Summary: On the anniversary of the battle that sparked the Civil War, Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust and eminent Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer explore the enormous human toll of the war on 19th-century America. More than 600,000 soldiers lost their lives in the Civil War. An equivalent proportion of today's population would be six million. In her book This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, Faust reveals how death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation, redefining the meanings of race, citizenship and nationhood. Questions or comments? Write: programs@constitutioncenter.org.
