Dof Harvard University and an eminent history scholar. Several of her previous publications have dealt with the South and the War Between the States.

This Republic of Suffering is subtitled "Death and the American Civil War." Faust states in her preface that the number of soldiers who died in the Civil War (an estimated 620,000) approximately equals the combined total of deaths in all our other wars up to the Vietnam era. The rate of death was six times that of World War II, based on relative populations.

As we describe the deaths of soldiers, frightening as they were, we need to remember also the carnage among the civilian population, which was comparable to what has happened in our own technological age. "Death's significance for the Civil War generation arose as well from its violation of prevailing assumptions about life's proper end -- about who should die, when and where, and under what circumstances."

As the war began, neither side anticipated the magnitude or length of the struggles. New weapons and the numbers increased the scale of the conflict. Three out of four white men of military age became soldiers in the south. Also, twice as many Civil War soldiers died of disease as of battle wounds. Faust speaks of the

work of death." Men needed to be ready to die, and codes of patriotism and religion prepared them and their families for what might come.

Faust discusses the concept of the "Good Death." A dying person was supposed to pass away surrounded by family, conscious of his fate, and reconciled with God. However, at war, death was unpredictable and far from home. It was thought that dying words imposed meaning on life. Unable to be with loved ones in their last moments, soldiers sometimes died holding pictures of their families. Nurses in military hospitals tried to provide a bridge as they cared for the wounded.

There was no formal system of reporting casualties on either side. Often fellow soldiers wrote condolence letters to families describing a "good death," whether or not it fit the expected description. Clara Barton and Walt Whitman tried to answer this need when they could.

The other side of war, of course, was the necessity to kill. Killing was not easy at first for a generation trained in Christian values. As the constraints of conscience and custom loosened, soldiers in action learned to revel in combat and to take pride in their ability to kill the enemy, especially when it could be seen as vengeance for the death of friends.

Most Civil War battlefields were not open terrain, and the volunteer forces had minimal training. Infantry had individual responsibility for killing, unlike later soldiers in twentieth-century warfare.

There was at first no provision for military hospitals or for burying the dead. After a battle, "soldiers had to disregard their own misery and attend to the wounded and dead." The sheer number of bodies presented a staggering task. Bodies required sacred care. Soldiers worried about their own remains. Burying the dead became an act of improvisation. Soldiers tried to find and honor the bodies of comrades, and dead officers often received privileged treatment.

Families wanted to see their lost loved ones if they could be sent home. Freelance embalmers began to flock to battlefields after the fighting. Coffins were scarce and in demand. "Civil War Americans worked to change death in ways that ranged from transforming the actual bodies of the dead through embalming to altering the circumstances and conditions of interment by establishing what would become the national cemetery system and a massive postwar reburial program."

"We still live in the world of death the Civil War created. We take for granted the obligation of the state to account for the lives it claims in its service."

The Republic of Suffering is beautifully written and well-researched, and it contains truths we need to consider in our own time. "We still struggle to understand how to preserve our humanity and ourselves" in this world of mass slaughter. "We still seek to use our deaths to create meaning where we are not sure any exists."

The book is available at the Mary Willis Library.