Being released on the 161st observance of the Gettysburg Dedication Day, this new book is being published to follow up the solemnity and caring characterizing how Lincoln eulogized these honored dead by presenting these profiles of the lives of the 2000 of these honored dead of the over 4000 total buried, the ones fortuned with having their names preserved on their gravestones.
This new book presents the profiles of these named soldiers in a tabular format, matching the sequential grave-by-grave location that these men today lie buried in the cemetery. The profiles seek to resurrect the individual personhoods of these men by identifying distinguishing characteristics in their lives and military service. The profiles provide each soldier’s birth year and residence and occupation prior to enlisting into the Union army. Irish and German immigrants are identified. The profiles give the army unit that each soldier was enlisted into, his rank upon enlisting, promotions, court martials and interesting detachments during their service, as with men sent to work as hospital stewards before later they themselves would die in such hospitals.
The profiles attempt to retrieve from the over 2500 soldiers’ service records examined for this book at the D.C. National Archives the nature of each soldier’s mortal wounding at Gettysburg, the day it was received, the care and any amputations the soldier received, and the date the soldier died. The profiles highlight the age or approximate age at which each soldier died. Minors who surreptitiously enlisted in the army and were killed before their 18th birthday are identified. The youngest of these deaths is found in a boy soldier killed at only 14 years old. The profiles identify the soldiers who fought and died under aliases and the nine Confederates mistakenly buried in the cemetery. The profiles identify the pension recipients of the killed soldiers, these being the widowed mothers, the pregnant wives, and the now fatherless children given with their names and ages.
Over 300 footnotes are appended throughout the text to flag the profiles of the soldiers killed as minors and also the profiles warranting more detail regarding the soldiers’ pension recipients. Over 700 U.S. pension records were examined at the D.C. National Archives to report these pension recipients.
This book gives the U.S. pension certificate numbers, facilitating their viewing on the Fold.com website. The tabular format of these profiles are separated, as in the cemetery, by the states. This book offers at the end of each state chapter a technical illustration of a monument today on the Gettysburg battlefield, given with a caption commenting on the monument’s significance for the veterans who oversaw their erections some 20-30 years after the battle.
Over de auteur
Dr. James Christian is an occupational medicine physician. He holds degrees from Harvard College and University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. He has long held an interest in the human toll of the Civil War, and in particular, the care of the wounded following Civil War battles. He has published Civil War articles in the Gettysburg Magazine and the Maine History Journal. He currently lives with his wife Nina in Maryland.
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