Almost every Confederate soldier who died in a Richmond hospital during the war was buried in one of three local cemeteries: Hollywood, Oakwood, or Shockoe Hill. Although Hollywood Cemetery is the best known because of the many prominent men buried there, Oakwood’s Confederate section covers an equivalent area and contains the graves of more than 17,000 of the South’s fighting men. Burials occurred here between August 1861 and April 1865. Most of the soldiers died in one of Richmond’s many hospitals, including Chimborazo and Howard’s Grove in the eastern end of the city, two of the three busiest hospitals in Richmond, with Chimborazo treating more patients than any other hospital in the world. After the Seven Day’s Battles, more than 75 men a day were buried here in 1862 for several weeks. No nationally famous men are interred here: no generals, only a handful of field officers, and a few hundred commissioned officers. More than 95 percent of those buried here were privates, making this a vast memorial to the “common soldier” of the Army of Northern Virginia. When Richmond's first municipal cemetery, Shockoe Hill, began to fill up in the 1850s, the city acquired 66 acres here in 1854, and the first burials occurred in 1858. Today, Oakwood Cemetery encompasses 176 acres. On April 14, 1866, local women formed the “Ladles Memorial Association for the Confederate Dead in Oakwood Cemetery” and held Richmond’s first Confederate memorial day commemoration here on May 10, 1866. Gen. Robert E. Lee declined their invitation to attend, but wrote that “the graves of the Confederate dead will always be green in my memory, and their deeds be hallowed in my recollection.” For decades, the association maintained the Confederate section, placed painted wooden headboards at each grave, erected a commemorative obelisk, and conducted well-attended annual exercises on Confederate Memorial Day. The Sons of Confederate Veterans has managed the Confederate section since 2009.
