Civil War

Macon, GA

In a modest Macon cottage in 1842, Sidney Lanier was born—a poet, musician, linguist, and lawyer of astonishing range. He served in the Confederate Army and was captured while running a blockade, an ordeal that ruined his health. Later, lecturing at Johns Hopkins while he wrote, he produced enduring works such as "The Marshes of Glynn" and "Song of the Chattahoochee" before dying young in 1881.

Delafield, WI

This modest stone in Delafield marks the birthplace of two brothers who became Union heroes of the Civil War. Alonzo Cushing died at his guns on Cemetery Ridge repelling Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, an act of valor later recognized with the Medal of Honor, while his brother William made his name in the U.S. Navy for a daring torpedo-boat raid against a Confederate ironclad. From a small Wisconsin town, the family sent sons into the defining conflict of the age.

Taliaferro County, GA

In a Taliaferro County log cabin in 1812, a poor farm family welcomed Alexander Hamilton Stephens—"Little Alec"—orphaned young and educated by an uncle before rising to the bar and a long career in Congress. He became Vice-President of the Confederacy, and after the war served again in Congress and finally as Governor of Georgia, dying in office in 1883.

Saint Louis County, MO

The line "On Fame's eternal camping ground their silent tents are spread" comes from "The Bivouac of the Dead," a poem carved on memorial gates in national cemeteries across the country. Standing amid the military burial grounds of the St. Louis area, it turns a soldier's final resting place into a permanent encampment of honor.

La Grange, TX

By 1840, Anglo and German families had settled near the headwaters of Black Jack Branch, and when pioneer Charles Luck buried his brother-in-law Thomas Oeding in 1867, this graveyard was born. Among its early burials is Wil Loessin, who with his three brothers volunteered as U.S. cavalrymen during the Civil War and died of illness after being held as a prisoner of war at Camp Groce. Adjoining Trinitatis Lutheran Church rose in 1871, and the cemetery gathered homesteaders, craftsmen, and the renowned German-Texas poet Johannes Romberg.

Oran, TX

Established for the pioneers of the Keechi Valley and the settlement of Black Springs, this burial ground holds the earliest marked grave of Mary A. Lasater (1841–1871). The land was given by Silas Adam Sheek, stepfather of the great Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight, and among those buried here is Goodnight's mother, Charlotte Sheek, alongside Civil War veterans and early community leaders. It was renamed Oran Cemetery when the town took its new name in 1886.

Cochran, GA

Bleckley County was carved out by the Georgia Legislature in 1912 and named for Logan E. Bleckley, remembered as one of the state's greatest jurists. Born in Rabun County in 1827, Bleckley served as a Confederate soldier, then rose through the Georgia Supreme Court to become Chief Justice. The marker also records the county's first slate of local officers as it began its work.

Jones County, GA

In November 1864, Blountsville lay in the path of Sherman's March to the Sea. Blair's 17th Corps, part of the army's right wing, crossed the Ocmulgee at Seven Islands and marched through Monticello and Blountsville toward Gordon, camping here on the night of the 20th. The move kept pace with the 15th Corps and Kilpatrick's cavalry along Georgia's crowded backroads.

Polk County, TX

After the Civil War, families who had supported the Union — among them the Collins and Knight households — left Mississippi for the pineywoods of Polk County to escape hostile Reconstruction-era neighbors. Their settlements gave rise to the Bluewater community, whose cemetery was established in 1898, the same year a Missionary Baptist church organized nearby. More than 600 graves rest here, many marked by handmade concrete stones and shaded by old cedar trees.

Nocona, TX

Founded in 1880 and named for the late Col. Bob Stone, this camp gave Confederate veterans of Montague County a place to gather for annual summer reunions with their families. It joined the national United Confederate Veterans in 1893 and settled permanently at Nocona in 1899 on donated land. Notably, its programs drew both Confederate and Union veterans from north Texas and Oklahoma, and the camp stayed active until the last local Civil War veterans died in the 1940s.

Logan, OH

In the courthouse town of Logan, this monument keeps faith with the men of Hocking County who marched off to war between 1861 and 1865. "The Boys in Blue" was the affectionate name a grateful North gave its Union soldiers, and small Appalachian-Ohio counties like this one sent a remarkable share of their young men into regiments that fought from the Ohio hills to the killing fields of the Deep South. Ohio raised more than 300,000 soldiers for the Union, most of them in companies of friends and neighbors organized county by county.

