Page 7 - cemetery_tour_curriculum guide

the post cemetery. Commanders at frontier forts of the early-to-mid 19th century buried
their dead in cemetery plots marked off within the post reservations. Post cemetery
registers reveal a fairly uniform system of recording burials, sometimes even including
assigned grave numbers. Management of burial grounds fell to quartermaster officers.
In 1850, the U.S. Congress called for the establishment of a cemetery outside Mexico
City for Americans who died in the Mexican American War. This was a precedent for
the creation of permanent military cemeteries over a decade before the creation of a
national cemetery system.

During the Civil War, there was a critical shortage of cemetery space for large
concentrations of troops. At first, this need was addressed through the acquisition of
lots near general hospitals, where more soldiers died than in battle. As the war
continued, however, it was clear that this was not an adequate solution. In 1862,
Congress passed legislation authorizing the creation of a national cemetery system.
Within the year, 14 national cemeteries were established. Most were located near troop
concentrations, two were former post cemeteries, one was for the burial of Confederate
prisoners and guards who died in a train accident, and several were transformed
battlefield burial grounds. The end of 1864 had added 13 more. Two of the best known
of the national cemeteries from the Civil War period are Arlington National Cemetery,
established in 1864, and Andersonville, established in 1865. The Union army
confiscated Arlington, the home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at the beginning
of the Civil War, in May of 1861. In 1864, on the recommendation of Brig. Gen.
Montgomery C. Megis, Quartermaster General of the Army, the grounds officially
became a national cemetery. Andersonville became the final resting place of almost
13,000 soldiers who died there at the Confederate prisoner of war camp.

Immediately after the Civil War, an ambitious search and recovery program initiated the
formidable task of locating and reburying soldiers from thousands of scattered battlefield
burial sites. By 1870, over 90 percent of the Union casualties 45 percent of whose
identity were unknown were interred in national cemeteries, private plots, and post
cemeteries. In 1867, Congress directed every national cemetery to be enclosed with a
stone or iron fence, each gravesite marked with a headstone, and superintendent
quarters to be constructed. Although many national cemeteries contain Confederate
sections, it was not until 1906 that Congress authorized marking the graves of
Confederates who had died in Federal prisons and military hospitals. The post-Civil
War reburial program also removed burials from abandoned military post cemeteries,
particularly those in the western frontier, for internment into newly created national
cemeteries.

Following World War I, only 13 percent of the deceased returned to the United States
were placed in national cemeteries; 40 percent of those who died were buried in eight
permanent cemeteries in Europe. Similarly, after World War II, 14 permanent
cemeteries were created in foreign countries. Today, there are 24 American cemeteries
located outside the United States, which are administered by the American Battle
Monuments Commission.