By 1865, most of "the Grove" had been lost. Its flower beds and paths had been trampled out of existence by troops and pack animals, and some of its trees had been cut down. That year, Meigs decided to build a monument to Civil War dead in the center of "the Grove". U.S. Army troops were dispatched to investigate every battlefield within a radius of the city of Washington, D.C. The bodies of 2,111 Union and Confederate dead were collected, most of them from the battlefields of First and Second Bull Run as well as the Union army's retreat along the Rappahannock River (which occurred after both battles). Some of the dead had been interred on the battlefield, but most were full or partial remains discovered unburied on the field of battle. None were identifiable. Although Meigs had not intended to collect the remains of Confederate war dead, the inability to identify remains meant that both Union and Confederate dead were interred below the cenotaph.