October 4, 1863---The lingering stench of death: Gettysburg in Autumn.

OCTOBER 4, 1863:    

Burials and reburials are still going on at Gettysburg. However, it is a hot Indian Summer, and the three-month sojourn that many of the corpses have already had in the ground (buried helter-skelter after the battle and now disinterred for reburial in the new National Cemetery) has turned the task both sickening and pestilential. The stench of death hovers like a miasma over the town. It is finally decided, on this day, that all handling of remains will be delayed until after the first frost. The frost occurs very late, on October 25^th.

Many of the wounded still remain in the hospitals that now spot the town.