21. Mary D. Robertson, ed., Lucy Breckinridge of Grove Hill: The Journal of a Virginia Girl, 1862–1864 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1979), pp. 80–81. Daily South Carolinian, February 26, 1864. Patricia Loughridge and Edward D. C. Campbell Jr., Women in Mourning (Richmond, Va.: Museum of the Confederacy, 1985), p. 24.
22. Margaret Gwyn Diary, April 22 and 29, 1862, Special Collections, RBMSC; Nannie Haskins Diary, March 3, 1863, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.
23. Welton, “My Heart Is So Rebellious,” p. 239.
24. Kate Corbin to Maggie Tucker, April 21, 1863, manuscripts in possession of David Eilenberger, Chapel Hill Rare Books, Chapel Hill, N.C. See also Lila to Willie Chunn, September 21, 1863, William Augustus Chunn Papers, Emory University, Atlanta; Daily South Carolinian, March 10, 1864.
25. Philadelphia Inquirer, July 3, 1863; Richmond Enquirer, April 25, 1861, p. 3; New York Times, May 31, 1863, p. 6.
26. Godey’s Lady’s Book 71 (August 1865): 106; 64 ( June 1862): 617; 68 (May 1864): 498.
27. Mary D. Robertson, ed., Lucy Breckinridge of Grove Hill: The Journal of a Virginia Girl, 1862–1864 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1979), pp. 80–81; Daily South Carolinian, February 26, 1864; Patricia Loughridge and Edward D. C. Campbell Jr., Women in Mourning (Richmond, Va.: Museum of the Confederacy, 1985), p. 24.
28. “The Massachusetts Dead Returned from Baltimore,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 11, 1861, p. 410; Christian Recorder, May 11, 1861; John Marszalek, ed., The Diary of Miss Emma Holmes, 1861–1866 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), pp. 69–70. In early months of the war funerals received attentive press coverage that soon disappeared as they became commonplace. See, for example, “The Funeral Ceremonies in Honor of Addison Whitney and Luther C. Ladd at Lowell, Mass. On Monday, May 6,” New York Illustrated News, May 25, 1861, p. 43; “Funeral of Colonel Vosburgh,” New York Illustrated News, June 8, 1861, p. 75; “The Late Captain Ward,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, July 13, 1861, p. 133.
29. George Skoch, “A Lavish Funeral for a Southern Hero: ‘Stonewall’ Jackson’s Last March,” Civil War Times Illustrated, May 1989, pp. 22–27; Samuel B. Hannah, May 17, 1863, Death of Stonewall Jackson, VMIA; online at www.vmi.edu/archives/jackson/tjjhanna.htm. See also Lexington Gazette, May 20, 1863, Funeral of Stonewall Jackson, VMIA, online at www.vmi.edu/archives/jackson/tjjobit.htm; Daniel Stowell, “Stonewall Jackson and the Providence of God,” in Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, Religion and the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 187–207; Charles Royster, The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), pp. 193–231. See also “Funeral of Gen. Maxcy Gregg,” newspaper clipping, December 22, 1862, Maxcy Gregg Papers, SCL; “Funeral of General Winthrop,” clipping, 1864, Frederick Winthrop Papers, MAHS.
30. Rev. T. H. Stockton, “Hymn for the National Funeral” (Philadelphia: A. W. Auner, [1865]); Swain quoted in David B. Chesebrough, “No Sorrow Like Our Sorrow”: Northern Protestant Ministers and the Assassination of Lincoln (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1994), p. 88.
31. New York Herald, April 20, 1865; Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 15–22.
32. New York Herald, April 26, 1865; Jacob Thomas quoted in Chesebrough, “No Sorrow Like Our Sorrow,” p. 187. See also Christian Recorder, April 22, 1865, May 6, 1865.
33. Walt Whitman, “Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day,” in Walt Whitman: Civil War Poetry and Prose (New York: Dover, 1995), pp. 34–35.
34. Helen Vendler, “Poetry and the Mediation of Value: Whitman on Lincoln,” Tanner Lecture on Human Values delivered at the University of Michigan, October 29 and 30, 1999, online at www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/Vendler_01.pdf, pp. 147–48. I am deeply indebted to Professor Vendler for sharing thoughts about Whitman with me.
35. Whitman, “O Captain! My Captain,” in Civil War Poetry and Prose, p. 34.
36. Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” in Civil War Poetry and Prose, pp. 27–28.
37. Whitman, “Pensive on Her Dead Gazing,” in Civil War Poetry and Prose, p. 38; Vendler, “Poetry and the Mediation of Value,” pp. 155–56; Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” pp. 27–28, 33.
38. Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” p. 28; Whitman, “Ashes of Soldiers,” in Civil War Poetry and Prose, pp. 36, 37.
39. Tyler Resch, Dorset: In the Shadow of the Marble Mountain (Dorset, Vt.: Dorset Historical Society, 1989), pp. 141, 174; Nantucket Weekly Mirror, December 27, 1862, quoted in Richard F. Miller and Robert F. Mooney, The Civil War: The Nantucket Experience (Nantucket, Mass.: Wesco, 1994), p. 137.
40. Reverend Clark B. Stewart, Journal-Diary, 1859–1865, Works Progress Administration typescript, SCL.
41. L. H. Blanton, “Well Done Thou Good and Faithful Servant,” Funeral Sermon on the Death of Rev. John W. Griffin, Chaplain of the 19th Va. Regt., August 1, 1864 (Lynchburg, Va.: Power-Press Book & Job Office, 1865), p. 8.
42. On funeral sermons, see Robert V. Wells, Facing the “King of Terrors”: Death and Society in an American Community, 1750–1990 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 54–56.
43. William J. Hoge, Sketch of Dabney Carr Harrison, Minister of the Gospel and Captain in the Army of the Confederate States of America (Richmond, Va.: Presbyterian Committee of Publication of the Confederate States, 1862), pp. 50, 51–52, 53.
44. Alexander Twombly, The Completed Christian Life: A Sermon Commemorative of Adjutant Richard M. Strong, 177th N.Y.S.V. (Albany, N.Y.: J. Mussell, 1863), p. 7; Philip Slaughter, A Sketch of the Life of Randolph Fairfax, A Private in the Ranks of the Rockbridge Artillery (Richmond, Va.: Tyler, Allegre and McDaniel, 1864), pp. 6, 8, 35, 39; R. L. Dabney, A Memorial of Lieut. Colonel John T. Thornton of the Third Virginia Cavalry, C.S.A. (Richmond, Va.: Presbyterian Committee of Publication of the Confederate States), pp. 6, 8; Robert Lewis Dabney, True Courage: A Discourse Commemorative of Lieutenant General Thomas J. Jackson (Richmond, Va.: Presbyterian Committee of Publication of the Confederate States, 1863), p. 4.
45. Charles Seymour Robinson, A Memorial Discourse: Occasioned by the Death of Lieutenant James M. Green, 4th N.Y.S.V. (Troy, N.Y.: Daily Times Printing, 1864), pp. 14, 15.
46. Joseph Cross, “On Grief: A Funeral Service Oration for General Daniel Donelson,” in Camp and Field: Papers from the Portfolio of an Army Chaplain (Columbia, S.C.: Evans & Cogswell, 1864), pp. 68, 69, 71.
47. Henry I. Bowditch, “Memorial of Lt. Nathaniel Bowditch,” p. 1015, Nathaniel Bowditch Memorial Collection, MAHS.
48. Ibid., pp. 1015, 1048; Henry I. Bowditch to My Own Sweet Wife [Olivia Yardley Bowditch], March 19, 1863, “Manuscripts Relating to Lieutenant Nathaniel Bowditch,” vol. 2, p. 98, Nathaniel Bowditch Memorial Collection, MAHS.
49. Henry I. Bowditch to Darling [Olivia Yardley Bowditch], March 21, 1863, “Manuscripts Relating to Lieutenant Nathaniel Bowditch,” vol. 2, p. 98, Nathaniel Bowditch Memorial Collection, MAHS; Bowditch, “Memorial,” p. 1019. On the unmanliness of grief, see also H. L. Abbott to J. G. Abbott, in Robert Garth Scott, ed., Fallen Leaves: The Civil War Letters of Major Henry Livermore Abbott (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991), p. 140; W. D. Rutherford to Sallie Fair Rutherford, June 12, 1862, William D. Rutherford Papers, SCL.
50. Henry I. Bowditch to My Darling, March 19, 1863, “Manuscripts,” vol. 2, pp. 98–100; Bowditch, “Memorial,” p. 1015.
51. Bowditch, “Memorial,” p. 1015; Memorials of Lieut. Nathaniel Bowditch A.A.A.G., 1st Cavalry Brigade, Second Division, Army of the Potomac, title page, Nathaniel Bowditch Memorial Collection, MAHS. “My Child” was originally published in Monthly Miscellany 3 (October 1840): 193–94, with the title “He is Not There.” The poem was “addressed by the writer to a clerical friend, on the death of his only son.” See also Louis
Harmon Peet, Who’s the Author?: A Guide to the Authorship of Novels, Stories, Speeches, Songs and General Writings of American Literature (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1901), p. 169, and Henry I. Bowditch, “The Celebration of John Pierpont’s Centennial Birthday,” Reminiscences (Boston: n.p., 1885).
