![]() Near the war's end, thousands of Union soldiers held as prisoners of war had been herded into a series of hastily assembled camps on the site of a former racetrack in Charleston. Colored Troops (including the Massachusetts 54th Infantry) and a group of white Charlestonians, gathered at a former war prisoner detention camp in Charleston, SC to consecrate a burial site for Union dead. Three weeks after the Confederate surrender, on May 1, 1865, more than 1,000 people recently freed from enslavement, accompanied by regiments of the U.S. Disturbed at the sight of the bare graves, the women placed flowers on their mounds as well. Nearby were the graves of Union soldiers, neglected because they were the enemy. In Columbus, MS., April 25, 1866, it has been recorded that a group of women visited a cemetery to decorate the graves of Confederate soldiers who had fallen in battle at Shiloh. (All of the previous wars and conflicts fought by the United States combined barely add up to the body count the country suffered in the Civil War.)Ī few local springtime tributes to Civil War dead began even before hostilities had ceased. ![]() In the years following the end of the Civil War increasing numbers of American communities began ritually tending to the remains and graves of an unprecedented number of fallen soldiers. Arlington National Cemetery, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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