Ric Burns’ film “Death and the Civil War” is scheduled to premiere as part of PBS’ American Experience series on Tuesday, September 18, the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam (check your local public television listings for the exact times). Based on the book This Republic of Suffering by Harvard president and Civil War scholar Drew Gilpin Faust, the show examines how the unprecedented and overwhelming number of Civil War casualties moved Americans both individually and collectively to better serve members of the armed forces who lost their lives in battle.
At its start, the Civil War was expected to be a short and relatively bloodless military engagement. Instead, the war lasted four years, and had an enormous death toll of 620,000–the equivalent of the total number of soldiers lost in every other American war from the Revolution through Korea combined. Before the war began, there were no formal procedures established to identify soldiers killed in the line of duty, or to notify their next of kin. The problem was staggering–approximately half of the men who lost their lives in battle during the Civil War were never identified; this brought additional suffering for the families of soldiers who never received any official notification of how, when, or where their loved one died, or was buried. Public response to the horror and confusion caused by failed communication amidst such intense grief and loss engendered the establishment of services and institutions to serve the wounded, the dying, the dead, and their families.
Approximately 120,000 Georgians served the Confederacy during the Civil War; 11,000 to 25,000 of these soldiers died on battlefields, or in hospitals from wounds and disease. Although most of the casualties were Confederate soldiers, there were also a significant number of Union soldiers who died in Georgia. Because so many of these men were unidentified and because the staggering death toll overwhelmed local resources, many of these soldiers were buried in mass graves adjacent to their last battle sites.
To address this problem, a massive federal reburial program took place between 1865 and 1871. Seventy-four new national cemeteries were created for Union soldiers with federal funds, and more than 300,000 men were ultimately relocated and reburied. The federal government, however, did not recognize any Confederate dead in these efforts. To address this exclusion from the services of the federal government, white Southern women raised private money to repatriate dead soldiers from border and Northern states and bury them in Southern cemeteries. Organizations like The Daughters of the Confederacy funded improvements to Confederate burial sites that included replacing wooden memorial markers with more permanent marble gravestones, and installing cast-iron replicas of Confederate medals at the tombstones of veterans who served honorably during the Civil War.
African American soldiers who belonged to U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) regiments (and accounted for ten percent of the Union Army at one hundred and eighty thousand soldiers) were also difficult to identify at death, given the lack of personal identification and burial details that impacted all soldiers. Additional confusion surrounded the burials of some of the forty thousand African American casualties due to their status as African American men. Some remained in public or freedmen’s cemeteries; some were re-interred several times prior to burial in segregated sections of national soldiers cemeteries. More than 3,500 black Georgians served in the Union army and navy between 1862 and 1865.
After the Civil War ended, Congress passed legislation to establish ambulance services; federal hospitals; official systems for identifying soldiers and communicating with family members; national military cemeteries; and Memorial Day remembrances; many of these practices and institutions remain in place to this day.
CIVIL WAR CEMETERIES IN GEORGIA
Most Georgia cemeteries contain graves of Confederate soldiers or veterans, but some have entire sections dedicated to those who lost their lives in the Civil War.
Andersonville Cemetery
The Andersonville cemetery cemetery originally served the 13,000 soldiers who died in the Andersonville prison, the nearby prisoner of war camp. Today nearly 20,000 soldiers are buried there.
Union and Confederate Cemeteries in Marietta
Marietta includes both a national (Union) cemetery and a Confederate cemetery. The national cemetery contains around 10,000 Union soldiers, who died during the Atlanta campaign–only 7,045 of whom are known. The Confederate cemetery, established in 1863, is the largest Confederate cemetery in the state. It holds 3,000 soldiers who were recovered and reburied at the site.
Atlanta’s Oakland and Westview Cemeteries
Originally designed as a six acre rural garden cemetery and named the Atlanta Graveyard or City Burial Place, Oakland Cemetery was given its current name in 1872, after the city and the Confederate government added another 42 acres of land to accommodate casualties of the Civil War who had died in local hospitals. Westview Cemetery actually saw battle during the Civil War (it was the site of the Battle of Ezra Church); 400 Confederate veterans are buried here.
Stonewall Confederate Cemetery
Located in Griffin, Georgia, Stonewall Confederate Cemetery is the burial site for several hundred Confederate soldiers and one Union soldier; most of these men were casualties of the Atlanta Campaign.
Kingston and Cassville Cemeteries
Both of these cemeteries are located in Bartow County. 250 unknown Confederate and 2 Union soldiers are buried in Kingston Cemetery, and 300 unknown Confederate soldiers buried in Cassville’s town cemetery.
