Something Must Be Done: The Construction and Dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg

By Hannah Christensen ’17

Not only did the armies leave something of a state of chaos behind them after the battle of Gettysburg; they also left their dead buried poorly almost everywhere. Within days, the combination of rain and pigs rooting around the battlefield had exposed multiple skeletons and partially-decomposed bodies. The smell was horrendous, and residents and visitors alike were shocked by the state of the burials.

Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin was among these visitors. After seeing the state of affairs during his tour of the battlefield on July 10th, Curtin appointed local attorney David Wills to act as his “agent” in affairs related to Pennsylvania’s dead. As agent, Wills did everything from helping families locate loved ones’ bodies to disinterring and sending those remains home. This process was made more complicated by the fact that those grave markers that existed were only partially legible, if at all.

Wills also got to know other state agents, including William Yates Selleck of Wisconsin and Henry Edwards of Massachusetts. It was Edwards and Massachusetts officials who brought up the idea of purchasing part of the battlefield to turn into a cemetery. Wills also got the head of the Christian Commission of Pennsylvania, Andrew B. Cross, in on the idea. When Wills wrote to Governor Curtin about it on July 24th, the governor quickly authorized him to get to work.

Three developments impacted the success of the cemetery project before it really began. First, the military commander at Gettysburg, Colonel Henry C. Alleman, halted the exhumation and shipping home of any more bodies, inadvertently assuring that more would be buried in the proposed cemetery. Second, a fight over the organization of the cemetery occurred between Wills and the Massachusetts representatives. The representatives wanted the dead buried by state, while Wills planned to mix them together. Wills deferred to Massachusetts to keep them on board. Last was a fight over control of the cemetery. The governing body of the local Evergreen Cemetery wanted it under their control, which nearly derailed the entire project when state agents threatened to pull out if the cemetery got its way. Thankfully, Wills was able to out-argue the association, and the cemetery project continued as planned.

Between his first letter to the governor on July 24th and his second on the 30th, Wills took steps to purchase the necessary land, get more states on board, and write to the governors of the other Union states with his plans. By July 30th, Wills already had eight state agents on board and believed that the rest would eventually follow suit. He also had the potential location and cost of land for the cemetery site. After a telegram to the other state governors explaining his plan, Wills went ahead and purchased a total of seventeen acres for $2,475.87.

At the same time, Wills got the Connecticut and Wisconsin agents to help draft a circular to the state governors, drafted specifications and advertised for bids to rebury the Union soldiers in the cemetery, and contacted one William Saunders to lay out the cemetery grounds. Wills included this information, as well as the total cost of the project–under $35,000–in his circular to the state governors on August 12th. He also asked the governors to appoint agents to work on the cemetery project and inquired if they wanted to purchase their state’s portion of the cemetery.

Wills’s report to Governor Curtin in mid-August indicated that progress was being made. Fifteen of seventeen governors had responded, the location and layout of the cemetery had been set, and Wills was ready to move ahead. His suggestion for some kind of dedication ceremony was also well-received and he was immediately authorized to plan one. Wills turned to the other states for suggestions for the ceremony. They were in unanimous agreement with Wills’s invitation to Edward Everett of Massachusetts to give the main oration.

Everett’s attendance would dictate the date of the ceremony. Wills had originally planned for the dedication ceremony to be on October 23rd, but Everett would not be able to do it before November 19th. So, the ceremony was moved to the 19th; this meant the reburials would start about a month before the ceremony. Now that Wills had the date for the ceremony, he sent out the rest of his invitations: President Lincoln, whom Wills invited to give “a few appropriate remarks;” Vice President Hamlin, the cabinet, foreign ministers, and generals were all invited. Wills also invited the House chaplain, Reverend Thomas Stockton to give the invocation, Reverend Henry Baugher (president of the Gettysburg Seminary) to give the benediction, and several bands to provide music for the occasion. To manage the ceremony and the procession, Wills chose Ward Lamon, the U.S. marshal in D.C. and Lincoln’s bodyguard. Wills had high hopes for the dedication ceremony, but several officials were unable to attend, and a few railroad companies backed out of running special trains for the occasion.

As November 19th got closer, Wills took care of several last-minute details, and guests began to arrive. Edward Everett arrived on the 17th, President Lincoln arrived after dark on the 18th, and Governor Curtin did not arrive until around midnight. On the morning of the 19th, the weather was perfect, but the masses of people who had arrived for the ceremony made it hard for Ward Lamon to get everyone in line for the procession by the intended start time of 10 o’clock. According to the program, the military was supposed to form up at 9 o’clock just north of the square, all the civic bodies (except for citizens of states) were supposed to be in line elsewhere at the same time, and the citizens of states were supposed to be in line at 9 o’clock as well. The procession did not start until nearly 11 o’clock.

Once the procession reached the cemetery, the program began. It started with a funeral march from one of the bands, followed by the invocation from Reverend Stockton and a performance from another band. Then, Lamon introduced Edward Everett, who gave a two-hour long speech recounting the entire battle. Everett was followed by a choir, and then President Lincoln was introduced. His short “Gettysburg Address” was interrupted repeatedly by applause and ended with even more applause. Once the applause died down, a choir of Gettysburg residents sung a dirge, and Reverend Baugher gave the benediction. With the ceremony essentially over, a battery of the 5th New York fired an eight-shot salute, and the attendees dispersed. Wills, the president, and several other prominent guests headed back to Wills’s house and later back to Washington.

While the dedication ceremony was officially over, there was still work to be done. The reburials still had to be finished—the process would take until March of 1864. In addition, a commission had to be set up to handle cemetery operations, and a monument had to be erected. While the commission was selected in December 1863, the cornerstone of the monument was not laid until July 4, 1865. The process of creating and dedicating the cemetery was far longer and far more complicated than just the dedication that people celebrate today.

Sources:
Klement, Frank L. The Gettysburg Soldiers’ Cemetery and Lincoln’s Address: Aspects and Angles. Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing Company, 1993.

“Program Containing the Order of Procession and Order of Exercises for the “Inauguration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, PA, 19 November, 1863,” Gettysburg Battlefield

Memorial Association, Civil War Vertical File Manuscripts, Gettysburg College Special Collections.

Image: President Lincoln at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, November 19th, 1863. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

From: gettysburgcompiler.com

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The Confederate Cemetery in Madison, Wisconsin

By Mark, 6-15-15

Madison, Wisconsin is a long way from the battlefields of the Civil War or the states of the old Confederacy. It would seem to be an unlikely location for a Confederate cemetery, yet there is indeed such a cemetery in Wisconsin’s capital city. Confederate Rest, as it is called, is a section of Madison’s Forest Hill cemetery that contains the graves of 140 Confederate soldiers who died while prisoners of war in 1862 . It is the northernmost Confederate cemetery in the United States.

In March 1862, Union naval forces attacked the Confederate garrison on an island in the Mississippi River near New Madrid, Missouri called Island Number 10. The island and nearby mainland were heavily fortified to help stop the Federal advance down the river, which was a major transportation route. Eventually, Union forces surrounded the island, and with escape routes cut off, the Island Number 10 defenders surrendered on April 7th.

The Confederate prisoners of war were sent north to various POW camps. Some 1,156 prisoners, all of whom were enlisted men, were sent to Madison. They were first sent via transport vessels on the Mississippi River to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and then by rail to Madison. The first group of 881 arrived by train on April 20th, and 275 more joined them on April 24th.

