For New Jerseyan General Robert McAllister, no matter what civilians did or saw, their efforts to understand war could never reach the level that came with actual experience. “All the men in the army,” he wrote to his daughter in January 1863, “who a short time ago were at home speculating, come out now and acknowledge that they knew nothing about it, and that there [sic] views are entirely changed.” Indeed, he continued, “I wish all such could come and try there [sic] hands. It would be a holesome [sic] lesson and would teach them wisdom and stop a grate [sic] deal of this complaining at home, as well as lessen [sic] the dissatisfaction in the army.”1
Perhaps the general was being unfair to those Northerners who experienced something of the war, even if not in the same way as his campaigning soldiers. Fear, pain, and death, not to mention anxiety and worry as well as the desire to know what their men experienced all could bring civilians closer to a better understanding of the conflict. Also, the dangers of a closer war appeared real to many of them. Those civilians residing near the Canadian border and on the Great Lakes worried about the possibility of Confederate raiders harassing their communities from their northern neighbor or even war with England, Canada’s master. As if to prove distance from the battlefields of Virginia offered no absolute protection to the Yankee home front, on October 18, 1864, escaped Confederate prisoners of war, their uniforms hidden under civilian clothes, raided St. Albans, Vermont, harassing the people and robbing three of the city’s banks before escaping across the Canadian border.2
Earlier in August 1862, the Sioux uprising in distant Minnesota also suggested that some Northern civilians learned the meaning of fear in the face of the threat of violence, even if it did not come at the hands of rebels. Indian attacks in Minnesota triggered panic among residents not only there but also in relatively safe Wisconsin. Families in both states fled their homes in terror, but Wisconsinites panicked beyond all reason. In one town, residents fled, “stampeding like cattle while not an Indian was within fifty miles.” Rumors spread of towns burned to the ground, of people massacred by the native horde, of scalping parties roaming the countryside. Consequently, refugees clogged roads with their wagons.3
The Sioux who caused the widespread panic were not auxiliaries of the Confederate army. They had their own grievances, but Wisconsin’s Governor Edward Salomon believed he could recognize a conspiracy in these events. “I am well satisfied,” he explained as he requested more arms from Washington, “that these Indians have been tampered with by rebel agents.”4 Regardless of the irrational behavior, at least a fair number of civilians tasted the kind of fear more frequently experienced by their Southern enemies.5
The poorly defended Atlantic coastal states, as distant from the southern battlefields as the settlers of the Great Lakes, were vulnerable to Confederate naval raids, thus prompting some realistic concern among their inhabitants about rebel infringements on their peace, quiet, and trade. Before the war the government had planned an impressive system of forts that, if completed, would have protected harbors from Maine southward from rebels or potential European belligerents. In 1861 many of them stood as inadequate sentinels, unfinished and lacking in weaponry and manpower, victims of shortsighted congressional budgets, until the real threat posed by secession and potential international enemies moved the government to renewed efforts.6 Federal and state governments tried to rectify the problems of coastal defense, but the occasional Confederate attack on shipping reminded East Coast residents that there was a war in progress.7
Residents of the borderland counties of the free states more than other Northerners had legitimate concerns about their exposure to invasion or to partisan guerrilla violence. Kansans had experienced internal violence before the war between proslavery and antislavery factions. Little changed with the coming of the war, but Missouri’s significant rebel sympathies and its own internal civil war did not help matters across the border. During the fall of 1862, Kansas communities along that Missouri border felt “no security for life or property,” wrote John Halderman, a state militia commander, “and many, in despair that the Government will afford them aid, are leaving the State or moving back into the interior, abandoning crops, houses, and other improvements to the mercy of the enemy.”8
