Title Awaiting the heavenly country : the Civil War and America's culture of death / Mark S. Schantz

Published Ithaca : Cornell University Press, ©2008

Click on the following:
ProQuest Ebook Central
EBSCO eBooks

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xv, 245 pages) : illustrations Contents Emblems of mortality -- The heavenly country -- Melancholy pleasure -- A voice from the ruins -- Better to die free, than to live slaves -- The court of death Summary "Americans came to fight the Civil War in the midst of a wider cultural world that sent them messages about death that made it easier to kill and to be killed. They understood that death awaited all who were born and prized the ability to face death with a spirit of calm resignation. They believed that a heavenly eternity of transcendent beauty awaited them beyond the grave. They knew that their heroic achievements would be cherished forever by posterity. They grasped that death itself might be seen as artistically fascinating and even beautiful."--Awaiting the Heavenly CountryHow much loss can a nation bear? An America in which 620,000 men die at each other's hands in a war at home is almost inconceivable to us now, yet in 1861 American mothers proudly watched their sons, husbands, and fathers go off to war, knowing they would likely be killed. Today, the death of a soldier in Iraq can become headline news; during the Civil War, sometimes families did not learn of their loved ones' deaths until long after the fact. Did antebellum Americans hold their lives so lightly, or was death so familiar to them that it did not bear avoiding?In Awaiting the Heavenly Country, Mark S. Schantz argues that American attitudes and ideas about death helped facilitate the war's tremendous carnage. Asserting that nineteenth-century attitudes toward death were firmly in place before the war began rather than arising from a sense of resignation after the losses became apparent, Schantz has written a fascinating and chilling narrative of how a society understood death and reckoned the magnitude of destruction it was willing to tolerate. Schantz addresses topics such as the pervasiveness of death in the culture of antebellum America; theological discourse and debate on the nature of heaven and the afterlife; the rural cemetery movement and the inheritance of the Greek revival; death as a major topic in American poetry; African American notions of death, slavery, and citizenship; and a treatment of the art of death-including memorial lithographs, postmortem photography and Rembrandt Peale's major exhibition painting The Court of Death. Awaiting the Heavenly Country is essential reading for anyone wanting a deeper understanding of the Civil War and the ways in which antebellum Americans comprehended death and the unimaginable bloodshed on the horizon Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL English Print version record digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL SUBJECT University of South Alabama gnd Subject Death -- Social aspects -- United States -- History -- 19th century War and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century HISTORY -- United States -- Civil War Period (1850-1877) HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- General. Death -- Social aspects War and society Sezessionskrieg 1861-1865 Todesvorstellung Tod Unsterblichkeitsglaube Döden -- sociala aspekter -- historia -- Förenta staterna -- 1800-talet. Amerikanska inbördeskriget 1861-1865. SUBJECT United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Casualties -- Social aspects Subject United States Genre/Form History Form Electronic book LC no. 2007048089 ISBN 9780801459252 0801459257 0801458013 9780801458019

  Permalink