How Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination Created The Multi-Billion Dollar American Death Industry
Lincoln’s impact on the funeral services industry.
Pre-Civil War Americans dealt with death in a much simpler way. People would wash the dead, dress them nicely, and light some candles around.
Some relatives would stop by to bid farewell. Further, the body would get lowered in the cemetery in a simple wooden box.
But President Abraham Lincoln’s (R-Illinois) embalmment flipped that practice. After Lincoln’s assassination, his body was treated with varying chemicals. Owing to a lengthy funeral train, people from all over the world came to wish farewells.
People witnessed the corpse that hardly seemed altered. The new concept of embalming got fed into their head: they realized that death didn’t change anything thus included it as a regular part of death rituals.
The Civil War turned death into a big business for embalmers
The Civil War witnessed tens of thousands of dead bodies lying around. The decomposition rate of the bodies increases when left alone, and something exactly happened with the bodies of civil soldiers who were left unattended. Not a single person used to visit the site where the soldiers fell.
But the situation didn’t stay the same. As embalming, a process invented by Europe was already making its way to America.
The newly-minted embalmers knew that the bodies of war soldiers would be left on the Earth. They would thus approach those soldiers who were about to make their way into the battlefield and offer embalming services.
What morale would such an offer give the military? Of course, it would pull it down; thus, such contracts were soon stopped.
It was not always the soldiers who would choose to get embalmed as sometimes their family would decide for them. The soldiers weren't supposed to choose but others could.
The affluent families, primarily residing in the North, would pay to have their loved ones embalmed. For a long journey, the dead body had to go through the process of embalming anyway. About 40,000 to 60,000 deceased soldiers underwent the embalming process.
Embalmers in business created a chaos
As the embalming trend mounted, so did the need for more embalmers. At the time, embalming was only for men, so more men joined the business.
Desperate families wanted the bodies of their loved ones back quickly; thus, they paid any price.
As far as the military is concerned, it offered varying embalming prices for varying ranks: $30 for a soldier and $80 for an officer, converting to around $900 to $2500 as of today.
The lucrative businesses meant embalmers fought for the dead bodies. The fights and chaos on the battlefield mounted to the extent that the war department had to issue General Order Number 39, which meant anyone who interacted with dead soldiers would require a special license.
But such a rule got applied from March 1865 when the war was over, and embalmers faced conflicts.
The Civil War’s first causality was embalmed
Lincoln was familiar with the embalming process as the first Civil War casualty was actually embalmed; he was Lincoln’s friend.
Dr. Holmes approached Lincoln, asking him to embalm his friend’s body and that too for free. After getting embalmed, the body was buried after ten days.
Lincoln must have appreciated the idea because when a year later, his 11-year-old-son passed away, he made his dead body go through the embalming process. The embalming allowed Lincoln to keep his son’s body in the white house for longer.
Lincoln’s Body Went On An Epic Journey
Little did Lincoln know that people would get him embalmed for an epic journey around the country after his assassination.
The secretary of war thought that people would want to see their beloved for one last time and pay their respect.
Thus, Lincoln’s body was embalmed and put on a train for a farewell journey of weeks. The train traveled over 1600 miles and stopped in seven states, making appearances in 180 cities.
The whole idea was of recreation, but that too in reverse. It was to recreate Lincoln’s trip held during elections, from Illinois to Washington, D.C.
The body was actually removed from the train in significant cities and placed in any important available building.
Millions of people put a great deal of effort into catching a glimpse of the deceased president.
They would stand in lines for hours in all weather and that too twice. Even ex-slaves visited the body to pay their respect to a man whom they owed a great deal.
Embalming Became A Trend
Through this whole journey, millions of people got the chance to appreciate the process of embalming. The death industry underwent a revolution.
Something which initially started during the Civil War became a trend after Lincoln’s train journey.
After the Civil War, people deemed that embalming was not required anymore — the idea mainly disappeared. But Lincoln’s death flipped the notion, and embalmer continued to mount in popularity.
People began thinking that if embalming was suitable for the president, it might be suitable for their family members.
Funerals became more elaborated. Instead of viewing the dead body as grossly morbid, it became the normal routine whole process of embalming altered the perception of death people possessed in their hearts.
As far as what people think about embalming today, then they consider it terrible for the environment. The chemicals used are hazardous, and people are seeking greener ways to deal with dead bodies.
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References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Abraham_Lincoln