Confederate Soldiers Rest

Confederate Soldiers Rest, in the Fowler Section of Historic Elmwood Cemetery, contains the graves of more than 1,000 Confederate soldiers and veterans. A Memphis Daily Appeal article of 27 June 1861 said the plot was dedicated to the Southern Mothers' Society, and another on 25 September 1861 said the company had donated and set apart the ground free of charge for soldiers who died honorably in defense of their liberties, with a central circle twelve feet in diameter reserved for a monument to the fallen. The first burial there was William Thomas Gallagher in lot 159, Fowler Section, Grave 20 on 17 June 1861, barely a month after the war began, and the last was Confederate veteran John Frank Gunter on 01 April 1940. In 1886, the Confederate Historical Association raised funds for 945 numbered headstones to be placed at each grave, and years later the discovery of a small notebook matching names to those numbers made it possible to identify the exact burial place, burial date, and Confederate unit of a specific soldier or veteran. The Confederate monument in the burial ground was unveiled on 05 June 1878 before a crowd of almost 5,000 people. Plans for it began with the Ladies Confederate Memorial Association, later known as the Confederate Historical Association, and its $5,000 cost was raised by a committee chaired by N. B. Forrest. The monument bears the words "Confederate Dead" on the front and on the back the inscription "Illis Victoriam Non Immortatitatem Fata Negaverunt," translated as "The Fates Which Refused Them Victory Did Not Deny Them Immortality."

Memphis, Tennessee · United States