The Sacred Remains : American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799-1883 / Gary Laderman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Laderman, Gary, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Protestants--Attitudes--18th century--Northeastern States.

Protestants.

Death--History of doctrines--Christianity--Religious aspects--19th century--Northeastern states.

Death.

Death--Christianity--Religious aspects--History of doctrines--18th century--Northeastern States.

Funeral rites and ceremonies--History--19th century.

Funeral rites and ceremonies.

Funeral rites and ceremonies--History.

Northeastern States--Church history--18th century.

Northeastern States.

Northeastern States--Church history--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (238 p.) : 16 b/w illus.

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [2008]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

When George Washington died in 1799, towns throughout the country commemorated the event with solemn processions featuring empty coffins. In contrast, after Abraham Lincoln's death in 1865, his body was transported around the North and displayed for more than two weeks, for by then corpses could be autopsied, drained of their blood, and beautified for the benefit of mourners. This absorbing 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.Drawing on medical histories, religious documents, personal diaries and letters, literature, painting, and photography, Laderman examines the cultural transformations that led to nationally organized death specialists, the practice of embalming, and the commodification of the corpse. These cultural changes included the development of liberal theology, which provided more spiritual views of heaven and the afterlife; the concern for health, which turned those who managed death toward more scientific treatment of bodies; and growing sentimentalism, which produced an increased desire to gaze upon the corpse or to take and keep death photographs. In particular Laderman focuses on the transforming effect of the Civil War, which presented so many Americans with dead relatives who needed to be recovered, viewed, and given a "proper burial."

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

George Washington's Invisible Corpse and the Beaver Hat

1 .Signs of Death

2.From the Place of Death to the Space of Burial

3 .Simplicity Lost: The Urban Model of Death

4 .The Great Escape

5. "The Law of Nature": Revisioning Mortality and the Natural Order

6 .Morbid Obsessions

John Brown's Body and a Soldier's Experiences of Death on the Battlefield

7 .Death During Wartime

8 ."Let the Dead Bury the Dead": The Search for Closure

9. National Interests

10 ."Resurrection Days" and Redemptive Blood

11. Disenchantment with the Mortal Remains

12. Looking Death in the Face

Abraham Lincoln's Hallowed and Hollowed Body

13. The Business of Death in the Late Nineteenth Century

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780300143690

0300143699

OCLC:

1024005696