Civil Death
Death and the American Civil War: Disruptions of Decency and a New Awareness of Reality
Victorian notions of the body and its functions were complex given the combination of the rise in biological and medical knowledge that occurred during the nineteenth century and the prudery that gained such traction during the same era. These two trajectories were likely not in simple conflict as they might appear, but rather the increasing awareness of the body as an almost mechanical entity rather than the soul-filled object of majesty it had long been appreciated as likely fueled the reluctance to admit to bodily functions and certainly to bodily decay. In the United States, the Victorian Era brought with it a stark and unavoidable reminder of the body's frailties and ultimate lack of majesty with the onset and prolonged casualties of the Civil War. The half-decade of conflict is famously the bloodiest of American wars, claiming the lives of more U.S. citizens than any other war or military action in the nation's history, and while even today it serves as a poignant reminder of man's inhumanity to man it's effect on the Victorian sensibilities of the era could only have been more profound.
The idea of a "good death" in Victorian times, given the aversion to all things bodily and medical that existed during the era, would have been one that took place privately, quietly, and with a minimum of medicinal fuss or symptom expression. Passing quietly in one's sleep would have been the ideal for most individuals of the period, and certainly it would not have been desired to be immediately present for anyone else's more gruesome death or to witness or even discuss the details of one's passing. Photography, journalism, and the backyard presence of the Civil War made it all but impossible to avoid stories and images of death, and almost every family throughout the nation was touched by a death in the war in some way or another. The good death was not to be found in the Civil War, then, but instead those directly affected by the violence and death and society as a whole had to redefine the way they understood death, dying, and life itself. There was no longer a way to avoid thinking about these issues and their implications, and thus a new spirit that recognized the raw brutality of war and of death and that arguably created a greater respect for the body that replaced the former majesty with which it had been mistakenly imbued. Death in the Civil War era became a force in and of itself with both concrete and abstract impacts upon the world and American society that continue to reverberate today.
A Meditation on Death
Understanding how views of death generally and the fatal violence of war specifically were changed by the Civil War requires an understanding of sentiments that existed prior to the war. In his "Declaration of Sentiments of the American Anti-Slavery Society," William Lloyd Garrison celebrates the Revolutionary War as one in which "people rose up as from the sleep of death, and rushed to the strife of blood; deeming it more glorious to die instantly as freemen, than desirable to live one hour as slaves" (p. 18). To Garrison writing approximately six decades after the American Revolution commenced and three decades prior to the Civil War, the idea of death in service of a higher purpose was noble and even graceful, and is far removed from the gory details that would be almost universally shunned in the Victorian Era.
While Victorians might not have been able to see majesty in the body anymore, they could certainly see grandeur in the nobler principles and values of humanity, and Garrison suggests that war and death are noble when they occur for noble purposes. While still not the typical Victorian ideal of the "good death," such a death would certainly be honorable according to Garrison's view and according to the sentiments of many during the period. Not all individuals would agree with Garrison's abolitionist viewpoint,...
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