|
|
Article: The Civil War Soldier and the Art of Dying.
- Article from:
- The Journal of Southern History
- Article date:
- February 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Southern Historical Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
MORTALITY DEFINES THE HUMAN CONDITION. "WE ALL HAVE OUR Dead--we all have our Graves," Stephen Elliott, a Confederate Episcopal bishop, observed in an 1862 sermon. Every age, he explained, must confront "like miseries"; every age must search for "like consolation." Yet in spite of the continuities that Elliott identified in human history, death has its discontinuities as well. Men and women fashion the way they approach the end of life out of their understandings of who they are and what matters to them. And inevitably these understandings are shaped by historical and cultural circumstances, by how others around them regard death, by conditions that vary over time and ...