Death and The Civil War

Death was very real during the Civil War. It was brought to the homes in many ways. Through the pictures of Matthew Brady, the transportation of the wounded from the front lines, and through the letters and the delivery of the bodies back to their respective homes.
For soldiers in both armies death was very real. They saw friends and brothers die every day. They felt in a more real sense the fact that death was immenent. Death would come to either them or someone they were close to inevitably.
Soldiers and people on the homefront had many views on the subject. The most prominant were the Christian view and the antognistic or athiestic view. In this article I will focus mainly on the Christian side of death.
For those who held the Christian worldview death was not considered scary or untimely. They believed tht God has alloted that we all should die because we have sinned. Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death. They knew that every man has sinned so the consequences would have to be death. If this were the complete case though death would still be very scary. Praise the Lord it is not the case! Another text from the Bible that Christians during the Civil War used to make death not a scary thing is found in the book of John. John 3:16 says For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, that whosoevr believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Also if you will read up at the beggining of the paragraph I gave you part of Romans 6:23 but it was not the entire verse. The whole thing goes like this. For the wages of sin is death, BUT the gift of God is eternal life. God had given them the gift of salvation through Christ. So they no longer had to fear death.
Yes, death was a sad time but with Christ the soldiers knew that they would see Christ and be free from the scourge of war. That is one view of death in the Civil War. I will do some more research and get part 2 of this article out soon.