The Civil War wiped out 2.5 percent of this nation’s population, the equivalent of 7 million people today. Before 1861, there was no national register of the deceased or any set procedure for identifying battlefield casualties. This gripping Ric Burns documentary details how the “bureaucracy of death” spawned by the war transformed the federal government and the national psyche. Based on Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering, it airs on the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. Tuesday, Sept. 18, at 8 p.m., PBS; check local listings
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