Townspeople in Madison came out to the train station to see the arrival of the prisoners. While the first group was in relatively good physical condition, the second group was in much worse shape, with many suffering from pneumonia, mumps, measles, and chronic diarrhea. These prisoners were taken off the train on stretchers. Island Number 10 was in an important strategic location, but the soldiers who were given the task of defending it had to do so under poor conditions. Men were exposed to cold rain and winds, with little food and medicine, standing knee deep in water in the trenches. It was no wonder many were desperately ill.

The POWs marched or were transported to Camp Randall, a large training camp for Wisconsin volunteer soldiers. It was not designed nor equipped to be a prisoner of war camp. At first, the camp was badly run and many of the ill prisoners received inadequate medical treatment. Things improved after a visit from Lieutenant Colonel William Hoffman, Commissary General of Prisoners for the Union Army. Later in the war, prisoner of war camps would be infamous for their appallingly bad conditions, but Hoffman made a sincere effort to improve things here. He ordered clothing, bedding, supplies, and medications for the camp, and improved sanitary conditions. Hoffman also brought in extra surgeons to deal with the rampant illnesses. Madison’s civilian population had been shocked at the condition of the ill prisoners and townspeople helped out by bringing food and other supplies to Camp Randall.

Despite these efforts, many of the seriously ill could not be saved by the 19th century medical practices of the day (far more soldiers died of disease than in combat in the Civil War). As many as 10 prisoners a day died.

The dead were taken to Madison’s Forest Hill Cemetery. They were buried side by side in one section of the cemetery, with wooden headboards marking each grave. After about three months, the prisoners were moved out of Madison to other camps, but a total of 140 had died and were buried in what the civilian population called Confederate Rest cemetery. One hundred ten of these men were from the 1st Alabama Infantry with the remainder from Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

As time went on the site began to be overgrown with tall grass and weeds. Then in 1868, a southern born woman who had spent most of her life in the north moved to Madison. Although she did not personally know any of those buried there, Alice Waterman took an interest in the cemetery and removed the overgrowth, placed a fence around the site,  and replaced the deteriorating headboards at her own expense. (The wooden headboards were later replaced with headstones). She got the attention of Madisonians including Lucius Fairchild and C.C. Washburn, both of whom were former Union generals who went on to become governors of Wisconsin. She persuaded them to help improve the site, and Washburn personally led a group of former Union soldiers to the cemetery on a Decoration Day (today’s Memorial Day) when he was governor.

Today, the site of Camp Randall is occupied by the stadium where the University of Wisconsin’s football team plays its home games, though reminders of the location’s Civil War past are just outside the stadium. Forest Hill Cemetery, where many prominent Madisonians of the past are buried, is maintained by the City of Madison, and Confederate Rest receives the same care as the rest of the cemetery. A section of Union Army graves lies near the Confederate graves, and each Memorial Day, commemorative ceremonies are held at both sites.

One grave in Confederate Rest lies in front of the first row of soldier’s graves. After her death in 1897, Alice Waterman was buried at her request in the plot of ground containing the remains of soldiers she had never known, but whom she referred to as “her boys”.

Sources:
“A Wisconsin Burial Place of Confederate Prisoners of War” by William A. Titus, Wisconsin Magazine of History, Spring 1953.

History of the First Regiment Alabama Infantry C.S.A. by Edward Young McMorrries.

Mr. Lincoln’s Brown Water Navy: The Mississippi Squadron
by Gary D. Joiner

Official Records of the Union And Confederate Armies in the War of the Rebellion Series II Volume 3.

Images: Confederate Rest Cemetery Madison Wisconsin

From: ironbrigader.com

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Civil War Cemeteries

Original entry by Leah Richier, University of Georgia, 09/09/2010. Last edited by NGE Staff on 01/10/2014

Both during and after the Civil War (1861-65), Georgians faced the task of burying the Confederate and Union soldiers who died within the state's bounds. Many of the fallen were later reburied either in existing cemeteries or in new ones specifically dedicated to Civil War soldiers. Nearly every sizable cemetery in Georgia contains individual graves of Confederate soldiers or veterans who died after the war was over, and several have entire sections devoted to Civil War dead. A few cemeteries hold only Confederate soldiers killed in the war; the Confederate Cemetery at Resaca was the first of these to be established in Georgia.

Approximately 120,000 Georgians served the Confederacy, and many thousands of them died over the course of the conflict, with estimates varying from around 11,000 to 25,000. Within the state itself, several major battles and numerous skirmishes left both Union and Confederate soldiers dead near farms, homes, hospitals, and towns. While many soldiers died on battlefields, many more died in hospitals from wounds and disease. Though most of the dead in Georgia were Confederates, a significant number of Union soldiers died as well. Such was the case at Andersonville Prison, where the Union dead were buried on site because of an inability either to preserve corpses or to move the dead.

Many fallen soldiers remained unidentified. The corpses were often very deteriorated after battle as the result of wounds and decomposition, and many were initially buried in mass graves near where they fell. For major engagements, such as those at Chickamauga, Resaca, and Atlanta, bodies were moved to nearby existing cemeteries or to new ones created just after the fighting.

Stone monuments or obelisks were often constructed in these cemeteries to honor both individuals and full companies and regiments that suffered significant losses. In addition, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), which formed a Georgia chapter in 1895, placed iron crosses of honor on many graves throughout the state. Later, soldiers' resting places were officially marked with regulation government headstones, noting their service to the Confederacy.

Kingston and Cassville Cemeteries
Each cemetery in Georgia has its own history relating to local events and politics during and after the Civil War. Kingston and Cassville, both in Bartow County, for example, established Confederate cemeteries after intense fighting in that area in May 1864, during the early part of the Atlanta campaign. There are 250 unknown Confederate and 2 Union soldiers buried in Kingston. The Cassville cemetery holds approximately 300 unknown Confederate soldiers (including a general) who died in eight local hospitals. They were buried in the town cemetery after Union general William T. Sherman's troops set fire to Cassville. The UDC placed marble headstones on all the Cassville graves in 1899.

Marietta Cemeteries
The Marietta National Cemetery is located at 500 Washington Avenue in Marietta. There are more than 10,000 Union soldiers buried here, with approximately 3,000 of them unknown. Confederate soldiers were interred at a separate Confederate cemetery in Marietta.

Marietta National Cemetery boasts both a national cemetery and a Confederate cemetery. The national cemetery contains around 10,000 Union soldiers, only 7,045 of whom are known, who died during the Atlanta campaign. The Confederate cemetery, established in 1863, is the largest of its kind in the state. It holds 3,000 soldiers who died in local hospitals, in combat during the Battle of Chickamauga or the Atlanta campaign, or in an 1863 train wreck that occurred north of Marietta. In 1902 wooden markers at the Confederate cemetery were replaced by marble headstones.

The separate cemeteries in Marietta were created because local civilians objected to enemies lying together in death. A prominent Marietta businessman, Henry Green Cole, sought a combined Confederate and Union cemetery, and donated land toward the project. When local officials objected, Cole gave the land to the federal government to be used for the burial of Union casualties only, and it was designated as such in 1866.

