In honor of the action of the South Carolina legislature to lower the Confederate flag, it's fitting to highlight a memorial to the sacrifice and deprivation endured by their forebears in that misguided cause.
The Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio has graves for over two thousand Confederate soldiers who died there as prisoners of war, 1861-1865. Most of them have headstones, carved with a serial number, name, rank, and company. Many of course are from South Carolina, highlighted below.
The cemetery is all that remains of Camp Chase, the army base that issued more blue uniforms than any other during the Civil War. Beyond the headstones, there is probably no source to tell the story of how these men suffered, either at the prison camp or the battle field before.
I took these today over the course of about an hour, then interrupted by rain.
Click on any image to get a larger version.
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From Michael Conger on Memorial Day 2007:
From Hamlet, often quoted by Pres. Abraham Lincoln:
... What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood?
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? ...