Largest Civil War Cemeteries

 

As armies on both sides marched off to what they believed was to be a short conflict, no one would imagine that by the end of the war the government would set up the first national cemetery system. To further fuel the fires of hate building in the South, Congress forbade the interment of Confederates at these sites. What Congress first assumed would be limited to less than a dozen sites, grew to seventy three by the end of the war. This month I have listed these “final campsites” of our ancestors by their 1875 totals. Some of these are not accurate due to partial remains and mass graves and will forever be left to history as approximations.

 

1. Blandford Church Cemetery (30,000) Petersburg, Virginia – Setting on top Wells Hill, the village of Blandford saw lots of action during the war. A key piece of high ground protecting the last rail lines into Richmond ended the war with more men buried along its path than Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia as they marched away. As the war left the small community, civilians began to move these bodies from their rough graves along the battle lines to the small church yard on Wells Hill. Raising funds and forming burial parties, these community members re-interred an estimated 12,000 CSA soldiers into the eastern section of the Blandford Church Cemetery. As with many mass graves of the Civil War, it is uncertain how many soldiers actually rest within Blandford. Most frequently cited as 30,000 interments, the total is probably lower. A 1890 article from the Richmond Daily Dispatch listed the sum as “Nearly twenty thousand.” Whatever the exact count, it can be said there are more “residents” in the cemetery at Blandford Church, than there are in the village itself.

                        When Union General Ambrose E. Burnside launched his ill-executed Battle of the Crater on July 30, 1864, his primary objective was to break through and hold the high ground at Blandford Church.

 

2. Hollywood Cemetery (18,000) Richmond, Virginia – Established just ten years prior to the onset of the war. Hollywood Cemetery, named for the holly tree grove on its hillsides, became the prestigious resting ground in Richmond. By the end of the war, these Richmond elite began “rubbing elbows” with soldiers from the seventy hospitals in Richmond and as well as neighboring battlefields, including Gettysburg some 180 miles away. Because of these burials, and the generals and statesmen residing in its grounds, Hollywood may rightly be considered the Arlington of the Confederacy.

                  Hollywood Cemetery contains the graves of Presidents James Monroe and John Tyler, as well as Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In addition, more Confederate generals are buried in Hollywood (25) than anywhere else.

 

3. Oakwood Cemetery (17,200) Richmond, Virginia – Around the time of the establishment of Hollywood Cemetery, Oakwood was already running out of room. After 1861, it burst its borders. The chief cause of the cemetery’s rapid population increase during the war was not from the battlefields nearby but rather from the adjacent facility called Chimborazo Hospital. Once an efficient hospital staffing over 300 nurses and complete with its own diary and cattle yard, Chimborazo turned out over 35,000 causalities in just over six weeks during the Wilderness Campaign.  Many of Oakwood’s unknown come from this period, when shorthanded burial crews were forced to pike the dead into mass graves.

                  During the War, Chimborazo Hospital processed some 76,000 cases, and lost more than twenty percent of them. Such a mortality rate was considered commendable at the time.

 

4. Vicksburg National Cemetery (17,077) Vicksburg, Mississippi – At the right flank of the Union assault on Vicksburg is a terraced 166-acre burial ground containing the largest number of Union Soldiers of any national cemetery. When original wooden grave markers began to rot in the 1870s, the federal government replaced them with permanent white marble tombstones – upright slabs for the known, and small cubes for the unknown. Of the burials in Vicksburg National Cemetery, seventy-five percent are unknown, including ninety eight percent of the African Americans buried there.

                        Despite its massive number of interments, Vicksburg National Cemetery holds few high-ranking officers. Highest is Brevet Brigadier General Embury D. Osband, who led U.S. Grant’s cavalry escort during the siege, and later commanded a brigade in the Third U.S. Colored Cavalry.

 

5. Nashville National Cemetery (16,485) Nashville Tennessee – Selected due to its location along the Louisville railway before you arrived in town, the Nashville National Cemetery now is nestled closely into the city limits. Many of the 12,486 known and 3,999 unknown are from nearby military hospitals. Also buried in its grounds are Federals who died in operations in southern Kentucky. While many of the Union dead from the nearby battle of Franklin lie in the grounds of the National Cemetery, their Confederate counterparts are buried on the MgGavock family plantation of Carnton. On land donated and maintained by the McGavocks following the war, 1,481 of the battle’s 1,750 Confederate dead are buried. It is the largest privately owned military cemetery in the United States.

                  The soldiers in Nashville National Cemetery represent 750 different regiments and were found in 251 different burial sites.