Oakland Cemetery
Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, established in 1850, has 6,900 Confederates buried in its grounds, including 5 generals. It is Atlanta's oldest cemetery. The first soldiers were buried at Oakland as early as September 1863, following the Battle of Chickamauga. Soldiers who died in Atlanta while seeking treatment for wounds or disease were also buried there before the Battle of Atlanta in July 1864. During the Battle of Atlanta, Union soldiers vandalized the cemetery; they stole nameplates, broke into crypts, and exhumed Confederate dead in order to place Union corpses in their coffins. Wooden markers in the cemetery were replaced by marble ones in 1890.

A well-known monument to the Confederate dead, the "Lion of Atlanta," was erected at Oakland in 1894. Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens was briefly interred there after his death in 1883, but his body was later moved to his home at Crawfordville, in Taliaferro County.

Andersonville Cemetery
Andersonville National Cemetery in Macon County holds approximately 13,000 Union soldiers who died while imprisoned at Andersonville Prison in 1864-65. It was designated a national cemetery in 1866 and is managed today by the National Park Service.

One of the best-known and most visited Civil War cemeteries is the burial ground at Andersonville, where more than 13,000 Union prisoners died and were laid to rest in 1864 and 1865. Due to the efforts of nurse Clara Barton, who worked to identify and mark the graves, the Andersonville cemetery was designated a national cemetery in 1866. It is one of fourteen cemeteries in the United States managed by the National Park Service, and one of only two in which American war veterans can still be buried.

Image: Marietta National Cemetery

From: georgiaencyclopedia.org

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Antietam's National Cemetery

By Kim O'Connell 12-9-15

Divided No More: The creation of a battlefield park at Antietam was contentious and uncertain, much like the battle itself.

ON SEPTEMBER 17, 1867, a large cadre of dignitaries and interested parties descended on Sharpsburg, Md., a province of rolling hills just east of a bend in the Potomac River. Having lost its bid to become the county seat of Washington County a century before—a distinction that went to Hagerstown to the north—Sharpsburg had retained its sleepy quality well into the 19th century. Therefore, a crowd of such stature was certainly unusual—but not unprecedented. It was exactly five years before, after all, that the town had ballooned from its normal population of 1,300 to about 100,000, during and after the maelstrom of Antietam.

This day, by contrast, was meant to be more serene; a crowd of nearly 15,000 had assembled to dedicate the new Antietam National Cemetery, to pay final respects to the Union soldiers whose bodies had once littered the fields and who had now been re-interred in the cemetery (nearly 5,000 in all, representing 19 states). Located atop a hill east of Sharpsburg, the cemetery encompassed 9½ acres, with the burial plots set in a handsome semi-elliptical pattern. Men and women in hats and bonnets had arrived from near and far, some carrying umbrellas in preparation for the storm gathering overhead, which seemed to reflect an unspoken tension in the air. Along with several state governors and other dignitaries, one of the day’s speakers was President Andrew Johnson. The North Carolina–born Johnson was supportive of Reconstruction and was conciliatory toward the South, something the pro-Union crowd didn’t appreciate, especially with the memory of the high casualty count at Antietam so close at hand. When Johnson rose to speak, he was met with tepid applause and more than a few hecklers, and he and his entourage fled shortly afterward. The New York Tribune called the ceremony “a stupidly farcical affair.”

It was an inauspicious beginning for what would eventually become Antietam National Battlefield. As a border state, Maryland’s loyalties were divided during the war and just as divided when it came to memorializing its most famous battle. Even as the Unionists were hustling the president off the stage at Sharpsburg, for example, still others were working to include a section in the cemetery for the Confederate dead—a controversial effort that brought deep sectional feelings to the fore once again. It would be the work of several more decades to establish both the physical boundaries of the park and, just as important, the message the park was sending to the residents of Maryland and the nation beyond.

The first phase of memorializing the Battle of Antietam began almost as soon as Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia retreated across the Potomac. For months and even years afterward, the field was littered with the detritus of war: bullets, cannon balls, soldiers’ accoutrements and, gruesomely, skeletal remains. As park historian Ted Alexander writes in his book The Battle of Antietam: The Bloodiest Day, a Union soldier passing through Sharpsburg two years after the battle remarked that, at every stop, “the eye rests upon something to remind the traveler of that awful day of carnage.”

At Antietam as elsewhere, relic hunters began collecting these items and passing them around parlors as objects of conversation—a nascent effort, one might say, to interpret what had occurred there. (Even a notorious boulder on the battlefield, known as “Lee’s Rock,” was subject to appropriation—see p. 37.) It wasn’t long before the nation’s first Civil War souvenir shops were open for business. O.T. Reilly, only 5 years old at the time of the battle, would amass such a collection of artifacts that he opened a novelty store in Sharpsburg years later, selling candy on the main floor and relics in the basement, according to historian Stephen Recker. Although Sharpsburg has never had the bustling tourism that, say, Gettysburg has enjoyed (for good or ill), attracting visitors has long been part of the battlefield’s history.

Preserving and interpreting the landscape was a decidedly more complicated business. At Antietam, the primary concern in the immediate aftermath of the war was burying the dead. But even that was fraught with controversy from the beginning, as conciliatory legislators (including Maryland Governor Thomas Swann) sought to reserve a section of the new cemetery for Confederate soldiers. In Washington, D.C., according to park superintendent Susan Trail (whose doctoral dissertation, Remembering Antietam: Commemoration and Preservation of a Civil War Battlefield, is an authoritative source on the development of the park), the Chronicle ran an editorial calling the plan to include Confederates akin to interring, “side by side with loyal men who perished to save the Government, the traitors who sought to destroy it.” Union factions ultimately prevailed, and the Confederate dead of the Antietam Campaign were buried instead in Hagerstown and Frederick in Maryland, and in Shepherdstown, W.Va.

The New York Tribune called the cemetery dedication ceremony ‘a stupidly farcical affair’

“In the end, locating the Confederate cemeteries away from the battlefield represented a step toward the battlefield becoming a Union landscape,” writes Trail, “one upon which Confederate soldiers had little place.” At least Maryland officials were willing to acknowledge the Confederate losses enough to allow burials within their state, Trail adds. She points out that the Confederates who perished at Gettysburg were transported out of Pennsylvania altogether, primarily to Richmond.

In July 1879, the cemetery was transferred from the private Antietam National Cemetery Association to the U.S. War Department, thus beginning the long period of federal government oversight at Antietam. It would coincide with a growing impetus to turn the battlefield into a commemorative landscape through the erection of monuments. The largest of these is the Private Soldier monument that stands at the center of the cemetery—depicting a 21-foot-high soldier at parade rest. Including its pedestal, the monument stands 44 feet tall. With his U.S. belt buckle displayed so prominently, Trail says, the monument struck another blow for the Union and against a spirit of reconciliation with the South.

But a generation is a long time—long enough for healing, and long enough to forget. By the 1890s, writes historian Timothy B. Smith, “the old wounds of the Civil War began to fade into memory as the North and the South developed new issues other than the racial questions that had so divided them.” By that point, nearly half the members of Congress were Civil War veterans, according to Smith, and veterans filled the ranks of state legislatures as well. These men wielded enormous power and influence and, as they began to comb gray hair, they were rightly concerned with the legacies they would leave behind. They turned their attention to preserving what they saw as the five most prominent and symbolic battlefields of the late war—Chickamauga and Chattanooga, Antietam, Shiloh, Gettysburg and Vicksburg.

