Dr. Burr at his field embalming tent. By the time the Civil War had started in earnest, the embalming tent was a battlefield staple. Embalming surgeons traveled from site to site looking for the dead and pumping a mixture of arsenic and other chemicals into their veins which delayed the decaying process. Most charged around $7 for enlisted men and $13 for officers.
It is certainly true that officers were given preference in the disposition of their remains, but bereaved families of enlisted men did their best to retrieve their loved ones and bury them “at home.” Embalming was a much rarer occurrence in the Confederacy than in the North, but Northern embalmers advertised in Southern newspapers, pointing out the convenience of their newly opened “field offices” on the site of recent battles. Embalmer and medical doctor William Maclure promised “persons at a distance” that “BODIES OF THE DEAD” would be “Disinterred, Disinfected, and SENT HOME” from any place within the Confederacy.