Harvard’s president connects turning points in national mourning
Many of the rituals and ceremonies determining how America mourns its fallen trace back to the Civil War, when the country was overwhelmed by death on a massive scale. Those rituals are reflected in the way we honor the nearly 3,000 who died in the 2001 terrorist attacks, Harvard President Drew Faust said Wednesday at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York. “So many of the assumptions and approaches that are characteristic of the 9/11 tragedy have their roots in the responsibilities that were undertaken by the government, the idea that the government has a responsibility, that the public has a responsibility — that clearly is very powerful in the response to 9/11,” Faust said. “That would have been bewildering before the Civil War.” The 750,000 Civil War dead represented 2.5 percent of the nation’s population, a figure that would be equivalent to more than 7 million today. To gauge...