But even in this “golden age” of battlefield preservation, things did not come easy at Antietam.
The cemetery was dedicated on the fifth anniversary of the Battle of Antietam. Political tension and President Andrew Johnson arrived together. (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Famous Leaders and Battle Scenes of the Civil War, 1896)

In light of all the changes and threats the 20th century wrought upon other battlegrounds, Antietam remains incredibly well-preserved, hauntingly like it was in 1862. This is especially remarkable given that the legislation establishing the battlefield park covered only the rights of ways for the park roads, not the large farms between them. Although Congress offered widespread support for creating a national battlefield park at Antietam, after setting aside large tracts of land at Chickamauga, Ga., the legislators realized they could save money at Antietam by focusing solely on acquiring the roadways and thin strips of land on either side—what Ted Alexander calls a “minimalist approach” to preservation. They also established the Antietam Battlefield Board, whose first two agents were Col. John C. Stearns of the 9th Vermont Infantry and former Confederate Maj. Gen. Henry Heth. They were tasked with mapping out troop movements and staking out what would become the park boundary.

The work was slow and difficult; eventually Stearns resigned, and Major George B. Davis became president of the board (he was later succeeded by George W. Davis, who was not related). Stearns’ departure had opened the door for Ezra A. Carman, who had himself fought at Antietam and had steadfastly gathered information on the battle ever since. He was soon named the board’s “historical expert” and worked tirelessly with both of his Davis colleagues to lay out the park road scheme, draft the text for the iron interpretive tablets that would line those roads and negotiate with landowners who were willing to sell. Slowly, the battlefield came together. In 1900, Congress appropriated funding to name the battlefield’s first superintendent—Charles W. Adams.

Although the battlefield plan had solidified, relations between the park and the townspeople were sometimes rancorous. This was never more true than in the spring of 1912, when Superintendent Adams had taken a stand that farm machines and cattle were forbidden to travel on park roads. One Sharpsburg resident, Charles Benner, took such offense to this and other perceived slights by the superintendent that he approached him on the morning of June 6, 1912, and shot him several times—leaving his lifeless body, somewhat ironically, lying on a park road. Benner, whom one newspaper called “maddened with drink,” then went home and turned the gun on himself. Incidentally, Adams had been superintendent when the 90th Pennsylvania Association placed one of the battlefield’s most distinctive markers on Cornfield Avenue—a stack of three rifles from which hung a kettle with an inscription that read, in part, “Let us have peace.” (The monument fell into disrepair around 1930 and was replaced with a replica in 2004.)

Despite the challenges, the turn of the 20th century saw a growing appreciation for—and acceptance of—conciliatory efforts toward the former Confederacy. In 1900, the most significant manifestation of this change of heart came in the form of the Maryland Monument, the classical domed structure just north of the park’s visitor center and the iconic Dunker Church. It remains the only monument on the battlefield that honors soldiers from both sides. When it was dedicated on Memorial Day, approximately 20,000 people attended, including several generals and then-President William McKinley, himself an Antietam veteran who would soon have a monument to his service dedicated there. “I am glad to meet on this field the followers of Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, and Johnson,” McKinley said, “with the followers of McClellan, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan….This meeting after these many years has but one sentiment, love for Nation and flag.”

With the healing passage of time, McKinley’s reception was no doubt far different than the one lobbed at President Johnson 33 years earlier.

By the time the War Department turned control of the battlefield over to the developing National Park Service in 1933, it was simply a case of luck and geography that the battlefield had remained wholly unspoiled. The acreage owned by the government was shockingly small—only about 65 acres. It was only with the celebration of the Civil War centennial in the 1960s and the Park Service’s new Mission 66 program for park improvements—which saw construction of modern visitor centers such as the one at Antietam and the recently demolished Cyclorama building at Gettysburg—that Congress appropriated more funding for land acquisition at Antietam, bringing its acreage up to about 600. That number held until the 1980s, with a series of battlefield expansions bringing the current acreage up to about 3,200.

The park now faces the challenge of adapting its signage, trail markers and other interpretive materials to encompass all the property that has been added to the park since those early park roads and signs were laid out by Ezra Carman and his colleagues more than a century ago, when acreage was minimal. Park staff are now engaged in creating a new long-range plan for literature and signage, which will not only reflect the additional acreage but broader cultural and societal themes as well. Also under consideration are different ways of bringing this information to the modern visitor, who might want to get information through a mobile app instead of an iron tablet.

Critical preservation work continues as well. This winter, for example, a small but significant section of Burnside Bridge collapsed. Although the bridge was stabilized and repaired, Trail says the failure is an indication of potentially greater structural issues that must be addressed.

“My emphasis here is to get all our historic structures and buildings to a good condition,” Trail says. “You always want to leave something better than you found it.”

In the not too distant future, it will be time for another ceremony at Antietam. In 2017, the park will celebrate the sesquicentennial of the national cemetery. With the wounds of war still fresh, it was nearly impossible for many to consider honoring the enemy when the cemetery was created. A century and a half later, however, with its pristine fields still undisturbed by suburban sprawl, and its solemn markers to Union and Confederate dead, it’s impossible to think of Antietam as anything but a place of peace.

Former Maryland resident Kim O’Connell writes regularly about history and preservation for national and regional publications.

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of America’s Civil War magazine.

Image: Sharpsburg physician Augustin A. Biggs, first president of the Antietam National Cemetery Board, is credited with the cemetery’s design. (Library of Congress)Sharpsburg physician Augustin A. Biggs, first president of the Antietam National Cemetery Board, is credited with the cemetery’s design. (Library of Congress)

From: historynet.com

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The Confederate Hospital in Bristol

From: visitbristoltnva.org

Bristol was a divided area when the Civil War began.  However, during the years that followed, Bristol became a confederate stronghold.  Although Bristol didn’t experience any battles, it served as a crucial point for soldiers in the area during the war.

The train depots located in Bristol were a stopping point for many soldiers traveling to the Deep South or northern Virginia.  During the years of the war, both train depots were burned down.  One occurrence was in December 1864 during (Union General) Stoneman’s Expedition into Southwest Virginia.

In the later years of the war, the trains bought soldiers to Bristol for medical attention.  The Exchange Hotel, which once stood in historic downtown Bristol, served as an Army hospital for the Confederacy.  The local residents made sure the hospital was supplied with food, medicine, bandages and fuel until the end of the war.  Many recuperating soldiers were placed in private homes when the hospital began to overflow with patients.

For the soldiers who didn’t make it, they were placed in the East Hill Cemetery.  A special section is dedicated to those who served.  Although most are confederate soldiers, union soldiers can also be found.

Built in 1920, the Confederate Soldier Monument was erected to honor those that fought for the Confederate Army from Tennessee and Virginia.  Today the monument can be found at Cumberland Square Park off of Cumberland Street.

 Among the many confederate and union soldiers that served from Bristol, was confederate Colonel John S. Mosby, who moved to Bristol with his wife in 1857.  During the war, Mosby was deemed the “Gray Ghost” because of his quick raids on Union strongholds and ability to vanish before being captured.

Bristol has many stories from the Civil War times.  Several that can be heard on the self-guided historic downtown walking tour.

