Civil War Memorials
Oak Woods is the home to the largest mass grave of Confederate Soldiers in the United States as well as to hundreds of soldiers who served in the Union Army. There are 3 prominent Civil War monuments which were constructed over the years.
Scroll down to read about each monument or click on the links below view each section:
1. The Soldier’s Memorial
2. Lincoln the Orator
3. The Confederate Mound
*Not all Union and Confederate soldiers are buried in these specific locations. Graves of both can be found throughout the cemetery. However, these three sections contain the largest concentration.
The Soldier’s Memorial is a tribute to the Union Soldiers who served in the Civil War. It was erected in 1876 by the Board of Managers of the Chicago Soldier's Home.
Lincoln the Orator
Known as "Lincoln at Gettysburg " or "Lincoln the Orator" the monument honors the graves of numerous Union soldiers and volunteers who served in the Civil War. This monument is a replica of another monument by Charles J. Mulligan. The original monument sits in a cemetery in Pana, Illinois. This replica was erected in 1905. It sits on the Abraham Lincoln Post #91 lot.
The Confederate Mound of 1895
The Confederate Mound is a large granite monument in the southwest corner of the cemetery that memorializes the more than 4,000 Confederate soldiers who perished while imprisoned at Chicago’s Camp Douglas during the Civil War.
Located in what is the present-day Bronzeville neighborhood, politician Stephen Douglas leased the land for Camp Douglas to the US government for military purposes during the war. Originally used for the training of Union soldiers, Camp Douglas became a significant military prison as the war went on, housing nearly 26,000 soldiers through the duration of the conflict. Conditions at the camp made diseases such as smallpox easy to spread between prisoners, resulting in a significant number of deaths. Deceased prisoners were buried on the grounds of the camp as well as in Chicago’s old City Cemetery, located in modern-day Lincoln Park, but at the end of the war the US government bought a portion of land in Oak Woods cemetery to serve as the resting place for these Confederate soldiers.
In 1887, more than 20 years after the initial re-interment, the War Department approved a proposal by former-Confederates to build a monument to the fallen soldiers at the burial site in Oak Woods. Under the creative and financial supervision of former Confederate officer John C. Underwood, the Mound project was completed in 1895 and its dedication attracted a crowd of over 100,000 people. The main feature of the monument is a statue of a Confederate soldier, inspired by the painting “Appomattox” by John A. Elder.
Nearby the statue are cannonballs stacked in pyramids. In 1911, additional construction at the site raised the mound and added plaques that contain the names of individuals known to have died as prisoners at Camp Douglas.
Some historians point to the Confederate memorialization at Oak Woods cemetery as evidence of an evolving memory of the Civil War in succeeding generations. In Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory David W. Blight identifies the dedication of the Confederate Mound at Oak Woods cemetery as representing a shift away from an emancipationist memory on the war that centered the ending of slavery, with a reconciliationist memory that emphasized the valor of soldiers on both sides, while minimizing the causes of the conflict. For Blight, the emancipationist vision of the Civil War, synonymous with Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, understood the conflict as a sacred fight aimed at an American “rebirth” with the collapse of slavery. However, in service to the nation’s deep need to heal, Blight reveals how silences around slavery and Reconstruction served the reconciliationist narrative that followed the conflict. Celebrating the heroism of Confederate soldiers in ceremonies and monuments such as those at Oak Woods, may have provided a sense of reunion at the expense of the ideals of the conflict.
Some view the Confederate Mound as unique in character as a monument to the suffering of everyday Confederate soldiers, without commenting on their cause and the Mound is still annually honored by organizations such as the Illinois chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The monument’s placement in Oak Woods, a previously segregated cemetery, stands in contrast to its other major legacy: a resting place for significant Black Chicagoans, including civil rights leaders. The fraught juxtaposition of this monument dedicated to soldiers who fought to preserve slavery with figures such as Ida B. Wells, Harold Washington and Lyman Trumbull, an architect of the 13th amendment to end slavery, makes Oak Woods a rich space for contemporary cultural conversations related to Confederate monuments and memorialization. Oak Woods demonstrates the way that different historical narratives can converge within a physical space, creating tension, but also the opportunity to see history as something that is not fixed, but always evolving.
