As the inevitable consequence of battle involved dealing with war dead, the toll of Civil War casualties presented significant challenges for both the North and the South.

Civil War expert Kathleen Logothetis Thompson appeared at Lunch With Books at the Ohio County Public Library in Wheeling Tuesday, July 22, to present a program, “After the Storm: Burial of the Civil War Dead.” More than 100 people attended the lecture.

Thompson, a New York native, is pursuing a doctorate at West Virginia University. She has been an interpreter at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, editor for the Emerging Civil War blog and a contributor to books in the Emerging Civil War book series.

“Both sides suffered a lot to care for the dead in the Civil War,” Thompson said. The Union, with its established government, was more able to care for its dead soldiers than the Confederacy, although the North also faced problems, she said.

The Union’s adjutant general kept records of every death, and guidelines were issued for burying the dead. The most efficient manner was to dig shallow graves in rows. “In practice, however, that almost never happened,” she said, because of ground conditions and a need to complete the task hastily.

Soldiers who had just fought a battle often were called upon to bury their fallen comrades, she said. No regular ambulance service existed until the end of the war, so “the same men were trying to take stretchers out on the field,” she said. Of course, they had to care for the wounded and living before burying the dead.

“The quality of burials depended upon the number of dead and the circumstances,” she said. Hasty, and often anonymous, burials occurred; in many cases, people were unable to identify the dead, she added.

When troops moved on to the next battle quickly, residents of the area were forced to deal with the dead men left on the battlefield, Thompson said. If a friend or family member were handling the body, more care was taken to identify the grave.

Citing four burial strategies employed in four battles, Thompson said a truce was called to bury the dead on the southern end of the battlefield at Fredericksburg, Va., but a huge standoff occurred at the other end of the battlefield at Marye’s Heights, she said. Union burial crews arrived four days after the battle ended and found most of the bodies stripped of clothing and possessions. The unidentified victims were interred in mass gaves in two huge pits, she related.

After the battle of Chancellorsville, Va., a Union general did not want to go back to bury the dead, so Confederates had to handle the task, she said. The Confederates buried their own dead first, then placed Union soldiers in mass graves without identification. A lot of men were left unburied on the field, she added.

When the Union army returned in the Overland Campaign of 1864, continuous warfare took place. “That Union strategy affects how the dead are handled,” Thompson said. After two days of chaotic fighting in the Wilderness of Virginia, the troops were too tired to bury the dead.

By contrast, at Spotsylvania Courthouse, Va., most of the burials are identified because the battle lasted for two weeks, she said.

People looked to the federal government for help in burying the dead and the response continues to affect policies today, Thompson related. In 1862, a national cemetery system was established; three existing graveyards became national cemeteries and nine others were created, all in Union territory, she said.

After the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, a cemetery started by the state of Pennsylvania was taken over by the federal government. A meticulous supervisor, Samuel Weaver, tried to identify bodies; he cataloged personal effects and removed items in case families wanted to claim possessions, she said. Weaver and James Townsend, supervisor of burials, compared notes every day and created a permanent record.

In other locations, “a huge proportion were not buried properly,” she said. The largest push to bury the dead occurred in 1865-66, after the war ended. A joint House-Senate resolution in April 1866 called for an immediate effort to find the Union dead and create more cemeteries.

In the South, the task of honoring the war dead fell to women, who formed memorial associations to bury Confederate casualties in private cemeteries, Thompson said.