Image: Confederate dead, East Hill cemetery, Bristol Tn

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Forgotten Valor - The Lincoln Cemetery

By Steve Light, 9-29-12

Many of the millions of visitors who come to Gettysburg each year find themselves strolling amidst the semicircle of graves in the National Cemetery while contemplating the meaning of Lincoln's words here. He used his Gettysburg Address not only as a chance to make a "few appropriate remarks" to honor the fallen, but as a call to action:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
To many in Lincoln's audience that day, and to those who read his words in newspapers in the days and weeks after, the "unfinished work" clearly referenced the end of the war and reunification. Those with keener insight perhaps interpreted "a new birth of freedom" as support for the complete eradication of the system of slavery. Yet the Gettysburg Address lives on in American memory because its message still speaks to us, much like Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. Today, while we recognize Jefferson's self-evident truths as the founding principles of our nation, we can always look to Lincoln's address as a call to action to complete the unfinished work remaining to reach those lofty truths.

While the Civil War ended in 1865, the struggle to achieve a new birth of freedom for African Americans remained a long and arduous task. For those visitors to Gettysburg who would like to dig a bit deeper, evidence of that struggle resides within the very cemetery that Lincoln dedicated on November 19, 1863. In section 13 - a section devoted to U.S. Regulars - you can find the grave of Henry Gooden in the front row, second from the left. Gooden served in the 127th U.S. Colored Troops, which organized at Camp William Penn in the fall of 1864, and consisted of men enlisted and drafted from the State of Pennsylvania. The regiment saw combat only once during its service, at Deep Bottom.

Gooden died on August 3, 1876. Initially buried in the Alms House Cemetery, he was reburied in the National Cemetery on November 8, 1884. His presence there was an anomaly in a period of segregated cemeteries. Though a few black veterans from more recent wars were interred in the National Cemetery, Gooden remained the only black Civil War veteran in the cemetery until 1936, when Charles H. Parker joined him.

Parker served in Company F of the 3rd USCT, and died on July 2, 1876. His remains originally rested at Yellow Hill Cemetery north of Gettysburg, and his grave was rediscovered in the 1930s at the neglected cemetery by Dr. Henry Stewart, who was conducting a graves survey for the Gettysburg camp of the Sons of Union Veterans. Parker was moved to the National Cemetery in November, 1936. Today, Parker and Gooden remain the only black Civil War veterans buried in the National Cemetery.

Yet a small, out-of-the-way cemetery in Gettysburg speaks powerfully to the fact that, despite Lincoln's call for a "new birth of freedom," the country had a long way to go. While two famed cemeteries rested atop Cemetery Hill - the National Cemetery and the Evergreen Cemetery - these two sites largely remained for whites only. In 1867 a society of black men calling themselves the Sons of Good Will purchased a half-acre of land located along Long Lane, and set it aside as a place to bury Gettysburg's African American citizens and Civil War veterans. Called Goodwill Cemetery, this was actually the second black cemetery in the borough. Another cemetery had been located on the east end of town on York Street in 1824. In 1906 the bodies buried in this cemetery were exhumed and moved to Goodwill Cemetery.

According an interpretive marker at the site, the Lincoln Lodge of Gettysburg's Black Elks purchased the land along Long Lane in the 1920s, giving the Goodwill Cemetery its modern name, Lincoln Cemetery (though references to the Goodwill Cemetery can be found in Gettysburg newspapers right up to the 1950s). The remains of some forty African American veterans reside at Lincoln Cemetery, including 30 Civil War veterans of the USCT. For many years the cemetery hosted the Memorial Day observances of Gettysburg's African American community. On May 29, 1933 the Gettysburg Times reported on that year's program:

"After a creditable parade in which a number of visiting organizations participated, colored residents of Gettysburg paid fitting tribute to the memory of their soldier dead in Goodwill cemetery Sunday afternoon. A threatening rain held off until the exercises were concluded. The principle speaker for the occasion, Edward W. Henry, Philadelphia magistrate, delivered a forceful address in which he called upon colored citizens everywhere to combat the influences of communism, pointing to the results of that system in Russia, Germany, Spain and Mexico. He urged colored residents to live for and by the principles laid down by the constitution of the United States and Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation."

The procession to the cemetery itself included three bands and a group of African American school children. Upon arriving at the cemetery, the Gettysburg Boys' Band played a dirge, and the school children strewed flowers over the graves. Similar ceremonies continued at least through the 1960s.

Very few Gettysburg tourists know anything about the Lincoln Cemetery. I myself spent four years of college in Gettysburg, and did not learn about it until much later. Luckily, strenuous efforts over the past two decades have helped to preserve and fix up the cemetery, and to tell its story. In 1992, a community group called Concerned Neighbors revived the traditional Memorial Day observances at the cemetery. "Braving the bone chilling cold of a gray, rainy day," the June 1, 1992 Gettysburg Times related, '50 people - black, white, hispanic, young, old, veteran, lifelong civilian - marched to the cemetery to pay tribute to 40 men who served their country in various wars and now are buried in the segregation that marked their lives."

 In the years since, community members have continued these remembrances, and have worked hard to keep the cemetery in good condition. The cemetery has been fenced in and the same "Silence and Respect" signs that dot the National Cemetery are now posted.

Today the gates of Lincoln Cemetery are often locked - I have not yet made it inside those gates. Even so, I find that this out-of-the-way spot speaks so strongly to the "unfinished work" of Lincoln's Gettysburg address, and the struggles of the past 150 years (as well as those struggles that continue) for freedom and equality.

Image: Gettysburg Times, May 29, 1933

From: battlefieldbackstories.blogspot.com

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Death and Dying during the American Civil War: Drew Faust at the Countway Library of Medicine

by Lisa Haushofer, 1-21-13

Some of us would claim not to be frightened of death, but would admit to concern about the end of life. This anxiety, Drew Faust explains in front of a packed Carl Walter Amphitheater on December 13, 2012, is hardly a new one. The notion of how to manage death with dignity – how to die a good death – may have undergone professionalization in the last few decades, with journals, associations and training programs for palliative care. But its roots go back much further. Victorian notions of how to die a good death, the ars moriendi, characterized by a domestic, peaceful passing in the presence of loved-ones, Faust wants to argue, were profoundly challenged by the American Civil War.

Burns Documentary

Faust’s speech builds on her book This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, which was the basis of a new documentary on death and the Civil War by Ric Burns (brother of Ken Burns; both brothers also produced the earlier popular 1990 documentary on the Civil War). It also marks the opening of a new exhibit in the Center for the History of Medicine at the Countway Library of Medicine, “Battle-Scarred: Caring for the Sick and Wounded of the Civil War.” Curated by Jack Eckert and Dominic Hall, the show explores the experiences of those who were wounded and killed in combat, and those who in turn cared and mourned for them.  Featuring a variety of archival documents as well as artifacts and anatomical specimens from wounded civil war soldiers, the exhibition brings to life Faust’s claim that the Civil War brought unprecedented destruction, injury, and death to the American people.

More than 750,000 Americans died in the Civil War. This body count, Faust explains, is greater than the sum of fatalities in all other wars in which America participated. Americans were apparently quite unprepared for this scale of destruction: there were no ‘dog tags’ to identify the dead and no system of next-of-kin notification to inform their families. Soldiers died far from home without the comfort of being surrounded by their loved ones. Medical care in general, and pain medication in particular, was limited in what Faust calls a true “medical Middle Ages.” There was, in short, little comfort for the dying soldiers. The specimens and objects exhibited at the Countway give a sense of the injuries suffered by soldiers. There are bone fragments, which are either perforated by bullets, or have balls still embedded in them. There are a number of photographs of soldiers with amputated limbs. A surgical amputation set – saw and all – makes the proud pose struck by the amputated soldiers in the pictures all the more awe-inspiring.

