Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1878 — Our National Cemeteries. [ARTICLE]

Our National Cemeteries.

Gen. D. B. Sacket, Inspector General of the Military Division of the Missouri, has just returned to Chicago from a tour among the national cemeteries in the South. He made the trip under orders from the President, and the cemeteries at New Orleans, Mobile, Baton Rouge, Port Hudson, Natchez, Vicksburg, Memphis and Mound City were embraced in his inspection. Gen. Sacket reports finding all the cemeteries in first-rate order. The one at Vicksburg is a magnificent necropolis. The citizens are proud of it, and strangers visiting the city are shown through it the first tliiug. It is beautifully terraced, and already three growths of grass have been mown from it this season. In a building on the grounds are preserved every article of value found on the persons of the thousands who fell victims to the siege of that city. In this collection are watches, finger-riDgs, coins, knives, locks of hair, and similar trinkets without number, and some of these may yet serve in enabling friends to identify the remains of their dead relatives. The General gathered complete statistics of the dead in all the cemeteries visited by him. He learned that the Clialmette Cemetery at New Orleans contains the remains of 12,131 soldiers, of which number 6,731 are known and 5,400 unknown. In the cemetery at Mobile only 841 bodies were buried, 749 of which are know n and 92 unknown. At Baton Rouge 2 ; 943 soldiers were buried, of wham 2,459 are known and 484 unknown. The necropolis at Port Hudson is packed full of the remains of darkies, who were led to the slaughter by some blundering General. The number interred there is 3,804, of which only 596 are marked “ known.” The grounds at Natchez contain 3,088 bodies, and of these the superintendent has the names

of only 308, the other 2,780 being recorded among the “unknown.” But the greatest collection of dead men’s bones is at Vicksburg, where 16,596 were buried, and of whom only 3,893 are known, the word “ unknown” being inscribed on the headstones of 12,703. At Memphis, of the 13,972 graves 5,755 contain “known” deposits and 8,817 unknown. There are 5,225 graves at Mound City, 111., and 2,463 of these contain soldiers who are knowm and 3,762 are marked unknown.