The Sacred Remains; American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799-1883

by Gary Laderman

• ISBN13: 9780300078688
• ISBN10: 0300078684
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 1999-01-11
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

This fascinating book explores the changing attitudes toward death and the dead in northern Protestant communities during the nineteenth century. Gary Laderman offers insights into the construction of an "American way of death", illuminating the central role of the Civil War and tracing the birth of the funeral industry in the decades following the war.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	1	(14)
Part I Living with the Dead in the Antebellum North George Washington's Invisible Corpse and the Beaver Hat	15	(74)
1 Signs of Death	22	(5)
2 From the Place of Death to the Space of Burial	27	(12)
3 Simplicity Lost: The Urban Model of Death	39	(12)
4 The Great Escape	51	(12)
5 "The Law of Nature": Revisioning Mortality and the Natural Order	63	(10)
6 Morbid Obsessions	73	(16)
Part II Death in the Civil War John Brown's Body and a Soldier's Experiences of Death on the Battlefield	89	(68)
7 Death During Wartime	96	(7)
8 "Let the Dead Bury the Dead": The Search for Closure	103	(14)
9 National Interests	117	(6)
10 "Resurrection Days" and Redemptive Blood	123	(13)
11 Disenchantment with the Mortal Remains	136	(8)
12 Looking Death in the Face	144	(13)
Epilogue. The Birth of the Death Industry Abraham Lincoln's Hallowed and Hollowed Body	157	(20)
13 The Business of Death in the Late Nineteenth Century	164	(13)
Notes	177	(22)
Bibliography	199	(20)
Index	219