Gettysburg S Confederate Dead

At least 10,000 Union and Confederate soldiers lost their lives as a result of the Battle of Gettysburg. Visitors and readers quickly learn that the former were eventually interred in the National Cemetery. What happened to the Confederate dead? Their journey to a peaceful afterlife, explains historian Gregory Coco in Gettysburg’s Confederate Dead, was a much longer and lonely experience.

This unique study is divided into two sections. Part I explains the riveting story of how a local physician made it his mission to identify as many of the Southern dead as possible to save them from oblivion. How he did so, and the heartbreaking details involved, is riveting. This section also sets forth how another Gettysburg doctor disinterred 3,320 sets of Confederate remains and shipped them South between 1871–1873, partially in an effort to keep them from being obliterated by area farmers. Part II is an 80-page alphabetical roster of 1,400 identified Confederates, including their initial and final grave locations, as well as their units, ages, and date of death. Finally, several appendices discuss Confederate casualties, the burial sites themselves, missing bodies, and other related interesting topics.

This fascinating and indispensable reference work on a macabre subject belongs in the library of every student of Gettysburg.

Gregory Ashton Coco, born and raised in Louisiana, lived in the Gettysburg area for nearly 35 years. In 1972, after serving in the U.S. Army, he earned a degree in American History from the University of Southwestern Louisiana. While in the military, Greg spent a tour of duty in Vietnam as a prisoner of war military interrogator and infantry platoon radio operator with the 25th Infantry and received, among other awards, the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. During his years in Gettysburg, Greg worked as a National Park Service Ranger and a Licensed Battlefield Guide. He wrote sixteen books and a dozen scholarly articles on Gettysburg and the Civil War. His A Strange and Blighted Land. Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle was voted #12 in the Top 50 Civil War Books ever written.

Greg died at age 62 in February of 2009. In his words, he was “the happy husband of Cindy L. Small for 26 years. He was the fortunate father of daughter, Keri E. Coco. He loved them both with all his heart.” Keri is married to Cail MacLean and they have a daughter, Ashton MacLean Coco.