Eventually, the bodies of Union soldiers were removed from their battlefield burial sites to the National Cemetery, dedicated in November 1863 with that famous speech. Even a few Confederates were buried there as the markers on the original graves were becoming illegible.
All of the remaining soldiers buried on the battlefield are most likely Confederate. Their families and states had to wait until after the war to do anything about recovering their dead.
After the battle, crews took only the larger bones of the more decomposed bodies, leaving the smaller ones.
Somewhere around 51,000 Americans, Union and Confederate, were casualties over that three-day period in 1963. That would include killed, wounded and missing. Union casualties: 3,155 killed, 14,531 wounded and 5,369 captured or missing. Confederate casualties are harder to determine, but best figures indicate 4,708 killed, 12,693 wounded and 5,830 captured or missing., but some say the numbers were much more.
The day before the battle commenced, June 30th, was payday.
Today the bodies of over 6,000 veterans are buried at the Gettysburg National Cemetery. These include veterans of the Civil War, Spanish-American, World War I, World War II, Korean and Vietnam.
--Old Secesh
No comments:
Post a Comment