Identification Tags During The Civil War

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“Between 1862 and 1913, while the military considered a number of options for identifying soldier remains on the battlefield, individual soldiers continued to utilize makeshift identification methods. In 1906, a circular aluminum disc was presented. By 1913, identification tags were made mandatory by the military.” (http://taskandpurpose.com/a-brief-history-of-the-dog-tag/) The identification tags used during this era were circular and contained the similar information the current ones do. A couple decades later the circular tags became more oval and that’s when they were nicknamed dog tags due to the similar appearance of actual dog tags. Discipline in every service member is what made them realize the value of the identification tags in their boot. Discipline instilled throughout every service member career can lead them to achieve great things like GySgt Hathcock once did. …show more content…
According to the National Museum of Naval Aviation: “In the days of the Civil War, 1861-1865, some soldiers going into combat improvised their own identification, pinning slips of paper with name and home address to the backs of their coats, stenciling identification on their knapsacks or scratching it in the soft lead backing of the Army belt buckle.”(https://www.armydogtags.com/dog-tag-history/) This quote goes to show that, before dog tags, no actual uniformed way of identifying fallen soldiers was deemed a necessity. Later on in the same article, it is explained that without an actual identification more than one hundred fifty thousand of the fallen were “unidentified”. Dog tags nowadays have your EDIPI written on them instead of your SSN for security purposes but it doesn’t change the fact that it still does what it’s supposed