Digging Up the Dead: A History of Notable American Reburials
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A funeral closes a life story, and a grave in a cemetery marks its end forever. But what happens when those left behind don’t agree about the meaning of that story? Or when that disagreement extends all the way to arguments about the final resting place itself? In a surprising number of cases over the years, that’s when people have chosen to grab shovels and start digging. With Digging Up the Dead, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Michael Kammen reveals a treasure trove of fascinating, surprising, and sometimes gruesome stories of exhumation and reburial from throughout American history. Taking us to the contested grave sites of such figures as Sitting Bull, John Paul Jones, Frank Lloyd Wright, Daniel Boone, Jefferson Davis, and even Abraham Lincoln, Kammen explores how complicated interactions of regional pride, shifting reputations, and evolving burial practices led to public, often emotional battles over the final resting places of famous figures. Grave-robbing, skull-fondling, cases of mistaken identity, and the financial lures of cemetery tourism all come into play as Kammen delves deeply into this little-known—yet surprisingly persistent—aspect of American history. Simultaneously insightful and interesting, masterly and macabre, Digging Up the Dead reminds us that the stories of American history don’t always end when the key players pass on. Rather, the battle—over reputations, interpretations, and, last but far from least, possession of the remains themselves—is often just beginning. Publishers Weekly Who is buried in Grant's Tomb? The answer to this old joke—and the story behind it—can be found in this well-written in-depth account of high-profile Americans whose remains were reburied for a number of surprising reasons. Generally, says Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Kammen (People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization), reburial is “a figurative form of resurrection—primarily... of reputation.” Reburial can also symbolize reconciliation, whether familiar or national. Kammen explores the politics, mythology, and commercialization of the American practice of reburial. In some cases, long-forgotten remains became rare relics, most vividly in the case of Rhode Island founder Roger Williams, whose body slowly nourished the apple tree roots that grew around it taking the skeleton's shape while the bones themselves disappeared. The stealth reclamation of what Native Americans believed to be the remains of Sitting Bull contrasts with the more public, emotional restoration provided to the late Jefferson Davis. While situating the ritual of reburial within the American psyche, Kammen effectively captures the eternal dual fascination with greatness and with the dead, and the power of their conjunction in the burial of heroes. Photos. (May)
Preface and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1 A Short History of Reburial: Patterns of Change over Time2 Heroes of the Revolution: The Siting and Reciting of Patriotism3 Honor, Dishonor, and Issues of Reputation: From Sectionalism to Nationalism4 Problematic Graves, Tourism, and the Wishes of Survivors5 Disinterred by Devotion: Religion, Race, and Spiritual Repose6 Repossessing the Dead Elsewhere in Our TimeNotesIndex