Kansans were far from innocent in this border war, with James Lane and his “jayhawkers” making their reputations with forays into Missouri.9 Federal troops from Kansas also fought rebel sympathizers across the border in Missouri while the Kansas border region remained “infested with bushwackers who kill in the dark, murder, destroy and rob the country of everything they can carry off.” This guerrilla conflict only bred fear and hatred. George W. Packard, a soldier in the Seventh Kansas, advised his mother that an end to it would come only after “About two-thirds of the inhabitants of Mo. . . . [were] killed like wolves or as any other venomous wild animals.” For Packard, during the spring of 1863 “Murder, robbery, and plunder seem to be the order of the day.”10
The August 21, 1863, sacking and razing of Lawrence, Kansas, by William Quantrill and his men, however, appeared to be the most shocking example of such border violence. Quantrill’s raid was a retaliatory attack for what Kansans had done in Missouri, and it certainly succeeded in exacting vengeance in blood and treasure from the antislavery residents of Lawrence.11 After the ashes had settled, stubborn residents were determined to stay and rebuild. Nevertheless, some of their number admitted that the massacre had the effect of terrorizing them. After funerals for victims of the raid, a “night of terror and excitement . . . followed.” Word had arrived of an imminent attack by Quantrill, which led people to hide in a cornfield through the night. Not long afterward, Lawrence resident Elizabeth Earl admitted that her “nerves” were “so unstrung” by the raid, which had caused unimaginable “distress, and suffering, of our women and children, by the suden [sic] death of their Husbands and Fathers.” Women left the town “Horrified and will never return,” Earl wrote to her mother, and “others have left, thinking by doing so, they can throw off the feelings” resulting from the massacre of friends and family.12 Far from the Lawrence raid being the end of such cross-border fights, Kansans planned their own vengeance.13
Incursions into the border states of Maryland and Kentucky in 1862 caused some concern farther north of those loyal slave states, imparting some sense of the fear experienced by enemy civilians in the Confederacy.14 In September, Cincinnati had prepared for the worse. On learning of Confederate progress in Kentucky and the approach of cavalry dispatched from Confederate General Kirby Smith’s forces, some residents of the city fled their homes. Authorities proclaimed martial law and essentially conscripted all citizens for preparing the city’s defense. Men drilled. A few defaulters found themselves arrested by the police. Volunteers converged on the city. As Northerners had done since the beginning of the war, Cincinnati’s citizens fed their guests, and the town appropriated local buildings for their barracks. Men built defensive works on the Kentucky side of the river, while other communities along the Ohio River also prepared for invasion.15
After two weeks of manning the improvised defenses and a few skirmishes fought on the Kentucky side of the Ohio, Cincinnati’s danger passed as Kirby Smith’s contingent withdrew southward. Not long afterward, western Confederates under Braxton Bragg failed to do better, stymied by Union forces on October 8 at Perryville, Kentucky.16 Neither Philadelphia nor Harrisburg or for that matter Cincinnati had to live with the enemy marching down their streets, but the threat had sown the sort of fear common in Confederate communities in the paths of invading Union armies, raiders, and foragers.
In 1862, despite real concerns about General Robert E. Lee’s progress in Maryland during his invasion northward, Pennsylvanians won a reprieve. On September 17, 1862, the Army of the Potomac stopped the invasion with a bloody fight at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg.17 The summer of 1863 once again proved the vulnerability of Pennsylvania with a particularly harsh reminder of how the war might spill over into Northern backyards. Incursions above the Potomac River by the Army of Northern Virginia during the Gettysburg campaign of 1863 spread fear among the people of the state. The Army of the Potomac, however, gathered at Gettysburg for a battle that lasted from July 1 through July 3. Lee failed to break the Yankee forces. His army retreated and completed its crossing of the Potomac by July 14.18 Before the battle and Lee’s successful retreat, however, the Confederates gave Pennsylvanians a taste of what an invading army could do.
