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WARNING: These are historically accurate, and detailed descriptions of post battle devastation. If you don't want to read about death and wounds, just read my next post, and skip this one.
After the third day of the battle of Gettysburg, over 51,000 casualties littered the fields. On the Union side, over 28% of men involved were lost, and on the Confederate side, 37%. 7,058 were killed, 3,155, for the Union, and 3,903 for the rebels. A combined 33,264 men were wounded, and over 10,790 were missing (either blown to bits, or unidentified, or in a prison camp). It was a ghastly price to pay, for the freedom of others, the rights of a region, and the Union of a country.
Every available home, church, school or barn became a field hospital. Surgeons were overworked with a non stop flow of patients. It reportedly took a 500 surgeon team one week to clear just one section of field. Amputations were done with little, to no anesthesia, and the unlucky soldier had to be held down by many men, while the doctor amputated the limb. Huge mounds of limbs piled up quickly, and the local children were sometimes the unfortunate souls who had to dispose of them into shallow pits.
Often the worse part of being a soldier was being wounded. It could be hours, days, and even a week or two before you were ever discovered. The wound would be infected, or worse, rotting. On the night of the fourth, a large rainstorm swept through, causing a flash flood, carrying live wounded men away, drowning them as they could not swim. Feral hogs ate others, whether they were alive or dead. And then there were the photographers, who repositioned bodies, and souvenir hunters who rifled through the clothes of the victims for memorabilia.
Where the dead lay in heaps, mass graves were dug. Among the bodies, two Southern women were found. They disguised their genders so they could fight for what they believed in. Many townspeople dug graves for weeks on end, in the summer heat. With that heat, came the smell of death that lingered for weeks. Over 5,000 horses and mules lay dead, and the bodies of these were burned over several weeks.
But out of all of this, acts of kindness were common. Many organisations for orphans whose fathers were killed in the battle sprung up, and citizens gave supplies to the wounded. In one case, an African American woman named Lydia Smith, provided what little she had to both Union and Confederate wounded.
It was later that year, in November, when president Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg address, at the consecration of the Soldiers National Cemetery.
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
After the third day of the battle of Gettysburg, over 51,000 casualties littered the fields. On the Union side, over 28% of men involved were lost, and on the Confederate side, 37%. 7,058 were killed, 3,155, for the Union, and 3,903 for the rebels. A combined 33,264 men were wounded, and over 10,790 were missing (either blown to bits, or unidentified, or in a prison camp). It was a ghastly price to pay, for the freedom of others, the rights of a region, and the Union of a country.
Every available home, church, school or barn became a field hospital. Surgeons were overworked with a non stop flow of patients. It reportedly took a 500 surgeon team one week to clear just one section of field. Amputations were done with little, to no anesthesia, and the unlucky soldier had to be held down by many men, while the doctor amputated the limb. Huge mounds of limbs piled up quickly, and the local children were sometimes the unfortunate souls who had to dispose of them into shallow pits.
Often the worse part of being a soldier was being wounded. It could be hours, days, and even a week or two before you were ever discovered. The wound would be infected, or worse, rotting. On the night of the fourth, a large rainstorm swept through, causing a flash flood, carrying live wounded men away, drowning them as they could not swim. Feral hogs ate others, whether they were alive or dead. And then there were the photographers, who repositioned bodies, and souvenir hunters who rifled through the clothes of the victims for memorabilia.
Where the dead lay in heaps, mass graves were dug. Among the bodies, two Southern women were found. They disguised their genders so they could fight for what they believed in. Many townspeople dug graves for weeks on end, in the summer heat. With that heat, came the smell of death that lingered for weeks. Over 5,000 horses and mules lay dead, and the bodies of these were burned over several weeks.
But out of all of this, acts of kindness were common. Many organisations for orphans whose fathers were killed in the battle sprung up, and citizens gave supplies to the wounded. In one case, an African American woman named Lydia Smith, provided what little she had to both Union and Confederate wounded.
It was later that year, in November, when president Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg address, at the consecration of the Soldiers National Cemetery.
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
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