The Fate of Soldiers’ Remains — Livestream with Dr. James J. Broomall

Explore what happened to Civil War soldiers’ bodies after the battle

Join us on Wednesday, August 24 at 1:00 PM on Facebook for a livestream hosted by the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. You can tune in by visiting facebook.com/CivilWarMed at the scheduled time.

Major Sullivan Ballou’s last letter home has become something of a sacred text. Supposedly penned days before the first major battle of the American Civil War, the Major’s words enjoyed an outsized afterlife when they became part of Ken Burns’ immensely popular documentary, The Civil War. Burns concludes the stirring segment by relating Ballou’s sad fate: mortally wounded at the Battle of Bull Run. But his story did not end there. Director of Education John Lustrea will talk with Dr. James J. Broomall about the fate of Civil War soldiers’ remains, including the collection and display of human bones.

Dr. James J. Broomall holds the Ray and Madeline Johnston Endowed Chair in American History at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, WV, and is the director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War. He is a cultural historian of the Civil War era and has published articles and essays in Common Place, Civil War Times, Civil War History, and The Journal of the Civil War Era and co-edited with William A. Link, Rethinking American Emancipation: Legacies of Slavery and the Quest for Black Freedom (Cambridge University Press, 2016). The University of North Carolina Press published his book, Private Confederacies: The Emotional Worlds of Southern Men as Citizens and Soldiers, in 2019.

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