Remains Of 28 Civil War Veterans, Found In Funeral Home Storage, Finally Laid To Rest

Nice to see some news that can hopefully unite most Americans, even for a moment, on a historic Election Day. The Associated Press reports that 28 Civil War veterans whose cremated remains were left in a Seattle funeral home for decades are being properly laid to rest at long last. https://twitter.com/AP/status/1853643433207812481 This is all thanks to exceptional due diligence by those involved with the Missing In America Project, a nonprofit organization whose mission is "to locate, identify and inter the unclaimed cremated remains of American veterans." The MIA Project has interred 6,848 veterans to date since launching in January 2007, according to their official website. The AP report indicates that Washington state coordinator Tom Keating was critical to the efforts, and that a number of the Union soldiers have been buried at Tacoma National Cemetery in Kent, Washington. According to Keating, the MIA Project couldn't track down any living ancestors of the vets. One of the veterans was a Confederate Army deserter who joined the Union Army. Another survived getting shot thanks to his pocket watch. At the Tahoma National Cemetery burials, each veteran's name and military achievements were announced, and crowds sang "Battle Hymn of the Republic" as musket volleys were fired. The remains of one veteran, hospital steward Byron Johnson, were sent to Pawtucket City Hall in Rhode Island, prompting the best statement from the AP report by Pawtucket Mayor Donald R. Grebien: "When you have somebody who served in a war but especially this war, we want to honor them...It became more intriguing when you think this individual was left out there and not buried in his own community. [...] It was important to remind people not only in Pawtucket but the state of Rhode Island and nationwide that we have people who sacrificed their lives for us and for a lot of the freedoms we have." Johnson passed away in 1913, and had moved to San Francisco, then to Seattle after the war. Several of the vets fought at Gettysburg, and in digging into some background for this story, I found a photo of reunited Union and Confederate soldiers on the 50-year anniversary of Pickett's Charge. https://twitter.com/DStarmanHockey/status/1852292391199277203 Commanded chiefly by James Longstreet on the Confederate side, Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg was a major push by the Confederate Army to gain a stronghold in the North. It was a pivotal moment in the Civil War, where the Union Army decisively pushed back the offensive ordered by Robert E. Lee. Over half of the Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured in the Union rout. The photo above from 1913 shows both Union (blue) and Confederate (gray) veterans. It's quite surprising to see such polarized, opposing forces being cordial with each other despite how brutal the Civil War was. As far as the United States has come from that horrible conflict for the better, that picture still predates the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote and wasn't certified until 1920. What a noble initiative the MIA project is, though. Americans going out of their way to honor veterans who sacrificed so much and helped shape the massive improvement and general trajectory of the country? That's something I feel like all of us can get behind. Identifying the Union veterans took a team of dedicated volunteers combing through records and conducting genealogical research to confirm the soldiers' identities. The process to getting these vets to their final, rightful resting place took a period of years. Now that's what you call peak patriotism, am I right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XJY9qKdwwo