From Necessity and For Honor

Greetings, this week I will be reviewing the National Park Service (US Dept. of Interior) essay From Necessity to Honor: The Evolution of National Cemeteries in the United States by Kelly Merrifield.  

Bodies gathered for burial after the Battle of Antietam. Collection of the New York Historical Society

Just like Memorial Day, National Cemeteries were initially created to honor the Union soldiers killed during the Civil War. These cemeteries would eventually become gravesites and memorials for all United States veterans. The first few National Cemeteries - including Alexandra and Antietam - were established in 1862 around a year after Confederate forces first started firing on Fort Sumter. But by the 1870s, "almost 300,000 Union soldiers and sailors were buried" across seventy-three national cemeteries. Today, we have more than 175 cemeteries or lots designated for our war dead or past veterans and are managed by the National Cemetery Administration of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA); the Department of the Army of the Department of Defense; and the National Park Service of the Department of the Interior.

Alexandria National Cemetery circa 1862-1865 Library of Congress Civil War Collection

In 1861 governor of the Soldier's Home in Washington D.C. elected to allow for the burial of Union dead who had fought in and around the city perimeter. More quickly than they could have imagined bodies started pouring in and the lot filled up quickly. The consistent need for more burial spaces prompted the Federal Government to act. By 1862 Congress had passed legislation funding the maintenance and purchase of land for Civil War casualties of the Union. 


This burial on behalf of the United States of America was a luxury not intended for Confederate soldiers. Indeed, the development of private enterprises to care for and memorialize the dead after the Civil War sprang up just as forcefully for the Confederates too.

By the end of the Civil War, cemeteries were being constructed near prominent battlefields. This decision was not just a matter of memorializing the landscape of the battle; rather, it was to aid in the recovery and burial of the Union dead. 

Excerpt: Despite this, many soldiers still were lying in farm fields due to hastily conducted wartime burials, often having their remains exposed over time.

But by 1867, the concern for wartime internments led to new efforts to provide burial for the dead left on the battlefield. This eventually came under the direction of the Office of the Quartermaster General to establish more cemeteries and search for remaining internments. Some remains of United States Colored Troops (USCT) were also included. The Act to Establish and Protect National Cemeteries also required "the Secretary of War to enclose every national cemetery with a stone or iron fence, to mark every gravesite with a headstone, appoint a superintendent to each cemetery, and construct a lodge for the superintendent to occupy." 

Confederate Headstones: notice pointed top and lack of US shield.

And Olustee? What of them?

As of the moment they remain underneath the shadow of confederate monuments. In the ground and unrecognizable, a precise failure of the Secretary of War and former War Department. No iron fence denotes this grave, nor does a marble headstone require the care of an attendant. There remains so obvious a gap for the Federal Government one can only wonder why? Unfortunately, the State of Florida and its previous elected officials were pushers of the Lost Cause narrative of the Confederate rebellion. While this is egregious in hindsight, we must recognize something equally as egregious: the state in which the dead Union soldiers were initially left and the merciless killing of USCT and wounded troops. 


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