Confederate Memorial | Photo 05

By the end of 1901 all the Confederate soldiers buried in the national cemeteries at Alexandria, Virginia, and at the Soldiers' Home in Washington were brought together with the soldiers buried at Arlington and reinterred in the Confederate section. Among the 482 persons buried there are 46 officers, 351 enlisted men, 58 wives, 15 southern civilians, and 12 unknowns. They are buried in concentric circles around the Confederate Monument, and their graves are marked with headstones that are distinct for their pointed tops. Legend attributes these pointed-top tombstones to a Confederate belief that the points would "keep Yankees from sitting on them."

To further honor these citizens of the South, the United Daughters of the Confederacy petitioned to erect a major monument to the Confederate dead. On March 4, 1906 Secretary of War William Howard Taft granted their request. The cornerstone was laid on Nov. 12, 1912 at a ceremony featuring speakers William Jennings Bryan and James A. Tanner, a former Union corporal who lost both legs at the second Battle of Bull Run. He was commander in chief of the Union veterans group, The Grand Army of the Republic. That same evening, President William Howard Taft addressed the United Daughters of the Confederacy at a reception in the Daughters of the American Revolution's Centennial Hall.