This is one of the most gruesome artifacts I've seen from the war and is on display at the Fredericksburg Battlefield Visitor's Center.
This is one of the most gruesome artifacts I've seen from the war and is on display at the Fredericksburg Battlefield Visitor's Center. This was found on the battlefield after the war and is a bayonet thrust through a shoe. The card says the bones of a foot were found inside this shoe when recovered. Bayonet wounds were very rare during the war, despite what is s often depicted in fanciful paintings. I imaged bayonet wounds would mainly be in the body, but for some reason a bayonet thrust through a foot seems extremely savage and barbaric to me. Only those who served in this war knew the true horrors it entailed. The stories we read today are largely sanitized, as it was thought impolite to write of the true horrors of the war, these accounts exist, but were rarely mentioned in letters or histories written by the soldiers on either side. As Walt Whitman famously said, "Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background of countless minor