The following day, a large number of people attended the funeral service held at the Arsenal.

The processions then moved to gravesites in Congressional Cemetery where two pits were dug: one for the identified bodies and the second for the unidentified.

In the years that followed, there were additional explosions that happened at the Arsenal, including one that claimed the lives of 10 men.

While husbands from Washington, D.C., were busy fighting in the war, some of their wives took up jobs throughout the city to earn money or to demonstrate patriotism.

At the Washington Arsenal, now known as Fort Lesley J. McNair, women worked a variety of jobs.

[1][2][3] The Arsenal was established in 1791 and, during the Civil War, it housed around 40 buildings containing ammunition, flares, and other military artillery.

The flares contained potassium chloride, strontium nitrate, and carbon, and were drying in an out-of-the way area by two buildings.

[5] Earlier that morning, the women had received a message thanking them for donating $170 towards a memorial for the Allegheny Arsenal explosion that occurred in 1862.

[6] Many of the women were wearing hoop skirts that caught fire as they tried to escape the burning building.

A few women who were rescued from the flames were taken to the Potomac River and thrown in the water to extinguish their burning clothes.

Three women were most likely in shock when they began running up a hill while their clothes were on fire, but Arsenal employees managed to save them.

Some of the survivors who were able to walk made their way to boats en route to the Sixth Street Wharf, where their families could take them home.

In total, 21 women died, some of whom were burned beyond recognition and only identifiable by a ring, piece of a dress, or other personal items.

[3] After the explosion, uninjured people from the Arsenal, military medical personnel, and several volunteer fire department companies arrived and began assisting the wounded.

He told the Arsenal's commandant "You will not spare any means to express the respect and sympathy of the government for the deceased and their surviving friends.

"[4] The following day male employees of the Arsenal adopted resolutions to not only have a funeral service for the women who died, but to include a large procession to Congressional Cemetery, where a monument would be erected to honor the victims.

The funeral service at Congressional Cemetery began when the six identified victims and eight unidentified were placed in pits measuring 15-feet (4.6 m) wide and 5 1/2-feet deep.

[4] There was an investigation and a coroner's inquest of the disaster, which revealed thousands of cartridges were carelessly put in an area where they could ignite.

"[1] During the trial, Brown claimed to not know how the explosions occurred since the materials he was drying did not include sulphur.

[4] Congress passed a resolution on July 4, 1864, to pay victims' families "the sum of two thousand dollars, be and the same is hereby, appropriated out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, for the relief of victims of such explosion, – said money to be distributed under the direction of Major Benton, commanding at said arsenal and in such manner as shall most conduce to the comfort and relief of said sufferers, according to their necessities respectively, and that he report to this house.

The statue on top of the monument is of a woman with long hair wearing a gown, symbolizing Grief.

The second layer of the base includes reliefs of hourglasses with wings, demonstrating the women's time had ended.

[11] The inscriptions on the monument are:[11] Killed by an explosion at the U.S. arsenal Washington D.C. June 17th 1864 Flannery Bro.

In describing the event, a reporter for The Evening Star wrote "The terrible scene, immediately after the explosion, was only equalled by the scene at the explosion in June 1864, some of the corpses being burned, blackened, and torn so as to expose the entrails, and none being recognizable from the features.

[13] Personnel from Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall held a ceremony on the same day, honoring the women who lost their lives helping to defend the Union.