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This Republic Of Suffering Summary

Decent Essays

In This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Drew Gilpin Faust tells the story of the Civil War while revealing the way the thousands of deaths changed the United States as a whole. She presents this testimony of history by telling the eight main ways the Civil War changed the nation while including countless forms of evidence. This paper will review Faust’s historical narrative, the book’s evidence, as well as evaluating the quality of Faust’s writing throughout the book. The purpose of Drew Gilpin Faust writing this book remains incredibly clear as wanting to show the different ways the Civil War directly affected the United States’ people and government. This purpose presented by Faust is made obvious by the intelligent arguments and countless pieces of evidence to support the claims brought to the reader’s attention. All of these arguments …show more content…

Each chapter is divided up into one argument. These chapters include key pieces of information for the reader to get a better understanding about the war and the affect it had on the nation. Through evidence and accounts from people in the war, Faust shows how and why the country changed on both the government and the citizen front. For the government, the war showed them the flaws in their soldier responsibilities. Because of the war the government changed many different policies to deal with death, created national cemeteries, implemented better identification and numbering systems, as well as worked out different programs to take care of the soldier’s families. For citizens the war changed their ways of mourning, thinking of the afterlife, their views on religion, their process of burial, as well as their amount of respect each person held for the soldiers in the war. The author makes clear that without the war many of the tactics and ideals the country has in place today would not be the same without the Civil

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