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The Gettysburg National Cemetery within the Gettysburg National Military Park is an Civil War cemetery created for Union casualties of the Battle of Gettysburg opened in November 1863.[2] In addition to reinterments from the Gettysburg Battlefield, the cemetery has subsequent sections for Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War and their spouses and children. The cemetery as a whole a part of the Gettysburg Battlefield Historic District as a historic district contributing structure as well as the various battlefield monuments, memorials, and exhibits displayed within.
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| Gettysburg National Cemetery | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| National Park Service | ||||
 | ||||
| For the Union soldiers of the Civil War | ||||
| Established | November 18, 1863 | |||
| Location | ||||
| Designed by | William Saunders | |||
| Total burials | 3,555 | |||
Unknowns | 979 | |||
| Burials by nation | ||||
Union (USA)
Confederate (CSA)
| ||||
The muffled drum’s sad roll has beat The soldier’s last tattoo, No more on life’s parade shall meet That brave and fallen few. | ||||
Soldiers' National Cemetery | ||||
Pennsylvania Historical Marker Program | ||||
 Entrance to National Cemetery, c.1920s | ||||
| Coordinates | 39°49′10.31″N 77°13′54.62″W | |||
| Built | October 27, 1863 | |||
| Architect | William Saunders | |||
| MPS | 64500520 | |||
| NRHP reference No. | 75000155 | |||
| Significant dates | ||||
| Designated NHLDCP | 1966 | |||
| Designated PHMP | December 12, 1947[1] | |||
History
In June 1863, Confederate forces under the command of Robert E. Lee pushed into Union territory. The Confederacy hoped that by bringing the war into the northern states, northern politicians would abandon the war and normalize the South’s secession. Union forces responded to the invading army, culminating in a confrontation near the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.[3] Union artillery in a cornfield at the subsequent cemetery site counter fired on Confederates west of Gettysburg at the seminary and railway cut.[4][5] By July 2, Confederate sharpshooters in Gettysburg were "picking off" Federals on the hill.[6]
For three days, more than 150,000 soldiers clashed in a series of Confederate assaults and Union defenses. On the third day of the battle, Lee ordered an assault on the Union’s center, a move now known as Pickett’s Charge. More than 12,500 Confederate soldiers marched on the Union position, coming under intense artillery fire. Union guns decimated the attacking Confederates, injuring or killing nearly 50 percent of the approaching brigades.[3] The charge’s strategic failure and loss of men forced Lee into retreat. Three days of fighting at Gettysburg took a horrible toll on both sides: 8,900 dead soldiers killed or mortally wounded, 30,000 injured, and 10,000 captured or missing.[7]
After the battle, bodies lay scattered throughout Gettysburg’s farmlands. Burial work commenced quickly as fears of epidemic rose. As one Confederate soldier recalled passing over the fields northwest of Gettysburg on July 4,
“The sights and smells that assailed us were simply indescribable-corpses swollen to twice their size, asunder with the pressure of gases and vapors…The odors were nauseating, and so deadly that in a short time we all sickened and were lying with our mouths close to the ground, most of us vomiting profusely.”[8]
The dead were hastily buried by townspeople and farmers who buried some of bodies at battlefield sites (e.g., along fences and stone walls) in shallow graves on the battlefield, crudely identified by pencil writing on wooden boards.[9][3] The local Provost Marshal solicited "Men, Horses, and Wagons…to bury the dead" in various Gettysburg Battlefield plots,[10] including any "rebel" bodies found on the battlefield.[11] As rain and wind began eroding the impromptu graves, Gettysburg’s citizens called for the creation of a soldiers’ cemetery for the proper burial of the Union dead.[3]
Creation
At the urging of local attorneys David McConaughy[12] who purchased land, including "the heights of Cemetery Hill," the same from which the Union center repulsed Pickett’s Charge, and David Wills who recommended a state-funded cemetery at the south slope of East Cemetery Hill "on the Baltimore turnpike, opposite the Cemetery"[13] the open, sloped tract of 8 acres (3.2 ha)[14] which was sold to Willis by Peter Thorn in 1899.[15] With the support of the Pennsylvania Governor, state-appropriated funds purchased the property, and the reburial process began four months after the battle on October 27, 1863 and continued through March 1864.[3][16]
Wills, after being designated Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin's agent,[17] purchased McConaughy's summit tract and later a second tract "between Evergreen and the five-acre tract of Miller's apple orchard"[13] totalling 17 acres (6.9 ha) for $2,475.87[18] ($64,740 in 2026 dollars).
