I believe this is generally true of death by disease, everywhere.
Our ever kindly mother, Nature, only makes us dread death when she desires us to preserve life.

When she summons us hence she tenderly provides that we shall willingly obey the call.
More than for anything else, we wanted to live now to triumph over the Rebels.

To simply die would be of little importance, but to die unrevenged would be fearful.

If we, the despised, the contemned, the insulted, the starved and maltreated; could live to come back to our oppressors as the armed ministers of retribution, terrible in the remembrance of the wrongs of ourselves and comrade's, irresistible as the agents of heavenly justice, and mete out to them that Biblical return of seven-fold of what they had measured out to us, then we would be content to go to death afterwards.

Had the thrice-accursed Confederacy and our malignant gaolers millions of lives, our great revenge would have stomach for them all.
The December morning was gray and leaden; dull, somber, snow-laden clouds swept across the sky before the soughing wind.
The ground, frozen hard and stiff, cut and hurt our bare feet at every step; an icy breeze drove in through the holes in our rags, and smote our bodies like blows from sticks.