What Happened To The Bodies Of Fallen Civil War Soldiers?

there is no plan for the dead during the American Civil War Mass graves are leaving them where they fell would only go so far discover the heartbreaking fate to the Fallen Soldiers of the Civil War and the journey to bring them home of all the wars in which the United States has taken part the American Civil War was by far the bloodiest over just four years

from 1861 to 1865 hundreds of thousands of lives were lost the official estimate was that about 620 000 soldiers died on both sides combined but the reality may have been far worse a more recent analysis of historic records published in the journal Civil War history indicates that many more soldiers perished an estimated death toll of 750 000 more likely and perhaps as many as 850 000

total the confusion is due largely to haphazard record-keeping and make the chaos of war in a single day of fighting at Antietam some 23 000 soldiers were killed we've had the devil's own day haven't we but that wasn't even one of the worst battles of the Civil War that very dubious honor goes to the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 which saw the deaths of an

estimated 51 000 over a mere three days the sudden deaths of masses of soldiers on Civil War battlefields was overwhelming both emotionally and logistically and an era before telecommunications or even electricity our officials supposed to coordinate the removal of the Dead truth is that many simply didn't though hastily assembled groups of soldiers and civilians stepped in to manage the task it rarely happened efficiently observers of

the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam noted that it took more than a week for the first of the Dead to be buried but no dedicated burial Personnel no Ambulance Service and no military policy for identification of the deceased confusion reign both armies and Antietam perform the somber final ritual of all great battles tending to the dead and dying and Antietam some of the Fallen were

collected and buried in Mass Graves While others were left in the open indefinitely this was more likely if the dead were from the opposing Army a year or more later troops moving back over battlefields in places like Bull Run or Chancellorsville found them littered with skeletons but little was left to signify whether the deceased fought for the union or the Confederacy for those who did take

it upon themselves to bury the dead it was impossible to give each body an individual grade soldiers might go to the extra effort if they knew the deceased or if there were ample time but with so many remains and often sweltering weather that encouraged decomposition Mass Graves were the only real answer witnesses to mask Brave burials explain that soldiers would typically dig long trenches and carry

or drag bodies to the pole sometimes placing them head to foot to save space as for grave markers some survived to delineate to burial spots others disintegrated or were never put there in the first place this left some Mass Graves forgotten for well over a Century Metal detectorist Kevin Ambrose helped uncover a Civil War era grave in Centerville Virginia a bull excavation began in 1994 revealing

the remains of six Union Soldiers who'd been lying there for well over a century all six were identified and returned to their home towns to be re-buried during the Civil War era there was no common identification carried by soldiers unlike the standard issue metal dog tags worn in later conflicts motivated people might go through a soldier's Pockets to look for something that might offer up a

name but that was hardly a given that plus inconsistent record-keeping meant that the living were sometimes listed as dead and vice versa the use of mass Graves further complicated things as few on burial detail took the time to do more than place the marker estimating the number of bodies feared by some estimates more than half of the Dead were never connected to a name at all

perhaps most heartbreaking of all was the site to families wandering battlefields looking for a familiar face amongst the dead for much of the war Union General Ulysses S Grant allowed civilians to move through Battlefield so long as they didn't get in the way of the military modern archaeologists also struggled to identify the dad after the pack the six Union Soldiers buried near Centerville Virginia uncovered in

the mid-1990s had been placed in coffins in their uniforms but they didn't carry any identification and researchers had to use historic documents and forensic analysis of the remains to connect them with lost soldiers from the first Massachusetts Infantry at the time DNA analysis was still difficult to access and highly expensive families of Civil War soldiers sometimes found themselves in terrible limbo some got word of their

loved ones Fates though it wasn't guaranteed and letters sometimes arrived long after the soldier's death that's because in the same way that there was no official or organized way of identifying remains there was no procedure for notifying families some dying soldiers managed to write their own letters home or fellow service members might take it upon themselves to contact the Fallen comrades family but not everyone was

so lucky as the many Anonymous Battlefield Graves make Kingsley clear however not everyone was so overwhelmed or careless that identifications couldn't be made shortly after the war famed nurse Clara Barton set up the missing soldiers office which helped to identify over twenty thousand men Barton used her own money to keep the Enterprise going answering thousands of inquiries and pouring over records with a small team the

of embalming offered an alternative before this funerals and burials were rushed Affairs even if there wasn't a war going on the morning and Remembrance continued after a grave was closed families had to bury the remains of loved ones before decomposition made itself too obvious but what to do about someone who died on a battlefield far from home families who learned of a loved one's death sometimes

requested that their remains be shipped home the lack of refrigeration made this a gruesome Affair the answer was a fringe practice in balmy like so many other practices around death and dying in the Civil War however preserving corpses was a haphazard and quasi-professional process early attempts involved replacing body fluids with Arsenic and Mercury Solutions despite the less than consistent results enough people asked for embalming that