The cemetery was designed by landscape architect William Saunders who designed the cemetery as a wide semi-circle, radiating from a central point to be decorated with a grand monument.[17] The cemetery’s sections were divided by state; smaller states closest to the monument and larger states along the outer portions.[19]
Construction
By the end of 1863, The Board of Commissioners of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg was organized at Harrisburg and incorporated on March 25, 1864.[20][21]
[22] Michigan appropriated the first payment from a state for the cemetery. By the federal turnover in 1872, 18 states had contributed $129,523.24.[13]: 26
Re-interments
Union remains were transferred from the various battlefields locations (e.g., on Cemetery Hill) as well as local church cemeteries, field hospital burial sites (e.g., Camp Letterman and the Rock Creek-White Run Union Hospital Complex), the York U.S. Army Hospital and the Valley of Death where unburied soldiers decomposed in place.[23][24]
In 1863, a re-interment contract was issued and required wooden boards nailed to the head of the coffins to protrude from the ground for displaying identities.[17]
Bodies and improvised gravesites were found in various locations around the town. In a former cornfield, the first re-interments were from the 1804 "United Presbyterian Burying Ground" and the "Associate Reformed Graveyard", which closed in 1899.[25][26][27][28]
By November 1863, 1188 remains, including 582 unknown, "had already been interred in the Cemetery".[29] The next month, in order to speed up the process, Wills advertised for farmers to report graves on their property.[30]
Confederate burials
Confederate burials did not receive placement in the national cemetery. Efforts in the 1870s by Southern veterans' societies eventually relocated 3,200 Confederate remains to cemeteries in Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas, such as Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. A few Confederates do remain interred at Gettysburg National Cemetery.
A few weeks after the burial process started, a dedication ceremony was held at the yet to be completed Soldiers' National Cemetery. The cemetery committee chose Massachusetts statesman and orator Edward Everett to deliver the main speech. The committee asked President Abraham Lincoln to deliver “a few appropriate remarks.” At the November 19 ceremony, Everett spoke for two hours on the causes of war and the events that led to the Battle of Gettysburg. After his remarks, Lincoln rose and spoke for two minutes; his brief speech today is known as the “Gettysburg Address.” His speech honored the brave men who fought and invoked their sacrifice as a cause to continue fighting for the preservation of the nation.
|-
| [when?]
| The "city of Boston" exhumed 158 soldiers' remains for reinterment in Massachusetts.[31]: 161
|-
| 1864-03-19
| † Samuel Weaver reported 3,512 total Union bodies "taken up and removed to the Soldiers' National Cemetery" October 27-March 18.[31]: 161
|-
| 1864-03-21
| † Wills identified the cemetery had 3,564 total burials, including those buried directly in the cemetery (not exhumed)[31]: 175 (e.g., Major George Tate's leg amputated at a hospital was buried in the cemetery which he annually visit from Massachusetts.)[32]
|-
| 1864-12
| † 37 more bodies had been located and reinterred, the stone walls had been completed (the lodge nearly so), and the "main avenue" was "ready for macadamizing".[13]
|-
| 1865
| Wills had iron fencing erected between the Soldiers' and Evergreen cemeteries[33] contrary to the condistion when Pennsylvania purchased McConaughy's tract.[34]
|-
| 1865-03-06
| ۩ The cemetery's 3 stone walls and the brick "gate house" (lodge) were complete, and the gate was ready to be erected.[31]
|-
| 1865-05
| § Daniel K. Snyder was appointed the cemetery superintendent, and was replaced in November by Sgt John McAllister.[13]: 21
|-
| 1865
| ۩ The wooden marker boards for each grave were replaced with gravestones (the CCC reset gravestones into concrete in 1934).[35]
|-
| [specify]
| † A Union soldier buried July 5, 1863, at South Mountain's Monterey toll house was reinterred at the cemetery (his wife visited both sites for the 1913 reunion).
|-
| 1865-07-04
| ۩ The "Exercises Incidental to the Laying of the Corner Stone" for the Soldiers' National Monument were conducted[36] after designs had been requested in 1864.[37]: 35
|-
| 1867-06-19
| To plan the transfer to the federal government, the "Board of Managers" appointed a committee[38] (Blake, Carr, Ferry, Hebard, McCurdy, Selleck, and Wills).[39]
|-
| 1867-06-20
| The Committee of Arrangement of the Board of Commissioners of the National Cemetery met Governor Geary, who with General Grant visited the cemetery.[39]
|-
| 1867
| ۩ The marble urn in the National Cemetery was dedicated to the 1st Minnesota Infantry.
