HALL OF THE
CONFEDERATE VETERANS’ ASSOCIATION OF WASHINGTON, D.C.
CAMP 171, U.C.V.
DECEMBER 2nd, 1897
COMMRADS:
The Committee appointed to report as to what steps should be taken in respect to the 139 dead Confederate soldiers who lie buried in Forest Hill Cemetery at Madison, Wisconsin, have to report that they have investigated the records, so far as they are accessible, in reference to this matter and find the facts to be as follows:
The operations around New Madrid, Missouri, and Island Number Ten were carried on by about 7,000 Confederates, on the one side and about 28,000 Federal troops on the other. Besides these land forces the Federal army was assisted by a large flotilla of gunboats upon the Mississippi. It is not intended here to detail even briefly the operations which resulted in the capture of Island Number Ten, after an unusually severe siege of about six weeks, and after the greater portion of its garrison had evacuated it. Those who desire to read at length the military history of that memorable occasion, will find the official reports of both sides in the 8th Volume of the War Records, Series 1. It is sufficient to say here that the Confederate forces upon the Island and on the mainland numbered about 7,000 of which about 3,000 were on the island.
In the volume of the War Records just referred to, at page 94, the strength of the Union forces operating against the island, seven days before its capture, is officially stated at 18,547 officers and men present for duty. In the same volume, page 795, the official return of the Confederate force upon the island, present for duty, is 2,385 men on the 21st of March, which was seventeen days previous to its capture. When it was seen that the island must inevitably be taken, steps were begun to evacuate it, and accordingly on the night of the 6th of April, during a heavy rain storm, about 6-7ths of the men succeeded, after spiking most of the guns, in getting off in boats and rafts, and made their way to the Confederate lines. This was done, however, only after the disaster of New Madrid, where about 2,500 of our men were compelled to surrender to a force of about 15,000 of the enemy. The dispatch of Admiral Foote to the United States Secretary of War, dated April 8th, and announcing the capture on the previous day of Island Number Ten, states the number that surrendered to him to be “17 officers and 368 privates, besides 100 of them sick.” Of these five hundred men, nearly all were of the First Alabama Regiment; one hundred and fifty only of that regiment having succeeded in getting off the island, the others remaining until it was too late. The First Alabama was commanded by Colonel Isiah G. W. Steedman. That he was a gallant officer, and his men among the very flower of their native State, the official reports alluded to clearly show. The regiment was, as its number indicates, probably the first regiment formed in the State at the breaking out of the war. We all know that in every Southern State, at that time, the men of these first regiments- the men who shouldered their guns at the first sound of the tocsin of war, were among the best soldiers of the Confederacy. Consequently we are not surprised to find the First Alabama frequently mentioned in the official reports of the transactions on Island Number Ten. General Leonidias Polk, in a letter announcing to General McCown the Confederate Commander of the Island, that he had sent the First Alabama to reinforce him, speaks of the men as being among the best of Bragg’s army. After the surrender of this little garrison to a force forty times its superior in numbers, they with a large number of other Confederate prisoners, were sent North. A part were sent to Camp Douglass, near Chicago, and a smaller portion, which included these men of the First Alabama, were sent to Camp Randall near Madison, Wisconsin. They remained there, however, but about three months, when they were sent up there and it is believed were shortly afterwards exchanged. During this period of three months, 139 of these men died, 110 being of the First Alabama. Their deaths were undoubtedly the result of the suffering and constant exposure they had undergone in their heroic defense of Island Number Ten, which during the siege was constantly flooded in consequence of freshets of the Mississippi river, the men being often compelled, as the official reports state, while manning the guns of the batteries, to stand for hours knee-deep in the chilly waters of the river, for the siege was during the month of March. (See the report of General Trudeau commanding Artillery at Island Number Ten, March 29, 1862, Vol. 8, Series 1, War Records, page 150.) Elsewhere we have given the names of these dead heroes. As they died, sometimes at the rate of ten a day, they were laid side by side in a plot of ground on the edge of Forest Hill Cemetery, and that spot soon became known to the people of Madison, Wisconsin, as “Confederate Rest.” And rest it was indeed, to these poor fellows, who, succumbing to the hardships of war, laid them down in their last sleep, martyrs to the cause they loved. For nearly five years after the war the site of those graves was almost forgotten. Among strangers who could not be expected to sympathize with the sentiments which had imbued these boys in gray and led them to offer their lives upon the altar of their country, it would perhaps, in time, have become completely obliterated but for the fact that there came to live at Madison, Wisconsin, a widowed, southern-born woman-Mrs. Alice W. Waterman of Louisiana. She learned of this lonely little corner in Forest Hill Cemetery and expended of her means to beautify it. How she did it, let the people of Madison, whose sympathies she awoke for these, our dead comrades, tell us, as we find it in the Wisconsin State Journal of May 29, 1885, published at Madison, and from which we now quote:
The knowledge of the fact that many of her countrymen lay neglected and almost forgotten among strangers at the north, far removed from the homes of their youth and the loving care of those to whom they were near and dear, touched a tender spot in the heart of the lady, and she resolved to do what lay in her power to beautify the resting place of the strangers. She heaped up neat mounds over each grave, planted trees in the plat and an evergreen hedge along the east and south sides, cleared away the weeds, trimmed the grass, and had a rude board fence, which has since been removed, constructed around the plat. Then she secured head boards, had them appropriately inscribed with the names of the dead, their company and regiment, as well as the date of death.