Fairfield, TX

Merchant W. L. Moody built this Greek Revival house in 1860 for his bride, Elizabeth Bradley, complete with a well at the rear once used to cool milk and butter. After Moody moved to Galveston—where he became a Civil War veteran and a leading businessman—he sold the home to his father-in-law, F. M. Bradley, for $2,800 in gold. The house passed between two of Freestone County's most influential families on the eve of the Civil War.

Laurel County, KY

After the bloody Battle of Perryville in October 1862, Confederate General Braxton Bragg gathered his forces and began withdrawing southward, ending the Confederacy's bid to hold Kentucky. Union General Don Carlos Buell pursued as far as this point in Laurel County before deciding further pursuit was not worthwhile. Bragg's army continued on, passing through the Cumberland Gap in late October.

La Vernia, TX

Brahan Lodge began meeting under dispensation in 1858 and was chartered in 1859, named for Dr. Robert W. Brahan and led by first master John Rhodes King. Its members had fought in the Texas War for Independence, the Mier Expedition, the Mexican War, and Indian campaigns, and they quarried and ox-carted the stone for a hall completed in 1871 that also served as church and school. The marker is dedicated above all to the lodge's Civil War veterans, who served in famed Confederate units from Hood's Texas Brigade to Terry's Texas Rangers, fighting from Chickamauga to Appomattox.

Hillsborough County, FL

This quiet family burial ground in Hillsborough County holds the graves of soldiers from the Civil War era, when Florida had joined the Confederacy and sent its sons to fight far from home. Small private cemeteries like this one dot the rural South, marking where families laid veterans to rest on their own land rather than in distant national cemeteries. The plain fieldstones and family plots tell a story of loss absorbed at the household level.

Nahunta, GA

Brantley County was carved from neighboring counties by the Georgia legislature in 1920 and named for Benjamin D. Brantley. Local tradition holds that the old Brunswick & Western Railroad running through it marked the southernmost point reached by Sherman's forces, and the marker lists the county's first slate of officers — sheriff, ordinary, clerk, tax collector, and the rest. It stands as a compact civic record of a young south-Georgia county's founding.

Bryan, TX

During the Civil War, the Brazos County Commissioners Court became an engine of the Confederate home front, outfitting local men with horses, clothing, and equipment and levying war taxes while exempting soldiers' estates. It surveyed the needs of soldiers' families and appropriated funds for their care, and it issued its own small-denomination county warrants that circulated as legal tender. The court also procured scarce goods—powder, lead, medicine, shoes, cotton cards—for resale to a blockaded citizenry.

Hearne, TX

Established in 1863 along a Brazos River tributary and chartered by the Texas legislature, this company was meant to produce flour and cloth for the Confederate war effort. With coastal blockades choking off imports, Texas scrambled to build factories, and planters funded the enterprise with cotton in exchange for the right to export bales of their own. Like many wartime ventures, its output proved small and came too late to matter.

South Padre Island, TX

Guarding the mouth of the Rio Grande, Brazos Santiago Pass became one of the Confederacy's most vital lifelines during the Civil War. With the Union blockade choking Southern ports, cotton and war material moved through neutral Mexican Bagdad and slipped into this pass from Cuba, Europe, and beyond, keeping the Trans-Mississippi supplied. The region changed hands repeatedly, and troops staged from Brazos Island fought at Palmito Hill in May 1865 — the last land engagement of the war, weeks after Appomattox.

Brenham, TX

Founded in 1843 and named for Republic of Texas patriot Richard Fox Brenham, this Washington County seat became a railhead and supply center during the Civil War. It grew into a hub of farming, trade, and manufacturing and gave rise to Blinn Memorial College in 1883. Its celebrated Maifest keeps alive the folk traditions of its German-influenced community.

The Colony, TX

The Bridges settlement, reportedly the oldest in Denton County, took root in 1843 as part of the Peters Colony land-grant venture. This cemetery, on land granted to W. A. Bridges in 1850, holds burials dating to 1855, including many children and Civil War soldiers among its early immigrant families. Deeded to the county in 1889, it preserves more than a hundred sandstone and granite markers.

