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Children and Youth during the Civil War Era$
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Children and Youth during the Civil War Era

James Marten

Print publication date: 2012

Print ISBN-13: 9780814796078

Published to NYU Press Scholarship Online: March 2016

DOI: 10.18574/nyu/9780814796078.001.0001

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PRINTED FROM NYU Press SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.nyu.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of NYU Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in NYSO for personal use.date: 20 May 2022

“Good Children Die Happy”

“Good Children Die Happy”

Confronting Death during the Civil War

Chapter:
(p.92) 6 “Good Children Die Happy”
Source:
Children and Youth during the Civil War Era
Author(s):

Sean A. Scott

Publisher:
NYU Press
DOI:10.18574/nyu/9780814796078.003.0007

This chapter discusses children's encounters with death during the Civil War. In addition to honoring the Union dead, civilians also remembered the children and youth who passed away on the home front during the war. In fact, the presence of children's obituaries alongside those of soldiers demonstrates the high value placed by society on the lives of children by the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Although the Civil War may not have noticeably altered the content of children's obituaries compared with those written in the 1850s, it intensified children's cognizance of death. Whether describing the death of a child who succumbed to disease at home or an underage soldier who fell in battle, the importance of these obituaries and articles lies in the emphasis that children need to be spiritually prepared for death in order to enjoy the blessings of heaven and a familial reunion untouched by sickness and war.

Keywords:   death, children, obituaries, Civil War, spiritual preparation, dying, sickness

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