This Republic Of Suffering Analysis

The book This Republic of Suffering illustrates the great deal of hardship the American Civil War brought upon not only the soldiers fighting the battles along with the generals and political officials at the front of the war but also how the civilians were affected. The book shows how people of this time dealt with death and how the death of so many young soldiers would change their lives forever. It is evident after reading this book that the war brought many struggles that the American people were not prepared for since they had never been involved in a war with this many casualties. The book starts by going over what a good death is how soldiers prepare for death and continues through to how the people left living were affected by the …show more content…
Officers would even be given their own section in cemeteries and buried apart from their men. Officers bodies would be wrapped in charcoal and delivered to Washington where they would be placed in metallic coffins before being shipped to their homes in the north. After the battle of Gettysburg, there were 7,000 slain men and 3,000 dead horses far too many for the union army to tend to themselves so civilians offered a helping hand to the union army out of respect and necessity. The decayed corpses emitted a terrible smell and also promoted diseases and infected their cattle so it was necessary to properly tend to the dead. Many families of moderate means would flock to battlefields in order to reclaim bodies and escort them home, though this was a privilege few had because of the cost of traveling. In the 1850 embalming came about in America and many people like Thomas Holmes made a fortune with embalming during the Civil War. In 1862 as a direct response to the growing number of dead corpses Congress passed a measure giving presidential power to the president to purchase land that would be used as national cemeteries and five emerged from