RELATED CIVIL WAR COLLECTIONS IN THE DIGITAL LIBRARY OF GEORGIA
Civil War in the American South
In recognition of the sesquicentennial of the start of the American Civil War, Civil War in the American South provides a central portal to access digital collections from the Civil War Era (1850-1865) held by members of the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL). ASERL members hold deep and extensive collections documenting the history and culture of the American South, developed over hundreds of years to support scholarly research and teaching. Many of the special or unique manuscripts, photographs, books, newspapers, broadsides, and other materials have been digitized to provide broader access to these documents for scholars and students around the world. Civil War in the American South is a collaborative initiative to provide a single, shared point of access to the Civil War digital collections held at many individual libraries. More than 30 libraries have contributed resources to this effort.
America’s Turning Point: Documenting the Civil War Experience in Georgia
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/CollectionsA-Z/turningpoint_search.html
Archival materials documenting the Atlanta Campaign and the defense of Savannah; the Eastern Theater and Western Theater outside of Georgia; Confederate government records and correspondence of its prominent officials; life on the homefront; slavery; and the Civil War in memory. The records include the diverse experiences and perspectives of military leaders, soldiers, and civilians whose lives were directly impacted by the Civil War. Thousands of first-hand accounts of Union and Confederate soldiers and officers document their hardships and opinions of the war and national politics. Military documents, including orders issued by William T. Sherman, describe the strategy of the Atlanta Campaign. Letters and diaries from Georgia civilians, young and old, male and female, describe in compelling detail the anxiety leading up to the war, the blockade of Georgia’s coast, the siege of Atlanta, and General Sherman’s subsequent march through Georgia. Financial and military documents reveal details of the buying and selling of slaves by private parties and by governments in the defense of the Confederacy. Letters, questionnaires, and 20th-century photograph collections capture the memories of Civil War veterans and document important Georgia Civil War landmarks a few decades after the conflict.
American Civil War
http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/selections/confed/index.html
Includes a variety of important documents and artifacts from the American Civil War held by the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Barnard’s Photographic Views of the Sherman Campaign, ca. 1866
http://www.galileo.usg.edu/express?link=zlbp
The site contains images of the sixty-one albumen prints found in early American photographer and member of the Matthew Brady studio, George N. Barnard’s Photographic Views of Sherman’s Campaign, ca. 1866. Subjects of the photographs include Sherman and his generals, Nashville, Chattanooga Valley, Atlanta, and Savannah. Barnard was the official photographer for the United States Army, Chief Engineer’s Office, Division of the Mississippi. See a previous DLG B post on Barnard’s Photographic Views of the Sherman Campaign, ca. 1866 here.
The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865 (University of North Carolina)
http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/index.html
This collection presents documents related to all aspects of Southern life during the Civil War. In particular, government and civilian publications demonstrate the Confederate States of America’s unsuccessful attempt to create a viable nation state. This collection includes over four hundred Civil War era maps, broadsides, photographs, printed works, Confederate currency, and manuscript letters and diaries.
North American Slave Narratives (University of North Carolina)
Documents the individual and collective story of the African American struggle for freedom and human rights in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
“a sad – sad day…I never saw such a gloomy set of men in my life as the soldiers were after the news came…”
CIVIL WAR DIARIES
Cornelius C. Platter Civil War Diary, 1864 – 1865
http://www.galileo.usg.edu/express?link=zlpd
Civil War diary of Lieutenant (later Captain) Cornelius C. Platter, of the 81st Ohio Infantry Volunteers, from November, 1864 – April 27, 1865. Platter’s diary details Sherman’s march through Georgia from Rome to Savannah and the march north through the Carolinas. He gives dates, times, and lengths of marches and describes the weather, locale, scenery, and food as well as orders, rumors, positions, troop morale, and administrative duties. The diary also includes a description of the burning of Columbia, South Carolina, the news of the Confederate surrender, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Cyrus F. Jenkins Civil War Diary, 1861-1862
http://www.galileo.usg.edu/express?link=jenk
Personal diary of Confederate private Cyrus Franklin Jenkins, of Company B, 13th Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Infantry. He was killed at Spotsylvania, Virginia, on May 12, 1864.
NEWSPAPERS
The following Georgia historic newspapers include coverage during the Civil War period, provide full-text searchable articles, and can be browsed by date. They provide a primary source perspective for investigating daily life on the homefront, the impact of the war on Georgia cities and towns, casualty lists, political events, and eyewitness coverage of battles.