During June, as during the earlier Antietam campaign, Yankees panicked as a Confederate army threatened Harrisburg, other points in southeastern Pennsylvania, and perhaps, some people worried, even Philadelphia. Harrisburg, the state’s capital and a communications hub, as well as rail lines were attractive targets, as the people of that city understood. A prosperous, well-built town on the Susquehanna River, it also had desirable military resources in the Pennsylvania Arsenal located there. Governor William Curtin was well aware of the city’s situation and acted accordingly. The prudent governor not only supervised the local defenses but also sent men far afield to scout the enemy. He petitioned Lincoln for troops while calling up Pennsylvania militiamen. “It is our only hope to save the North and crush the Rebel army,” he wrote, “Do not suppose for one instant that I am unnecessarily alarmed.” In the meantime, officials spirited away important documents while moving the state’s wealth to New York for safety. The concerns of the residents of the capital intensified with the sounds of the battle they heard in the distance when on July 3 the artillery of both armies unleashed their power.19
Southern Pennsylvanians in the path of the Army of Northern Virginia tried to escape the rebels, either making their way to Harrisburg or at some other point putting the Susquehanna River between them, their portable property, and the invaders.20 As the rebels approached, Chambersburg businessman William Heyser witnessed, “Suddenly about two hundred more wagons, horses, mules, and contrabands all came pouring down the street in full flight. . . . Such a sight I have never seen, or will never see again.” There was no mistaking the panic, as Heyser observed “The whole town . . . on the sidewalks screaming, crying, and running about. They know not where.” Heyser joined fleeing Chambersburg residents that night on the journey to Harrisburg, a city he found “in wildest confusion.”21
The people who remained in Chambersburg, as well as other nearby places such as Carlisle, were able to watch rebels come and go through their streets, breaking into stores and warehouses and taking what they needed or fancied.22 When the invading army finally returned to Virginia, it had suffered a setback on the battlefield, but by all appearances it had participated in a successful raid. The tens of thousands of animals as well as significant quantities of agricultural and manufactured products seized by the Confederates were sufficient proof. The Army of Northern Virginia would be able to sustain itself for some time off of the bounty appropriated from the civilians north of the Potomac.23
The people of Gettysburg, even more so than the surrounding towns, saw exactly what war did to life, limb, and property. They initially watched Confederate and Union soldiers fighting in streets and houses, and they listened to the thundering battle continue south of their town. When the residents emerged from their homes, they viewed previously unimaginable scenes, the consequence of the physical mayhem and destruction of war. The odor of the summertime battlefield was unavoidable, especially with dead and decomposing soldiers and animals an immediate presence on the town’s streets, and the task of burying the multitude of human and animal bodies on the fields of battle around the town appeared to be overwhelming.24 Local residents had no choice but to spend much of their time after the battle cleaning up their community, praying, and recovering from their traumatic experiences. Refugees eventually returned to views of great destruction in the town and its immediate hinterland, hardly able to breathe the putrid air of an atmosphere reeking of death. Soldiers had erased farm boundaries, consumed farmers’ pantries, and poisoned wells with dead bodies.25
Federal surgeon John H. Brinton recalled the medical emergency that followed the battle, but also the immediate swarm of the curious, who created additional problems for the federal army. “The town of Gettysburg was filled with hospitals and stores for the wounded, surgeons and their assistants, who were coming to see a real battle-ground,” Brinton noted, but there were also “newspaper men in abundance, and a crowd of Sanitary and Christian Commissioners, who wandered about everywhere, and kept remarkably good tables at the houses which they regarded as their headquarters.” Not only did individuals who had some real or invented purpose for being there arrive on the scene but also “Crowds of citizens” from nearby locales and even far-away Philadelphia. These were not helpful volunteers, according to Brinton. “A great many were in search of relics or ‘trophies’, as they called them, from the battlefield,” Brinton noted, “shot, shell, bayonets, guns, and every sort of military portable property.” Trophy hunting was against regulations, but rules did not stop individuals who did their best to evade provost guards. The solution was a practical and necessary one: the Provost Marshal sent those civilians caught in the act of scavenging for souvenirs “out to the field of battle, to assist in burying dead horses,—not a pleasant duty.” Despite the complaints of the conscripted gravediggers, the threat of being placed on such a burial detail seemed to have stopped the trophy hunting.26
