Confederate Burials in the National Cemetery

Fort Smith was established by the War Department in 1817 and occupied until April 23, 1861, when the garrison retreated as Arkansas militia advanced, taking arms and supplies with them. Hours later, Arkansas Volunteers led by Col. Solon Borland, a former U.S. senator, entered Fort Smith and claimed it for Arkansas. Because of its location, transportation and communications network, and storage facilities, Fort Smith became an important Confederate supply depot, and over the next thirty months military expeditions were launched from there until Confederates withdrew as the Union army approached on August 31, 1863. During the occupation, Confederate soldiers were buried in the existing post cemetery, which in 1867 became Fort Smith National Cemetery. After the cemetery was established, former Confederate general James F. Fagan and Dr. Elias Duval, aided by the women of Fort Smith, raised money for a memorial honoring Confederate dead buried there, including Gens. Alexander E. Steen and James McIntosh, and before 1898 a shaft was erected in Section 2. A tornado in January 1898 destroyed that memorial and damaged the cemetery. The United Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy later raised money for a replacement and submitted a design to the War Department in 1901, but it was rejected because its inscription violated government policy. The proposed monument was eventually placed on the Sebastian County courthouse lawn, while about 1904 the War Department replaced the destroyed memorial in the cemetery with a small marble obelisk. The largest group of Confederate burials in Fort Smith National Cemetery lies in Section 3, with other interments scattered through Sections 1, 2, 4, and 8; many graves contain two or more burials, and some hold as many as thirty individuals. The distinctive pointed-top Confederate headstones were installed after 1930, when the War Department authorized adding the Southern Cross of Honor, a simplified form of the medal created in 1898 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy for Confederate veterans or their families.

Moffett, Oklahoma · United States