Indianapolis, IN

Benjamin Harrison entered the Union Army as a second lieutenant of the 70th Indiana Regiment, insisting on drilling raw recruits into disciplined soldiers and rising to brigadier general during the Civil War. He went on to serve as a United States Senator from Indiana and, in 1889, became the twenty-third President of the United States. This marker honors his wartime service and public career.

Milwaukee, WI

Brigadier General Erastus B. Wolcott served as Surgeon General of Wisconsin during the Civil War and for thirteen years afterward, overseeing the medical care of the state's soldiers. In an era when disease killed more men than bullets, military surgeons like Wolcott shouldered an enormous burden, and his monument praises a life of service to profession, city, and nation. Milwaukee honored him as a healer as much as a soldier.

Elkton, KY

This marker notes the birthplace of Benjamin Helm Bristow (1832–1896), a Kentuckian who rose to prominence first in uniform and then in national government. He served as a Union officer during the Civil War before becoming the nation's first Solicitor General and, later, Secretary of the Treasury, where he won fame for prosecuting the corrupt Whiskey Ring. The plaque frames him simply as 'the soldier,' the role that launched a notable public career.

Kosse, TX

North Carolina native Ervin Brown brought his family to Texas in 1846 and, by 1857, to a 1,600-acre farm in Limestone County near Eutaw. The family plot that grew here holds Ervin and Matilda and generations of their descendants, several of whom shaped Texas public life. Their sons served as Confederate captains, and Thomas Jefferson Brown rose to become Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court.

Milledgeville, GA

Built about 1825 for George T. Brown by English-born architect John Marlor, this Federal-style Milledgeville house served as a hotel for legislators and visitors while the town was Georgia's capital. Merchant Daniel Stetson bought it in 1857, and his family tied it to the secession era: his son-in-law, Judge Daniel Sanford, was clerk of Georgia's Secession Convention. Later famous as the Sanford House Tea Room, it was moved to this site in 1966 to be preserved.

Atlanta, GA

At 3:30 on the afternoon of July 22, 1864, during the Battle of Atlanta, Confederate divisions under Gen. John Bell Hood struck the Union Fifteenth Corps astride the Georgia Railroad. The eight brigades of Brown's and Clayton's divisions smashed through four entrenched Federal brigades at the point of the assault, the battle's critical moment, later immortalized in the Atlanta Cyclorama at Grant Park.

Tucker, GA

Near this crossroads stood the justice's office of Browning's Militia District, which Union reports of July 1864 called 'Browning's Court House.' On July 18, as Sherman's armies closed on Atlanta, part of Gen. John A. Logan's Fifteenth Corps detoured through here to support Garrard's cavalry as it tore up the Georgia Railroad near Stone Mountain, camping that night at Henderson's Mill.

Comfort, TX

This burial ground served Brownsboro, a Hill Country community first settled by shinglemakers, then farmers, and later railroad workers. Thomas and Sarah Manning gave land for a cemetery and church in 1870, with the earliest recorded burial in 1877; among those interred are five Civil War veterans. As the town faded and floods took their toll, the cemetery outlasted the community it once served.

Brownsville, TX

For nearly a century the ferries — the chalans — knit Brownsville to Matamoros across the Rio Grande, carrying everyone from retreating Mexican generals after San Jacinto to Confederate cotton dodging the Union blockade. Charles Stillman's operations dominated the crossings from the 1840s, and in the 1880s a plank boardwalk sprang up from the railroad to the dock, soon lined with shops for the crowds of travelers. The international bridges of 1910 and 1928 finally made the boats — and the boardwalk that grew up around them — obsolete.

Brownsville, TX

During the Civil War, Brownsville became the Confederacy's crucial back door to the world. With the Union blockading Southern ports, cotton rolled down the "cotton road" to the Rio Grande and across to the neutral Mexican port of Bagdad, returning as European war material. Federal forces seized the town in November 1863 after Confederates burned Fort Brown and their stores, but Southern troops retook it in July 1864, restoring its role as a lifeline for the Confederacy west of the Mississippi.

