Post by Glenda Gustin on Sept 3, 2021 6:07:50 GMT
Stolen from farcebook; edited to fit here
On December 26, 1865, Edmund Burke Whitman was given a new assignment: locate the “scattered graves” of U.S. soldiers buried in the South. At the time of the Civil War the federal government recognized no obligation to care forsoldiers who died in war. Those who fell in battle were usually buried hastily on the battlefield and those who died in hospitals were usually buried wherever convenient nearby.
Clara Barton's “Missing Soldiers Bureau” had helped thousands of northern families learn the fates of their missing sons, husbands and brothers.
The son of Massachusetts farmers, Whitman left home at age 15 to take a job in an apothecary shop in Vermont, before later enrolling as a "charity student," first at Phillips Exeter Academy, and afterwards at Harvard. After graduating from Harvard in 1841, Whitman became headmaster of a classical school in New England, before emigrating to Kansas in 1855 with a group of fellow abolitionists to support the Free State cause. When the War broke out, he enlisted, was assigned to the Quartermaster Corps, and by wars’ end had risen to the rank of Chief Quartermaster for the Department of Tennessee.
Whitman adopted Clara Barton’s strategy, sending out an appeal to veterans for information about where their comrades had been buried. He was soon flooded with letters. Armed with this information, and with the assistance of locals (often freedmen), Whitman traveled around the South searching for the graves, covering over 30,000 miles before he was through. During his search he was distressed and shocked to find that many of the graves were being treated with indifference, neglect, and often contempt. Believing it the only way to assure that the remains of the soldiers were honored and respected, he began to advocate for the creation of national cemeteries.
Thanks to Whitman's persistence and advocacy, in early 1867 Congress passed an Act creating seventeen national cemeteries and taking federal responsibility for reinterring the soldiers. By the time the reinterment program was complete in 1871, under Whitman’s supervision 303,536 Union soldiers had been reinterred in seventy-four national cemeteries, each with his own coffin and headmarker, at a cost to the federal government of over $4,000,000—an enormous sum at that time. “Such a consecration of a nation’s power and resources to a sentiment,” Whitman remarked, “the world has never witnessed.”
The National Cemeteries Act, and the public expenditures for reinterment and grave protection, applied only to Union soldiers. President William McKinley, with the full support of Union veteran’s organizations, extended federal protection and preservation of the graves of Civil War dead to both sides of the conflict.
On December 26, 1865, Edmund Burke Whitman was given a new assignment: locate the “scattered graves” of U.S. soldiers buried in the South. At the time of the Civil War the federal government recognized no obligation to care forsoldiers who died in war. Those who fell in battle were usually buried hastily on the battlefield and those who died in hospitals were usually buried wherever convenient nearby.
Clara Barton's “Missing Soldiers Bureau” had helped thousands of northern families learn the fates of their missing sons, husbands and brothers.
The son of Massachusetts farmers, Whitman left home at age 15 to take a job in an apothecary shop in Vermont, before later enrolling as a "charity student," first at Phillips Exeter Academy, and afterwards at Harvard. After graduating from Harvard in 1841, Whitman became headmaster of a classical school in New England, before emigrating to Kansas in 1855 with a group of fellow abolitionists to support the Free State cause. When the War broke out, he enlisted, was assigned to the Quartermaster Corps, and by wars’ end had risen to the rank of Chief Quartermaster for the Department of Tennessee.
Whitman adopted Clara Barton’s strategy, sending out an appeal to veterans for information about where their comrades had been buried. He was soon flooded with letters. Armed with this information, and with the assistance of locals (often freedmen), Whitman traveled around the South searching for the graves, covering over 30,000 miles before he was through. During his search he was distressed and shocked to find that many of the graves were being treated with indifference, neglect, and often contempt. Believing it the only way to assure that the remains of the soldiers were honored and respected, he began to advocate for the creation of national cemeteries.
Thanks to Whitman's persistence and advocacy, in early 1867 Congress passed an Act creating seventeen national cemeteries and taking federal responsibility for reinterring the soldiers. By the time the reinterment program was complete in 1871, under Whitman’s supervision 303,536 Union soldiers had been reinterred in seventy-four national cemeteries, each with his own coffin and headmarker, at a cost to the federal government of over $4,000,000—an enormous sum at that time. “Such a consecration of a nation’s power and resources to a sentiment,” Whitman remarked, “the world has never witnessed.”
The National Cemeteries Act, and the public expenditures for reinterment and grave protection, applied only to Union soldiers. President William McKinley, with the full support of Union veteran’s organizations, extended federal protection and preservation of the graves of Civil War dead to both sides of the conflict.