Rhea Cole
Major
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2019
- Location
- Murfreesboro, Tennessee
With the exception of Chickamauga, the Army of the Cumberland was left in command of the field after every battle with the Army of Tennessee. After Missionary Ridge, AoC soldiers were disgusted to find the Union dead from Chicamagua still laying where they fell. The characteristic command disfunction of the AoT had not arranged burial details for the Union dead. That was considered a great moral failure. Confederate dead had been given soldier's burials the same as their own by the AoC.Of course, the Federals did the same thing, as recounted in my thread on Shiloh's confederate burial trenches:
Confederate Burial Trenches at Shiloh NMP | Shiloh / Pittsburg Landing
The mass graves of Confederate soldiers killed at Shiloh and interred right after the battle in burial trenches of varying size have their own peculiar fascination and brooding sadness. There are five such marked, and during my recent visit to the battlefield I managed to locate and photograph...civilwartalk.com
There are ghoul maps that documented where trench burials were made on the battle field. Elliot's map of the Gettysburg battlefield is, perhaps the best known. Contractors were paid a fixed rate per body to bury the dead of both sides. They had to document the number & location of the bodies in order to get paid.
Modern scholars have used the ghoul maps to reevaluate the narrative of how the battle's were fought. That was especially true at Shiloh. At Gettysburg, the ghoul map showed how Pickett's men piled up behind the fence in front of the stone wall, which rewrote the history of that fight.