Existing comment:
Not For Themselves, But For Their Country
Inscription from the Private Soldier Monument in the center of Antietam National Cemetery
After the battle, Federal soldiers buried over 4,000 bodies in mass graves, along rock outcroppings, and in farmers' fields. As time passed, more soldiers died of wounds or disease. The peaceful village of Sharpsburg became a vast hospital and burial ground, an unsafe and unpleasant situation for a war-torn community.
In March 1865, the State of Maryland stepped forward and purchased land "for the purpose of a State and National Cemetery, in which the bodies of our heroes who fell in that great struggle and are now bleaching in their upturned furrows, may be gathered for a decent burial and their memories embalmed in some suitable memorial."
The original plan called for Union and Confederate soldiers to be buried in the National Cemetery. However, the lack of funds available from southern states and the objections against including former Confederates led to the reinterment of only Union soldiers. Confederate dead remained in shallow graves, in some cases for ten years, until they were reinterred in three existing cemeteries located in Hagerstown and Frederick, Maryland, and Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
Today over 5,200 soldiers lay at rest in the National Cemetery. Their service spans from the Civil War to the Korean War. Deemed full in 1953, the cemetery was closed and since then only a few exceptions have been made, most recently a sailor killed during a terrorist attack on the USS Cole in October of 2010.
This shovel and bent bayonet were used at Antietam to drag and bury bodies.
"When we took on yon battlefield, I think of these brave men who fell in the fierce struggle of battle, and who sleep silent in their graves. Yes many of them sleep in silence and peace within this beautiful enclosure after the earnest conflict has ceased."
-- President Andrew Johnson speaking at the dedication, September 17, 1867 |