The Civil War Writ Small
The literature on the Civil War, the watershed event in American history, is enormous and continues to grow. With so much written on the conflict, it is valuable to find a little-explored aspect. It sometimes can be useful to limit one's scope, as author Charles Mills has done in his book "Civil War Graves of Northern Virginia" (2017), part of the series of photographic local histories published by Images of America. Mills studies the Civil War in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., and he focuses on the commemoration of death resulting from the conflict in northern Virginia. Northern Virginia, of course, was heavily hit by the Civil War and has been studied in detail. Still, this book's study of cemeteries and death is moving and poignant and gives the reader a feel for the conflict and its cost that sometimes is absent from longer, broader-based accounts. The focus on death and commemoration in northern Virginia becomes a symbol for the death and destruction resulting from the Civil War as a whole.
Mills' book consists of photographs largely drawn from the Library of Congress and from the author's own files together with commentary and explanatory material. Some of the images will be familiar to readers with a good knowledge of the Civil War, but many of them are rare and unusual. Taken together, the images tell an impressive, coherent story. The discussions are brief, but they show Mills has a good command of Civil War history. The book examines a broad range of commemorative sites, from large cemeteries including the Arlington National Cemetery to battlefield commemorations, to many small hidden-away cemeteries in local churches. Similarly, the book describes the commemoration of famous leaders, such as Lee, Jackson, and Stuart, to lesser known figures, to unknown soldiers who died through battle or disease, to civilians and children.
The book is in six parts. In the first part, Mills examines the suburban D.C. city of Alexandria and offers images of the first civil war casualties following Virginia's secession from the Union in the May 24, 1861 encounter at a hotel called the Marshall House. Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, a friend of Abraham Lincoln, was killed as was the owner of the hotel, an ardent supporter of the Confederacy, James Jackson. Many old unusual images of Alexandria and its environs add interest to this section.
Prince William County is the focus of the second part of the book which includes many images of the First Battle of Bull Run and of the treatment of the casualties from this first large battle of the War. The book shows monumentation of both Union and Confederate soldiers and of civilians in burial sites large and small.
Part three of the book takes the reader to Fairfax County. It ranges in scope from the deaths of Union Generals Philip Kearny and Isaac Stevens following Second Manassas to a view of the Jermantown Cemetery, a small cemetery established in 1868 for African Americans who could not be buried in the segregated cemeteries of Fairfax. The book also shows how George Washington's home at Mount Vernon was maintained as a neutral site throughout the war.
In the fourth part of the book, Mills offers a brief but lively account of John Mosby and his guerilla Confederate cavalry. The account is short but offers a good introduction to the famous raider while showing graves and other forms of commemoration for both the raiders and their victims in northern Virginia.
The next section of the book offers a brief history of Arlington National Cemetery, built on the estate of Robert E. Lee, and of its commemoration of Civil War dead from generals to unknown, humble privates. Mills also discusses the construction of the Confederate National Memorial at Arlington. The book offers an eloquent overview of the Civil War in this iconic American cemetery.
The final part of the book discusses commemorative organizations North and South that arose following the Civil War and it briefly traces events aimed at the reconciliation of the former foes. The section also discusses a number of important cemeteries and sites not included in earlier parts of the book while discussing as well commemorative efforts for Confederate Generals Lee, Jackson, and Stuart.
Although this book is short and narrowly focused, I learned a great deal from it. The book will interest readers with a passion for Civil War history. A bibliography would have made a useful addition. Readers interested in a broader account of the treatment of casualties resulting from the Civil War may wish to read Drew Gilpin Faust's book, "This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War." Although he does not refer to the work, Mills has clearly learned a great deal about his subject from Faust.
