Death and the Civil War

Aired on PBS's American Experience series, Ric Burns' documentary offers an elegiac look at how the Civil War forever changed the way Americans viewed death, noting that both the North and South were unprepared for the massive carnage. The conflict's first major military campaign, the Battle of Bull Run, claimed more casualties than the entire Mexican War, and with each new engagement the number of battlefield fatalities staggeringly rose. Complicating matters were the era's primitive medical conditions—two out of three deaths were attributed to diseases that spread through the Army encampments. Neither side went into war with the infrastructure needed to identify and bury the dead and notify next of kin, so many families learned of the loss of loved ones in letters written by soldiers who were dying from their wounds. Burns follows the famed protocol set by his brother Ken, combining excellent photographs (most notably, Mathew Brady's still shocking pictures of the corpses that littered abandoned battlefields—which helped spur the Lincoln administration to create national military cemeteries) with interviews of articulate experts who offer insights on the subject. Writer George Will stands out here with his observation of how the 19th-century killing machine was “lubricated every step of the way with blood.” Highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (P. Hall)