With the 45th Illinois at Shiloh-- Part 3: Union Graves and 'Half Seas Over'

"We buried  our Union boys in a separate trench, and on another board were the words:  '35 Union.'

"Many of our men had been taken away and buried separately by their comrades.  It was night when we finished the task, some of the squad, 'half seas over' with liquor, but they could not be blamed, for it was a hard job.

"The next day, we burned the dead horses and mules."

So, "Half Seas Over" is another way of saying "Snockered."

An Unpleasant Job All Around, But the Whiskey Helped.  --Old Secesh

With the 45th Illinois After Shiloh-- Part 2: Burial Detail Plied with Whiskey

"On Tuesday I was detailed with others to bury the dead lying within our camp and a distance of  two hundred yards in advance.  I had charge of digging the grave, if a trench over sixty feet long and four feet deep, can be called a grave.

"The weather was hot, and most of the dead had been killed early Sunday morning, and dissolution had already commenced.  The soldiers gatherd the bodies up and placed them in wagons, hauling them near the trench, and piling them up like cord wood.

"We were furnished with plenty of whiskey, and the boys believed that it would have been impossible to have performed the job without it.

"When the grave was ready, we placed the bodies  therein, two deep; the father, brother, husband and lover, all lie till Gabriel's trumpet shall sound.  All the monument to those brave men was a board nailed to a tree at the head of the trench, upon which I cut with my pocket knife, the words: '125 rebels.' 

--Old Secesh

What the War Was Really About

From Civil War Talk

April 9, 1862 diary entry by James Hannegan of the 5th Ohio  Cavalry after the Battle of Shiloh.

"Went over the battleground again today & saw some of the most shocking sights I ever beheld.    Men were lying dead in every possible position.  Some with their heads torn off, limbs scattered around & the dead horses were in heaps all over the field & today it was quite cool which is very favorable, otherwise this stench would be almost intolerable.

"Most of the dead  bodies have been robbed by our own men.  The faces of the dead were perfectly black.  Our men have been busy ever since the battly burying the dead, but hundreds still unburied.

"Every house in the neighborhood is filled with wounded rebels.  Some have been brought in today who have been lying in the woods since Monday."

--Old Secesh

There Are Still Bodies Buried on Gettysburg Battlefield-- Part 2: Just in Time for Halloween

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

There Are Still Bodies Buried on the Gettysburg Battlefield-- Part 1

From the July 7, 2014, Gettysburg 150 "Yes, there are still bodies buried on the battlefield at Gettysburg" by Marc Charisse, Evening Sun.

There is a Confederate mass burial trench at Culp's Hill and the National Park Service estimate that there are still 100 to 200 Confederates buried there in the telltale depression easily seen during the winter.

They don't tell tours of the battlefield or visitors for fear of vandalism and stealing.  Disturbing hallowed ground such as this is illegal and even having a metal detector on the battlefield is against federal law.

In the days after the battle, Union and Confederate dead were buried near where they fell.  Some were buried by comrades and others by burial crews in the weeks following the battle.  The Union also mapped the graves.

--Old Secesh