By Thomas Zei
When discussing the national cemetery with visitors, the most asked question is "So where are the Confederates buried?" The quickest answer is to respond with The Confederate Circle at Evergreen Cemetery in Murfreesboro. The full answer is more complicated then saying where they are buried now. By doing so, one leaves out the first attempt to provide a suitable recognition of their sacrifice.
The Confederate and Union dead from the Battle of Stones River (Murfreesboro) were buried in shallow graves wherever they fell on the battlefield. This would also apply to those that died in field hospitals or the hospitals in Murfreesboro from wounds or disease. In 1865, the Union Army decided to create Stones River National Cemetery and they searched the battlefield to remove and rebury the Union soldiers into the new consolidated location.
Edwin A. Arnold was born in 1818 in Mecklenburg, Virginia. In 1860 he resided in Rutherford County community of Bushnells Creek (now known as Bushman Creek) with his wife Harriett and eight children. In November 1861, he joined the Tennessee 45th Infantry Regiment as a 2nd Lieutenant. The 45th was later consolidated with the 23rd Regiment and eventually consolidated with other units. An individual document for Arnold’s Civil War record was not found beyond the end of his initial 12-month enlistment when he was still a 2nd Lieutenant. The unit’s history does not show Arnold as a captain in his unit even though he is referred to as Captain Ed. Arnold throughout the rest of his life. After the war, Arnold partnered in a general store located on the town square and he was elected as county sheriff several times.
Photo from family tree of Jesse Cantrell Sykes
When discussing the national cemetery with visitors, the most asked question is "So where are the Confederates buried?" The quickest answer is to respond with The Confederate Circle at Evergreen Cemetery in Murfreesboro. The full answer is more complicated then saying where they are buried now. By doing so, one leaves out the first attempt to provide a suitable recognition of their sacrifice.
The Confederate and Union dead from the Battle of Stones River (Murfreesboro) were buried in shallow graves wherever they fell on the battlefield. This would also apply to those that died in field hospitals or the hospitals in Murfreesboro from wounds or disease. In 1865, the Union Army decided to create Stones River National Cemetery and they searched the battlefield to remove and rebury the Union soldiers into the new consolidated location.
Edwin A. Arnold was born in 1818 in Mecklenburg, Virginia. In 1860 he resided in Rutherford County community of Bushnells Creek (now known as Bushman Creek) with his wife Harriett and eight children. In November 1861, he joined the Tennessee 45th Infantry Regiment as a 2nd Lieutenant. The 45th was later consolidated with the 23rd Regiment and eventually consolidated with other units. An individual document for Arnold’s Civil War record was not found beyond the end of his initial 12-month enlistment when he was still a 2nd Lieutenant. The unit’s history does not show Arnold as a captain in his unit even though he is referred to as Captain Ed. Arnold throughout the rest of his life. After the war, Arnold partnered in a general store located on the town square and he was elected as county sheriff several times.
Photo from family tree of Jesse Cantrell Sykes
In 1867, Arnold decided that the Confederate dead deserved similar care and recognition as the Union dead. He purchased a plot of land near the southeast junction of The Shelbyville Pike (now Church Street) and the railroad crossing. Captain Arnold stated that the land could hold up to 6000 soldiers who died in the area around Murfreesboro. With the assistance of the town’s women and financial support from Rutherford County, he searched the battlefield and moved bodies to the new cemetery.
An article in The Murfreesboro Monitor on December 7, 1867 provided an overview of the project and a status report. The article stated that:
“Captain Arnold has already exhumed a great many, the majority unknown, with no possible way of ascertaining their names or commands. A single silver case watch, No. 56050 was found upon one body, a brass locket containing two photographs, which are disfigured, upon another and single silver watch, No. 15628 upon a third. These articles may lead to their identity.”
The article went on to say that Captain Arnold’s efforts were facing a crisis. The funding from his own resources and Rutherford County had run dry and assistance was needed from the former Confederate states “who have husbands, brothers and sons killed here to assist them… We hope the friends of the dead here in the States south of us will immediately take this matter in hand, and assist the ladies in accomplishing what they have generously begun, and let the last resting place of him who gave his life in your defence (sic) such as friendship demands and what a true friend and defender receives.”
Although Captain Arnold’s Confederate Cemetery had a capacity of 6000 burials, his efforts and resources stopped at 1800-2000 burials. Each grave was marked with a small wooden plank. Without the benefit of Confederate burial maps, unlike those available for the Union reburial efforts, most were marked as an unknown soldier. Less than two hundred had full names while some only had initials.
By June 1874, The Murfreesboro Monitor noted that the cemetery’s fencing had already fallen down in places and animals were grazing on the unkempt property. The cemetery property was also located in the flood plain of Lytle Creek causing periodic damage to the wooden planks.
Clipping from Newspapers.com
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In The Nashville Banner newspaper on January 28, 1882, an article is printed based upon a submission from the Murfreesboro Free Press. The reporter went through the Confederate Cemetery and recorded the names and units he read on the remaining wooden planks that were readable. The list of 156 names is printed in the newspaper.
Captain Arnold passed away suddenly in 1884. The condition of his prized Confederate Cemetery continued to worsen without funding and its advocate. The Ladies Memorial Association began to lobby for the movement of the Confederate dead out of the cemetery. In 1889, a letter is posted in the Murfreesboro Free Press comparing the “National Federal Cemetery as a thing of beauty, for the government pays well for its keeping.” The writer states that the Federal cemetery is visited by the thousands. Meanwhile the Confederate Cemetery is almost in utter ruin and an elderly widow who travels many miles only finds thousands of graves marked as “unknown”. Under this constant pressure, a decision is made to create a suitable memorial to the Confederate dead at Evergreen Cemetery, the town’s main cemetery. In 1891, the Joseph Palmer Bivouac #10 of the Association Confederate Soldiers Tennessee Division began the task of moving the Confederate dead to a newly designated spot in Evergreen Cemetery. Because of the large number of unknown soldiers and the condition of the graves, the decision was made to bury all of the unknowns into a single circular mass grave. Only about ten bodies are buried in marked individual graves. The spot of land becomes known as The Confederate Circle. The mass grave is encircled with the names of the states providing their sons in the battle. A marble shaft is added in 1915 as a monument. In 1982, memorial markers are placed engraved with the names of the 156 soldiers named in the 1882 newspaper article. |