A Skeleton in Every Household: Mourning and the Civil War

Death was a constant presence in the lives of nineteenth century Americans. Its frequency permeated every aspect of their lives: their art, their literature, and their traditions. Its presence forced them to develop a set of cultural responses to death. The foundation of these traditions was the idea of the Good Death. The belief in the Good Death set standards for the ways in which a life should end. Out of it grew strict personal and public mourning responses, with women at the center. The cultural traditions used to respond to death before the Civil War would be directly challenged, and transformed, by the conflict. The Civil War would leave no family untouched, for there would be "a skeleton in almost every household." Because of this bloodshed, Americans were familiarized with deaths that directly contradicted the ideals of death held before the war. The violent deaths of the Civil War challenged and transformed the preconceived notions of dying well, mourning practices, and the role of women within the art of death