Mound City National Cemetery

[Bob Herr]

There are some 45 Confederate soldiers buried in the Mound City,IL National Cemetery. This cemetery is different from the other National Cemeteries in IL that have Confederates in them in that the Rebels are mixed in with the Union burials. Camp Butler,Rock Island and Alton have seperate Confederate sections but Confederates are mixed with the other graves at Mound City. I want to inquire if anyone out there knows of any other National Cemetery that has Union and Confederate graves side by side. This post may need to be in The Sinks but I posted under Preservation because there has been a lot of work in the last few years to keep Mound City open since it is nearly full. - Bob Herr

[Mrs. Buttrick]

Re: Mound City National Cemetery

There are some Confederate graves mixed in among the 37,000 graves at Wood National Cemetery, Milwaukee, but that might not have been the original plan. In the middle of the last century I-94 cut a substantial path through the cemetery, causing many of the 6,000+ Civil War veteran graves to be relocated. Now the state is contemplating widening the expressway... so much for eternal rest.

[georgewunderlich]

Re: Mound City National Cemetery

The hospital cemetary at St. Elizabeth's in DC has mixed graves. There are USCT and white, Union and Confederate all intermixed. There a quite a number of graves but I am not sure about the exact figure.

[georgewunderlich]

Re: Mound City National Cemetery

I forgot, Frederick has some mixed graves as well at Mount Olivette which was the official cemetary of the US hospitals in Frederick. There is a confederate section but it has some Union graves.

[Michael Comer]

Re: Mound City National Cemetery

The national cemetery in Springfield, MO has Confederate dead in it. They are in their own section though and not among the rest of the graves. If I remember correctly, and someone may need to correct me, they were mostly from Wilson's Creek. When the national cemetery needed to expand later on, the woman who owned the land the graves were on ceded her land for the cemetery with the stipluation that the Confederate graves had to stay where they were.

[Brent6871]

Re: Mound City National Cemetery

Culpeper, VA, Annapolis, MD and Yorktown, VA all have Confederate burials intermixed with Union burials.

[Matthew Semple]

Re: Mound City National Cemetery

It is common to find mixed cemeteries here in Annapolis and in Baltimore. Early in the war, soldiers from both sides who died in combat and in hospitals were buried in Washington city cemeteries. By mid-1862, major cities surrounding Washington began burying the dead from hospitals in their city cemeteries.

Loudon Park National Cemetery in Baltimore was created in late 1861 when the federal government purchased land from the city operated Loudon Park Cemetery. Union and Confederate soldiers who died in hospitals were buried there.

By mid-1862, the city of Baltimore began burying the Confederate Prisoners of War who died in captivity at Fortress McHenry in unpurchased plots at Loudon Park Cemetery. These Confederate POWs were not eligible for burial in Loudon Park National Cemetery because they had not died in a hospital.* When plots began to run out, private citizens who had already purchased plots in that section of the cemetery donated their plots to keep the cemetery uniform in appearance. After the war, some Confederate veterans requested to be buried there also. It became known as Confederate Hill. Other Confederate veterans along with several Union veterans purchased their plots in other parts of the city cemetery.

*Note: Confederate Prisoners of War who died in hospitals were eligible for burial in national cemeteries. Confederate Prisoners of War who died in POW Camps were not eligible for burial in national cemeteries.

[MissouriStateGuard]

Re: Mound City National Cemetery

Bob,

The national cemetery at Fort Leavenworth has an area of Confederate dead (mostly prisoners who died of wounds during the kansas leg of Price's Missouri Campaign of 1864) surrounded by Federal dead, with no attempt to segregate or discriminate into a specific "plot."

The Fort Scott (Kansas) National Cemetery has a similar area with Confederate dead, including those who died in capativity at the fort, surrounded by Federal graves that include USCT.

The Confederate section of the Springfield, MO National Cemetery that Michael mentions was purchased by private donation in the 1890's- part of the money going to the land (adjacient to the national cemetery) and part for contractors to disinter Confederate and Missouri State Guard dead from sites across southern Missouri (the majority, as Michael says, from the Wilson's Creek battlefield.) Eventually the national cemetery expanded and enveloped the Confederate cemetery. The United Daughters of the Confederacy held deed to the property until the 1980s when they donated the land to the Department of Veterans Affairs; this was beneficial to both groups as the UDC was no longer responsible for costly maintenance and the VA needed expansion space for current interrments.

The donation offered another decade of expansion for the Springfield National Cemetery, which closed around 1995. Although no Federal Civil War veterans are buried among the Confederates, veterans from WWII though the 1990s are placed between the Southern dead.

I hope this helps,

Kip Lindberg

[Bob Herr]

Re: Mound City National Cemetery

Thanks to all of you for the informative replies. I thought Mound City might be unique but it obviously is not. Matthew Semple's comments shed much light on the situation because Mound City was the graveyard for the Union hospitals in the area and was not a Confederate prison camp like Alton,Camp Butler or Rock Island. This would appear to be the reason for the mixed burials. One more comment. the Confederate Burial mound in Oakwood in Chicago has a fewUnion soldiers in it too. They have individual tombstones but the 4000 plus confederates have their names on plaques that are fastened to the base of the momument - Bob Herr

[Michael Comer]

Re: Mound City National Cemetery

Kip,

Thanks for clearing up the info on the Springfield cemetery. I was pretty sure I was incorrect in the details.