African Americans, unlike their white neighbors, suffered a particularly heinous hardship at the hands of the invaders who acted as slave catchers. Rachel Cormany took particular notice of the fear among local African Americans, whom she witnessed being hunted and captured with the rebels “driving them off by droves.” “O! How it grated on our hearts to have to sit quietly & look at such brutal deeds,” she lamented; “Some of the colored people who were raised here were taken along— I sat on the front step as they were driven by just like we would drive cattle.”27 News of captured African Americans caused panic in the black population, prompting freeborn blacks and former slaves to evacuate their homes, abandon the region, and seek refuge 35 miles away in Harrisburg or even farther eastward in Philadelphia. Philadelphians opened their churches and homes to the fugitives from Lee’s army. In Harrisburg, residents, already frightened badly by the invasion, witnessed black refugees occupying parks, churches, and the courthouse. However, not all African Americans panicked and ran from the rebels; east of York on the Susquehanna River, a company of black volunteers joined in a defense of Wrightsville.28
It would not be until March of 1864 that the scattered decomposing bodies of half-buried soldiers would find permanent and suitable resting places in dedicated cemetery ground at the battlefield.29 In the meantime, the desire for better treatment of the dead and a more sanitary landscape led to the battlefield’s reincarnation as a national soldiers’ cemetery, a development that would forever make the place a physical reminder of what had occurred there as well as providing the nation with arguably the greatest statement of the war’s meaning.30 The cemetery’s dedication was a long affair, but the enduring high point was a short speech—the Gettysburg Address—by President Lincoln lasting only a few minutes.
On November 20, 1863, Philadelphian Sidney George Fisher recorded “a large meeting at Gettysburg” the preceding day, its purpose being “to consecrate a cemetery for the interment of our soldiers who fell . . . at that place.” Many dignitaries were present and the famous orator Edward Everett made a “long but commonplace” speech “tho well written & appropriate.” Lincoln, on the other hand, made “a very short one, but to the point and marked by his pithy sense, quaintness, & good feeling.”31 Editorialists across the land considered Lincoln’s brief remarks a masterpiece.32 It would be Lincoln’s dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, where he explained the necessity for such bloodshed in Pennsylvania and, indeed, elsewhere across the South, that would make that place unique in the memory of the war. His declaration of the nation’s “new birth of freedom” and the necessity to make certain that “the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” were essential reasons for continued sacrifice such as that witnessed at the Gettysburg battle.33
About a year after the battle at Gettysburg, the people of southeastern Pennsylvania once again faced the enemy’s wrath. Confederate cavalry peeled off from Jubal Early’s army, which was raiding up from Virginia and into Maryland to the outer forts of Washington, to return to Chambersburg. Eager to retaliate for Yankee depredations in Virginia, Early expected to make Pennsylvania communities pay for their army’s destructive behavior; his cavalry demanded a ransom but on July 30, 1864, were satisfied with razing the town.34 And the residents once again came to understand the nature of war by first-hand experience as they surveyed “the black and smouldering [sic] ruins of that once happy and prosperous town.”35
Farther west Midwesterners had little time to enjoy the federal victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. On July 8, 1863, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan with some 2,400 to 3,000 cavalry troopers raided north of the Ohio River, traveling over 1,000 miles through Indiana into Ohio and through the hinterland of Cincinnati until his capture less than two weeks later on July 10.36 Indianans had realized earlier that the Ohio River offered them little protection from their Southern enemies and always had feared Confederate raiders. Now Midwesterners suffered what was all too common for Virginians and other Confederates in the path of invading Yankees.
