The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799-1883

by Professor Gary Laderman

This fascinating book explores the changing attitudes toward death and the dead in northern Protestant communities during the nineteenth-century. Gary Laderman offers insights into the construction of an "American way of death," illuminating the central role of the Civil War and tracing the birth of the funeral industry in the decades following the war.
Drawing on medical histories, religious documents, personal diaries and letters, literature, painting, and photography. Laderman examines the cultural transformations that led to nationally organized death specialists, the practice of embalming, and the commodification of the corpse. These cultural changes included the development of liberal theology, which provided more spiritual views of heaven and the the concern for health, which turned those who managed death toward more scientific treatment of and growing sentimentalism, which produced an increased desire to gaze upon the corpse or to take and keep death photographs. In particular, Laderman focuses on the transforming effect of the Civil War, which presented so many Americans with dead relatives who needed to be recovered, viewed, and given a "proper burial."

Genres: Death, History, American History, Sociology, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published November 27, 1996

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each October, I'm asked to give tours at several historic cemeteries here in CT. The Sacred Remains is the book I use most for fact checking and for answers to questions that visitors sometimes ask that I can't answer. Meticulously researched and documented, the book opens with an account of the many funerals of George Washington (GW's "invisible corpse"), with emphasis on how the extravagant, nationwide expressions of mourning affected Protestant American burial traditions and attitudes toward death itself, especially with respect to the physical remains. Adopting a cultural, sociological perspective, Dr. Laderman examines the spiritual, emotional, and psychological factors that influenced how families dealt with the preparation of the body of the deceased in the decades preceding the Civil War, when the vast majority of Americans died at home and were "laid out" by relatives and friends, and buried, necessarily, within a day or two. When the war began to produce an avalanche of disfigured corpses that died far from home, it became necessary to develop procedures for embalming those that would be transported from battlefield to their northern homes, introducing professional undertakers into what had been an intensely private process. Ending with the " birth of the "business of death" that occurred toward the end of the nineteenth century, with "corpse as commodity", the author illustrates how the mortuary industry ensured that the body would be "ushered out in a comforting manner for the living."

"The dead do not simply vanish when life is extinguished....The dead must also be accounted for in the imagination." The Sacred Remains is a compelling study of the ways in which Americans have accomplished this task.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating to learn how much, and in some ways how little, our attitudes toward death have changed. And to understand that practices that currently seem so outrageous -- like embalming -- we can blame on war. (In this case, the Civil War.)

[Playing Marbles · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book takes the reader on a comprehensive and fascinating tour through the evolution of American ideas around death and how funeral practices have changed to reflect them. The text is accessible and engaging, a must-read for understanding burial practices and perspectives.

[Geof Sage · Rating 2 out of 5]

I went to great lengths to get this book and I was thoroughly disappointed. There was nothing new in here, and the author spent too much time on the civil war.