52. Bowditch to My Darling, March 19, 1863; Nat’s Funeral, Rev. James Freeman Clarke’s Remarks, both in “Manuscripts,” vol. 2, pp. 97, 160–64, Nathaniel Bowditch Memorial Collection, MAHS.
53. Bowditch, “Memorial,” p. 1015; Henry I. Bowditch, A Brief Plea for an Ambulance System for the Army of the United States, as Drawn from the Extra Sufferings of the Late Lieutenant Bowditch and a Wounded Comrade (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1863).
CHAPTER 6. BELIEVING AND DOUBTING
1. John D. Sweet, The Speaking Dead. A Discourse Occasioned by the Death of Serg’t Edward Amos Adams (Boston: Commercial Printing House, 1864), pp. 6, 4, 5.
2. Carwardine quote and church statistics in Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), p. 12.
3. Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (London: John Murray, 1830–33); Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (London: John Murray, 1859). On biblical criticism, see Jerry Wayne Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 1800–1870: The New England Scholars (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969); Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974); James Turner, Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985). Lyell published another devastating work in the midst of the Civil War itself. See The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, with Remarks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation (London: John Murray, 1863).
4. On the argument from design, the classic text was William Paley’s Natural Theology (1802). For two efforts to reconcile the science of Darwin and Lyell with religious belief, published during the Civil War, see Reverend Edward F. Williams, “On the Origin of Species,” Evangelical Quarterly Review 16 ( January 1865): 11–23, and Daniel R. Goodwin, “The Antiquity of Man,” American Presbyterian and Theological Review 6 (April 1864): 233–59.
5. Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001), p. 18. See also Robert C. Albrecht, “The Theological Response of the Transcendentalists to the Civil War,” New England Quarterly 38 (March 1965): 21–34.
6. Sweet, Speaking Dead, p. 7; A. M. Poindexter, Why Will Ye Die? (Raleigh, N.C.: n.p., 186–); G. A. A. Riggs, Diary, August 14, 1864, CAH.
7. See Mark Schantz, “The American Civil War and the Culture(s) of Death,” unpublished paper; W. H. Christian, The Importance of a Soldier Becoming a Christian (Richmond, Va.: Soldiers’ Track Association, [186–]), p. 3; Mrs. Hancock, in North Carolina Presbyterian, August 4, 1862 p. 149; Drew Gilpin Faust, “Christian Soldiers,” in Faust, Southern Stories: Slaveholders in Peace and War (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992), pp. 98–99.
8. Jestin Hampton to Thomas B. Hampton, July 7, 1864; Thomas B. Hampton to Jestin Hampton, August 9, 1863, July 17, 1863, May 27, 1863, all in Thomas B. Hampton Papers, CAH.
9. Thomas B. Hampton to Jestin Hampton, October 15, 1863; Jestin Hampton to Thomas B. Hampton, April 24, 1864; both in Thomas B. Hampton Papers, CAH.
10. A. S. Collins and H. Collins to Jestin Hampton, March 21, 1865; Thomas B. Hampton Obituary [March 1865]: both in Thomas B. Hampton Papers, CAH.
11. Philippe Ariès, The Hour of Our Death, trans. Helen Weaver (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), pp. 557–601; Philippe Ariès, Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).
12. “My God! What Is All This For?,” Wolf C116, American Song Sheets Collection, LCP.
13. Captain Edson Gerry, “Battle of Winchester,” Wolf 108, online at musicanet.org/robokopp/usa/harkthem.htm; “Tell Mother, I Die Happy,” words by C. A. Vosburgh, music by Jabez Burns (New York: Charles Magnus, n.d.), Wolf 2290. See also “Shall We Know Each Other There?,” Wolf 2081, “Our Southern Dead,” Wolf C130, E. Walter Lowe, “The Dying Soldier” (New York: Charles Magnus, n.d.), Wolf 5486; L. Katzenburger, “The Dying Confederate’s Last Words,” Wolf C49, “Oh! Bless Me, Mother, Ere I Die,” Wolf 1653, all in American Song Sheet Collection, LCP.
