At the end of the Civil War the dead were everywhere, some in half
buried coffins and some visible only as unidentified bones strewn on the
killing fields of Virginia or Georgia. Americans, north and south,
faced an enormous spiritual and logistical challenge of memorialization.
The dead were visible by their massive absence. Approximately 620,000
soldiers died in the war. American deaths in all other wars combined
through the Korean conflict totaled 606,000. If the same number of
Americans per capita had died in Vietnam as died in the Civil War, 4
million names would be on the Vietnam Memorial. The most immediate
legacy of the Civil War was its slaughter and how we remember it.
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