Leon County, TX

The Yarborough family left South Carolina by way of Alabama and settled in eastern Leon County in the 1850s, and their five sons all served the Confederacy during the Civil War. Two brothers, Wade Hampton and William Burns Yarborough, bought 186 acres in the Brushy area in 1883, where Wade set aside three acres for a Primitive Baptist church and cemetery that doubled as a one-room school. Fire claimed the sanctuary in the 1920s, but the burial ground endured.

Pitt County, NC

Bryan Grimes rose to major general in the Confederate Army, and his war carried him from the 1862 Peninsula Campaign to the final stand at Appomattox in 1865, where his troops reportedly fired some of the last shots. His family plantation, "Grimesland," stood on this ground. He returned to farming here after the war.

Liberty, TX

This family burial ground holds many of Liberty County's founding figures, including Luke Bryan, a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto who later served as county sheriff, and his brother Pryor Bryan, who fought in the Texas Revolution and the Civil War. Also resting here are Confederate captain and publisher Watson D. Williams, the businessman Isaiah C. Day for whom Dayton is named, and a remarkable cast of writers, musicians, judges, and benefactors whose lives stretch from the Republic of Texas into the twentieth century.

Pinehill, TX

John S. Buckner brought his family from Georgia to settle this Rusk County area before 1850, and was among the first laid to rest in the family burial ground in 1870. Both his sons served the Confederacy — Arthur Washington Buckner was at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, when Lee surrendered, then returned to run a sawmill, store, and cotton gin at Pinehill. His daughter May Buckner Hillin later led the women of Pinehill to smash the whiskey containers of a drugstore after an 1892 stabbing, an axe-wielding echo of the temperance crusade.

Buffalo Springs, TX

During the Civil War, Buffalo Springs stood in a thin line of sentry forts guarding the Red River and the exposed North Texas frontier from 1861 to 1865. Cavalry manned it at intervals — notably when 3,000 Federal troops massed to the north in Indian Territory in 1864 — while enduring chronic shortages of guns, food, and horses. Frontier families "forted up" here in a fortified square of picket houses, posting guards on wood- and water-gathering parties until a water famine forced them out in 1862.

City of Troy, NY

In the booming iron city of Troy, New York, Henry Burden's works harnessed water power to mass-produce horseshoes at an astonishing rate — machinery so productive it is said to have helped shoe the Union cavalry during the Civil War. The lower works forged these famous horseshoes for the army in wartime and for civilian markets after. Troy's ironworks helped make the upper Hudson Valley a powerhouse of 19th-century American industry.

Bastrop, TX

Richard Burger left Germany around 1859 and, after riding with Terry's Texas Rangers during the Civil War, settled into life as a Bastrop tailor and merchant. He bought this newly built Greek Revival house and raised a family here with his wife Clara, whose skill in German 'hair art' reflected the community's Old World traditions. Burger helped anchor local culture as an original stockholder in a town gathering place called 'The Casino.'

Caldwell, TX

The land here was farmed as early as 1744 by Native people under Spanish missionaries, and in 1830 Fort Tenoxtitlan guarded the Brazos crossing on the old San Antonio Road, drawing Anglo-Texans who lived off wild game. The county was organized in 1846 and named for Gen. Edward Burleson — a hero of San Jacinto, Indian fighter, and Republic of Texas vice-president — with its seat at Caldwell. During the Civil War it sent troops, cotton, and food to the Confederacy.

Caldwell, TX

On February 23, 1861, Burleson County voters chose secession by 422 to 84, and within days the "Burleson Guards" organized and offered themselves to the state. Most joined Company G of the 2nd Texas Infantry, while others served in Walker's Texas Division, Waul's Legion, Terry's Rangers, and Hood's Brigade. At home, a state-troop regiment guarded local citizens and the county court funded food and supplies for soldiers' families.

Chambersburg, PA · est. 1947

On the morning of July 30, 1864, Confederate cavalry under Gen. John McCausland rode into Chambersburg and demanded a ransom in gold and cash. When the town could not or would not pay, McCausland put it to the torch in retaliation for Union Gen. David Hunter's destruction in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. The fire gutted the heart of the town, making Chambersburg the only major Northern community burned by Confederate forces during the Civil War.