Faced with this new cruel reality, soldiers, doctors, nurses and other caretakers “conspired” to recreate the experience of a good death, even in the absence of every comfort. Without adequate medical care, however, end of life care during the Civil War often focused on spiritual rather than physical wounds. Faust conjures up scenes of dying soldiers being surrounded by photographs of their families, while nurses, doctors and fellow patients tried to play the role of family members. When they were mistaken for relatives by the dying soldiers, Faust reveals, they often did not have the heart to correct the error. Witnessing the death of soldiers, informing their families of their ends, and passing on exactly how they had died was understood as an essential part of the role of caregivers in Civil War hospitals and hospices. Walt Whitman himself took to visiting the wounded and the dying in the military hospitals of Washington. He described his experiences in a series of letters written to his mother. Correspondence with family members, Faust shows, often followed similar patterns, assuring those left behind that their hero had died conscious of his fate which he accepted as God’s will, and that he was sure to go to heaven. In the process of providing emotional assistance to the dying, caretakers redefined the “end of life” to mean “the beginning of a new life.”

An important way of providing comfort to the bereaved was to return the belongings of the deceased with their letters, and in some cases the remains of the bodies were returned to their kin. One such case was that of Alfred Richardson Glover whose photograph features prominently in the “The Dead and the Wounded” section of the exhibit. Killed in battle on June 14, 1863, his body was returned home to Massachusetts and buried in Forest Hills Cemetery. Next to his photograph is Glover’s very own traveling homeopathic pharmaceutical kit, which was sent back to his home, presumably to serve as a keepsake for his wife, Mary Louisa Bodge Glover, until her death from phthisis on September 10, 1864. Her photograph is exhibited alongside her husband’s. The caption informs us that according to Henry A. Willis, historian of the 63rd Regiment, however, she died of grief.

War has been called a “great accelerator of change.” The Civil War was no exception. The experience of a new scale of death and dying did not fail to leave its mark on American society. Like never before, the American nation was called upon to take responsibility for the end of life.  It was during the Civil War that national cemeteries were first established, and the aftermath of the war bore witness to a large-scale reburial program, in which the remains of soldiers were sought out, identified, and either returned to their relatives or buried in one of the national cemeteries. The unprecedented scale of dying incited a debate about what was the best way to dispose of the dead – burial, or cremation. The war also saw the birth of the United States Sanitary Commission, which inspected war hospitals, maintained records of the sick and assisted war veterans in pension claims. The Sanitary Commission’s work comes to life in the Countway exhibition’s richly detailed letters written by Robert Ware, who served as an inspector for the commission between 1861 and 1863.

Amongst the remnants this gloomy subject lies a great opportunity. The experiences of death during the Civil War, Faust believes, remind us of the many dimensions which make up end of life care. We have professionalized and perfected the physical aspects of such provision. We are certainly much better than the Victorians at managing chronic pain and controlling other long-term symptoms. But what of the spiritual anguish that is provoked by death, for the dying, and for their families? Alleviating this kind of suffering, Faust concludes, may be even more challenging for us than for our Civil War counterparts.

From: remedianetwork.net

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Then & Now: Caring for War's Dead and Wounded

From: pbs.org

A Civil War burial ground was a profoundly religious place. The circumstances of a person's death was thought to indicate much about the nature of one's afterlife; a "good death" meant passing at home surrounded by the family and friends one hoped to reunite with in heaven. The American Civil War upended these Christian notions of the proper way to die. On the battlefield, most soldiers died alone, anonymous, and without comfort, their families unaware of their fate.

Today, our government provides services for surviving veterans and their families, but it took the mass casualties of the Civil War to bring about this standard. The four-year war that claimed 2.5% of the American population caused the government to recognize the responsibility it owed to its soldiers and citizens, transforming the relationship between the nation and its people forever.

Before the Civil War:

*There was no effective ambulance corps to transport wounded soldiers from the battlefields to aid locations. As late as August 1862, a Union division took the field at the Second Bull Run without a single ambulance. After numerous pleas to the government by public health advocates such as Henry Bowditch, an ambulance corps was finally established in 1864.

*There were no federal hospitals providing comprehensive care. Wounded soldiers lucky enough to be rescued were taken to hastily established field hospitals constructed on an emergency basis. Volunteer relief groups, such as the U.S. Sanitary Commission, organized medical aid, while individual medical professionals such as Clara Barton bravely took to the battlefields to care for the wounded.

*Soldiers did not wear dog tags or have any system of personal records. Hundreds of thousand of bodies remained unidentified, leaving families with no knowledge of how their loved one died, or where they might be buried. When officials did attempt identification, it was often unreliable, resulting in live soldiers being recorded as deceased and dead soldiers being marked as only slightly wounded. By World War I, soldiers were wearing official id badges.

*There was no official system for notifying next of kin. If a body was identified, a fellow soldier might take it upon himself to write to the family of the deceased explaining how their loved one died and offering words of condolence. In the spring of 1865, Clara Barton established the Missing Soldiers Office in Washington, D.C. Her organization eventually helped provide information for about 22,000 soldiers who would have otherwise remained unknown.

*There was limited technology available to preserve the war dead for proper burial. With so many families requesting that the bodies of their deceased loved ones be transported home, preservation methods had to evolve beyond simply keeping a body on ice. When the use of arsenic in embalming fluid became widespread during the Civil War, the Medical Department of the Union Army set up battlefield embalming stations to put this chemical advancement into practice. This allowed bodies to be preserved for the often  long journey home.

*Using refrigerated transportation cases for bodies was not common. In addition to the advancements in embalming fluids, refrigerated transportation cases were greatly improved to preserve the body on its often long, and slow journey back home. The Staunton Transportation Company distributed fliers claiming that its "portable refrigerator" cases preserved the body in perfect condition.

*Federal services for veterans and their families were inadequate. After the war ended, the Nation's veterans assistance program expanded to include benefits and pensions not only for veterans, but also their widows and dependents. The first state veterans homes were also established which provided medical care even for injuries or diseases not acquired through battle. This paved the way for Congress to establish a new system of veteran's benefits when the U.S. entered World War I, which included disability compensation, insurance, and vocational rehabilitation for the disabled. In 1930, a comprehensive Veterans Administration was established, and today the system includes 152 hospitals, 800 outpatient clinics, 126 nursing home care units, and 35 domicillaries as well as numerous mental health and crisis prevention programs.

*There were no national cemeteries at Arlington, Gettysburg, or anywhere. As there were no federal provisions for burying the dead, responsibility for clearing a battlefield of dead bodies fell to individual units, volunteer organizations, and even civilians. It was almost two full years after the end of the Civil War before Congress finally passed formal legislation to establish and protect a vast system of national cemeteries.

*There was no Memorial Day. After the burial of many Union and Confederate soldiers, "decoration day" rituals began to spring up, which included placing fresh flowers on soldiers' graves. In the spring of 1868, General John Logan officially designated May 30th "for the purpose of strewing flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in the defense of their country," and Memorial Day as we know it today was established.

Today, the United States spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year trying to recover servicemen who are missing and presumed dead from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. And with a $137.6 billion budget the Department of Veterans Affairs now offers dozens of programs, including medical and financial services.

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Memorial Day History

From: va.gov

Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of Union veterans — the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) — established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared that Decoration Day should be observed on May 30. It is believed that date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all over the country.

The first large observance was held that year at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.