Indianans panicked when they learned of Confederate soldiers riding on their state’s soil, fearing they would reach Indianapolis, and thousands of volunteers converged on the capital to protect it. Confederate raiders “stole a great many horses,” according to Kate Starks, and at Corydon, they routed the home guard, killed residents, and set fire to the town. Women and children at Newpoint, Indiana, “went about town screaming & holoring fit to kill themselves & when news came that they were fighting at Summansville & Napoleon and that there was more of their men than there was of ours some of the women like to have went crazy but they were drove back and did not get to come further.” By the time federal troops ran Morgan to ground in Ohio on July 26, he and his men had accomplished little but for the destruction of property and the fear they caused among the citizens. Both consequences, however, were significant reminders of how the vagaries of war could bring about the unexpected.37
Civilians far from these traumatizing yet very localized events could only experience them in a vicarious fashion. Short of being in the path of an invading army or traveling to a battlefield, they might glean some understanding of the costs of war by reading published reports or viewing exhibits of photographs and magic lantern shows.38 In the wake of battles, citizens scrambled for copies of extra editions printed by their local newspapers, hoping to learn something of the recent events or read casualty lists dreading seeing familiar names among those men killed in the fight. New Yorker Julius Wesslau and other concerned citizens made it a regular habit to scan the papers to keep abreast of events. In December 1864, he reported to his German parents, “The first thing I do every morning is look through the newspaper.” The consequences of war were obvious to him, even so far removed from the fighting, with the political implications being made clear on the editorial pages. “Every day there are reports about battles, towns being destroyed, railroads, ships and other property,” he wrote, “there are articles that curse the rogues in the government, one screams peace, the next for war, and usually the rabble with nothing to lose screams the most about the government (they themselves elected).”39
Hometown journals often recruited local men, some of whom had journalistic experience, to act as their special correspondents, but every soldier who wrote a letter home was a reporter to his own family.40 Soldiers, as much as any newspaper, educated the home front about the ways of war, military commanders’ high and low, the Southern landscape and rebels, slaves and slavery, the campaigns in which they marched and fought, and the death throes of the rebel armies.41
Many of the home folk were able to come to an even better understanding of the war when they had the opportunity to see and to speak to their soldiers in person. Throughout the war, individual soldiers such as William Merrill of Andover, Massachusetts, came home on leave bringing with them information that they shared with friends and strangers.42 After the battle at Antietam Creek in September 1862, Sidney George Fisher, while traveling between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware, “fell into conversation with a young soldier who was wounded” at that fight. The young soldier impressed Fisher with his patriotic enthusiasm and manly bearing and gave Fisher “an account of the battle & of the dreadful scenes that accompanied it, by which he seemed much impressed.” The wounded soldier did not spare his civilian traveling companion. “He saw 1,100 men buried at once, in a long trench,” Fisher continued, “but so hastily was the work done that hands, feet, & heads stuck out above ground.”43
As the war raged on, entire regiments arrived home at the end of their enlistments or on furlough because of reenlistments, giving people throughout the Northern states opportunities to give them the joy of their communities, celebrating their return with parades, martial music, ringing bells, speeches, receptions, and dinners.44 Even as communities honored their veterans, the appearance of the regiments might have sobered them, especially if the citizens recalled the day those men had left for the war. In the fall and winter of 1864, Bostonians were eager to celebrate returning soldiers, only to be shocked when they witnessed the greatly reduced size of the regiments.45 The physical appearance of these veterans might also have given the home folk pause. Members of the 25th Connecticut returned home in August 1863, “a pretty hard looking set” after only a year of soldiering. Friends did not recognize the bearded men, who had dirty uniforms draped on their skinny frames.46 The homecoming also provided an opportunity for men to inform home folk of the circumstances of the deaths of common acquaintances and to compare notes about local casualties serving in other regiments.47
