Union field hospital at Savage’s Station
As the Confederate economy was increasingly squeezed Southerners had to make due with less and come up with creative product substitutes. 150 years ago today evidence was published of another way to find supplies – digging up the graves of dead Yankees. From the Richmond Daily Dispatch October 21, 1863:
Buried.
–In the neighborhood of Savage’s Station, and along the Chickahominy where McClellan’s hosts pitched their tents for a time, many of the graves contained articles of far more value than the bodies of dead Yankees. In many of these pits large amounts of ammunition, clothing, medicines, etc., have been found, and only a few days since a gentleman accidentally dug into one of them and discovered a number of shovels, spades, and pickaxes. Tons of Minnie and other leaden balls can yet be gathered from these camps, the Yankees having strewn them over the ground in their haste to leave before our Southern soldiers came upon them.
