Last updated: September 23, 2022
Place
Bivouac of the Dead Plaque
Quick Facts
Location:
Gettysburg National Military Park
Significance:
Soldier's National Cemetery
Designation:
National Cemetery
This plaque is one of many dotted throughout the cemetery that contains lines from the poem, "Bivouac of the Dead."
It is easy to forget that each grave represents not only a victim of war, but also the unseen victims at home—wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children, who all mourned the passing of a loved one. While over 10,000 died at Gettysburg alone, during the four years of the Civil War, over 720,000 Americans perished.
The graves are arranged in a wide semi-circle that radiate out from the Soldiers’ National Monument which marks the center of the cemetery. The burials were organized around state sections, divided into an inner ring (for smaller states) and outer ring (for larger states). This design was created by William Saunders, a famed landscape gardener (and later one of the founders of the National Grange), thus “the position of each lot, and indeed of each interment, is relatively of equal importance.” The evenness and equality of the gravestones, where men of differing rank and position rest side-by-side, contrasts sharply with the jumbling diversity visible in the Evergreen Cemetery. The “simple grandeur” of William Saunders’ cemetery plan speaks to the underlying theme of equality in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address; and is an eloquent reminder of the ultimate goal of the struggle, and of the costs necessary to achieve it.
There are three types of stones that make up the state sections and individual graves. Larger grey stones serve as state section markers and also indicate the number of fallen from each state. Long, rectangular granite stones, which are set nearly at ground level, serve as gravestones for the remains of soldiers buried in the state sections, and mostly are marked by names. Lastly, you will also see hundreds of small marble squares bearing only numbers. This is one of three such sections in the Civil-War portion of the cemetery, all of whom are UNKNOWN.
As there were no government “dog-tags” issued to soldiers during the war, identification of the dead was usually via friends, or from personal effects or letters that might be found on the body. Upon examination, sometimes a soldier was determined to be ‘partially unknown.’ If their home state could be determined, the dead soldier was placed within the proper state section, and the word UNKNOWN engraved upon his flat headstone. If, however, the soldier’s home state was not known, he was laid in one of the UNKNOWN sections, his remains marked only by a number. Some 979 unknowns were buried in this way. Of these, twenty men could be identified by name, but not by state affiliation, and therefore were buried as UKNOWN.
In addition to the attempts at identification, each soldier received a proper reburial, with the remains being placed in a pine coffin which was then buried to a depth of four feet. The reburials were not completed until March 1864, nearly five months after the work had begun. A few Confederate soldiers were mistakenly interred in the cemetery alongside their former foes. The remainder of the Confederate dead remained buried on the battlefield. Between seven to ten years after the battle, these Confederate remains, over 3,200 altogether, were returned home to four primary locations – Richmond, Virginia; Raleigh, North Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; and Charleston, South Carolina.
It is easy to forget that each grave represents not only a victim of war, but also the unseen victims at home—wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children, who all mourned the passing of a loved one. While over 10,000 died at Gettysburg alone, during the four years of the Civil War, over 720,000 Americans perished.
The graves are arranged in a wide semi-circle that radiate out from the Soldiers’ National Monument which marks the center of the cemetery. The burials were organized around state sections, divided into an inner ring (for smaller states) and outer ring (for larger states). This design was created by William Saunders, a famed landscape gardener (and later one of the founders of the National Grange), thus “the position of each lot, and indeed of each interment, is relatively of equal importance.” The evenness and equality of the gravestones, where men of differing rank and position rest side-by-side, contrasts sharply with the jumbling diversity visible in the Evergreen Cemetery. The “simple grandeur” of William Saunders’ cemetery plan speaks to the underlying theme of equality in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address; and is an eloquent reminder of the ultimate goal of the struggle, and of the costs necessary to achieve it.
There are three types of stones that make up the state sections and individual graves. Larger grey stones serve as state section markers and also indicate the number of fallen from each state. Long, rectangular granite stones, which are set nearly at ground level, serve as gravestones for the remains of soldiers buried in the state sections, and mostly are marked by names. Lastly, you will also see hundreds of small marble squares bearing only numbers. This is one of three such sections in the Civil-War portion of the cemetery, all of whom are UNKNOWN.
As there were no government “dog-tags” issued to soldiers during the war, identification of the dead was usually via friends, or from personal effects or letters that might be found on the body. Upon examination, sometimes a soldier was determined to be ‘partially unknown.’ If their home state could be determined, the dead soldier was placed within the proper state section, and the word UNKNOWN engraved upon his flat headstone. If, however, the soldier’s home state was not known, he was laid in one of the UNKNOWN sections, his remains marked only by a number. Some 979 unknowns were buried in this way. Of these, twenty men could be identified by name, but not by state affiliation, and therefore were buried as UKNOWN.
In addition to the attempts at identification, each soldier received a proper reburial, with the remains being placed in a pine coffin which was then buried to a depth of four feet. The reburials were not completed until March 1864, nearly five months after the work had begun. A few Confederate soldiers were mistakenly interred in the cemetery alongside their former foes. The remainder of the Confederate dead remained buried on the battlefield. Between seven to ten years after the battle, these Confederate remains, over 3,200 altogether, were returned home to four primary locations – Richmond, Virginia; Raleigh, North Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; and Charleston, South Carolina.