Thousands of Northern soldiers also made their way home because of ill health or wounds, and communities of all sizes tended to them. Convalescing men rested in the expansive hospitals of cities and towns, where they attracted the attention of sympathetic civilians. Wounded veterans became a visible presence on Northern streets in larger towns during the war as they waited for artificial limbs or for trains to their final destinations. Even in small towns such as Nininger, Minnesota, wounded veterans attracted the attention of the people as they hobbled about on crutches.48
While on the mend, injured or sick soldiers sought comfort with their families. They frequently had their peace and quiet upset by the visits of curious citizens who wished to learn something about the war from the men who knew it firsthand. Iowan Will Kemper returned home on leave in an exhausted state in June 1863 and then again in March 1865 to recover from his time as a prisoner of war. On both occasions he attracted a stream of neighbors who quizzed him about his experiences. The visitors who called in 1865 in turn saw an ill-but-game veteran who willingly discussed his experiences with them, repeating the same stories over and over as required.49 Indeed, it would be hard for wounded veterans to enjoy quiet anonymity in their communities; the local press often considered their homecomings to be newsworthy, making their presence known to all of their subscribers.50
It would be hard for families of the men still on campaign to miss the reminders of war’s cost brought to their communities by these experienced soldiers. They made real the worries they had for their own husbands and sons, but for some of them, those concerns assumed a more universal quality, transformed into wider feelings for all the suffering soldiers. In June 1864, Emeline Ritner expressed her concerns for the hard times all soldiers endured in the service of their country. “I wonder you don’t all get discouraged, sick and utterly fed up,” she admitted; “But, the true soldier has the noble Union & the glorious old flag in view, and mind, not the hardships of the day . . . There is fighting for the right and right will prevail.”51 Crete Garfield wrote to her husband, the future president, James Garfield, explaining that her concern for all soldiers unsettled her. “I cannot think of the horrors this terrible war is planting around our brave boys, I could neither eat nor sleep nor live should I give myself up to the contemplation of the sufferings and miseries of those who are fighting for us,” she admitted; “I only make the hours endurable by filling them so full of some employment that I cannot think.”52
Just as sick and wounded veterans reminded Northerners of the reality of war, so, too, did the funerals of their hometown boys whose families were fortunate enough to be able to retrieve their remains from hospital or battlefield. By the end of the war, at least 360,000 soldiers had given their lives for the Union, killed by the enemy or by disease. Most of these men never returned to rest in their native soil, buried where they had fallen on some distant battlefield or encampment. However, those dead who made the last trip home concluded their journeys with the usual rituals of interment that their families required for their own peace of mind. In 1864, for example, people in Indianapolis, Indiana, in North Adams, Massachusetts, and in Trenton, New Jersey, watched funeral processions for local men.53 In May of that year, the people of Lowell, Massachusetts, filled the streets to pay their respects as the body of Major Henry L. Abbott was laid to rest with military honors.54 And in November, Waterbury, Vermont, residents buried a soldier with speeches, a turn-out of an honor guard of 32 soldiers, and an assembly of the local Masonic lodge.55
Northerners repeated these scenes throughout the region, usually with elaborate ritual for the more important men of the community.56 Such ritual required civilians to think about the cause for which the dead had sacrificed themselves, reevaluate their lives, and come to terms with their grief. The dead also reminded civilians of the dangers that their men continued to face on their behalf. Rachel Cormany, whose husband Samuel was in the army, watched a soldier’s burial across the street from her home in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. “The first I ever saw buried,” she noted; “I could not help shedding a tear for the brave soldier, perhaps thinking that such may be the fate of my poor Samuel makes me so sad.”57
Americans had been familiar with death before the war, but the violent and obscene, sudden or lingering faraway deaths brought on by battle or camp sickness were new to most of their experiences. Before the war, death followed an established ritual. People did not normally die among strangers, and the death process provided the kind of structure that allowed family to contemplate the event, grieve the loss, and come to some degree of closure. During the war, this process remained possible for some families, but soldiers commonly died on distant fields, away from their loved ones, leaving them searching for some meaning in the loss that shattered their world.58
