Civil War

Congressional Cemetery occupies 35 acres of land in the southeast section of Washington, DC, and has served as the final resting place for scores of elected officials and notable Washingtonians. The more than 60,000 gravesites include 806 maintained by VA. Some 168 of the VA sites are adorned with one of the most distinctive markers to be found in the cemetery—the iconic cenotaphs designed by Benjamin H. Latrobe, the nation’s first professional architect.

George Ford was a Veteran of the famed "Buffalo soldiers" after the Civil War. A U.S. law gave preference to employ Veterans to oversee the growing cemetery system for Union dead. So in 1878, Ford became one of the first Black Veteran superintendents of a national cemetery.

After the Civil War, thousands of Volunteer Soldiers needed care. Two women, Delphine Baker and Emma Miller were critically important to the creation and operation of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, the governments answer to providing healthcare to the Union volunteers during the Civil War.

On May 12, 1868, Dorothea L. Dix at last had the satisfaction of transferring to the Army ownership of the monument she helped finance and shepherd to completion.  Dedicated to “Union Soldiers who perished in the War of the Rebellion,” Dorothea Dix's monument was a 65-foot-tall granite obelisk erected in Hampton National Cemetery in Virginia near the large Civil War hospital at Fort Monroe.

To help with manpower shortages in the Civil War, President Lincoln authorized recruiting of "men of color" in 1862, using posters called broadsides to advertise the call to arms.

The 1867 “Act to establish and to protect National Cemeteries” directed the Secretary of War to appoint a superintendent for each cemetery who was to reside in a lodge at the main entrance of the property. The superintendent’s principal duties involved greeting visitors, answering their questions, and taking care of the grounds. The Army provided superintendents with printed disability certificates affirming that the recipient had “been found a meritorious and trustworthy person, disabled in the service of the United States.”

The pension system expanded enormously after the Civil War. The number of Union Veterans, widows, and dependents drawing a pension from the federal government rose from 15,000 in 1863 to over 200,000 in 1871. The soaring size and costs of the pension system raised concerns about the prevalence of fraud, which the Pension Bureau aimed to stop with special examiners.

The Civil War Veterans who resided in the barracks or entered the hospital at the Central Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (NHDVS) in Dayton, Ohio, knew that the home cemetery was most likely going to be their final resting place. a Veteran’s last journey, reported the Cincinnati Enquirer, followed a literal “underground path of death." Dayton's Tunnel terminated at a gated portal on the edge of what is now Dayton National Cemetery.

The Dayton Bible highlights the important role that religious faith and chaplains played in the lives of the National Home residents as well as later generations of Veterans.

Clara Barton earned lasting fame for her work ministering to the Union wounded during the Civil War and for founding the American Red Cross in the 1880s. But she also deserves to be remembered for a lesser-known chapter in her life sandwiched between these two episodes.

VA History Exhibit - Postcards were used frequently in the late 19th and early 20th century to capture Veterans' daily life at the 11 different National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers branches, which were early VA campuses. Check out the artwork and photographs from that era in this exhibit by VA History Office intern Kara Wheeler.

Just after Christmas in 1864, African American soldiers recuperating at the United States Colored Troops (USCT) L ‘Overture General Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, submitted a petition for the right to burial alongside their White counterparts in the city’s Soldiers' Cemetery, one of the first national cemeteries established by the U.S. government during the Civil War.