CONFEDERATE BURIAL PITS versus US NATIONAL CEMETERIES Jim Harvey
Generally, in the Civil War, when a battle ended, the side left holding the field buried the enemy soldiers first, into burial pits, on top of each other, as quickly as possible. They gave their own men a chance to identify their dead friends, if possible, and then to give them individual marked burials. Then the rest were put into burial pits or trenches, a bit more carefully. It was usually punishment for a Regiment or Brigade to be put on burial duty, and they were generally given alcohol, or they found some alcohol. It was a horrible thing to have to do.
From at least 1863 to 1867 The US Government largely used US troops to exhume every Union Soldier they could find, and to rebury them into National Cemeteries on the battlefields, or at least in the region where they had died. Each set of Union remains was put into an individual grave, with it own marker. Pains were taken to identify as many as they could. The Confederates were left to rot.
Generally groups of Southern Civilians, an individual family like at Franklin with the McGavocks, or groups of Southern women took interest in the Confederate dead at a battlefield near them, and they raised money, however they could to exhume Confederates from pits and trenches and scattered everywhere. They then put them into dedicated Confederate Cemeteries.
Most of the Confederate Gettysburg dead were exhumed in the Summers of 1871, '72, and '73 by a Maryland medical school Doctor. The Ladies of Richmond got him to do that, and they paid him what they could. They were never able to completely pay him off, but at least they gotten their boys out of Northern soil.
I found out in the last year that a Gettysburg farmer in the 1880s found 6 bodies along the famous wall at the Bryan Barn. That is right where the 11th Mississippi Memorial Committee placed a forward marker in 2001. One of those bodies had Mississippi buttons. The farmer reburied them "behind the barn". There are still 11th Mississippi men there at Gettysburg!
At Shiloh there was no substantial town nearby. The people who lived around there were generally poor, and made even poorer by that local battle, and the War. The Union Soldiers there were exhumed in 1866 by fellow Soldiers with Federal tax money. The Confederate bodies were left in the pits, and scattered all over the battlefield, and along the retreat route. There are at least 3 burial pits off the Park property on the retreat route that they do not talk about, for fear of grave robbers. There are five marked Confederate burial trenches on Park property, and maybe as many as 7 others that got lost over time. Then there are all the individual graves, and burials of 2's and 5's and 10's out in the woods and everywhere else. Some men were partially buried or not buried at all, and they were eaten by wild dogs, hogs, crows and vultures. The largest marked Confederate burial pit there contains probably 400 Confederates, stacked up to 4 deep, on top of each other.
Just as sure as the turnin' of the earth, I know there are some of my beloved UM students and alumni, and Lafayette County men buried there at Shiloh. NOW, are you starting to understand why most every Southern County seat has a monument dedicated to the boys who never came home?
I have visited the burial trenches at Shiloh since I was 8 years old. I am kind of used to them. I know most people are not. That is why I write this article and put these pictures here. We ALL ought to know this history.
I took a large group to Shiloh about 3 years ago. I took them to the largest Confederate burial pit (pictured here) and I explained it for about 10 minutes, like I have above. As the group walked around it, and took pictures and talked, I had one woman come over to me and whisper something in my ear, that shook me up that day, and still does to this day. She whispered, "Starke, every boy in there was some mother's son". I had never thought about it like that. I will forevermore, now.
