Resaca Confederate Cemetery
From Dixiepedia: The PC-Free Encyclopedia
Resaca Confederate Cemetery in Gordon County is Georgia’s first Confederate cemetery and one of the two oldest in the South.
In May of 1864, Union and Confederated forces engaged in the Battle of Resaca. Colonel John F. Green, whose plantation lay within the Resaca battlefield, was forced to take his family and leave their plantation. As the Confederate soldiers retreated, their dead was left on the battlefield. Union troops dug shallow graves for them where they fell, or threw dirt over their bodies. When the Green’s were able to return to their home, they found shallow depressions and low mounds surrounding all sides of their home. Rain had washed away dirt leaving some bodies exposed.
The Colonel's daughters, Mary J. Green and Pyatt with the help of a Negro cook and Negro maid, began collecting the remains of the Confederates, dug graves, and buried them in their flower garden. Then they desired to collect all the bodies and re-inter them in a plot of land to be used henceforth as a Confederate cemetery. In 1866, Mary and Pyatt wrote to friends around the State begging them to raise money for the cemetery. The poverty-stricken, war-torn people contributed what they could, sending nickels, dimes, and dollars. Colonel Green gave his daughters two and a half acres for the cemetery.
On 4 July 1866, the women of Resaca formed a Ladies Memorial Association and elected Mary Green president. They proposed for Miss Green to appeal to the Georgia Legislature for financial help on the cemetery. Her petition for $500 was granted and an additional $3,500 was given with a request for her to remove the dead from the Chickamauga battlefield also. By October 1866, all 450 soldiers had been re-buried in the cemetery. The first Memorial held for these soldiers was on 25 October 1866.
Colonel James Robertson designed the cemetery with a plot for soldiers from each State buried there - Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Eight soldiers whose names, but not States, could be identified were buried in a section together. The vast number whose names and States were unknown lie buried around a monument cross engraved “TO THE UNKOWN DEAD.” In 1902, a monument was erected in the Georgia lot bearing the inscription, "We Sleep Here In Obedience To Law/ When Duty Called, We Came/When Country Called, We Died."
Two memorial services are held each year at the cemetery, one in April in accordance with Georgia’s Confederate Memorial Day, and the other in May during the Battle of Resaca re-enactment.
