Tucked away in a peaceful spot behind Tad Smith Coliseum on the Ole Miss campus is a little-known Confederate cemetery. The soldiers buried here are memorialized by a single, gray stone monument in the center of the graveyard which is itself surrounded by a low brick wall. The Albert Sidney Johnston Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy is responsible for placement of both the stone monument and the brick wall. When I visited there recently, two small Confederate flags flanked the monument.
Below: steps leading up to the monument. You can get an idea of the size of the cemetery. The plaque on the monument indicates that more than 700 soldiers are buried here, mostly Confederate troops but some of Grant's army too.
Below: only a few names are known of the buried soldiers, and these are listed on the plaque. The earliest burials date from June 1862 following the Battle of Shiloh when Confederate troops retreated to Oxford. At that time, the Lyceum building on the campus of the University of Mississippi was used as a hospital for the wounded soldiers. Later that same year, following the Battle of Corinth in September, General Grant and his troops occupied Oxford, and the university's buildings were used by them.
There is a reason why there is just a solitary marker in a rather large, confined area. Sometime around 1900, workers on campus were instructed to clean up the cemetery by cutting the grass and weeds that had grown up around the graves and around the many markers that identified the graves at that time. Carelessly, the workers removed all of the markers in order to make their job easier, but when it came time to replace the markers no one knew which marker went with which grave! The ladies of the Daughters of the Confederacy then had the single monument erected to replace the lost grave markers. Later, in 1936, the original iron fence that encircled the cemetery was in disrepair and was replaced by the current brick wall, using bricks from the previously-burned Gordon Hall on campus.
Is there a list of the names of the buried confederate soldiers listed on the plaque? The earliest burials date from June 1862 following the Battle of Shiloh when Confederate troops retreated to Oxford. At that time, the Lyceum building on the campus of the University of Mississippi was used as a hospital for the wounded soldiers. Later that same year, following the Battle of Corinth in September, General Grant and his troops occupied Oxford, and the university's buildings were used by them.
ReplyDeleteIt would be MUCH better to list the NAMES of the soldiers who were buried here.
ReplyDeleteProbably so, but the plaque (pictured above) contains contains some of the names, and I'm not sure that all of the names of the buried dead are known.
ReplyDeleteI am working with the university to see if they can provide a list of names.
ReplyDelete