SIR, - I noticed in your issue of the 22d inst. an article
in answer to a letter from a Mr. King of Kossuth relative to the sending home
of Robert Barn’s remains undressed in uniform.
I assisted the bereaved father of the deceased (also a member of Co. k,
2d Iowa Cavalry) in expressing the remains of his son home and would say to
inquirers that Mr. B. did not decide to send the body home until after it was
prepared for burial by the government and it was then too late to dress it in
uniform because of the delays which would be caused in making out the papers
necessary for obtaining the clothes from the Hospital officers. I will further add for the benefit of those
having friends sick in the army, that the sick are well attended to in very
comfortable hospitals, and the dead decently buried, though not in
uniform. The graves all are numbered and
a record kept, so that friends can find the graves of the deceased relatives
should they ever desire to do so.
Yours,
L. B. PIERCE
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye,
Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 1, 1862, p. 2
