A femur that was sawed while being amputated is displayed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Matt McClain
Posted on 06/24/2018 2:34:46 AM PDT by BBell
The bullet probably hit the Union soldier as he was fleeing. It may have struck his cartridge box first, which sent it tumbling through the muscle of his right buttock, broke his right leg and buried itself sideways in his thigh bone just below the hip.
His buddies probably carried him as they retreated before the storm of Rebel gun and cannon fire. At the field hospital, the harried surgeons probably took a look at him and moved on to those less seriously wounded.
After he died, he was laid in a shallow pit with a dead comrade and the sawed-off arms and legs of as many as 11 more soldiers cut down at the Civil War's Second Battle of Bull Run, in August 1862.
On Wednesday the National Park Service announced that archaeologists have found the "limb pit" where the two soldiers and the amputated arms and legs were buried.
The discovery, on the battlefield just north of Manassas, Virginia, is extraordinary, experts said.
Nothing like it has been found before, and a century and a half after the battle, when a Park Service archaeologist examined the fallen Yankee's thigh bone, the bullet was still stuck in it.
"As an archaeologist . . . it's exciting," said Brandon Bies, who brought the bone out of the pit. "As a human being, lifting the leg of an American soldier and holding the bone with the bullet that killed him, it's an emotional experience."
Scientifically, it's "one in a million," he said. "But for that soldier, it wasn't a good one in a million. It was the end of his life."
The two soldiers - referred to as Burial 1, with the embedded bullet, and Burial 2 - were placed side by side in the pit.
(Excerpt) Read more at al.com ...
A femur that was sawed while being amputated is displayed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Matt McClain
I’ve been reading that the latest estimates for CW dead are up to 750,000.
Wow. Thanks for the graphic.
We lost family. Who with family going back that far in America didn’t? I, too, think of that every time the subject of reparations comes up. Already paid in full.
The Phillipine-American War (1899-1902), otherwise known as the Phillipine Insurrection, is rarely mentioned in war casualty lists, but the US lost 4,234 servicemen in that conflict.
While I was a student at Gettysburg College from ‘87-’91, there were a few instances where locals were having renovations done to their property otlr a utility company was digging and they’d find a crate of amputated limbs or other artifacts. The National Park Service would swoop in, surround the area with orange plastic fencing and complete the excavation.
Is that Union only, or Union and Confederacy?
“While I was a student at Gettysburg College from ‘87-’91, there were a few instances where locals were having renovations done to their property otlr a utility company was digging and they’d find a crate of amputated limbs or other artifacts.”
In certain Chicago neighborhoods home builders run across mass graves from the multiple cholera and typhoid epidemics.
L
Have to go to work. Read half of the article, very interesting.
Will read later.
Combined total.
James Hanger, a Confederate soldier became the first amputee of the CW when his leg was struck by a cannon ball...
He founded Hanger Prosthetics, the company that makes prosthetic limbs (they supply me with my prosthetic)
Thanks.
Are those numbers only the dead, or the dead and wounded? Looking at them I think they are only the dead.
Today those guys would all be walking around normally with a prosthetic leg.
We, too, had family in the war on both sides. Our youngest son shares a name with of them, who was killed. It seems to me like leftists are the ones who can’t let it go, keep opening old wounds.
The entire city limits of Corinth, Mississippi, are a burial ground of unmarked graves. Soldiers were buried everywhere prior to the Battle of Shiloh, after the Battle of Shiloh, the Siege of Corinth, and the Battle of Corinth. The NPS estimates there are as few as 2,500 unmarked buried to over 6000 unmarked graves in the area. Many have been found and the NPS is mum about the location because relic hunters desire the brass accouterments that accompany the dead. Corinth was the location of the largest siege and battle in Mississippi and estimated that 3 out of every 5 soldiers during the Civil War were at Corinth at one time or another. It was the rail site where two major railroads crossed. New Orleans and Florida were abandoned by the Confederacy to save Corinth.
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