Product Description

"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."--from Awaiting the Heavenly Country

How 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 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120112 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 245 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780801437618
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From the Back Cover
"The premise of this very interesting and very satisfying book is that an antebellum American culture of death contributed mightily, even decisively, to the destructive nature of the Civil War. Mark S. Schantz's excellent research melds with his deep knowledge of the war in making persuasive links between antebellum culture and Civil War behaviors--North and South, male and female, black and white, home front and battlefield."--David Waldstreicher, Temple University

"Awaiting the Heavenly Country is an eloquent and insightful analysis of the culture of death and dying in antebellum America. Mark S. Schantz argues that the carnage of the Civil War may perhaps best be explained by a culture that embraced several anesthetizing notions about death: the idea that death was ennobling, that it ushered the deceased into a materially and emotionally rich heavenly existence, that the body itself could be purified and restored in the act of death. Schantz is a generous and sympathetic guide to the mind-numbing bloodletting of the Civil War who manages to explain the inexplicable."--Susan Juster, University of Michigan

About the Author
Mark S. Schantz is Professor of History and Director of the Odyssey Program at Hendrix College.

Customer Reviews

A death-embracing culture
Mark Schantz's eagerly anticipated Awaiting the Heavenly Country will inevitably be compared to Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering. Faust, whose book beat Schantz's to the bookstores by just a few months, has explored death and the Civil War for several years, and some of the themes her book explores--for example, 19th century American notions of the good death, disposal of huge quantities of corpses, and rituals of mourning--are also investigated by Schantz.

But it would be a pity to regard Schantz's book as a redundant late-comer, because it complements more than duplicates Faust's work. Ironically, this is because Schantz's book doesn't really live up to its subtitle: The Civil War and America's Culture of Death. Schantz actually has relatively little to say about the Civil War. He's much more concerned with exploring the "death-embracing" culture of antebellum America, that "shared body of cultural assumptions and attitudes about death that helped to sustain a war that fractured a nation" by making it "easier to kill and be killed" (pp. 4, 2). To this end, he explores the sheer ubiquity of death in antebellum America (Chapter 1), antebellum notions of heaven (Chapter 2), the ethos of cemeteries and heroism (Chapter 3), antebellum death poetry in the "Southern Literary Messenger" (Chapter 4), the perceived relationship between a good death and freedom (Chapter 5), and depictions of death in memorial lithography and postmortem photos (Chapter 6).

Schantz's treatment of death in antebellum America is closely documented and frequently insightful (especially interesting is his analysis of the influence of classical Greco-Roman models on the nation's understanding of heroism, pp. 86-96). Chapter 5's discussion of good death, freedom, and slavery offers the closest tie-in with explicitly Civil War themes; the other chapters make only tangential connections. That's why I would suggest Schantz's book as a quite good prologue to Faust's, which deals much more explicitly with the Civil War.

In his epilogue (pp. 207-10), Schantz reminds us that it's anachronistic to think that basic presumptions about life and death held by the Civil War generation are similar (much less identical) to ours today. We may be tempted to think so because of the influence of popular films and novels, but we should resist the temptation. It was a different time and a different ethos, and nothing so underscores this fact than the difference between the "death-embracing" ethos of early 19th century America and the "death-denying" one of our own day. In reminding us of this point, Schantz not only helps us to keep our understanding of the period in perspective. He also sheds valuable light for us on how and why the nation coped with the colossal death and destruction of its only civil war.

the old, weird America
In "Awaiting the Heavenly Country," Mark Schantz leads his reader on a tour of the fascinating and often perverse world of 19th Century death literature, philosophy, and photography. What about those post-mortem pictures of Aunt Ida on the mantle? Wondering how your friends will recognize you in heaven? How could they read and enjoy all that bad poetry about the romantic deaths of young people? Schantz argues that a study of 19th death customs, though perhaps a joy in itself, is integral to understanding the startling number of deaths in the American Civil War. Advances in military machinery and speculation about the incompetence of generals can prove only partly sufficient to account for the carnage. Schantz suggests that confidence concerning one's heavenly future and one's martial fame makes it a bit easier to rush headlong into battle with one's bayonet fixed, quite possibly to die with one's fellows in droves. The 19th Century, with its peculiar death ways, may have provided this sort of confidence wholesale. I find Schantz's case fairly convincing. As for style, his prose is exciting, and his wit, if often subtle, sparkles. The "Advantages of Consumption" (i.e. tuberculosis) is a particular highlight. Finally, though Schantz appropriately confines his discussion to a particular period in history, his argument should be very interesting for those engaged in discussions of cultural attitudes towards death and war in 21st Century America. Overall, "Awaiting the Heavenly Country" is an excellent and thought-provoking book.

Fascinating Book!
This book is an essential for any Civil War history buff. The 19th century was a time when contagious illnesses, childbirth and occupational hazards limited the expected lifespan and coincided with a national evangelical spirit which carried with it the concept of the "good death."

When the Civil War broke out, the bloody battles resulted in staggering casualties which challenged nearly every family and individual to consider how they approached and handled death.

This book is a masterful achievement. There is no other quite like it and I have been reading Civil War history for some time now.

The book spans the time before, during and after the war. It envelops broad concepts and then sweeps in to tell deeply personal stories that can wrench the heart even after over 100 years. It is wonderfully illustrated with photos and drawings and very well written.

I started reading this book and was swept right into it immediately.

Buy, read and enjoy!