Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “Killing”
The author argues that killing is more difficult than dying. In the Civil War, it was often brother against brother or friend against friend. Theoretically, it was more difficult to kill someone the solider is familiar with than a faceless, nameless enemy. Supporting this thesis is the idea that the Sixth of the Ten Commandments that Moses delivered from the heights of Mount Sinai forbade people from killing one another. Yet the political needs trumped the religious teachings, as leaders of political, military, and even religious stripes found justification for killing soldiers on the opposing side in a “just cause,” one that God would surely embrace. The same Old Testament that contains those Ten Commandments has more than one episode that reflects this narrative. For example, the God of the Israelites is on their side and will lead them to victory—if not in person than in spirit—and in some cases by influencing events in the lives of the Israelites’ opponents.
Policymakers in both the North and South found parts of their religious teachings that justified whatever narrative they advanced. Souther
Drew Gilpin Faust > Quotes
“Look to the past to help create the future. Look to science and to poetry. Combine innovation and interpretation. We need the best of both. And it is universities that best provide them.”
&#; Drew Faust, This Republic of Suffering
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“Yankee private Henry Struble was not only listed as a casualty after Antietam but assigned a grave after his canteen was found in the hands of a dead man he had stopped to help. After the war ended, Struble sent flowers every Memorial Day to decorate his own grave, to honor the unknown soldier it sheltered and perhaps to acknowledge that there but for God’s grace he might lie.”
&#; Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
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“Richmond's Mrs. William McFarland. "Let us remember that we belong to that sex which was last at the cross, first at the grave…Let us go now, hand in hand, to the graves of our country’s sons, and as we go let our energies be aroused and our hearts be thrilled by this thought: It is the least thing we can do for our soldiers.”
&#; Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republ
This Republic of Suffering Quotes
“Yankee private Henry Struble was not only listed as a casualty after Antietam but assigned a grave after his canteen was found in the hands of a dead man he had stopped to help. After the war ended, Struble sent flowers every Memorial Day to decorate his own grave, to honor the unknown soldier it sheltered and perhaps to acknowledge that there but for God’s grace he might lie.”
&#; Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
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“Richmond's Mrs. William McFarland. "Let us remember that we belong to that sex which was last at the cross, first at the grave…Let us go now, hand in hand, to the graves of our country’s sons, and as we go let our energies be aroused and our hearts be thrilled by this thought: It is the least thing we can do for our soldiers.”
&#; Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
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“Death has no power to change moral qualities,” he insisted in a Decoration Day speech in “Whatever else I may forget,” the aging abolitionist declared, “I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for li
Important Quotes
“The American Civil War produced carnage that has often been thought reserved for the combination of technological proficiency and inhumanity characteristic of a later time.”
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Preface, Location
, Page n/a)This is one of the author’s themes throughout the book: that the technological advances available to the armies fighting the Civil War had outstripped the people’s ability to cope with the results. The people were ready for the ideals and relatively genteel behaviors and consequences from the last few wars, even though the weapons used in the Civil War were far beyond the people’s ability to cope with or comprehend just how much brutality was possible. This leads to the author’s broader theme about the ill-preparedness of America for the Civil War.
“How one died thus epitomized a life already led and predicted the quality of life everlasting.”
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Chapter 1, Location
, Page n/a)This quotes focuses on the Christian ideal of leading a good life in order to ensure a good afterlife. Faust cites some people whose beliefs echoed this idea: that what happened to them after they died was an immediate continuation of how they were liv
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