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The post–Civil War relocation of Union dead from the battle-ravaged Southern landscape into orderly new national cemeteries by the U.S. Army is partial fulfillment of President Abraham Lincoln’s promise “to care for him who shall have borne the battle.” The lesser-known individual most responsible for this feat is Brevet Lieutenant Colonel and Assistant Quartermaster of Volunteers Edmund Burke Whitman (1812–1883), who was also superintendent of national cemeteries. Based in the Military Division of the Tennessee in the Department of the Cumberland, Whitman led this solemn mission over four years with a deep commitment toward finding thousands of remains, selecting land for new cemeteries and methodically reinterring the dead — all the while creating crucial “mortuary records.” His accountability for the dead across the “interminable grave-yard” left in the wake of fighting led to passage of the National Cemetery Act of 1867, the first substantive legislation to define national cemeteries and provide permanent grave markers for those who served. The United States was the first country to do this.

At the end of Whitman’s tenure in 1869, he submitted to his superiors a remarkable report that spells out the breadth, timeline, methods, ethics and outcome of the reinterment mission. The mortuary statistics on many of the 130 or so pages are valuable, but the report’s unique significance is in its illustrations: sketch views and site plats for about 20 national cemeteries in the report, as well as separate, individual “cemeterial district” maps where the dead were found and their destination national cemetery. Whitman’s remarkably illustrative report is born of some of his pre-war work.

Whitman, 49, enlisted in the Civil War on July 18, 1862. Older than most volunteers but with an eclectic and suitable background, Captain Whitman was assigned duties in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee during the war. Whitman was born in Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard College in 1838 and taught in the East until 1855, when he moved to Lawrence in Kansas Territory as a representative of the New England Emigrant Aid Society. He also farmed and oversaw construction, and in the late 1850s, partnered with surveyor Albert D. Searl in real estate investments. Services offered by “Whitman & Searl” included mapping farms, bridges and railroads, and “architectural drawings of every description … town plats, and historical views of scenes.”

Finding the Dead

The U.S. Army had begun to bury its dead at major battle sites in Tennessee before Whitman’s posting there in December 1865 under Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas, commander of the Department of the Cumberland. Whitman, however, was tasked with the broader scope of “visiting battle-fields, cemeteries, and places where Union dead are interred” throughout the military division, which included Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississsippi and Tennessee.

He oversaw three major expeditions in addition to numerous shorter trips to map the fallen. His findings percolated into “definite cemeterial districts ranged around some central spot, convenient and appropriate,” where a national cemetery was established. The two dozen or so districts were eventually drafted separately by Charles “Chas.” F. Smith, inked on heavy stock in black and filled in with vivid pastel pink, green and blue watercolor washes. The elegant, very small drawings — most scaled at 32½ miles per inch — show geographic features and, in red ink, a flag for the cemetery. Their cheery appearance belies the human mortality they illustrate.

Whitman personally visited “the most interesting places and … most important routes.” He first set out on March 1, 1866, with officers, soldiers and clerks and equipped with “a field note-book and a pocket compass.” That May, some of his findings were used to brief a U.S. congressional committee visiting Memphis about the reinterment effort. Before the group left Tennessee, the essence of the 1867 legislation “with many of its details were … agreed upon,” Whitman later reflected. He was promoted to brevet major the following month and ordered to the “duty of locating, purchasing, and establishing National Cemeteries, and preparing Mortuary Records in the Military Division of the Tennessee.” Disinterment began in October 1866, and in January 1867, Whitman was named superintendent of national cemeteries, though technically it was only for the Department of the Tennessee.

To foster consistency, as early as June 1866, Whitman identified four “principles which should govern in the selection of national cemetery sites.” Major battle sites met the first criteria as “distinguished localities, of great historical interest” to honor the Union’s sacrifice. These included three Tennessee cemeteries Thomas authorized in 1863 — first at Chattanooga (five weeks after Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania), then and Nashville. Army chaplains Thomas B. Van Horne and William Earnshaw were at work in Nashville when Whitman arrived, and he wrote that they were “justly entitled to the credit of being the pioneers in the work of disinterring the dead in the Division.” This trio of sites also reflect two more principles — “points conspicuous … on the great thorough-fares of the nation” and “central points, convenient of access” — considering their proximity to transportation by waterway, railway and roadway. After the war, Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs directed officers in other military divisions to select burial sites for their Union dead, but it was Whitman who established the broad system of reinterments under the quartermaster’s authority before it was codified by law.