Confederate War Casualties May 19, 1864. Timothy H. O’Sullivan. Library of Congress. https://lccn.loc.gov/2016646715

An estimated 620,000 men died in the line of duty during the Civil War, the majority from disease, not on the battlefield. Both North and South faced the question: What do we do with the bodies? Some were buried in mass graves where they fell. Those who were able to afford to have a body embalmed, a new procedure, could have the remains shipped home over the rails. After the war, when National Cemeteries were established, federal employees searched for the remains, dug them up and reinterred what remained in the new cemeteries. Often, the soldiers were unknown and the headstones reflect that. Finding a stone that reads “two unknown soldiers” is an easy thing to do. Southerners also strived to reclaim their dead. Despite the best of intentions, not all Civil War bodies were recovered and still occasionally make their way into the public eye, such as skeletal remains unearthed in Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, where buildings were used as Confederate hospitals in 1862.