14. J. L. M’Creery, “There Is No Death,” Arthur’s Home Magazine 22 ( July 1863): 41.
15. Swedenborg quoted in Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang, Heaven: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 186. See Erland J. Brock, ed., Swedenborg and His Influence (Bryn Athyn, Pa.: Academy of the New Church, 1988). My thanks to James Kloppenberg and Trygve Throntveit for help on Swedenborg. On heaven see also Jeffrey Burton Russell, Paradise Mislaid: How We Lost Heaven and How We Can Regain It (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
16. James H. Moorhead, “‘As Though Nothing At All Had Happened’: Death and Afterlife in Protestant Thought, 1840–1955,” Soundings 67, no. 4 (1984): 458–59. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Swedenborg; or, the Mystic,” in Robert E. Spiller, ed., Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Washington Square Press, 1965), p. 155.
17. Emily Dickinson to Fanny Norcross and Loo Norcross, April 1861, in Mabel Todd Loomis, ed., Letters of Emily Dickinson (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1894), vol. 2, p. 237. Dickinson quoted in Shira Wolosky, Emily Dickinson: A Voice of War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), p. 44; Emily Dickinson, “I never felt at Home—Below—,” #413, in Thomas H. Johnson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960); McDannell and Lang, Heaven, p. 228; Daily South Carolinian, April 24, 1864; Phillip Shaw Paludan, A People’s Contest: The Union and Civil War, 1861–1865 (1988; rpt. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), p. 367; Harper’s Weekly, December 5, 1863, p. 784; poems from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 26 (February 1863): 384, and 29 (October 1864): 584.
18. Robert Patterson, Visions of Heaven for the Life on Earth (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1877); Harper’s Weekly, December 5, 1863, p. 784; William Branks, Heaven Our Home: We Have No Saviour But Jesus and No Home But Heaven (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1864). The book has twenty-five total chapters and is divided into three parts; part 2 is “Recognition.” Rebecca Gratz to Ann Boswell Gratz, September 12, 1861, in David Philipson, ed., Letters of Rebecca Gratz (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1929), p.427. On heaven and Jews, see Henry Harbaugh, “Heavenly Recognition Among the Jews,” The Heavenly Recognition; or, An Earnest and Scriptural Discussion of the Question, Will We Know Our Friends in Heaven (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blackiston, 1865), pp. 85–115.
19. Epes Sargent, The Proof Palpable of Immortality: Being an Account of the Materialization Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism (Boston: Colby and Rich, 1875).
20. Robert S. Cox, Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003), p. 169; James Henry Hammond Diary, December 13, 1853, James Henry Hammond Papers, SCL; see Drew Gilpin Faust, A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South, 1840–1860 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 66–67. Ann Braude demonstrates the especially close link between spiritualism and feminism in Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989). On numbers of spiritualists, the North American Review estimated at least 2 million in 1855; Harriet Beecher Stowe thought 4 to 5 million in 1869; Emma Hardinge, spiritualist writer, estimated 11 million in 1870. Nina Baym, “Introduction,” in Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Three Spiritualist Novels (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), p. ix.
21. Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), pp. 218–20, 221; “Lincoln’s Attendance at Spiritualist Seances,” Lincoln Lore, no. 1499 ( January 1963): 1–4; no. 1500 (Febru
ary 1963): 1–2; John Pierpont, “My Child,” online at www.poetry-archive.com/p/pierpont_john.htm; Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, Memorial (Boston: John Wilson & Son, 1865), p. 49; Bret E. Carroll, Spiritualism in Antebellum America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 16–34.
22. Cox, Body and Soul, p. 176.
23. Epes Sargent, Planchette: or, The Despair of Science (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1869). “Novel amusement” from broadside “The Boston Planchette,” American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass., reproduced in Braude, Radical Spirits, fig. 5, after p. 114.
24. R. Laurence Moore, In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 38; Epes Sargent, The Scientific Basis of Spiritualism (Boston: Colby & Rich, 1881), p. 346; John W. Edmonds and George T. Dexter, Spiritualism (New York: Partridge & Brittan, 1853), p. 360; Sargent, Planchette, p. 279.
25. “The Second Death,” Banner of Light, October 19, 1861, p. 6; “Message Department,” April 26, 1862, p. 6; May 31, 1862, p. 6; July 2, 1864, p. 1.; December 13, 1862, p. 6.
26. Banner of Light, April 26, 1862, p. 6.
27. Banner of Light, September 19, 1863; July 16, 1864; May 10, 1862; all p. 6.
28. Banner of Light, August 29, 1863, p. 6.
29. Ibid. See S. Weir Mitchell’s fictional rendering of a spiritualist reunion of an amputee and his limbs, “The Case of George Dedlow,” Atlantic Monthly, July 1866, online at www.painonline.org/pdf/dedlow.pdf.
30. National Park Service, Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, Names Index Project, online at www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/info.htm. The data are entered from the General Index Cards of the Compiled Military Service records at the National Archives.
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