The Forgotten: Confederate Soldiers Who Died at Gettysburg

One of the saddest and unfortunate aspects of the Battle of Gettysburg was the way the Confederate dead were handled. Unless buried by their comrades, the dead were carelessly buried in a shallow graves, with just enough dirt to cover the bodies. No attempt was made by the Union soldiers that did the interment to identify the bodies. The Union dead were buried quickly after the battle, but in many cases the Confederate dead were left unburied for days. When the rebel dead was buried, usually a shallow trench was dug and the bodies just rolled into it, in many cases multiple bodies in the same trench.

The lucky ones maybe had a piece of board with their name and unit penciled on it, but these were few compared with the number killed. Union General George G. Meade gave the numeration of Confederate burials as 2,954 officers and men.[1] Many a Southern Mother, Father, Wife or loved one waited with much distress and heartache for news of their soldiers' fate, only to never hear about their loved one, knowing only that he fell somewhere in the area of a small town in Pennsylvania. We can only begin to understand what those people when through, if we reflect on how we would feel if our sons or brothers were missing and never heard of again, knowing that they lay somewhere in a cold forgotten grave.

The Confederates laid on Gettysburg battlefield for more than 10 years before being moved back to their home states in the South. If it wasn't for the efforts of Dr. John W.C. O'Neal and Dr. Rufus B. Weaver, this might have never taken place.

Dr. O'Neal was born in Virginia in April, 1821 and was 42 years old at the time of the battle. He attended college in Gettysburg and in Maryland, receiving his medical degree in 1844. He practice medicine in the local area, and then moved to Baltimore with his wife Ellen in 1850. February of 1863, Dr O'Neal moved to Gettysburg where he was appointed as Adams County's official physician.

Dr Rufus B. Weaver was the son of Samuel Weaver, who was hired to oversee the exhuming of the Union bodies to be removed to the National Cemetery. In 1862 Dr Weaver graduated from the Pennsylvania College and in 1865 obtained his Master of Arts Degree. He received medical education during the period of 1868 through 1870 from the University of Pennsylvania and Jefferson Medical College.

Dr. O'Neal kept a list of the names of the dead as he found them on the battlefield and their locations. Unfortunately most of Dr O'Neal's private papers are missing, but a few letters still exist that were written by him to people about the recovery of Confederate remains. Around Jun 23, 1866, he had published in the Gettysburg Newspaper, the Compiler, a revised list of approximately 600 names and units. His list contains many errors, not his fault, but caused by the poor way the bodies were buried and marked. Many of the names had faded from view during the three years prior to Dr. O'Neal's efforts to list them.

Many Southern Societies raised money and pressured the state government to remove the dead from the battlefield and return them to the South. In 1870 Samuel Weaver met with some of the ladies from Charleston, South Carolina and Baltimore to plan for the removal of the Confederate Dead. But before he had a chance to put the plan into action he was killed in a railroad accident. The ladies then turned to Samuel Weaver's son, Dr. Rufus Weaver for help.

In 1871, Dr Weaver began to collect the remains of the dead and ship them south. In 1871 he shipped 385 skeletons. This was very hard work for Dr. Weaver to collect these bodies; he frequently worked 15 to 20 hours a day, in hot and dirty conditions. He personally supervised opening of each grave and handled the remains himself. One deplorable fact was that some landowners refused to allow the bodies to be removed without being paid in cash. One example of how greedy some people were was the case of LtCol David Winn, 4^th Georgia. He was buried on V. Oliver Blocher's farm and Blocher kept for himself a gold plate and teeth from the officer's skull. He would not let Winn's family have the dental set unless he was paid ten dollars. After making several futile trips to see Blocher and his father, David, to attempt to persuade them to give up the gold plate, Dr Weaver finally relented and paid five dollars to close the deal.[2] One good ending to this story is that the press found out about what Blocher did and really laid it to them calling them, "foul, faithless wretche(s), barbaric and unprincipled greediness and vile scum of humanity".

It cost Dr Weaver about $3.25 per body. From April 19 to September 10 and April 9 to October 3, 1873 he along with his team opened graves and recovered the bodies. Some of the burial trenches had as many as 40 bodies in them, many of the individual bones becoming tangled up in the rotting uniforms and roots of trees and plants. Dr. Weaver had sent over 2,200 bodies south and never collected the total amount due him. He was paid $2,800 and was still owed over $6,000. Before he died on July 14, 1936, he was able to collect a portion of the remaining amount.

The treatment of the Confederate Dead had wide ranging affect, especially in the South, even some people in the North did not agree with the way the dead were handled. J. Howard Wert, a citizen of Adams County said "Alas! in how many Southern homes aching hearts waited through weary months for news of loved ones that never came until the void of suspense was replaced by the real certainty that the absent one had helped to swell the unknown dead of the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard, or the Devil's Den of a Northern land.[3]

J. Howard Wert goes on to say "At one point, in a field at the edge of the Devil's Den woods, I found 156 Confederates buried together - that is 156 Confederates had been laid, side by side, in four parallel rows of 39 each, and a little earth had been thrown over them from different sides, through which after the ground had been settled by a heavy rain, appeared shoes, and hats, and locks of hair and portions of the bodies.[4]

The sight and smell of the of the dead bodies, some of them that laid out in the hot sun for days after the battle is incomprehensible to us to even try to understand. Even though they were the enemy, they were still Americans and should have been given the decency they deserved.

The question still remains today, is there bodies still buried on the battlefield? The answer is yes; bodies have been found in the town of Gettysburg and out on the battlefield, the latest being found in the Railroad Cut in 1996. In a letter to the Northern Neck News, April 7, 1882, part of the letter states "During last summer a gentleman who lives on a part of the battlefield of Gettysburg found on his farm the remains of eighteen or twenty Confederates soldiers, which was turned up by his plowmen."[5]After researching the files of GNMP, I found many letters and correspondence on the finding of bodies on the battlefield and in the town of Gettysburg.

A women seeing the field for the first time in 1894 stated "Besides, on one may guess how many soldiers still rest where they fell. In some cases all traces were lost of the shallow trenches and scant graves into which the bodies of brave men were, perforce, hastily rolled, after lying for days unburied, beneath a July sun. In that time of triumph and desolation, inextricable confusion and terrible suffering, the wounded demanded the chief care and burial was rather for the sake of the living than of the dead."[6]

Gettysburg saw some of the heaviest fighting of the Civil War, the civilians, the soldiers of both sides experienced incidents that most of us can only vaguely begin to understand. For those who died so far away from their home, and remained in a nameless and forgotten grave for ten years or more, they now rest in peace at home. For those that remain where they fell and are in a lost grave, known only to God, may they find peace.

[1] Wasted Valor - The Confederate Dead at Gettysburg by Gregory A. Coco

[2] Gettysburg's Confederate Dead by Gregory A. Coco

[3] Wasted Valor - The Confederate Dead at Gettysburg by Gregory A. Coco

[4] Wasted Valor - The Confederate Dead at Gettysburg by Gregory A. Coco

[5] Letter Copied by Writer From the Files of GNMP

[6] A Strange and Blighted Land - Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle by Gregory A. Coco