Michigan Dave
Muskegon
MI USA
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Posts: 8085
Joined: 2006
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Gettysburg Relics of the Confederate Dead at Pickett's Charge
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Hi Brian,
Fascinating story, the Pepper relative from Mississippi finding his relitives remains, post Pickets Charge!? Great story, I've seen several.excellant CW videos by that guy from History Underground, he's a lover of history, for sure!
Thanks for sharing!
MD
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"The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
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Phil Andrade
London
UK
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Posts: 6383
Joined: 2004
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Gettysburg Relics of the Confederate Dead at Pickett's Charge
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A captivating story, Brian : many thanks.
It surprises me that those Mississippians were left undiscovered for nearly a quarter of a century after the battle.
Dr Samuel Weaver, and his son, Rufus, undertook an enormous task in the early 1870s, in identifying southern burial plots and exhuming the dead, and organising the transport of the remains to destinations in the South, principally to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond . Roughly the same number of confederate dead were exhumed and removed in this endeavour as the number of Union dead that had been interred at the National Cemetery at Gettysburg.
That seven dead of the 11th Mississippi were overlooked is hard to understand, especially given their position near another of those Confederate “High Water Marks”, where the confederates got right up to the Union lines near the Bryan Farm.
Perhaps easier to account for, when we discover that Weaver was never paid the money he was promised for doing this grisly work : indeed, he was taking legal action to recover the debt, with interest, in 1887…….. the very time that those Mississippians were discovered.
There are probably hundreds more of Lee’s soldiers remaining unrecovered on that battlefield.
Editing : That memorial marker for the 11th Miss states that the regiment lost 110 killed or died from wounds. The rule of thumb was that three were killed on the field for every two who died from wounds, so by that criterion we might allow for sixty to seventy killed and forty to fifty died from wounds. If that is the case for this regiment, then the seven skeletons that were discovered represented about one tenth of the regiment's entire loss in killed outright, interred right in front of the Union lines, in a prominent position, which makes it all the more remarkable that they lay there undiscovered for an entire generation. That phrase " killed outright" is, I suppose, a misnomer. Being shot through the hips must have entailed an excruciating death, and it's all the more harrowing that it was witnessed by his brother, who - himself a prisoner of war - buried him.. Maybe the poor fellow was one of the forty or fifty who died from wounds.
Regards, Phil
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"Egad, sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox!"
"That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
Earl of Sandwich and John Wilkes
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