The ceremonies centered around the mourning-draped veranda of the Arlington mansion, once the home of Gen. Robert E. Lee. Various Washington officials, including Gen. and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant, presided over the ceremonies. After speeches, children from the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Orphan Home and members of the GAR made their way through the cemetery, strewing flowers on both Union and Confederate graves, reciting prayers and singing hymns.

Local Observances Claim To Be First Local springtime tributes to the Civil War dead already had been held in various places. One of the first occurred in Columbus, Miss., April 25, 1866, when a group of women visited a cemetery to decorate the graves of Confederate soldiers who had fallen in battle at Shiloh. Nearby were the graves of Union soldiers, neglected because they were the enemy. Disturbed at the sight of the bare graves, the women placed some of their flowers on those graves, as well.

Today, cities in the North and the South claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day in 1866. Both Macon and Columbus, Ga., claim the title, as well as Richmond, Va. The village of Boalsburg, Pa., claims it began there two years earlier. A stone in a Carbondale, Ill., cemetery carries the statement that the first Decoration Day ceremony took place there on April 29, 1866. Carbondale was the wartime home of Gen. Logan. Approximately 25 places have been named in connection with the origin of Memorial Day, many of them in the South where most of the war dead were buried.
Official Birthplace Declared In 1966, Congress and President Lyndon Johnson declared Waterloo, N.Y., the “birthplace” of Memorial Day. There, a ceremony on May 5, 1866, honored local veterans who had fought in the Civil War. Businesses closed and residents flew flags at half-staff. Supporters of Waterloo’s claim say earlier observances in other places were either informal, not community-wide or one-time events.

By the end of the 19th century, Memorial Day ceremonies were being held on May 30 throughout the nation. State legislatures passed proclamations designating the day, and the Army and Navy adopted regulations for proper observance at their facilities.

It was not until after World War I, however, that the day was expanded to honor those who have died in all American wars. In 1971, Memorial Day was declared a national holiday by an act of Congress, though it is still often called Decoration Day. It was then also placed on the last Monday in May, as were some other federal holidays.

Some States Have Confederate Observances Many Southern states also have their own days for honoring the Confederate dead. Mississippi celebrates Confederate Memorial Day on the last Monday of April, Alabama on the fourth Monday of April, and Georgia on April 26. North and South Carolina observe it on May 10, Louisiana on June 3 and Tennessee calls that date Confederate Decoration Day. Texas celebrates Confederate Heroes Day January 19 and Virginia calls the last Monday in May Confederate Memorial Day.

Gen. Logan’s order for his posts to decorate graves in 1868 “with the choicest flowers of springtime” urged: “We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. ... Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.”

The crowd attending the first Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery was approximately the same size as those that attend today’s observance, about 5,000 people. Then, as now, small American flags were placed on each grave — a tradition followed at many national cemeteries today. In recent years, the custom has grown in many families to decorate the graves of all departed loved ones.

The origins of special services to honor those who die in war can be found in antiquity. The Athenian leader Pericles offered a tribute to the fallen heroes of the Peloponnesian War over 24 centuries ago that could be applied today to the 1.1 million Americans who have died in the nation’s wars: “Not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions, but there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men.”

To ensure the sacrifices of America ’s fallen heroes are never forgotten, in December 2000, the U.S. Congress passed and the president signed into law “The National Moment of Remembrance Act,” P.L. 106-579, creating the White House Commission on the National Moment of Remembrance. The commission’s charter is to “encourage the people of the United States to give something back to their country, which provides them so much freedom and opportunity” by encouraging and coordinating commemorations in the United States of Memorial Day and the National Moment of Remembrance.

The National Moment of Remembrance encourages all Americans to pause wherever they are at 3 p.m. local time on Memorial Day for a minute of silence to remember and honor those who have died in service to the nation. As Moment of Remembrance founder Carmella LaSpada states: “It’s a way we can all help put the memorial back in Memorial Day.”

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Beverly National Cemetery, Beverly, New Jersey

From: nps.gov

During the Civil War, numerous Pennsylvania and New Jersey towns that lined the Delaware River provided support services for the Union. Several military hospitals cared for wounded troops. Soldiers not well enough to return to active duty, but not needing intensive medical care, stayed at Beverly's convalescent hospital. In 1864, the U.S. government purchased a small one-acre plot to bury those who died at the hospital.  From 1936 through 1951, the cemetery expanded and now totals 64 acres.  Interments number more than 40,000, and include veterans from the Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War II, and the Vietnam War.

In 1864, at the height of the Civil War, wounded soldiers crowded Philadelphia’s military hospitals.  To make room for more critically injured patients, a convalescent hospital was established in Beverly, New Jersey, 20 miles north of Philadelphia on the east bank of the Delaware River.  The War Department converted a rope factory in to a facility to care for soldiers well enough not to need full hospital care yet not fit to return to active duty.

The river steamer John A. Warner transported soldiers from Philadelphia to Beverly’s hospital. The steamer sounded its whistle in advance of its arrival at the town’s wharf, signaling the town residents who brought wagons to transport the patients to the hospital. As the procession began, church bells pealed and Beverly residents lined the streets offering coffee and food to the soldiers.

Doctors at the convalescent hospital performed surgeries as necessary, including amputations.  Local tradition holds that amputated limbs were buried in a vacant one-acre lot owned by Christian Weyman.  Weyman conveyed the property to the U.S.  government in August 1864, under conditions that the acre be properly enclosed and serve as a burial ground for U.S. servicemen. Officially established as a national cemetery, the first burial took place on August 29, 1864.

By the close of the war, 147 Union soldiers, all but 10 identified, were buried at the Beverly National Cemetery. A rubble stone wall originally enclosed the small cemetery.  Starting in the 1930s, expansions to the cemetery necessitated the removal of the 1877 stone wall. Today, wrought-iron fencing stands along Bridgeboro Road, while the remainder of the property is enclosed by modern fencing.  In 1949, a new wider main entrance gate on Bridgeboro Road allowed for the passage of motorized vehicles.  Service gates are located along Green Street on the cemetery’s south side.

To the right of the cemetery’s entrance gate in the northern-most section of the cemetery is the superintendent’s lodge.  The lodge is a one-and-one-half story brick building designed in the Second Empire style, notable for its mansard roof and dormer windows.  The lodge’s design is of the standard plan created by Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs.  It is one of the 17 remaining Meigs lodges found at the Civil War-era national cemeteries.  Originally constructed in 1879, a kitchen has an addition that dates from 1907.

The cemetery’s rostrum stands east of the lodge.  Constructed in 1937, the rostrum resembles an open-air Greek temple. The structure, primarily constructed of limestone, consists of a raised rectangular platform with three Tuscan columns rising from each corner. The columns support a simple entablature with pediments at either end.  A seamed copper roof covers the rostrum.  Limestone benches, arranged in a shallow arc, form a small amphitheater around the rostrum.

Other structures located on the cemetery’s grounds include a 1957 brick administration building, a brick and concrete garage built in 1941, and a  service building with restrooms constructed in 1936.

In 1875, the state of New Jersey erected a 70-foot-tall monument to Union soldiers. Deterioration of the monument became evident in 1950 and led to its deconstruction in 1951. The monument was stored on site until 1953 when the local American Legion Post requested the statue of the soldier that had crowned the monument.  The statue, along with part of the intricately carved base, now stands at the local American Legion Post at 700 Melbourne Street in Beverly, a few blocks north of the cemetery.

