Category:Confederate Mound (Oak Woods Cemetery)

English: According to the U.S. National Park Service, Confederate Mound is an elliptical plot, approximately 475 feet by 275 feet, located between Divisions 1 and 2 of Section K within Oak Woods Cemetery at 1035 East 67th St., in the Grand Crossing neighborhood of Chicago (South Side, near the campus of the University of Chicago). The most prominent feature of the plot is the Confederate Monument, a 30-foot granite column topped with a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier, a figure based on the painting "Appomattox" by John A. Elder which marks a mass grave of near 6,000 Confederate soldiers who died as prisoners of war at Camp Douglas prison in Chicago between 1862 and 1865. At the base of the tapered square shaft are three bas-relief images: "The Call to Arms" showing a group rallying for the cause, "A Soldier’s Death Dream" depicting a fallen soldier and his horse on the battlefield, and "A Veteran’s Return Home" showing a soldier arriving at a ruined cabin. General John C. Underwood, a regional head of the United Confederate Veterans, designed the monument and was at its dedication on May 30, 1895, along with President Grover Cleveland and an estimated 100,000 visitors. In 1911, the Commission for Marking the Graves of Confederate Dead paid to have the forty feet tall monument lifted up and set upon a base of red granite brought from the state of Georgia. Bronze plaques inscribed with the 4,275 known names were affixed to the four sides of the base were. Four cannons surround the monument, forming a square 100 feet on each side. Between the monument and the northern cannon, 12 marble headstones laid in an arc mark the graves of unknown Union guards at the Camp Douglas prison camp. Also near the monument are the plot’s flagpole and a large cannonball pyramid (NPS).