Montgomery Township, PA · est. 1947

Along this road on July 29, 1864, Gen. John McCausland's Confederate cavalry rode north through Franklin County. Passing by way of Mercersburg, they reached Chambersburg the next morning and burned it, then pressed on to McConnellsburg by that night. The raid traced a swift, punishing arc across south-central Pennsylvania in the war's final year.

Washington, NC

When Union forces evacuated the occupied town of Washington in April 1864, departing troops burned and shelled it, leaving much of the community in ruins. The destruction came at the close of a long Federal occupation of this Pamlico River port. It was one of many Southern towns scarred as armies withdrew.

Trenton, TX

Tennessee native William Boyd Burns donated the land for this cemetery in 1876, next to the log cabin where he lived as a pioneer settler of the Trenton community. He also gave ground for a union church and schoolhouse, tying the burial ground to the area's earliest institutions. Its graves include Civil War veterans — among them a physician who fought at Shiloh — and generations of the settlers who built up Trenton.

Burnside, KY

This spot on the upper Cumberland began as Point Isabel, one of the small settlements planted by families drifting west from the Carolinas and Virginia around 1800 in search of new farmland on the Kentucky frontier. Its greatest moment came in 1863, when the Union army recognized the strategic value of the site and turned it into a rendezvous point and supply depot. From here troops and provisions were staged for the push into East Tennessee, part of the Federal effort to break Confederate control of that mountainous, Unionist-leaning region.

Athens, TX

Orphaned young in Mississippi, Bushrod "Bush" Wofford came to Texas in the early 1850s and in 1853 bought 320 acres near Fincastle, where he raised a hand-hewn log house that his second wife, Eliza, expanded with a gallery porch and dog run. He farmed, ran the Wofford & Son mercantile, served as a lieutenant in a Civil War reserve unit, and raised a large family whose descendants became fixtures of Henderson County. In 2001 that family donated the old house for relocation and restoration here as a museum.

Butler, TX

During the Civil War, Texas county courts outfitted their enlisting soldiers and aided the orphans and widows left behind. They also recognized private 'soldiers' homes'—households that fed men traveling to and from the army—reimbursing them for meals. Freestone County had at least eleven such homes, including one near this site run by plantation owner Hillary Manning, and the Rev. Thomas Castleton organized many more across the region, gathering donations of gold, cattle, and even a hotel to support the work.

Hamilton Township, OH

In the decades before the Civil War, southwestern Ohio sat on the front line of the struggle over slavery — just across the river from the slaveholding South, it became threaded with secret routes north. Built in 1820, the Butterworth family's homestead in Warren County served as the county's southernmost link in that clandestine network, sheltering freedom-seekers who had crossed the Ohio River and guiding them toward safety. Beyond hiding refugees, the Butterworths helped bring the railroads to the region and founded Maineville Academy, planting schooling alongside their activism. Generations of the family went on to civic and reform leadership.

Yorktown, TX

The Eckhardt family's mercantile store dates to 1848, just after Yorktown's founding, when wagons hauled goods inland from the Gulf port of Indianola and gold and silver were smuggled to San Antonio hidden beneath potatoes to buy supplies. This sturdy building — iron shutters, an elevator, and walls twenty-five inches thick — went up in 1876 to house the thriving business. During the Civil War the Eckhardt wife kept the store running while her husband and two sons served the Confederacy.

Gilmer, TX

Cut off from Northern and European factories by the Union blockade, the Confederacy had to clothe its armies from scratch — and here in Gilmer, the Potts brothers turned local wool into some 600 hats a year for Confederate soldiers. They were part of a vast improvised war economy: Texas factories turned out overcoats, blankets, shoes, and caps, while housewives carded wool, spun cloth, and knitted socks at home. Even the state penitentiary wove 130,000 yards of cloth a month.

Center, TX

On April 4, 1964, descendants of Confederate soldiers gathered here to open the Texas Civil War Centennial with a living roll call, answering for fathers and grandfathers who had fought a century before. The men honored had served in the Red River Campaign of 1864–65, the Confederate effort that turned back a Union push up the Red River toward Texas. A restored Val Verde Battery cannon was hauled to ride in an eight-mile parade northeast to the Mansfield Battleground, where it fired again and the assembly unveiled the first out-of-state marker of the centennial.

