Fort Smith National Cemetery

In 1817, the U.S. Army sent soldiers to Arkansas Territory to keep peace between the Osage and Cherokee nations, established a post on the Arkansas River, and named it for Gen. Thomas A. Smith. The army abandoned Fort Smith in 1825, returned in 1836, and held it with a federal garrison until Arkansas militia seized it on April 23, 1861. Union forces retook the fort in September 1863 and held it for the rest of the Civil War, during which it became an important supply depot and outpost on the edge of Indian Territory. In 1865, a council at Fort Smith negotiated between the federal government and tribes that had sided with the Confederacy and reestablished treaties with those tribes. Post surgeon Thomas Russell, who died in 1819, was the first burial at Fort Smith, and the 5.5-acre cemetery served both Union and Confederate garrisons during the Civil War. In 1867, it became one of three national cemeteries established in Arkansas. Its burials include U.S. soldiers, several hundred Confederates, and more than 160 civilians who died at the fort. In the 1870s, the U.S. Army Quartermaster General's office built a brick lodge and wall and placed permanent marble headstones on the graves. After a tornado damaged Fort Smith in 1898, the wall was rebuilt in stone, and the lodge was replaced with the current two-story building in 1904; when a new entrance was erected in 1942, the old iron gates were moved into the cemetery. Over time, the cemetery expanded to more than 32 acres. Isaac Charles Parker, born in Ohio on October 15, 1838, became a lawyer in 1859, moved to St. Joseph, Missouri, left his city attorney post in 1861 to join the Union Army, and after the war served as county prosecutor and as a member of the U.S. Congress. Appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 18, 1875, as judge of the Western District of Arkansas at Fort Smith, Parker held court six days a week and often heard cases for ten hours a day. He presided over many cases carrying a mandatory death sentence and, though personally opposed to capital punishment, was required by federal law to impose death sentences when juries returned guilty verdicts for rape or murder. He served until shortly before his death on November 17, 1896, was buried in the cemetery, and later became widely known as the Hanging Judge.

Moffett, Oklahoma · United States