Order No. 33

[Steph-GB]

I was watching a documentary the other day regarding the role of the morticians on the civil war battlefield, I understand that there was a concerted effort by the United States to organise the removal and burial of dead soldiers. The documentary stated that the morticians on the battlefield would receive payments related to the rank of the soldier, obviously the higher the rank the better the pay for the mortician.

Could someone please clarify for me, did either the union or the confederate army have a dedicated organisation for this, or was the job left to civilian morticians?

Many thanks in anticipation.

 

[Mark Roth]

I don't have any reference materials handy, but that is very different from what I heard. In effect, there was no organization. The private morticians did charge for their services, but that was to prepare bodies to be sent home. Only a few of the richer families could afford that. At the beginning of the war, at least one state did try to pay for all of its sons to be brought home, but was quickly overwhelmed.

Most of the dead were buried by friends of comrades or later placed in unmarked graves after fighting ended.

 

[Steph-GB]

Thankyou.. I had read this

During the Civil War, Holmes was commissioned in the Union army medical corps.[3] Having experimented with embalming procedures previously, he was asked to embalm a few Union soldiers killed in battle so that the remains could be shipped back to their families. Holmes charged $100 per body.[3] Abraham Lincoln eventually sanctioned the treatment for all fallen soldiers and officers, and in four years Holmes embalmed several thousand bodies. He personally claimed to have embalmed, "4028 soldiers and officers, field and staff", although some believe this figure to be inflated.

After the war, Holmes returned to Brooklyn a rich man. The widespread use of arterial embalming for fallen soldiers made Holmes' technique widely known, and as a result embalming as part of funeral preparations became more accepted in America.


I'm not quite sure how things were done on the confederate side.

 

[diane]

I believe Order No 33 was why they had to put out Order No 39 - some morticians and embalmers were holding the bodies they worked on hostage!

Embalming certainly did change burial customs in the United States. It was always about three days of mourning with your kin laid out in the parlor - and I think the three days was in case the deceased was not deceased...! But when you are in Maine and your soldier dies in Texas, that changes things.

A tad gruesome, but embalming stopped the 'premature burials'. Lots of stories about opening a coffin to share it with another family member and there would be scratch marks on the lid! (Edgar Allan Poe sopped up a LOT of that sort of legend...)

 

[Steph-GB]

Now I'm off to look up order number 39!

Oh wow I thought that was actually a myth that there was scratch marks on the lids of the coffins how horrible being buried alive! Yes I would agree, 3 day delay is a great way to reduce the risks of that!

 

[diane]

Now I'm off to look up order number 39!

Oh wow I thought that was actually a myth that there was scratch marks on the lids of the coffins how horrible being buried alive! Yes I would agree, 3 day delay is a great way to reduce the risks of that!

That very nearly happened to Robert E Lee's mother. She apparently passed away and, as per custom, the family laid her out in the living room before the fireplace. Evidently the warmth was a help because around the second day, she started moving and talking. The Lees were surprisingly easy about it - they'd had that happen before when a small child was 'killed' falling off a porch. George Washington insisted on laying in state for three days and if he didn't move or started changing colors, they could be sure he was dead - he said that, not me!

 

[Steph-GB]

Well I'm sure by day 3 there would be a bit of a whiff to tell that they were dead! I'm not sure how I would of felt spending a night thinking she was dead to then the next day find her moving and talking, don't think I would have taken that easily! Wow imagine if they had buried her straight away.. that kind of creepy! I'm not a fan of burial anyway.. all for being buried alive (even though I thought that that was a myth!!) and getting eaten by the worms!

I couldn't imagine the mission the morticians had during the civil war.. especially if had to lay them for 3 days to make sure they were really dead first!

 

[diane]

Well I'm sure by day 3 there would be a bit of a whiff to tell that they were dead! I'm not sure how I would of felt spending a night thinking she was dead to then the next day find her moving and talking, don't think I would have taken that easily! Wow imagine if they had buried her straight away.. that kind of creepy! I'm not a fan of burial anyway.. all for being buried alive (even though I thought that that was a myth!!) and getting eaten by the worms!

I couldn't imagine the mission the morticians had during the civil war.. especially if had to lay them for 3 days to make sure they were really dead first!

Something interesting to read about - morbid, all right! - is Lincoln's funeral. As you note, he was embalmed but he took a train ride all over the place before he got to Illinois. Somewhere in Ohio two officers sneaked an extra photo of Lincoln in the coffin...and they had to apply a little putty and make up here and there! Stanton had had a photo taken and issued strict orders for no more - he confiscated the sneaked photo and hid it in his desk for ages. However, Abe certainly lasted a lot longer than if nothing had been done. His son Willie was travelling with him, but naturally the boy was not viewed by anyone, just along for the ride with his father. Mary had embalmed him as well so that when the Lincolns left the White House Willie could be taken home with them.

There was, at this time in America, a very big importance attached to 'native soil'. Families who could afford it used the embalming to have their loved one buried in the soil they were born on. This was very important. A poor Georgia family came to Carrie McGavock's large Confederate cemetery in Tennessee to find their son. With them they had brought a wagon full of red Georgia clay from the family farm. They didn't have the money to rebury him in Georgia, so they brought Georgia to him!