Often poor communications, unmarked graves, the grim reality of prisoner of war camps, incomplete casualty lists, and the general confusion of war even deprived families of positive knowledge of their soldier’s death, leaving them in a nether world of uncertainty. Family members could find some comfort by gathering as many details as possible about their loved one’s passing. They desired to know the last words of their loved ones, which would serve as part of the enduring memories of the deceased. They especially wanted to learn that they had died a good or noble death, one that was the consequence of heroic action or one that exhibited the traits of a true Christian.59
Families were fortunate to have information about the deaths of their soldiers in the letters of condolence written from someone who had been close to their loved one. The Remley family of Iowa learned of the circumstances of their son Lycurgus’s death in June 1863 because his brother George had been nearby. George, a member of the same regiment, had nursed his ill brother for some time in a hospital behind the Union lines at Vicksburg and was able to provide his family with his brother’s dying affirmation of his Christian faith in his last words. Lycurgus had asked George to tell the family that “he died in hope of a blissful immortality.” George also resorted to the common evangelical Protestant beliefs of the times to comfort his family, consoling his mother that Lycurgus “is a thousand times better off where he is.” “God was done with him here in this world and took him home to himself in Heaven, where he is forever free from pain and suffering and misery of Earth,” he reassured his mother. George’s words probably helped to comfort the grieving Remley family. But if they, religious as they were, had trouble finding meaning in Lycurgus’s death, they could find reassurance in the knowledge that it was part of God’s larger plan. “He does not willingly afflict the children of men,” George wrote, “but makes all things work to-gether for the good of those that love him and put their trust in Him.”60 Still, his mother grieved. Another son informed the father, the Reverend James A. Remley, that news of Lycurgus’s death “almost killed her.”61
By September 1864, George was also dead, killed in battle at Winchester, Virginia. On this sad occasion, the family had to rely on the information provided by one of their son’s friends, S. D. Price, the adjutant of the 22nd Iowa Infantry. Price sent George’s father two detailed letters explaining the circumstances of his son’s death. He informed the family that George was shot down while charging the enemy, not in the later retreat, hence it was a noble death. For some families, knowing that their son had done his duty to his country would have been sufficient, but for the Remleys, a family with a minister at its head, it probably was more important to know that their son had lived a virtuous life. Price reassured them that prior to George’s death, their son had maintained his Christian ways.62
Most families wished to have their loved ones buried closer to home if it were at all possible. Those who were able traveled the distance to the battlefield to locate their dead; others commissioned proxies to perform the duty.63 Some family members arrived at battlefields or military hospitals near the front where their loved ones had died only to find that confusion or poor records made it impossible to locate their bodies; others were fortunate to have hospital workers and nurses prepare bodies for transport back home.64 Even if they could not immediately retrieve a body, families sought information that would make it possible for them to do so at a later date. Thus, George Remley’s father wished to know if his boy’s grave was marked so that he might locate it in the future.65
As the Remleys and other families understood, religion helped the bereaved cope with their personal tragedies. The Rev. Remley reassured his son that Lycurgus “has indeed received his final discharge & is no doubt gone home to his Heavenly father to those mansions which Jesus has prepared for the reception of his ‘returned soldiers’.”66 It also allowed for a certain element of fatalism that may have helped some accept what they could not change. When Mary Vermilion’s eldest brother succumbed to smallpox after recovering from a battle wound, her husband William advised her, “we must submit to the laws of Him who rules in the Hospital as well on the battlefield.”67 And when a Vermont mother Rachel Stevens learned of her son’s death, she advised her daughter “to bear this crushing affliction with the fortitude & resignation of a Christian.”68
Resignation to the fate of a loved one, however, was not the same as finding meaning in death. Some families might have found comfort in the immediate, positive consequences of their soldier’s death that helped lead to an ultimate Union victory, as perhaps Private Oren C. Mudge hoped when he informed Gertrude Howard that her husband had been killed in fighting at Petersburg in 1865. “[I]t was the decicive [sic] Battle,” he told her; “the rebellion is crushed.”69 For many survivors, knowing that their men died for their country and the Union was sufficient.