PREWAR POSTMORTEM PHOTOGRAPHY VS. CIVIL WAR PHOTOS OF DEATH: HOW THE CIVIL WAR AFFECTED THE CONCEPT OF “THE GOOD DEATH”

Curtis, Jennifer Katherine

PREWAR POSTMORTEM PHOTOGRAPHY VS. CIVIL WAR PHOTOS OF DEATH: HOW THE CIVIL WAR AFFECTED THE CONCEPT OF “THE GOOD DEATH”

Authors

Curtis, Jennifer Katherine

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, the American Civil War destroyed the ideal of the good death that permeated throughout the general public. The hope for death at home with family around to hear the deceased’s last words soon was replaced with the soldiers dying alone with strangers without a proper burial. Throughout this article, postmortem photographs and images of death on the Civil War battlefields are used to analyze this shift in conceptions of the good death. However, the good death did not disappear during the Civil War, and instead the public began to find other routes to cope with their new way of death. Some of these ways include glorifying war deaths as heroic, traveling to retain a soldier’s body, embalming, the reburial movement, and the erection of monuments to make sense of their new reality. These components, combined with the significance of the Lincoln funeral ultimately led to the transformation of the funeral industry.