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 25th.
Many of the wounded still remain in the hospitals that now
spot the town.