“Her work was commenced during the time Gen. Lucius Fairchild was governor, and that gentleman displayed the charity of a true soldier for a fallen enemy, by doing various little acts of kindness tending to aid Mrs. Waterman in the work which her sympathetic nature inspired. Governor Washburn, who succeeded Governor Fairchild, went a step further than his predecessor in office, for upon a Memorial day, when he was the State’s Chief Executive, he led a party of old Union soldiers into Confederate Rest, and with his own hands strewed floral offerings upon the graves of the boys in gray. This custom has been generally followed since it was established. Governor Washburn was the first Chief Executive in any of the Northern States to exhibit such charity, but his conduct has since been very generally emulated where Union and Confederate soldiers lie buried together. Hon. B. J. Stevens, while acting as Mayor of Madison last year, showed great kindness to Mrs. Waterman and offered to assist her in any manner he was able, while the cemetery Commissioners-General C.P. Cha u, Deming Fitch and Darwin Clark- have of late years been very thoughtful in their attentions.
“Mrs. Waterman has an affectionate way of referring to the buried Confederates, whose graves she guards so tenderly, as “My boys.” She says she planted the hedges around the plat to “keep the cold wind off my boys,” and it affords her pleasure to know that when the sun rises in the morning, it shines warmly in the faces of “my boys.” She planted white lilac amid the graves, because they will blossom even if she is “not there to watch them,” and her object in setting out two butternut trees was as she puts it, so “that the children will go there to gather the nuts, and thus make the place more pleasant by their presence.”
Closely adjoining this cemetery of our dead comrades lies a cemetery of Federal dead, and we are informed that for many years it has been the custom on Decoration day to hold memorial exercises in the open spaces between those two burial spots, and at their conclusion to decorate the graves of Federal and Confederate dead alike. For this beautiful and touching tribute accorded by Union soldiers to their one-time foemen we tender our full-hearted acknowledgments, and say to them that they have, by their kindly remembrance of our comrades, given a fresh illustration to the saying of the ancient Tusculau that:
“Whoever is brave should be a man of great soul.”
But if those who were once our enemies have through all these years not forgotten our dead, is it not time that we should remember them? Is it not time that we place above those little mounds, which the coming years must eventually waste away, a more enduring memorial than the perishable flowers placed there by the impulsive hands of friendly strangers?
Mrs. Waterman died on the 13th of September last, at Madison. At her funeral was delivered the beautiful sermon, an extract from which is appended to this report. We have learned that it was the ambition of this good lady for over twenty-five years of her life to some day see a monument of granite erected in the midst of these graves whereon should be carved the names of these dead soldiers of the South, but her efforts where futile. She, herself, by the vicissitudes of fortune, had lost her entire means, and the people of her native land were poor and struggling under adverse circumstances to recuperate their broken fortunes, so the monument was never erected, but she continued to see after and care for the graves. And now that she is dead, who shall see to it that this monument be built? Who shall see to it that this spot where these men lie, the furthest north of any of our buried comrades, shall be marked with a token to all who shall see it that we have not forgotten our dead? As Southern men we should hide our heads in shame if after knowing the facts which we now know, we should fail to see to it that this monument be built with the names upon its face, not only of these men who lie buried so far away from their own southland and for love of which they fought and suffered and died, but the name also of this noble Southern woman, Alice Waterman, the patriotic care-taker of their graves for so many years, and who now sleeps with them, a heroine among heroes.
Comrades, your committee have to report in conclusion that this Association having had the honor to be the first among the Associations of ex-Confederate soldiers and sailors, to have this matter brought to their attention, should be among the first to take immediate steps toward the work of procuring means to erect this monument, and thereby perpetuate the names of these men and of the noble woman who for so long a time had faithfully kept green their graves. Your committee, therefore, submit for adoption the following resolution:
Resolved, That the Committee having in charge the matter of the Confederate dead who lie buried in Forest Hill cemetery at Madison, Wisconsin, be and they are hereby empowered with authority to proceed in such manner as they may deem proper and expedient to procure the means for the erection of a monument over their graves, and that it report from time to time, what progress they have made thereat.
We have annexed to this report, besides a list of the dead with the names of the commands to which they belonged, a letter to the Chairman of the Committee by Mr.Hugh Lewis, a brave Federal soldier of the 2d Wisconsin Regiment who lost his arm at the second battle of Manassas. To him this Association is greatly indebted for the first information which came to it in regard to this matter. Mr. Lewis has for many years been as resident of Madison, Wisconsin, and was a warm friend of Mrs. Waterman. To him we are also indebted for the excellent photograph of that noble lady, and of the cemetery where lie buried these 139 Confederate soldiers.
In addition to his letter we have also annexed an extract form a copy of the funeral oration delivered over the body of Mrs. Waterman before burial among “her boys” and also copies of several articles from the Madison newspapers bearing upon the subject of this report. These articles show a more that excellent spirit on the part of the good people of Madison and encouraged us to believe that in that city at least, the war with all its animosities, has long been at an end.
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