Confederate Dead

Confederate Dead. Mill Springs Battlefield. After the battle, Union soldiers hastily buried the dead. They interred many of the Confederates in shallow mass graves near where they fell. Some graves were so shallow that the bodies began surfacing just days afterward. With the army gone, local men faced the gruesome task of reburial. Cold weather and bodies frozen to the ground made the horrible task even more difficult. They reinterred the remains here, at what is now Zollicoffer Park. It is thought that many of the Confederate soldiers killed in the January 19, 1862, Battle of Mill Springs lie in the mound to your left and rear.

The United Confederate Veterans placed a memorial marker on the mass grave in 1910. The stone lists no names. In the 1990s, Geoffrey Walden used unit rosters and battle reports to identify over 140 Confederate soldiers who died here. On May 26, 1997, these headstones erected in memory of the fallen Confederate soldiers were dedicated. They do not mark individual graves, but serve as a memorial to the Confederates killed or mortally wounded at the Battle of Mill Springs.

Although the Confederate dead do not lie in neat rows, their remains are here. The headstones are arranged by regiment in the order in which they marched into battle.

Left photo: The dedication of the Zollicoffer Monument in 1910. The United Confederate Veterans erected the monument the same year that they marked the Confederate mass grave.