Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1892-07-05
A LONELY SPOT.
The Confederate Cemetery at
Columbus, o.,
In Which Were Buried Over
Two Thousand Men


fields and Sent to Camp Chase to Suffer
Confinement as Prisoners of War-Not
Known to Whom the Ground Belongs
Being Investigated.
COLUMBUS, July 5.-Adjutant General
Pocock is Just now making an investiga
ton into the history of little plat OF
ground about 140 feet wide and some
500 or 600 feet long, which lies about
five miles west of the state house. In that
small strip, which is enclosed by stone
wall nearly five feet high, lie barred
1890 men who were captured on south
ern battlefields and were sent to Camp
Chase. near Columbus, to suffer confine-
ment as prisoners of war. 1t is a lonely
place, this, situated ON by-road, among
fields that are golden with the ripened
grain, where little save the twittering
of the birds breaks the solemn silence of
death.
A few scanty trees give a precarlous
shade and the long, uncut grass lies
matted on the ground over the graves
of these hundreds of brave men sleeping
the eternal sleep so far from the homes
of their childhood. their friends and
their kin. The place is absolutely neg
lected and deserted. The single iron
gate that breaks the continuity of the
stone wall is fastened and covered with
the undisturbed rust of years. Twenty
five feet beyond it, in the center of the
cemetery, is a granite bowlder some five
or six feet through, On which is carved
in sunken letters
1890 Confederate Soldiers
of the War 1S6l-1S65
Buried in this Enclosure.
There are but three other marking
stones. One bears the inscription
j. d. NEwsoM,
Twenty-ninth Alabama Regiment,
Company ID.
It is modest little stone less than two
feet high, on which the storms have not
vet made visible their effacing force, but
it is plainly neglected, possibly I'M
thought Of
Over at the extreme western end &C
the enclosure is another small stone al
most hidden by the long grass, on which
appears:
GEORGE RANNEY,
Born, Livermore, KY,
July "a, 1889
Died Oct. %, 1868.
But one othe' stone marks the grave
of another gallant fighter for princi-
pie, and it is notable that the name of
the unfortunate who lies beneath is not
given on it. Why, can not be guessed.
Like the others, this stone is small. 1t
stands Just at the left of the entrance
gate, shaded by towering elm, whose
swaying limbs stretch out over many
another grave, and the lettering is this.
Ordnance Sergeant
Third Mississippi Battery,
Residence, Asyka, Miss.
Died JAN i6 1865.
Aged Thirty-Seven Years.
Erected by His Wife.
Two thousand two hundred and fifty
seven graves here are not even marked!
They can not be distinguished in any
way. The ground above all has sunken
to one common level. More than 1900
men, once radiant with hope and strong
with courage. eager for valorous deeds,
who went forth to battle, lie mingling
their dust with that of land they hated
in life, and it takes a long search to OBJ
tain any information as to who they
WERE where they came from or any
thing else about them. Indeed, it is not
sure that any information can be OBJ
tanned.
There is none in Columbus among the
state documents, indeed nothing SC
much as to show to whom the ground
belongs. A protracted inquiry has failed
to discover anyone who has any knowl-
edge of the burial ground and of the
men in it. The relatives and friends OF
the poor fellows have forgotten them
and pay no more heed than if they had
never lived-or died. Forsaken and for.
gotten, they lie in their unhonored
graves, a silent but terrible reproach tc
the living who will not even pay them
the poor tribute of memory.