The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1889-06-04
Places Where the Heroes of
the Civil War Lie
Buried.
Seventy Eight Beautiful Spots
Dedicated to the Use of Ma
tiOnal Cemeteries.

DclilOH was HTeu Oh Il OTI Oumpter
from Fort Moultrie at 4 O'Clock on
the afternoon of April y, 1861. ON
April ID. 1861, President Lincoln IS
sued his proclamation of war and call
:or Is, 900 armed men to laid this eff
fors to maintain he honor, the integ-
rity and the existence of national
government, and to redress wrongs
already long enough endured" This
call struck the nation like thunder
clap from clear sky. but, although
the n. cessity for this movement, az
gressive in the extreme, was not felt
by the people to be pressing. they re-
sponded nobly to the call. With IN
questioning faith they rallied around
the flag, and followed where it led,
trusting implicitly in the strong head
and true heart of the commander in
Washington. When it wasdemonstrat-
ed that $4,000 men could not stem
the swelling tide of civil war, another
call was made and still another.
Each time the demand was complied
with by thu outpouring from the hap
py northern homes of TIE young men
and boys, the brains and bone and
sinew OF strong young nation, bound
together by a common love of coun-
try, for the repression of fratric dial
strife. Too well do many remember
those five fateful years. and the sor.
rows, they bred in hearts and homes.
SJrrows, the memory of which are
sacred and burned in lasting scars on
many hearts. How can a grateful
people ever forget how the brave boys
gave their lives to preserve the ma
tional union, and who to day sleep in
unknown graves all over the south?
In 1865, when peace again spread
her white wings above our land, new
Iy baptized in and cOnsecrated afresh
in the blood of half a million loyal
men, appropriations were made by
congress, and the war department sent
out details to 60 over the battlefields
and gather up the bones of those who
fell in the conflict, aud to the prison
and hospital burial grounds with or
ders to re-enter and mark all the
graves, SO far as possible, of those who
died in prison pens or died of disease.
Right nObly was this work carried on
for a period of nearly four years, and
it was found that the South was
ONE VAST CEMETERY.
1t was found necessary to establish
national cemeteries at var ious points,
and into these were gathered the re-
mains of those found on the battiefields
or in the vicinity. Interments hastily
made during. or just after battles were
usually marked in such way that the
bodies could be taken up, and their
identity established. By this means,
many of the bodies exhumed were sent
to sOrrowing friends, who otherwise
must have gone through life haunted
by that one awful word, "missing."
The dead of the prison pens, where
thousands of brave boys persisted,
were the most difficult interments met
with, for no records were kept in most
cases, and thus the wOrli can never
know their names. In most cases of
the prison cemeteries there was no
cause for removal, and the bodies
were simply taken up and reinterred,
the grave marked as we'll as the scanty
information would allow and the
grounds beautifed. So in truth do
the brave boys
Rest where they wearied and lie where
they fell.
In July, 1865, Capt. James HI.
Moore, A. q. NJ, L. 5. A, under
special order from the War Depart
ment, proceeded to Andersonville,
Ga, to inspect and put in proper
shape the place where repOsed the
bodies of those whose lives were lost
in that prison. Capt. Moore found
the stockade just as the poor boys left
it, full of holes in which they burrow-
ed and the Shiny ooze of black water
unchanged. On site about three
hundred yards from the stockade the
trenches were found, in which 13, 500
bodies had been placed. So closely
had they been piled in that the tablets
marking the graves and only ten
inches in width, almost touched each
other. They were uncoffined, and
were buried with no clothing to cover
their nakedness. This, however was
the case in almost all prison burials.
The prisoners in Andersonville were
detailed to bury their dead comrades,
and they placed pine stake at the
head of each grave, bearing the num-
Der corresponding with similar num-
bered name upon the Andersonville
hospital record, and in this way r..