the government began requiring licenses for embalmers perhaps a welcome change as earlier less accomplished embalmers rather ghoulishly set up shop alongside battlefields and even encouraged soldiers to pay for the process ahead of their deaths even though death is said to be the great leveler the remains of Civil War soldiers were often treated differently based on race and class given that embalming bodies and transporting them home

was an expensive proposition it was often reserved for fallen officers with more money officers remains were more likely to come home in balm than in caskets the business of death and the preservation of bodies turns Undertakers into overnight millionaires the lower class dead were typically found in Graves dug closer to where they fell some Union Officers remains were even put to rest in the garden of

Confederate General Robert E Lee's wife Reyes still divided black and white soldiers even after death when they were buried in cemeteries black troops were typically consigned to segregated sections even at Arlington National Cemetery on the battlefield burials didn't always play out this way though Colonel Robert Gould Shaw the white commander of a black regiment was buried in a mass grave with his troops after they were

killed during a July 18 1863 attack Confederates meant it as an insult but Charles abolitionist family considered it an honor and requested that his remains stay where they had been originally buried segregated burials continued until President Harry S Truman ordered the integration of the military in 1948. though photography had been around for decades by the time the civil war war photographers were still a new site

Antietam looms large in American memory because it was the first major battle to be thoroughly documented by photography the equipment was bulky and complex yet photographers like Alexander Gardner Timothy H O Sullivan and Matthew Brady took their dark room wagons to battlefields anyway intent on documenting the horrors of war and Away sketches and reports never could while also gaining Fame and Commercial Success Gardner in particular

was complicated after gaining attention for his photographs of the aftermath of Antietam Gardner made his way to document the human wreckage of Gettysburg once there he took a photo he later said was of a fallen Confederate sniper on a rocky outcrop naming it home of a rebel Sharpshooter it was accompanied by a dramatic text written by Gardner that pointed out details such as the blanket where

the rebel had laid down to die but Gardner was almost certainly lying it looks like the realistic and gruesome aftermath of a firefight but in reality it's as posed as your favorite selfie on the battlefield Gardner had probably taken the remains of a Confederate infantryman he photographed and moved it to that picturesque outcrop according to a story on William prasinito's analysis in Gettysburg a journey in

time the Finishing Touch was a rifle Gardener used as a regular prop and which almost certainly would not have been used by sniper as a growing number of dead presented a stark reminder of the cost of War it became increasingly obvious that some sort of change was needed for many it was unacceptable that so many of the Dead lost their lives with no honor given to

their names of course this was easier to accomplish once the war was over Confederate General Robert E Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S Grant at Virginia's Appomattox Courthouse on April 9 1865. that fall quartermaster General Montgomery C Meigs ordered soldiers to begin searching out Union Graves to identify and protect the resting places of the Dead it turned into a six-year effort that included the re-burial

of more than 300 000 Union Soldiers though little more than half were identified nameless or not many of the Dead were Bound for one of 74 New National cemeteries established by the federal government it was just as well for those who had been buried in former Confederate territory as many in the South were not prepared to respect the graves of the Yankees who many still opposed

today Arlington National Cemetery is a peaceful solemn place but it was once a sprawling estate belonging to Marianna custis Lee wife of Confederate Commander Robert E Lee the union seized it at the beginning of the war though the Lee family continued fighting for its return for many years few on the union side were sympathetic to the leaves however this is a Union facility for Union Soldiers

quartermaster General Montgomery C Meigs thought it was only right that Lee should lose the property and perhaps his life too no one went so far as to execute Lee or any other top Confederates but Montgomery Meg saw to it that Arlington would serve a more useful purpose than hosting high-class soirees or well-mannered strolls about the grounds part of the estate became home to an estimated 1500

formerly enslaved people who constructed homes schools and churches and what became known as Friedman's Village another plot was set aside for military burials with the first internment in May 1864. later that year Meigs proposed that the area become a 200 acre National military cemetery it was officially designated as such on June 15 1864. the union and post-war governments weren't especially interested in caring for the Confederate

dead during the war at least one Union officer complained when he learned that remains from both sides were being buried together to you he's a victim to me a cold-blooded killer after the war the massive reberial effort conducted by the federal government's only extended to Union Soldiers if Confederate dead were honored it was only by civilians who organized and paid for the effort themselves these civilian

groups largely comprised of white women were known as the ladies Memorial Association in addition to arranging for the recovery and reinterment of thousands of dead soldiers they also engaged in post-war memorialization and myth-making that honored the Lost Cause of Confederacy with monuments and the organization of Confederate Memorial Day an occasion that continues to be observed by certain private citizens and even public figures into the 21st

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