Based on the best-selling book by Drew Gilpin Faust, this film will explore how the American Civil War created a "republic of suffering" and will chart the far-reaching social, political, and social changes brought about by the pervasive presence and fear of death during the Civil War.
From acclaimed filmmaker Ric Burns, Death and the Civil War explores an essential but largely overlooked aspect of the most pivotal event in American history. With the coming of the Civil War, and the staggering casualties it ushered in, death entered the experience of the American people as it never had before - permanently altering the character of the republic, and the psyche of the American people. The work of contending with death on an unprecedented scale propelled extraordinary changes in the inner and outer life of Americans - posing challenges for which there were no ready answers when the war began - challenges that called forth remarkable and eventually heroic efforts as Americans worked to improvise new solutions, new institutions, new ways of coping with death on an unimaginable scale.
Based on Drew Gilpin Faust's groundbreaking book, This Republic of Suffering - the film tracks the increasingly lethal arc of the war, from all but bloodless opening, through the chaos of Shiloh, Antietam, and Gettysburg - down through the struggle, in the war's aftermath, to cope with an American landscape littered with the bodies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, many unburied, most unidentified.
Producer: Ric Burns, Robin Espinola, Bonnie Lafave, Sharon Grimberg
Executive Producer: Mark Samels
Production Company: WGBH; Steeplechase Films
Production Year: 2012
Copyright Year: 2012
Rating: TV-14
Actors: James Cromwell, Keith David, Josh Hamilton, Gene Jones, Robert Sean Leonard, Amy Madigan
Writers: Ric Burns
Number of Discs: 1
Length: 112 minutes
Subtitled: Y
Subtitle Languages: English (SDH)
Audio Format: 5.1 Surround
Aspect Ratio: 16x9 Widescreen