Md. Civil War museum gives severed arm a good look

google-hosted AP story ^ | 11 April 2012 | DAVID DISHNEAU

[smokingfrog]

Long after the guns fell silent at Antietam, the earth yielded up gruesome reminders of the bloodiest day of the American Civil War: bodies, bones, buttons and entire severed limbs — one of which is now the focus of intense study at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.

A Sharpsburg-area farmer is said to have found the human forearm while plowing a field two weeks after the 1862 battle.

Officials at the museum in Frederick, Md., are trying to learn more about the limb in hopes of verifying that it's a relic of the Battle of Antietam and exhibiting the well-preserved specimen during the battle's 150th anniversary in September.

The muddy-looking right forearm, with skin and hand attached, was donated anonymously to the museum earlier this year, said Executive Director George Wunderlich. It had been displayed for several decades at a private museum in Sharpsburg in a glass-topped, pine case with a placard reading, "Human arm found on the Antietam Battlefield."

[smokingfrog]

Civil War Museum Gives Severed Arm a Good Look

[Jonty30]

I’d be somewhat inclined to plow it under.

Some plant will make use of the calcium in the bone. :)

[Timber Rattler]

Some plant will make use of the calcium in the bone.

Well, it's good to know that you have such respect for an American soldier who died fighting for his country.

Bravo! Bravo!

[PowderMonkey]

Some 23,000 casualties in about 12 hours. I'd say that corn field has already been well nourished by the blood of good men North and South. Medical and historical research be damned. Those remains should be interred with honors at a military cemetery.

[BuffaloJack]

The remains should be put to rest with full honors with other military dead.

[momtothree]

“.. remains should be put to rest with full honors...”

Totally agree and thank you for wanting some dignity for the person who most likely lost his life during that battle.

[wideminded]

[smokingfrog]

That arm was taken off pretty cleanly. If that soldier wasn’t otherwise wounded or maybe got an infection, I think he could well have survived.

[WorkingClassFilth]

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. I find it far more respectful to return an arm to the soil that held the bodies of thousands of other fallen soldiers than to pick it up and show it off in a display case.

[Timber Rattler]

No, if you read the story, the muscles and ligaments were badly shredded and warped at the end of the arm. He would have died in minutes unless a military surgeon was nearby on the field and applied a tourniquet, which I doubt considering that this was brutal Antietam.

[BuffaloJack]

>> “.. remains should be put to rest with full honors...”

> Totally agree and thank you for wanting some dignity for the person who most likely lost his life during that battle.

This is no different from Japanese soldiers in WW2 who sometimes left a lock of hair or even fingernail clippings to be buried in the event they never came home.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Welcome to the Civil War Museum. Be there or be headed.

Maryland “Freak State” PING!

[ConorMacNessa]

Thanks for the ping, TSR! Antietam resonates strongly with me - my 3-greats grandfather, Cpl. William Murphy, Battery "C", Fifth U.S. Artillery, was there as he was at every major engagement of the Army of the Potomac from September 1861 until September, 1864, when the term of his enlistment expired during the Siege of Petersburg. He was wounded with shrapnel 3July1863 at The Clump of Trees, Gettysburg, Pa - the High Water Mark of the Confederacy. I've made it to Antietam and Gettysburg on several occasions, but never to the Civil War Museum in Frederick. I will have to get over there soon.



Nos genuflectitur ad non princeps sed Princeps Pacem!

Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. (Isaiah 49:1 KJV)

[RedMDer]

I hope they can find out who’s arm that is and intern with a proper burial.

[Albion Wilde]

For any who haven't been there, the Antietam battlefield and museum are well worth a day trip.

Lincoln and McClellan at Antietam

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

My Dad’s a Civil War buff. He has taken me to Antietam and Gettysburg a number of times, as well as to Manassas and Chancellorsville.