Mineola, TX

Cadwell Walton Raines (1839–1906) packed several careers into one Texas life — Methodist preacher, teacher, lawyer, newspaper publisher, county judge, and finally state librarian. A Georgia native who came to Texas in 1853 and served in the Confederate army, he founded The Mineola Hawkeye in 1880 at the urging of his friend, future governor James Stephen Hogg. As state librarian from the 1890s until his death, Raines built the library's Texana collection, wrote reference works, and helped found the Texas State Historical Association.

La Pryor, TX

Founded in the spring of 1862, this Confederate frontier post guarded the crossing of the Nueces on the San Antonio-Eagle Pass Road, a lifeline that carried Southern cotton south to Mexico and manufactured goods north to the Confederacy. Manned by the frontier regiment under Col. James M. Norris, it was one of a chain of camps set a day's ride apart from the Red River to the Rio Grande. Short of food, horses, and guns and under constant threat of raids, the men here found little of war's glory and much of its hardship.

Circleville, TX

During the Civil War, a factory near this site on the San Gabriel River made cotton cards—the stiff wire brushes needed to turn raw cotton into batts for spinning—between 1862 and 1865. With the Union blockade choking trade, Texans could no longer swap cotton bales for finished cloth and had to make textiles at home, importing scarce cards through neutral Mexico at steep prices. Chartered by Confederate Texas and owned by Joseph Eubank, Jr., the factory was part of Governor Lubbock's push to re-tool the state's farm economy for war, as Texas became a storehouse of supplies for the Confederacy.

Kendalia, TX

George Wilkins Kendall (1809–1867) learned printing in the Northeast before co-founding the New Orleans Picayune in 1837. Riding with the Texas Rangers during the Mexican War, he filed dispatches that made him one of the world's first war correspondents, and his columns tirelessly promoted Texas to readers as far away as the Sandwich Islands. Settling on a Kendall County sheep range, he produced wool for Confederate uniforms and blankets during the Civil War while fighting Comanches, fires, and freezes to keep his flocks.

Cherokee County, TX

This site once held some of the more than 3,000 Union soldiers captured at the Battle of Mansfield, Louisiana, on April 8, 1864, when Confederate forces turned back the Federal Red River Campaign aimed at invading Texas. Overflow from Camp Ford at Tyler—the largest prisoner-of-war camp west of the Mississippi—these men were part of the vast logistical problem of holding captives in a resource-thin corner of the Confederacy. The marker anchors one node in a network of Texas prison camps far from the war's famous battlefields.

Lometa, TX

West of here on the Colorado River, brine springs long used by Native people as a healing resort were turned to industry during the Civil War. Workers pumped brine with a horse-driven lift onto a forty-foot scaffold, where cedar boughs concentrated it before iron kettles boiled it down—about one bushel of salt from fifty of brine. The salt supplied the Confederate army's men, cavalry horses, and mule teams, along with ranch and table needs.

Buchanan Dam, TX

During the Civil War, brine welling up from ancient Cambrian sea deposits fed a salt works between Tow Valley and Old Bluffton, where a day's boiling in a hundred 250-gallon iron kettles yielded twenty to thirty bushels. The precious salt cured meat and hides, seasoned tables, and fed cavalry horses across a Texas cut off from coastal supply. The busy site also hosted Llano County's first district court and a nearby stagecoach stop before Lake Buchanan drowned it in 1935.

Concan, TX

During the Civil War the Confederacy was chronically short of gunpowder, and inventive locals turned to whatever nitrate sources they could find. Here in the Texas Hill Country, workers mined the deep deposits of bat guano inside a vast limestone cave, extracting saltpetre — the essential ingredient of black powder — and combining it with sulphur and charcoal. A narrow-gauge railway with mule-drawn cars carried the diggings out of chambers so large that one room measured hundreds of feet across, with the mules themselves stabled underground.

Concord, NC

Erected in memory of the Confederate dead of Cabarrus County, this monument marks the years 1861–1865 with the solemn language of granite, marble, and the cypress branch, an old emblem of mourning. Like hundreds of courthouse-square monuments across the South, it was raised by a community determined to honor its war dead and to shape how the Civil War would be remembered. It stands today as both a memorial and a document of that memory.