u/Feaselbf6

drlindseyfitzharris On July 4, 1863, Vicksburg fell to General Ulysses S. Grant-the same man who, a year later, would order embalmers off the battlefield entirely.
Before the mid-19th century, embalming was not typically used in funerary practice. It was mainly employed to preserve specimens after dissection. A sea-change in embalming came with the American Civil War, during which there was an outcry for fallen soldiers to be returned to their families for burial. It was during this period that the foundations of the modern funeral industry were laid, and the embalmer-as a professional—began to emerge. But not everyone was happy about the commodification of death.
Embalmers following the Union and Confederate armies around the country were portrayed as vultures fattening themselves on the dead. They pitched tents close to battle sites, and offered soldiers the chance to pre-pay for their own embalming should they be killed. Over the course of the war, one embalmer named Thomas Holmes embalmed 4,000 men. In shops in Washington, Georgetown and Alexandria, he displayed the preserved bodies of unknown soldiers, which he collected from battlefields. Fortunately, there is no record of an unsuspecting relative stumbling across a lost loved one propped up in Holmes's window.