Published: May 23, 2009 08:00 pm      

U.S. maintains 141 national cemeteries

In July 1862, Congress passed legislation that allowed the President to purchase land to be used as cemeteries “for soldiers who shall have died in the service of the country.” Fourteen cemeteries were established the first year.

One of those cemeteries, located near Sharpsburg, Md., was nearly filled, when 4,476 Union soldiers were killed in one day in the Battle of Antietam.

By 1870, the number of national cemeteries has swollen to 73, which held the remains of the nearly 300,000 Union soldiers lost during the Civil War.

Many of those cemeteries were located in the southeast, where much of the fighting occurred during the Civil War. After the war, the Army sent out crews to recover the remains of soldiers that were sometimes buried near where they were killed. These remains were brought to national cemeteries for burial.

In the 1930s, more national cemeteries were established closer to larger metropolitan areas to serve those veterans who lived in those areas.

Some national cemeteries located near famous battlefields such as Gettysburg are maintained by the National Park Service because of their historical significance.

However, in 1973, control of the national cemeteries was transferred from the U.S. Department of the Army to the Veteran Administration, which now is the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Today there are 141 national cemeteries. The National Cemetery Administration, part of the Department of Veterans Af-fairs, administers 125 of them. The Army administers two others, Arlington and Soldiers Home. The remaining 14 are managed by the Department of the Interior.

There are 17,000 acres in the national cemeteries and they contain the remains of 3 million veterans dating back to the Revolutionary War to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.