Friday, December 4, 2009

Remembrance Day - November 21, 2009

Do you remember Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?? Then you should know about Remembrance Day and Gettysburg National Cemetery located on Cemetery Hill. On this day they place a flag for each fallen soldier.




The site was purchased and Union dead were moved from shallow and inadequate battlefield burial sites to this cemetery. Williams Saunders was a landscape architect and founder of the National Grange. His design had two facets: first, the Soldiers National Monument was placed at the center, promoting the Union victory. Secondly, the graves were arranged in a series of semicircles emphasizing the fundamental egalitarian nature of U.S. society with all graves considered equal. The cemetery was dedicated on November 19, 1863. It was here that Abraham Lincoln delivered his most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address. It became a National Cemetery on May 1, 1872 when control was transferred to the War Department. 3,512 Union soldiers are buried in the cemetery with 979 unknown. From 1870 and 1873, 3,320 Confederate dead were reburied in Richmond, Raleigh, Savannah and Charleston at the initiative of the Ladies Memorial Associations of these cities.


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