 

[Cavalry Charger]

There was, at this time in America, a very big importance attached to 'native soil'. Families who could afford it used the embalming to have their loved one buried in the soil they were born on. This was very important. A poor Georgia family came to Carrie McGavock's large Confederate cemetery in Tennessee to find their son. With them they had brought a wagon full of red Georgia clay from the family farm. They didn't have the money to rebury him in Georgia, so they brought Georgia to him!

There is something about this I can relate to, and I'm sure many people can, that brings it right into the 21st Century. Definitely something about native soil and the significance of that. That's if you treasure your homeland. Possibly because it's something tangible, and I can't think of anything worse than not being able to bring a body home, never mind not know where a loved one is buried.

Great topic @Steph-GB and one at times I know I prefer not to ponder on. That they got home to be buried would mostly be the luck of the rich in this instance, I think, as I do believe such things as embalming were costly at the time.

I also don't know that there would be enough morticians to go round considering the number of bodies for embalming at times.

 

[Steph-GB]

Thankyou

Ahh I think that is a nice sentiment that if they couldn't get them home then they would bring their birth home to them! Such a thoughtful and loving act in itself, although must have been horrible to not be able to have their loved ones home to be laid to rest.

I couldn't imagine that at all and I think now we can choose cremation and keep the ashes of loved ones with us it makes easier to move, I had a fear of burying a loved one but then later moving and not having them close to you.

I had wondered how they managed to cope with the amount of deaths and how it was dealt with, must be so hard for the loved ones to not get that closure of having the ability to get their lost ones home again.. not a thought I would like to think off!

 

[diane]

Those huge battlefields were really bad. A year or so after a big battle, they'd have another the same spot and add to the bodies. One general said he had arrived on one such field at night, and his men kept finding bones everywhere they tried to put down a blanket! Couldn't move them so they had to deal with it - not pleasant at all.

 

[Steph-GB]

Wow that's horrible! Must have been near impossible to concentrate on the task in hand knowing what lies at that place already!

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

I remember reading an officer and his group arriving at night where there had been a previous battle, and they knew that. They didn't immediately see any bones. They hostler was trying to put the horses away but the horses were acting terrible, especially the officer's horse and it wasn't like his horse to do that. So the officer went to investigate and with more light, found they were tying the horses up where there were several skulls and parts of skeletons on the ground! The horses weren't having that! They moved the horses and all was nice and quiet.

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

@diane that's something that's always bugged me about battlefields. When they say, so many dead, so many wounded, so many taken prisoner, and then so many missing. Where could they be? They can't all be deserters. Did men just crawl off and die and never get found? I know at Antietam they found a few bones in a groundhog hole just in the last few years and realized it was unknown. Yet it wasn't in such an obscure place really, so how did that person get missed? I've always felt so bad for the families that just never heard anything or came to the fields of the big battles after receiving letters from friends telling about the deaths and saying they were buried "over by yon tree" and they search for years but never find the grave.

 

[diane]

I remember reading an officer and his group arriving at night where there had been a previous battle, and they knew that. They didn't immediately see any bones. They hostler was trying to put the horses away but the horses were acting terrible, especially the officer's horse and it wasn't like his horse to do that. So the officer went to investigate and with more light, found they were tying the horses up where there were several skulls and parts of skeletons on the ground! The horses weren't having that! They moved the horses and all was nice and quiet.

Yes, if my horse is skittish when he shouldn't be, and I can't see what it's about - I take his word for it! Moving along...

 

[diane]

@diane that's something that's always bugged me about battlefields. When they say, so many dead, so many wounded, so many taken prisoner, and then so many missing. Where could they be? They can't all be deserters. Did men just crawl off and die and never get found? I know at Antietam they found a few bones in a groundhog hole just in the last few years and realized it was unknown. Yet it wasn't in such an obscure place really, so how did that person get missed? I've always felt so bad for the families that just never heard anything or came to the fields of the big battles after receiving letters from friends telling about the deaths and saying they were buried "over by yon tree" and they search for years but never find the grave.

I've read a couple articles about this very thing. Sometimes the wounded did crawl away to find somewhere more peaceful to die and were not found. A famous one was a Union soldier found sitting against a tree almost two miles from the battlefield with a picture of his children in his hand.

 

[Steph-GB]

Horses are smart animals! Must not have been a nice discovery though! Horses have great senses .. I would always trust the horse!

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

@Steph-GB something else they had, though poor people wouldn't have been able to afford it is a chiller type coffin. The National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, MD has an original one on exhibit. It is a coffin with holes in the bottom (I think, I'm trying to remember) and it sits on top of a galvanized metal bottom that would be filled with ice to keep the body chilled. It is quite the contraption a nd is heavy on it's own, never mind filled with ice and a body. I can't believe there would have been all that many available to the population.

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

I was just reading where the chiller coffins used to frighten children terribly. They metal pans were zinc and the holes were for the water from the melting ice to drip.... drip..... drip..... and apparently children made the natural assumption that this was the dead person's blood dripping. I can imagine sitting at night in a quiet parlor with the dead, the dripping water would be incredibly creepy.

 

[Steph-GB]

O wow @NH Civil War Gal that is really interesting, Thankyou. I'm going to look that up! I bet it was scary the sound of dripping if it was never explained to the children, which I expect it wasn't something they really talked about with them! That must have been seriously heavy also!