Athens
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/athnewspapers
Atlanta
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/atlnewspapers
Columbus
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/enquirer
Macon
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/telegraph
Milledgeville
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/milledgeville
South Georgia – includes historical papers from Albany, Thomasville, Americus, and Valdosta
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/sgnewspapers
Georgia Historic Newspapers –includes the Cherokee Phoenix (New Echota), the Dublin Post (Dublin), and the Colored Tribune (Savannah)
http://www.galileo.usg.edu/express?link=zlgn
Gordon County, Georgia Obituaries
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/CollectionsA-Z/gco_search.html
Newspaper clippings collected by the Calhoun-Gordon County Library as part of the Gordon County, GA Obituaries project. The source of the obituary clippings is the Calhoun Times and previous Gordon County newspapers no longer in print; the time coverage of these materials spans from 1800 to 2007.
BOOKS
Text-searchable books related to Georgia’s history and culture published prior to 1923; many of these publications cover history, biography, and literature of the Civil War period.
Georgia Historic Books
http://www.galileo.usg.edu/express?link=zlgb
A keyword search for “civil war” retrieves 39 works.
Georgia-related Publications from the HathiTrust Digital Library
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/CollectionsA-Z/hathidl_search.html
A search for “United States–History–Civil War, 1861-1865” in “Subject” retrieves 23 works
Georgia-related Publications from the Internet Archive
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/CollectionsA-Z/iadl_search.html
A search for “United States–History–Civil War, 1861-1865” in “Subject” retrieves 12 works
University of Georgia Press Georgia History Ebook Project
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/cgi-bin/meta.cgi?format=dlg&query=Coll:ugapressbks
This collection includes 7 titles that cover the Civil War as a subject area.
PHOTOGRAPHS
In addition to the aforementioned Barnard’s Photographic Views of the Sherman Campaign, ca. 1866 see:
Rare Books Online
http://fax.libs.uga.edu/dbooks.html
which contains The Photographic History Of The Civil War (Francis Trevelyan Miller, ed.) and other digitized book material from the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Vanishing Georgia
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/vanga/
This collection endangered historically significant photographs ranging from daguerreotypes to Kodachrome prints spans over 100 years of Georgia history and includes 251 photographs related to the Civil War.
LETTERS
Louise Jones DuBose Papers collection (Columbus State)
http://archives.columbusstate.edu/findingaids/mc2.php
This collection contains four letters written in 1860 and 1861 by Southern author and Columbus native Augusta Jane Evans.
Robert Toombs, Letters to Julia Ann DuBose Toombs, 1850-1867
http://www.galileo.usg.edu/express?link=zlrt
The digitized collection Robert Toombs, Letters to Julia Ann DuBose Toombs, 1850-1867 consists of correspondence from Robert Toombs to his wife, Julia Ann DuBose Toombs in Washington, Wilkes County, Georgia from 1850-1867. During 1850-1859 his letters come from Washington, D.C. while he served in the U.S. Senate. During the Civil War, he wrote from Virginia (1862) and Atlanta, Georgia (1864). Following the war, letters are written from Paris (1866-67) while he was in exile. The correspondence generally discusses current events; his land holdings in South Georgia, Alabama, and Texas; people; other soldiers; and his wish to be with his wife and family.
Joseph Henry Lumpkin Family Papers
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/hargrett/lumpkin/
The digitized selections from the Joseph Henry Lumpkin Family Papers consist of letters dated 1850-1861 (the bulk of which are from 1852-1856) to Callie Lumpkin King, wife of Alabama lawyer and plantation owner Porter King and daughter of Joseph Henry Lumpkin. Correspondents include Sallie (Baxter) Bird, wife of Hancock County plantation-owner Edgeworth Bird; King’s husband Porter; Thomas Read Rootes Cobb, her brother-in-law; and other Lumpkin family members. The letters touch on family life, local and national politics, marriage, and the social life in Athens, Georgia.
Available in the Historical Broadsides collection.
ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLES
New Georgia Encyclopedia
http://www.galileo.usg.edu/express?link=ngen
The New Georgia Encyclopedia contains 124 authoritatively-written entries (that include articles and photographs related to the Civil War that include events, the role of the war in Georgia, and historic Civil War sites located throughout the state.
HISTORICAL CALENDARS
GeorgiaInfo: This Week in Civil War History (1860-1865)
http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/CivilWar/CivilWar.htm
This calendar highlights Civil War (and related) events and how they impacted Georgians from November 6, 1860 through December 25, 1865.
MAPS
Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library Rare Map Collection
http://www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps/maps.html
This digital collection includes early maps of colonial and revolutionary America to 1939 that depict Georgia cities and coastal areas and document transportation by rail, river, and highway; there are Civil War-era maps available in this collection.
BROADSIDES
Historical Broadsides
http://broadsides.libs.uga.edu
A broadside is a sheet of paper generally printed on one side only and typically used as a poster to announce some event, proclamation or other matter. The Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia Libraries holds a collection of more than 2,000 historical broadsides from 1746 through the 1980s; there are Civil War-era broadsides available in this collection.
