Point Lookout Confederate Cemetery

At Point Lookout, Confederate soldiers who died as prisoners of war between March 1st, 1864, and June 30th, 1865, were remembered by the State of Maryland, which recorded 3,004 dead in all, including 640 from Virginia, 962 from North Carolina, 248 from South Carolina, 249 from Georgia, 75 from Alabama, 63 from Tennessee, 38 from Louisiana, 42 from Mississippi, 31 from Florida, 18 from Kentucky, 6 from Texas, 6 from Maryland, 4 from Arkansas, 4 from Missouri, and 618 whose Confederate states were not designated. The inscription honored their patriotism, their endurance of the trials of prison, and their faithfulness unto death. It also quoted Horace’s line Dulce et decorum est pro Patria Mori, translated as “It is right and proper to die for one’s country.” After Maryland ceded to the federal government the cemetery to which the bodies had been removed, and while Colonel Wm. Elliott, General Wm. C. Oates, and Governor James H. Berry served as U.S. commissioners to mark Confederate graves, the War Department permitted the state monument to be removed and re-erected at the original prison burying ground in A.D. 1910–1911.

Maryland · United States