Some interesting facts about Civil War headstones in this article, which discusses the replacement of some unusual grave markers near Petersburg:

1. They are way longer than I expected them to be!
2. A civil servant during the Depression convinced the government to save on all that unseen marble by laying headstones flat on the ground. (Which is why the ones in question are being replaced.)
3. Old headstones are ground up rather than preserved, by law.

(None of these were covered in Drew Faust’s excellent work about Civil War death and remembrance, This Republic of Suffering, though it is an excellent look at changes to the social customs around death wrought by the war’s tremendous casualty list.)