Commemoration
"The formulaic graffiti, giving names and unit affiliations, echo officially sanctioned public inscriptions on soldiers’ grave markers and memorials. Some could be viewed as an informal imitation of these: recording the soldier’s name in the place where they had served and connecting them to the site in a material way. The inclusion of dates in many inscriptions adds to the sense of testimony. J. A. Baird argues that the “solid materiality” of graffiti gives them a longevity and physical presence that is apt for informal commemoration. The inscription can “speak for itself long after the writer has gone.”"
The location of much of the graffiti means that the soldiers who wrote it would have been thinking about the possibility of death. Several sites are near battlefields, including Frederickburg and Manassas. Thirteen of the sites Reed identified in Virginia served as hospitals for at least some period of time, including both Blenheim House and the Graffiti House, as well as Ben Lomond.
Seeking to commemorate their presence with graffiti would have been particularly compelling to Civil War soldiers given the conditions in which they died and the practices of burial.
Casulties were so high that identifying and burying the dead was an overwhelming job. Bodies could lie on the battlefield for days, only then to be buried in mass graves. Even larger numbers died from disease. The identity of the dead could be lost in the scale of death. Soldiers did not carry formal identification; the dog tags we associate with the military did not exist at the time of the Civil War.