Status Updates From This Republic of Suffering:...

-“killing was for black soldiers[…]the instrument of liberation; it was an act of personal empowerment and the vehicle of racial emancipation. To kill and to be[…]permitted to kill was ironically to claim a human right”
-self numbing/detachment to cope, think of self as machines. “Loss of feeling was at base a loss of self—a kind of living death that could make even survivors casualties of war”

-black soldiers’ different justifications for death: retribution for suffering, win a place in the polity thru willingness to give up lives, sacrifice for their own people’s freedom
-many had concerns of this perpetuating a tradition of black victimhood
-black soldiers fought extra hard—for equality and citizenship, and bc Confederate troops singled them out and backed them into a corner w nothing to lose

-intimate battles made it difficult for many soldiers to fire weapons and kill
-snipers were morally condemned for killing of soldiers doing personal activities w/ dehumanization of victims and absence of guilt due to the physical distance
-Confederate soldiers found it especially hard to conceptualize armed black Union soldiers, seeing them as “slaves uprising launched by the federal gov’t against the south”

-finding ways to justify killing even with Christianity’s opposition to killing. Self-defense, Confederate “crusader”/sanction for a holy war, retribution and revenge for comrades’ death.
-the thrill: firing back at someone firing at you, escaping sense of victim hood through action against enemy, hunting enemies like sport for pleasure, “Pandora’s box” after realizing one’s power in killing.

But “you will”, he assured them, “by and by be able to look calmly on these day of grief.”-pg 165

-when faith wasn’t enough for Good Death, patriotism served as replacement
-deserter execution
-the war machine brainwashes soldiers to “want” to die in order to feed the system
-created higher meanings of death as a reassuring return to the 19th century’s domestic understanding of death

I love it so much. So far, it’s fixin’ to be one of my favorite civil war books read ever.

-sudden deaths departed from the Good Death, sparking “prepared unpreparedness”—anticipation and acceptance of one’s imminent death to restore sense of control
-recipes of ars moriendi in letters: willingness and readiness of death, Christian conviction and calmness in the last moments as evidence of going to heaven and future salvation, a soldier’s sanctified changed way of living

-dehumanization and dissociation of souls and body due to the amount of bodies
-more soldiers died of diseases than on battlefields.
-the Good Death and Christianity, glorification of death as coping mechanism
-last words, extension of life thru the process of death itself

Amazing read so far! Definitely different than any other American Civil War book I’ve ever read. The author does an amazing job of humanizing soldiers on both sides of the conflict. Haunting and heartbreaking, but so interesting and educational