Beverly National Cemetery is the final resting place for Medal of Honor recipients, the nation’s highest military decoration, given for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.”

Seven unknown Revolutionary War soldiers lay in the cemetery’s Section F. Initially buried in Camden, their remains were transferred to Beverly National Cemetery in 1955.

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Death and Mourning in the Civil War Era

by Amy Gagnon

Romance, sentiment, and strict moral conscience characterized much of expressive life in New England during the 19th century. Attitudes toward death and mourning practices were particularly important elements in this Victorian age. A central belief was the concept of a “good death,” that is, to die in the home, among family, and with a clear Christian conscience. For the dying, it was a time to give advice to family members, be absolved of sins, say goodbye, and peacefully transition to the hereafter. This time was equally important for the living; it allowed them to wake and mourn the deceased in the home with other family members.

The advent of the Civil War in the mid-1800s transformed the ways people in the North handled the death and mourning of loved ones. Because so many Union soldiers died during the war—and died far from home— the problems associated with properly laying the dead to rest and making sense of the unprecedented scale of human loss had a profound impact on Connecticut’s way of life.

Although Connecticut was one of the smallest states in the Union, its size did not stop large numbers of men from enlisting in the Union army. The state mobilized 30 infantries (including 2 African American regiments), 5 artilleries (both light and heavy), and 2 cavalries. In all, approximately 55,000 Connecticut men went off to war. Troops from the state fought in almost every major and minor battle of the Civil War, and casualties numbered in the thousands. Many more died in Confederate prisons or were executed by the Confederacy.

For those back in Connecticut, frequent funerals became a harsh reminder of the war’s toll. To add to the distress, death on the battlefield or far from home denied the deceased and their families the ideal of the good death. Oftentimes, families were not able to locate or identify the dead, and even when the deceased could be located, efforts to ship them home often failed. Still, many of the fallen were brought home. Trains transporting the dead were met at various stations throughout the state by crowds of hundreds, making once-private family grief a very public affair. For the Connecticut families that could afford to travel to recover their dead, the trip was often stressful. One Connecticut father remarked to a local newspaper that transporting his son’s remains from Washington, DC, to Winsted cost $125.00—almost $2,000 in today’s money—and the trip was not possible without “the personal attendance of some friend, and every step is attended by some incidental expense.”

Until 1864, General Ulysses Grant was lenient about permitting civilians to enter battlefields to retrieve their dead to bring them home for burial. As long as this practice did not hinder troop movement, families were allowed to search for their lost loved ones. Connecticut newspapers often reported—along with locations—“Rolls of Missing Men,” long lists of the dead for family members. After the Battle of Antietam family members and undertakers from all over Connecticut met on the battlefield, where they conducted over 200 funerals for the Connecticut troops killed there. Likewise, Connecticut families traveled to the battlefields of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness to retrieve their dead. It can be difficult for noncombatants today to grasp the impact such direct encounters with the war’s carnage had upon the citizenry.

Finding those who had been buried far from home, also proved difficult. Connecticut soldier Dorrance Atwater, taking his cue from then Civil War nurse Clara Barton, succeeded in obtaining copies of Union soldier interments while employed as a hospital worker. He was able to identify the graves of many Union soldiers who fell in the South so that their families could recover them. (He was later arrested and imprisoned for stealing the records). The rolls were not always accurate, however, and Connecticut newspapers sometimes had to print retractions. For example, in 1863 the Hartford Courant reported the death of Capt. Samuel Fiske of Madison only to retract the report after a witness saw him marching to Richmond as a prisoner.

The War Transforms Funeral Practices
The funeral in the Victorian age was a family event held in the home, with long periods of mourning, but the nature of war-related deaths disrupted such practices. It was at this time that various embalming methods emerged in hopes of returning the dead to their loved ones. But the new methods proved unreliable and rarely effective. When the dead did return to their families, they were often severely decomposed, or worse, not the family member at all. It was also during this time that casket companies began to construct various types of coffins to aid in transport and identification. For example, they made caskets with viewing windows so that the family could more easily identify their dead.

Honoring the Dead through Burial and Monuments
The Civil War era was also the time that local cemeteries began to transform. By the early 19th century, colonial burying grounds and churchyards located in towns and cities were overcrowded and largely ignored. To counter this, and in keeping with romantic sentiments of the Victorian age, the rural cemetery, set away from the town, emerged. Planners designed these cemeteries as park-like settings that encouraged visitors to wander paths, contemplate the solemnity of death, and feel God’s presence in nature. Hartford’s Cedar Hill Cemetery follows this thinking. Even though the first interment at Cedar Hill Cemetery occurred a few years after the Civil War ended, many who had died or served in the war were moved from other burial sites to this new resting place. Those whose remains were re-interred there include industrialist and Civil War arms manufacturer Samuel Colt, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, and General Griffin A. Stedman, Jr. of the 11th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry.

During and immediately following the war, Connecticut towns began to erect monuments to the soldiers who both fought in and were lost in the war. Berlin’s Soldiers’ Monument, erected in 1863, claims to be the first Civil War monument, not only in Connecticut, but in the nation. Today, there are well over 100 Civil War monuments in the state, with memorials still being erected. As recently as 1992, the town of Farmington dedicated a monument honoring the 362 townsmen who served in battle. Most monuments throughout Connecticut are located on town greens or in local cemeteries. They serve not only as a reminder of the Civil War but of the irrevocable changes that the conflict and its death toll left on Connecticut.

Amy Gagnon works as a content developer for ConnecticutHistory.org at Connecticut Humanities and received her MA in Public History at Central Connecticut State University.

From: connecticuthistory.org

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Gettysburg: This Consecrated Ground

From: NPS.gov

After the battle, the Gettysburg area was a tragic place. Dead horses, the bodies of soldiers, and the debris of battle littered its trampled fields. Many of its buildings were damaged, its fences gone, and its air polluted with the odor of rotting flesh. Nearly 20,000 wounded and dying soldiers occupied its public buildings and many of its houses; Union and Confederate hospitals clustered at many of its farms. Medical authorities transferred the wounded to general hospitals in nearby cities as soon as practicable. Dr. Henry Janes, the surgeon in charge of medical activities at Gettysburg, established a general hospital along the York Pike a mile east of the town in mid-July. The last of the wounded did not leave Gettysburg until November 23—over four months after the battle.

Although the armies had hurried many of their dead before marching away, many bodies remained above ground, and heavy rains that began on July 4 washed open the shallow graves of others. Many Union dead were embalmed and sent to their homes, and survivors of a few purchased lots for them in Evergreen Cemetery. Confederate dead were buried as individuals or in mass graves near the places of their deaths. After the war, the bodies of some of the known Confederate dead were exhumed and taken to home cemeteries.

Most, however, remained at Gettysburg until the early 1870s, when southern Ladies Memorial Associations had the remains of 3,320 Confederate soldiers exhumed and taken south. They reburied 2,935 of them in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. Virginia.

Northern states with units in the battle sent agents to Gettysburg to look after their dead and wounded soldiers. Governor Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania visited Gettysburg soon after the battle, saw its problems, and named David Wills, a Gettysburg attorney, as Pennsylvania's agent. Soon Wills and other agents decided that a cemetery should be established for the Union dead. With Curtin's permission, Wills soon purchased seventeen acres on the northwest slope of Cemetery Hill for a cemetery and hired the noted landscape architect William Saunders to create a cemetery plan.

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