 

6. Arlington National Cemetery (16,000) Arlington Virginia -  The 1,100 acres of ground belonging to Robert E. Lee had already been confiscated by the Union Army when Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs recommended the establishment of a 200-acre national cemetery outside the front doors of the family home. Union remains were gathered from Manassas, Spotsylvania, and Wilderness and reburied on the front lawns of the mansion. By 1865, Arlington contained nearly 5,000 bodies. Two years later the total exceeded 15,000. In 1866, the family rose garden was unearthed and an estimated 2,111 soldiers were laid to rest inside a ten foot deep vault. Today, the monument to the Tomb of the Unknown Dead- Civil War can be seen in place of the roses. Though scores of Confederate dead lie within the cemetery, it wasn’t until 1914, under the direction of President Wilson that a 32 foot monument to the Confederate dead was allowed to be placed inside Arlington National Cemetery.

                  Today, Arlington contains over 300,00 gravesites of veterans and their family members, statesmen, astronauts, and justices. On average, six thousand new burials are conducted every year. Available ground for new burials will likely run out by 2060.

 

7. Fredericksburg National Cemetery (15,068) Fredericksburg Virginia – Objective accomplished well maybe three years later. During the December 13^th 1862 battle of Fredericksburg the Union army tried and failed to capture the high ground where the Fredericksburg National Cemetery would come to be established by act of Congress only a few months after the war’s end. Most of the bodies interred in Fredericksburg National Cemetery are Union combat casualties sifted from the battlefields of Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania, the Wilderness, and of course Fredericksburg, where nearly 13,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, missing, or captured in less than a day, the bulk of which fell before a long stone wall at the base of Marye’s Heights. Nearby is the Confederate Cemetery holding 3,300 bodies. Of them, thirty-three percent have been identified, while only twenty percent of the Union troops in the national cemetery are known. 

                  At the entrance of the Fredericksburg National Cemetery is a gatehouse. It is constructed largely of stones removed from the famous wall at the base of Marye’s Heights.

 

8. Memphis National Cemetery (13,962) Memphis Tennessee – Originally known as the Mississippi River National Cemetery, the Union burial site on the western edge of Tennessee grew around the intersection of the Memphis and Ohio Railroads. Consisting of nearly 40 acres, the manicured grounds contained, in 1869, a gunboat motor and four army siege guns silently watching over the 9,754 white and 4,208 colored troops resting under the turf. Of these dead, two-thirds are unknown. These Union troops came from camps, hospitals, and battlefields as far away as Hickman, Kentucky, Helena, Arkansas, Battle of Island 10 and New Madrid, Missouri, Fort Pillow, Tennessee. A few were recovered from the Sultana when the riverboat exploded sending nearly 2,000 recently released Union POWs to a watery grave. Many of the bodies were initially buried in marshy plains and along riverbeds, leaving many to wonder how many more bodies had been consumed by the soil or swept away by rushing waters.

                  Union soldiers buried in Memphis National Cemetery hailed from every state in the Union, and from six states that had seceded- Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas.

 

9. Andersonville National Cemetery (13,363) Andersonville Georgia – When one looks at known versus unknown numbers in Civil War cemeteries he can’t help but be impressed by Andersonville National Cemetery where more than 90 percent of the dead are known. This is due in large part to Clara Barton and Andersonville Prison survivor Dorence Atwater who kept a ledger of those who had perished and where they had been buried. Beginning in July 1965 the two, along with a team of over forty, made their way to the abandoned camp to begin their task. For more than three weeks the detachment piled tons of clay upon sunken graves, fashioning new headboards for every body. Despite the scale of death and Andersonville, where nearly one in three prisoners did not survive, the crew achieved extraordinary results. Of 13,363 bodies in and around the massive camp, Barton’s crew successfully identified and marked 12,912 of them.  

                  At twenty-eight acres, Andersonville National Cemetery is slightly larger than the prison stockade of Andersonville itself.

 

10. Chattanooga National Cemetery (12,863) Chattanooga Tennessee – Two years after the war, Chattanooga National Cemetery was born on the grounds where the Union dead from the battles around Chattanooga were already quietly resting. Over the next three years, crews fanned out to gather the scattered Union remains from nearby skirmishes, the 1862 battle of Chickamauga, and the 1864 push towards Atlanta. By 1870, Chattanooga National Cemetery had 12,800 residents, nearly 5,000 of which are unknown soldiers.

                  Among the buried at Chattanooga National Cemetery are four recipients of the Medal of Honor who took part in the “Great Locomotive Chase” north of Atlanta on April 12^th 1862.

 

 

 

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