|-
| 1869-07-01
| ۩ The Soldiers' National Monument was dedicated[22] after the crowning statue of the Genius of Liberty had arrived in October 1868. On August 26, the "Plenty" statue was added to the monument,[22] and the "Peace" statue was added between[specify] August 30, 1869,[40] and September 21, 1887.[41]
|-
| c. 1870
| ۩ The 2nd floor of the stone "gatehouse" (Greek Revival architecture) was expanded with a Mansard roof.
|-
| 1870-07-14
| "A Resolution Authorizing the Secretary of War to take charge of the Gettysburg and Antietam National Cemeteries" passed.[42]
|-
| 1871-07-22
| The commissioners met ""to close up the business of the Board preparatory to its transfer to the National Government".
|-
| 1872-05-01
| Pennsylvania ceded the cemetery to the Department of War[37] (the board of commissioners expired.)[43]
|-
| 1872-08
| § Charles Stambaugh became the superintendent until July 1873.[13]: 26
|-
| 1872-08-31
| ۩ The Reynolds statue cast from bronze cannon tubes[13]: 25 (Robert Wood & Co. foundry, J. Q. A. Ward design) was erected on a dark Quincy granite pedestal.[36]: 17
|-
| 1878-10
| ۩ 50 new iron settees were placed in the cemetery.
|-
| 1879-05
| ۩ The 1st rostrum of 20 ft × 40 ft (6.1 m × 12.2 m) was being completed by P. J. and J. J. Tawney,[44] with 12 brick columns and a 5-foot-high (1.5 m) high floor.[45] In addition to Decoration and Dedication days' observances, the building was used during military camps (e.g.,1882 Camp Burnside)[46] and 1890 Camp Abe Patterson).[47]
|-
| 1881-06
| † 20 skeletons plowed up on the Gelback Farm along the Emmitsburg Road were reinterred.
|-
| 1882
| ۩ 17 tablets were erected to display stanzas of Bivouac of the Dead (only 8 remain).[48]
|-
|1882-05-10
| † During Grand Central Avenue (now Hancock Avenue) construction, remains of a US soldier found on the Leister Farm were interred in the Cemetery.[49]
|-
|1884-11-08
| † First and only African-American veteran of the Civil War, Henry Gooden of the 127th Regiment United States Colored Troops, is buried among U.S. Regulars in the Civil War section.[50][51]
|-
| 1887-10-01
| § Battlefield guide[52] and assistant superintendent William Holtzworth replaced Supt. Nicholas G. Wilson who resigned to become the GBMA superintendent.[49]
|-
| 1889
| † Remains found during avenue construction were reinterred in the cemetery, and the cemetery gate to the Taneytown Road was planned.
|-
| 1889-09
| Joseph H. Smith constructed the "grand stand…for use on Thursday, Pennsylvania Day … on the large lawn in front of the rostrum".
|-
| 1890
| ۩ Two "Act of Congress Tablets" were placed in the cemetery to commemorate[48] the February 22, 1867 "act to establish and perfect National Cemeteries" (the congressional reburial program had been resolved on April 13, 1866).[53]
|-
| 1891-02
| ۩ The cemetery's Taneytown Road (west) entrance was built at the summit curve of the Gettysburg Electric Railway.[54]
|-
| 1891
| § Calvin Hamilton resigned as[55] local school board president and became the cemetery superintendent after 2 years as assistant to W. D. Holtzworth.
|-
| 1892
| ۩ William H. Tipton photographed the cemetery's summer house near the west gate.
|-
| 1893-07-02
| ۩ After an October 1890 objection by Wills had been resolved, the Ionic[43] New York State Monument[48] was unveiled with the "statue of “Victory” in the presence of at least 12,000 persons".[56] The ceremony concluded with an artillery salute by Battery C.
|-
| 1899
| † Remains found at the United Presbyterian Cemetery during construction of the shirt factory were reinterred in the cemetery.[28]
|-
| 1899-09-23
| † Remains of 18 soldiers found on Culp's Hill were reinterred in the cemetery.
|-
| 1900
| † Remains found by fence builders on a farm were reinterred in the cemetery.[57]
|-
| 1903
| ۩ A larger Gettysburg Rostrum was built 36.8 ft × 22 ft (11.2 m × 6.7 m) with a sod platform[48] to replace the original 1879 rostrum.
|-
|1904-05-30
| ¶ President Theodore Roosevelt delivered the Decoration Day address after detraining near the McPherson Ridge railway cut.
