Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1892 — A Relic of Libby. [ARTICLE]

A Relic of Libby.

Hanging on one of tho Libby-prison war museum is a little weather-beaten pine board. It is about nino inches Bquare, and its edges and corners have been rounded by time, one of the headboards taken from a grave in the Gettysburg battlefield. This reile has been nlnced in the museum simply to show tho character of head-board used after a battle, and when one realizes that this little board was better than that over the graves of ninetenths of the fallen soldiers, it demonstrates some of the terrible results of the late civil war. It is a more than nine-tenths of the poor fellows that died on the battlefield wore buried with Unit inscription, •’unknown,” ut thoir hoad. At Salisbury. N. C., alone, there are graves of 12,126 soldiers, and 12,032 have only that little inscription at their he id. Official statistics show that of the 2.653,000 men that enlisted in response to the successive calls of President Lincoln, there were 44,238 killed in battle, 44,205 that died of wounds, 186,216 of disease and 24,181 of unknown cuusos, making a total of 803,843.