“Death is so common”: Soldiers’ Views of Death in the Summer of 1862

By the time of the Battle of Antietam, the Civil War had gone on longer than most Americans anticipated it would last. Staggeringly long lists continued to fill newspaper columns bearing the names of the dead. Death was everywhere in America. Few people escaped the war’s bloody summer of 1862 without knowing someone who died during the conflict.

After the end of the Maryland Campaign, both sides had already suffered a combined 386,015 casualties, according to one estimate.(1) Unfortunately, people grew accustomed to death, which was becoming all too common in the fratricidal American war.

On the home front, many dismissed the long lists. “We see the list in the morning paper at breakfast, but dismiss its recollection with the coffee,” wrote a New York Times correspondent. “There is a confused mass of names, but they are all strangers; we forget the horrible significance that dwells amid the jumble of type.”(2)

While civilians comfortably snug in their homes could afford to dismiss the lengthening lists of dead, soldiers on the battlefield could not escape the war’s growing horror. Amid the deadly fighting in the summer of 1862, Sergeant Marion Hill Fitzpatrick, 45th Georgia Infantry, wrote on September 2, “I have changed much in my feelings. The bombs and balls excite me but little,” he told his family at home, “and a battlefield strewed with dead and wounded is an every day consequence.”(3)

Following the Battle of Antietam, Private Roland Bowen, 15th Massachusetts Infantry, searched for his friend and comrade, Private Henry Ainsworth. Unfortunately, by the time Bowen learned the fate of his friend, Ainsworth’s remains were already laid under 3 feet of dirt in a long, common burying trench holding the remains of 39 other men. To Ainsworth’s father, Bowen sadly remarked, “Mr. Ainsworth, this is not the way we bury folks at home.”(4)

Fitzpatrick’s resignation to the death surrounding him and Bowen’s remark that battlefield burials differed greatly from those at home came to mind as I read a description of the burial of a soldier in the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry on September 28, 1862. The previous day, 36-year-old Private Michael Fay of that regiment died of cholera. Fay left behind a wife and 4 children when he enlisted on December 5, 1861. Lieutenant Elisha Hunt Rhodes wrote of Fay’s burial:

Sunday last a soldier of Co. “A” died and was buried with military honors. It was not an unusual scene for us, yet it is always solemn. First came the muffled drums playing the “Dead March” then the usual escort for a private. Eight privates commanded by a corporal, with arms reversed. Then an ambulance with the body in a common board coffin covered with the Stars and Stripes. Co. “A” with side arms only followed while the Company officers brought up the rear. On arriving at the grave the Chaplain offered prayer and made some remarks. The coffin was then lowered into the grave, and three volleys were fired by the guard, and then the grave was filled up. The procession returned to camp with the drums playing a “Quick March.” Everything went on as usual in camp as if nothing had happened, for death is so common that little sentiment is wasted. It is not like death at home. May God prepare us all for this event which must sooner or later come to all of us.(5)

The last 3 sentences of Rhodes’ description struck me the most. “Everything went on as usual in camp as if nothing had happened, for death is so common that little sentiment is wasted. It is not like death at home. May God prepare us all for this event which must sooner or later come to all of us.”

Death at home was something that could happen unexpectedly as it did in battle. The loss of so many friends and family hardened soldiers to the number of deaths happening around them by the summer of 1862. They could not afford to waste energy dwelling on the countless losses that continued to accumulate. But Fay’s family back home likely did not move on so quickly. Unfortunately, Fay’s remains stayed in Maryland, far from his home, and rest in Grave #2,840 in Antietam National Cemetery.

Notes:

1. Darroch Greer, “Counting Civil War Casualties, Week-by-Week, For The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum,” https://www.mathscinotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ALPLM_CountingCasualties_080519_lo.pdf.

2. “Brady’s Photographs: Pictures of the Dead at Antietam,” New York Times, October 20, 1862.

3. Lowe and Hodges, ed., Letters to Amanda: The Civil War Letters of Marion Hill Fitzpatrick, Army of Northern Virginia, 26.

4. Coco, ed., From Ball’s Bluff to Gettysburg…And Beyond: The Civil War Letters of Private Roland E. Bowen, 15th Massachusetts Infantry 1861-1864, 128.

5. Rhodes, ed., All for the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes, 83-84.