41 pages • 1 hour read
Drew Gilpin FaustThis Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Walt Whitman
Whitman, a celebrated American poet, features throughout the book, in the form of quotes from his work and descriptions of his actions. Whitman drove the campaign to assign names to the unknown dead to give the fallen soldiers a sense of finality and to give their families a means of burying and mourning them. He also spent countless hours writing to soldiers’ next of kin to tell them of their loss. He suffered his own family crisis when his brother became one of the many injured Union soldiers.; Whitman also frequently visited hospitals where he wrote letters home on behalf of soldiers unable to do so themselves. Whitman composed three well-known poems after the death of President Abraham Lincoln, in an attempt to put into words the tremendous anguish so many felt in the wake of that horrendous event. They include "O Captain! My Captain!", "This Dust Was Once the Man," and "Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day."
Clara Barton
Born in 1821, Clara Barton was a nurse who founded the American Red Cross. Barton’s participation in wartime medicine began as early as the Baltimore Riot, which historians consider the earliest bloodshed of the Civil War. In just over a year, she received permission to work on the frontlines. For her efforts, she earned national renown and found prominent patrons across government and industry. In addition to treating wounded soldiers, Barton worked to secure medical supplies for the Union Army throughout the war. Soldiers and journalists referred to her as the "Angel of the Battlefield."
After the war, with the endorsement of President Lincoln, Barton ran the Office of Missing Soldiers. She helped locate 22,000 unaccounted-for soldiers, including 13,000 who died in Andersonville Prison. By the end of the 1960s, Barton helped secure marked gravesites for 20,000 fallen Union soldiers.
Edmund Whitman
Born in 1812, Edmund Whitman served as a quartermaster for the Union Army during the Civil War. Following the war, as Superintendent of National Cemeteries, he established the principles on which National Cemeteries should be built—principles the United States still follows today. He also led African American regiments who helped locate 100,000 fallen U.S. soldiers who died in the South and therefore never received a proper burial. In these efforts, Whitman and his men relied almost exclusively on help from African Americans living in the South, given that they faced deep hostility from most White southerners.
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By Drew Gilpin Faust
