Why Is Gutlib Alive

Things aren't always as they seem. My great great great uncle Gutlib, was born sixteen years before the American Civil War was at its height. Gutlib bravely went to fight for the Union. Soon after he went to fight, communication ceased between Gutlib and his family. During the war, the family was unsure whether Gutlib was alive, all they had keeping them going was the hope that he was okay. After the war ended, the family still hadn’t heard from him for weeks, possibly months, and he was presumed dead. His family mourned his death, shocked that he was killed in the war. They held a funeral in his honor and were completely devastated by their loss. The weeks passed and nothing changed. Then one day, while looking over the hill that the family house faced in Pennsylvania,
The average age of soldiers fighting in the Civil War were 25.8 years old, consisting of only male fighters (“Civil War Facts”). At the time, communication on the battlefield continued to advance greatly (“Civil War Technology”). President Lincoln could communicate to different battlefields via a new technology called telegraphs; however, this technology was not widespread enough for the soldiers to use to communicate to their families (“Civil War Technology”). Soldiers had to send letters through the post office, which proved to be a very slow process due to the Union blocking mail coming out and going to the Confederate states (Burke). Back in the civil war, soldiers did not wear dog takes or any identifiers on their bodies, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers remaining unidentified (“Then & Now: Caring for War’s Dead and Wounded.”). To make matters worse, there was no technology to persevere soldiers bodies for a proper funeral at home (“Then & Now: Caring for War’s Dead and Wounded.”). Many families were unable to properly identify and bury dead soldiers due to the lack of technology that could preserve