Consider the historical nature of grief, mourning, and death. In D.G. Faust’s searing examination of the Civil War’s emotional costs, the pervasiveness of death, destruction, and grieving pressured the United States government to expand its obligations to the millions of Americans impacted by the war. It also upended Victorian-era notions of what constituted a “good death,” which fundamentally altered Americans’ conceptions of religious customs, burial practices, and rites of mourning. To what degree did the death and destruction of the war alter Americans’ understanding of their world? Did they lead to a crisis in religious faith, or did they reinforce the need for Americans to place their fate in the hands of God? You may want to end the essay by evaluating the extent to which studying death as a historical phenomenon humanizes figures of the past