The Civil War Underground: Coffins to Caskets

While the Civil War saw many medical innovations that helped to save lives, it also saw a great change in the way Americans dealt with their dead. Nowhere was this change more evident than in the way bodies were contained, either temporarily or for permanent burial.

Early coffins were manufactured by local furniture and cabinet makers, who were often also undertakers. These coffins were made of wood and built on an as-needed basis.[1] Hexagonal coffins were the preferred shape. A simple pine coffin in 1840 cost between $2 and $3 (between $40 and $60 in today’s currency).[2]

The mass-producing of coffins did not begin until the start of the Civil War in 1861, when large numbers of coffins were needed at a moment’s notice due to the enormous numbers of battle casualties and the necessity of transporting dead soldiers. The local undertaker, rather than making his own coffins, started to purchase the mass-produced models, and began to focus more on caring for the bodies themselves.[3]

It was just prior to the war that metal coffins were first offered on a large-scale basis. Although they had first appeared in the United States in 1848, they would not become popular until after World War II.[4] In 1848, Almond D. Fisk of New York had received a patent for his Fisk Metallic Burial Case. This was shaped much like an Egyptian mummy case and was the most popular brand of iron coffin. Due to the fact that these coffins could weigh up to 300 lbs. and cost from $40 to $170 at the time, they did not gain in popularity during the Civil War.[5]

Another type of coffin that also appeared during this time was the “safety coffin.” Fear of premature burial was very real to 18^th and 19^th century people. The medical practices of the day lacked the ability to definitively determine if someone was dead. While wakes were held to try to prevent an apparently dead person from being buried alive, the fear was that a person would awaken inside their coffin after having been interred. Inventors came up with several variations of the “safety coffin,” which often included a bell above ground that the occupant could ring via a cord inside the coffin, and perhaps even a tube to allow air flow and prevent suffocation.[6]

While a lot of literature and advertising exists to document the manufacture of safety coffins, there is not a lot of evidence that they were ever used in great numbers. Indeed, they were most probably a novelty that came out of the new coffin industry.

Prior to the Civil War, attempts had been made to preserve bodies by using coffins containing ice. New designs of these types of coffins began to appear throughout the war. Undertakers who had contracted with families in the north to bring home the bodies of their loved ones killed on southern battlefields began to experiment with ways to preserve bodies that had to travel long distances on trains, often during the hot summer.[7]

The Staunton Transportation Company distributed handbills to families searching for loved ones after the battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, offering its new “Transportation Case.” According to the advertisement, the case “preserves the body in a natural state and [as] perfect condition as when placed in it for any distance or length of time in any weather.” The body would appear “as though the subject had died on the day of arrival at home” as the case’s “construction makes it a portable refrigerator.”[8]

Embalming became popular during the Civil War as a way to solve the problem of shipping bodies long distances. Twenty-five percent of the average household income was spent to have a loved one embalmed and shipped home.[9] Not all dead soldiers were embalmed and not all families could afford the process. Most embalmers charged $7 to embalm enlisted men and $13 for officers.[10] There were cases in which embalmers would charge much more and many were often accused of criminal activity. Reverend Asahel C. Washburn, who had experience in transporting bodies from the battlefield back to his home state of Connecticut, wrote “embalming is utterly useless, and in my opinion, most of the embalming pretensions are a deception and an egregious fraud.”[11] Washburn went on to say that wooden coffins were preferable to metal ones:

The boxes were made of sound pine boards, thoroughly fastened with long screws, lined, except the covers, a part with lead and a part with zinc, so that they were watertight. The bodies were placed in them and covered with pulverized charcoal near to the top, then filled with sawdust, pressed hard, and the lid firmly screwed on. Such a box costs about one-fourth that of a metallic coffin. Metallic coffins often fail, while a box prepared as above, would, I verily believe, convey a dead body in perfect security around the globe.[12]

As the war raged on and hundreds of bodies were shipped home for burial, the general public’s attitude toward death and funerals began to change, and with this change, the design of burial containers was altered. The “beautification of death” began the change from simple coffins to more elaborate “caskets.”[13] Casket, from the Old French word “casset,” was defined as a small box for holding valuables or jewels. No longer were the dead being placed in the harsher sounding “coffin,” but placed in a box meant for something valuable.[14] The design of these new containers became more streamlined—a rectangular rather than a hexagonal shape. For Americans, the idea of a casket seemed a more appropriate way to honor the dead and to distance themselves from the ugliness of death.[15] 

The encasing of the body, the primary idea expressed in earlier receptacles [coffins] is modified toward the presentation of the dead in a receptacle designed to provide an aesthetically pleasing setting for its visually prominent and dramatically centered object of attention.[16]

By the end of the 19^th century, it became less common for Americans to be dying at home and more common for them to have end-of-life care in hospitals. Undertakers had also evolved into funeral directors who specialized in providing decorative caskets that were specially manufactured in factories. By the turn of the 20^th century, caskets had all but replaced the simpler coffins in American culture. The massive numbers of casualties resulting from the Civil War had spurred not only a change in the design of burial containers, but also a change in attitude towards the way the dead were interred. So many soldiers had died on the battlefields and were not given proper burials, that it was only natural that families who were able wanted to give their dead special treatment. No longer would soldiers be given the simple and common burial which Walt Whitman described:

The graves with slight boards, rudely inscribed

with the names,

The front of the hospital, the dead brought out,

lying there so still,

The piece of board, hastily inscribed with the name,

placed on the breast to be ready,

The squad at the burial, firing a volley over the grave.

About the Author

Tracey McIntire earned her BA in English at Rivier College in Nashua, NH. She is Director of Communications at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, and an interpretive volunteer at Antietam National Battlefield. She is also an active Civil War living historian, where she portrays a woman soldier in various guises.

Sources

[1] Weber, Austin. “The History of Caskets,” Assembly (eMagazine), October 2, 2009

[2] Zahn, Jonas A. “A Brief History of Caskets,” northwoodcasket.blogspot.com, March 4, 2011

[3] Funerals360, “A Brief History of Caskets,” July 29, 2019

[4] Zahn, Jonas A. “A Brief History of Caskets,” northwoodcasket.blogspot.com, March 4, 2011

[5] Ibid.

[6] “Safety Coffins.” Australian Museum, 2011. Retrieved 11/16/2022

[7] Groeling, Meg. The Aftermath of Battle, page 67

[8] Faust, Drew Gilpin. This Republic of Suffering, page 92

[9] Ibid. Page 167

[10] Groeling, Meg. The Aftermath of Battle, page 63

[11] John Bank’s Civil War Blog, September 22, 2012

[12] Ibid.

[13] “From Coffins to Caskets: An American History,” www.coffinworks.org

[14] Harra, Todd. Last Rites: The Evolution of the American Funeral, page 155

[15] Ibid.

[16] Habenstein and Lamers. The History of American Funeral Directing, page 170