|-
| 1905
| The lodge at the Baltimore Pike entrance was dismantled[58] (teacher Ruth Hamilton at the High Street School had lived at the lodge).
|-
| 1906
| ۩ $6000 was appropriated for a new lodge for the superintendent[59] (Wm. H. Johns was the contractor.)
|-
| 1908
| Memorial flags were 1st used on the graves.
|-
| 1912-01-24
| ۩ The Lincoln Address Memorial was erected on the cemetery grounds "near site of original summer house".[48]
|-
| [specify]
| "A 205' macadam roadway [was] graded and piked around the Lincoln Memorial in 1909 [sic]."[60]
|-
| 1914-04
| § Major M. M. Jefferys succeeded Calvin Hamilton as superintendent and the Jefferys family moved into the lodge,
|-
| 1915-05
| The "Three-Mile Picture Show" named for the length of film recorded wreath-laying at the Lincoln Address Memorial by local "colored residents".[61][62]
|-
| 1915-05-06
| † Remains of a soldier discovered at Menchey's Spring on the base of East Cemetery Hill were reinterred in the cemetery.[62][63]
|-
| 1915-05
| § Acting superintendent Harry E. Koch replaced Major Jefferys who resigned during illness while at "Johns Hopkins hospital".[62]
|-
| 1915-09
| § Superintendent Austin. J. Chapman (1915 to 1918) prohibited hackmans' jitneys from carrying more than 15 persons into the cemetery.
|-
| 1928
| ¶ President Calvin Coolidge delivered the Memorial Day address in the rostrum.
|-
| 1928-09
| ۩ The brick comfort station at the cemetery opened[64] and closed in 1931 (the 1st Gettysburg Parkitecture comfort station was built in 1933.)[65]
|-
| 1930
| ¶ President Herbert Hoover delivered the Memorial Day address at the rostrum that had been temporarily extended by Army Quartermasters.
|-
| 1930-08-31
| § James W. Bodley retired after serving as superintendent since 1918.
|-
| 1933-06-10
| Executive Order 6166 combined management of the cemetery and military park with the Department of the Interior[13]: viii (9 others cemeteries transferred on July 28).[53]
|-
| 1933
| ۩ Lafayette Square fencing was moved to the cemetery after 1888 legislation had moved it[44] to East Cemetery Hill in 1889 (installed by Calvin Gilbert).[49]
|-
| 1936
| † A U.S. Colored Infantry soldier that died after the Civil War was reinterred from Yellow Hill Cemetery (Biglerville) into the cemetery.
|-
| 1938
| The National Park Service planted 200 rhododendron plants in the cemetery.[33]
|-
| 1942
| § Captain Earl Taute was the cemetery superintendent.
|-
| 1947/8
| † 850 World War II dead were reinterred "from European and South Pacific theaters".[66]
|-
| 1949
| Federal appropriations of $10,000 was planned for adding 5 acres (2.0 ha) to the cemetery.
|-
| 1955
| ۩ The American Legion Tablet was placed in the cemetery to honor the "efforts of American fighting forces in preservation of freedom of all men."[48]
|-
| 1955
| The Oscar-nominated The Battle of Gettysburg documentary filmed the cemetery.
|-
| 1963
| ¶ President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a dignitary in the Remembrance Day activities at the cemetery.
|-
| 1963-11-19
| Bethlehem Steel deeded 5 acres (2.0 ha) "to enlarge the present cemetery"[67] during a luncheon for the Lincoln Fellowship's 25th anniversary.
|-
| 1967-04-15
| A design for the annex between the north wall of the cemetery and Steinwehr Avenue had plans for 1666 graves.
|-
| 1968-02
| † The first burial was completed at the annex (a 22-car parking lot had been contracted on January 23, 1968).
|-
| [when?]
| † The last interment was made in the original cemetery area (closed October 27, 1972, except for spouse interments).
|-
| 1972
| The last formal speaker for a Decoration Day ceremony at the cemetery was in the rostrum.
|-
| 1976–08
| The National Park Service acquired the 4th of 6 houses along Steinwehr Avenue east of the Taneytown Road for the cemetery annex.[68]
|-
| 1980
| ۩ The cemetery's 1864 stone walls were reconstructed.
|-
| 1993-08-21
| ۩ The Friend to Friend Masonic Memorial in the annex was dedicated by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania.
|-
| 1997-07-01
| † Remains of a soldier discovered in 1996 during Seminary Ridge excavation were interred in the cemetery.
|}
