FOUR OAKS (AP) — Researchers are testing whether the stains on the floor of a Civil War battlefield hospital were left by the blood of wounded soldiers.
The state Cultural Resources department expects to learn this summer the origin of the stains in the floors of the Harper House at the state’s Bentonville battlefield site.
A forensic team recently examined the floors of the big house where nearly 600 soldiers from both armies were treated during the three-day battle.
Scientists took samples from the 1850s floor boards and also searched the crevices between the boards.  Samples will be analyzed at a laboratory in Hilton Head Island, S.C.
Bentonville was the site of the Civil War’s last major Confederate offensive in 1865 in Johnston County near Smithfield. It involved 60,000 Union troops and 20,000 Confederates.