Feral Hogs Feasting on the Dead

[JeopardyPhD]

I love the Shiloh NMP's Misinformation Monday Facebook series. Today, they debunk Angel's glow after the battle.

This reminds me of another grotesque casualty-related thing that has stuck in my head. As a kid, I had one of those comic books of the battle (I think there were others on Gettysburg, etc.). The comic book showed a scene of a hog eating a body that was backlit by a lightning strike.

To my knowledge, this scene came from Wiley Sword's claim that feral hogs fed upon casualties during the stormy night of April 6th to 7th (I think supposedly from the diary of a Confederate soldier). The fact that there weren't more accounts of this (and this would have been noteworthy) make me a bit skeptical this actually occurred.

Also, this happening amid the lightning flashes of the storm just seems a bit too forced (like setting up the scene of a horror movie). Certainly, there were real enough horrors on the field, but the fact that this wasn't documented by others-- or documented on the decidedly less stormy night of April 7th, makes me think it's a lurid, literary embellishment. There were many other accounts of the storm (lightning illuminating the battlefield), of macabre casualty-related events, of the Lexington and Tyler's artillery bombardment, and of small ammunition fires-- but nothing really on the feral hogs.

Does anyone have more evidence that this actually occurred?

 

[wausaubob]

I love the Shiloh NMP's Misinformation Monday Facebook series. Today, they debunk Angel's glow after the battle.

This reminds me of another grotesque casualty-related thing that has stuck in my head. As a kid, I had one of those comic books of the battle (I think there were others on Gettysburg, etc.). The comic book showed a scene of a hog eating a body that was backlit by a lightning strike.

To my knowledge, this scene came from Wiley Sword's claim that feral hogs fed upon casualties during the stormy night of April 6th to 7th (I think supposedly from the diary of a Confederate soldier). The fact that there weren't more accounts of this (and this would have been noteworthy) make me a bit skeptical this actually occurred.

Also, this happening amid the lightning flashes of the storm just seems a bit too forced (like setting up the scene of a horror movie). Certainly, there were real enough horrors on the field, but the fact that this wasn't documented by others-- or documented on the decidedly less stormy night of April 7th, makes me think it's a lurid, literary embellishment. There were many other accounts of the storm (lightning illuminating the battlefield), of macabre casualty-related events, of the Lexington and Tyler's artillery bombardment, and of small ammunition fires-- but nothing really on the feral hogs.

Does anyone have more evidence that this actually occurred?

Wouldn't the hogs have been cautious with the sudden advent of thousands of soldiers present in the area? And I think the battlefield was cleaned up as soon as possible.

 

[UCVRelics]

I love the Shiloh NMP's Misinformation Monday Facebook series. Today, they debunk Angel's glow after the battle.

This reminds me of another grotesque casualty-related thing that has stuck in my head. As a kid, I had one of those comic books of the battle (I think there were others on Gettysburg, etc.). The comic book showed a scene of a hog eating a body that was backlit by a lightning strike.

To my knowledge, this scene came from Wiley Sword's claim that feral hogs fed upon casualties during the stormy night of April 6th to 7th (I think supposedly from the diary of a Confederate soldier). The fact that there weren't more accounts of this (and this would have been noteworthy) make me a bit skeptical this actually occurred.

Also, this happening amid the lightning flashes of the storm just seems a bit too forced (like setting up the scene of a horror movie). Certainly, there were real enough horrors on the field, but the fact that this wasn't documented by others-- or documented on the decidedly less stormy night of April 7th, makes me think it's a lurid, literary embellishment. There were many other accounts of the storm (lightning illuminating the battlefield), of macabre casualty-related events, of the Lexington and Tyler's artillery bombardment, and of small ammunition fires-- but nothing really on the feral hogs.

Does anyone have more evidence that this actually occurred?

Here is a post war newspaper article that mentions the hogs.

 

[lelliott19]

Another post-war one from 1866.

The Memphis Daily Argus. (Memphis, TN), April 8, 1866, 2.

 

[Crazy Delawares]

I've often wondered about hog stories even at Gettysburg. With so many hungry soldiers in the area, how did the hogs escape being caught and roasted?

 

[JeopardyPhD]

Thank you for the newspaper articles. I don't doubt that dogs, hogs, and other animals may have disinterred bodies after the battle-- I'm just more skeptical that this occurred during the fighting with 40,000 or more men around. It's also interesting that the first article has the dates of the battle wrong. Both articles seem to have sort of an op-ed flavor to them with the end goal of raising money for burials/monuments.

 

[JeopardyPhD]

The Argus article seems particularly lurid (considering the source, I shouldn't be surprised).
Mentioning Union soldiers taking teeth as trophies? The possibility of people using skulls as drinking cups?

The hog angle fits nicely into their persuasive attempt-- the graves are in bad shape, there are Union sympathizers all over who might desecrate the Confederate graves (sidebar into an impassioned speech about Southern rights), and even if you are a "Union man," you should still donate to the cause. You can see how the angle was to get any Southern-sympathizing Memphian's blood to boil.

Also, plenty of factual errors (Gladden's death being near the close of the battle?) sprinkled in

 

[bayonet]

Thanks for ruining my breakfast, I was about to have some bacon