Manassas Confederate Cemetery

Manassas Confederate Cemetery. Venerating "Spirit and Glory". , In May 1867, the Ladies Memorial Association of Manassas established the Confederate Cemetery on an acre of land donated by former Confederate Col. and Mrs. William Sanford Fewell. The Fewells donated this land for the reburial here of Confederate soldiers who had died in camps, hospitals, or farmhouses during the autumn of 1861 and the winter of 1862 and whose remains were "scattered over the Plains." The Groveton Association of Prince William County cared for remains gathered from the Manassas battlefield and interred in Groveton., The monument in front of you, dedicated in 1889, includes a marble plaque with the following inscription: "Dedicated by the Ladies Memorial Association of Manassas on August 30, 1889, to the heroes of Virginia and her sister States, who yielded their lives on July 18 and 21, 1861 and August 28-29-30, 1862, in defense of the Confederate Cause.", In 1911, the Ladies Memorial Association placed a bronze statue of a Confederate Soldier "At Rest" on the monument facing east to guard against another attack from Washington. Today, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Manassas Chapter, owns the cemetery and maintains it in cooperation with the City of Manassas., [Sidebar:] , The United States established the first national cemeteries in 1862 and, after the war, furnished wounded and destitute Union veterans with artificial limbs and pensions. The former Confederate states assumed similar responsibility for surviving Confederate veterans, while ladies memorial associations established Confederate cemeteries, reinterred remains from scattered battlefields, and tended to the graves. The ladies association, who collected Civil War relics to preserve Confederate history and organized memorial day observances at the cemeteries to instill "a proper veneration for the spirit and glory that animated the South."