This Republic of Suffering [111]
In its invocation of modernity, in its reference to the “greatest war,” in its citation of a line from Horace that became the title of World War I’s most famous poem, Russling’s words almost seem to look to another Great, and yet more bloody, War, one that would install mass carnage at the core of existence in the twentieth century. That dying for one’s country is sweet and proper becomes for Wilfred Owen by 1917 “the old Lie.” But a half century earlier it remained for Russling “a good sentiment”—one that he believed should animate national policy toward the Civil War dead.36
Russling’s prescriptions soon became settled policy. Even before Congress passed formal legislation in February 1867, the effort to bury every Union soldier within the safe confines of a national cemetery began. During the summer of 1866 Whitman made plans for “commencement of the general work of disinterment” in the cooler weather of fall, designing record-keeping forms that would minimize errors, mapping routes, and gathering needed labor and supplies. Whitman was acutely aware of both the dangers and the opportunities in relocating so many bodies. Moving a grave could mean losing an identity tied to a place or circumstance of burial; it might also provide a final chance to discover a name. He and his superiors were sensitive, too, to the implications of this unprecedented extension of governmental responsibility into the intimate and domestic arena of death. Brevet Major General J. L. Donaldson, chief quartermaster of the Military Division of the Tennessee, introduced an uncharacteristically personal tone into the customary formality of general orders when he emphasized in an August directive that “the Government in assuming to perform a work, which belongs as a special right only to kindred and friends of the deceased, demands of its Agents to discharge the duty, with the delicacy and tenderness of near and dear friends.” Later in the month Donaldson issued a circular addressed to “Friends of Deceased Union Soldiers” announcing to the general public that disinterment of all bodies in his Military Division would begin in October. He invited those who wished to be present at exhumations in hope of identifying lost kin to contact Whitman for an exact schedule of localities. The national government had assumed the unprecedented role of the citizen’s friend.37
In early September Whitman set forth on his explorations once more, moving through Kentucky from the Tennessee line to the Ohio River, embarking again in late October to Chattanooga and Chickamauga, then along the route of Sherman’s March, and back through Macon and Andersonville at the close of the year. By the end of his journey, Whitman estimated he had traveled thirty thousand miles in his search for the dead. Increasing local violence, resulting from the growing national conflict over Reconstruction, made Union bodies and graves, not to mention his own mission, ever more vulnerable. “The country in that section,” Whitman wrote from Lexington, Kentucky, in late September 1866, “is in a very unsettled state and the lives of Union men are unsafe.” Whitman kept a careful eye out for land that might be suitable for permanent cemeteries, recording details about plots, owners, and purchase options. His reports to headquarters, he later remembered, called regular attention to “the wretched condition of the graves and burial places of the dead and to their miscellaneous and universal distribution throughout the entire country that had been the seat of war.” Collectively his communications powerfully reinforced “the necessity of…universal disinterment and collection of the scattered remains into permanent National Cemeteries.”38
In early 1867 Whitman’s position was at last enshrined in law, as well as War Department policy. With “A bill to establish and protect national cemeteries,” passed by Congress in February 1867,