The Graves of Jefferson Davis & His Generals | History Traveler Episode 159

[Music] all right well if you have been following along for the past several episodes uh you know that i have been on this gargantuan series uh going through the areas that that are related to the battle of gettysburg and i ended up in the very last episode right here in richmond virginia at the hollywood cemetery where many of the confederate dead from the battle of gettysburg are buried but it's not just people from the battle of gettysburg who are buried here being that this was the capital of the confederacy as one might expect there are thousands upon thousands of confederate graves here as a matter of fact if you look behind me right here you can see this giant 90-foot monument to the confederate dead of the civil war but it's not just soldiers who are buried here also buried here is the president of the confederacy jefferson davis there's also a lot of generals who are buried here so i had this wild idea and i don't know if we're going to be able to do it or not but we're going to attempt to track down the graves of every single confederate general buried here at hollywood cemetery try and learn a little bit more about them cap it off with a visit to the grave of the president of the confederacy and yeah see see what we can learn along the way [Music] do all right now before we get going on this craziness i feel like there are a few ground rules that we need to establish first let's all agree that the civil war ended in 1865 and there is no need for us to re-fight the battles of the past especially in the comment section second even though i'm at a cemetery that holds the remains of a lot of confederates and i'm visiting the the graves of confederate generals that doesn't make me a confederate sympathizer that makes me somebody who is just interested in history and wants to wants to learn from it uh and third i think that reasonable people can agree that even though you may not agree with the cause for which the confederacy was fighting for you can acknowledge and maybe even on some level admire the the bravery and sacrifice and hardship that the individual soldier went through so anyway that's what we're gonna be doing today we're looking at the history we're we're not uh you know relitigating the civil war or fighting the battles of the past uh we're just exploring this place and seeing what we can learn [Music] so before we start in on our quest i'm going to take a quick look at this big monstrosity of a monument this was completed in 1869 and uh wow those i don't know if you can really tell it from the video but those stones are absolutely massive huh [Music] all right and here we have the guy who might be largely responsible for the battle of gettysburg that is general henry heath who commanded a division in ap hills corps uh heath had moved his division into gettysburg in spite of lee's order to not bring about a general engagement uh he moved into the town or towards the town rather and ran into buford's cavalry heath was wounded at gettysburg ended up bouncing back and uh was with lee all the way to appomattox and uh huh it looks like someone has left a rock in remembrance of heath with a duck painted on it here is the grave of general james j archer now archer's brigade was uh pretty well known was in a lot of different major engagements from the seven days all the way up to gettysburg where archer was uh taken prisoner and he was held in a couple of different union pow camps and uh was eventually uh traded for some union pows and was supposed to link back up with the army of northern virginia at petersburg but his health had deteriorated so much that he ended up dying before the war was over another interesting little fact archer came from the same town as john wilkes booth here is the grave of brigadier general robert hall chilton now this is a general that you may not have heard of because he didn't really have but i think maybe one combat command in 1861 he resigned his commission and became a chief of staff for robert e lee later that year and was kind of serving in a similar capacity for the army of northern virginia but what he's really best known for or what maybe he's not known for i don't know maybe you don't know it uh he wrote and signed special order number 191 which later became known as lee's lost order during the antietam campaign so yeah there's general chilton now here's another one that i'm sure very few people have heard of this is general philip saint george and he wasn't in the war for very long he commanded at blackburn's ford as a colonel and was also at the battle of centerville that was his last battle and he ended up committing suicide in december of 1861. the documented reason for his self-inflicted death was shattered in health and mind well in the confederate army sometimes it's not enough to have a billy smith sometimes you need an extra billy smith here is the tomb of william extra billy smith i have no idea how he got that nickname but if you go up here on the back side of course his whole family is in this tomb he was uh at antietam and uh at chancellorsville and uh was also at the battle of gettysburg and he's been kind of criticized for not taking the initiative and pursuing the union and taking cemetery hill just being a little bit too leery and anyway extra billy smith is buried right here at hollywood cemetery well here on this hilltop is the final resting place of brigadier general john cook he was originally from jefferson barracks so if you've watched the show for any amount of time you should be familiar with jefferson barracks but he ended up getting wounded at fredericksburg and then got back in the game was at the battle of the wilderness was also at petersburg until the union army breached the defenses there and went all the way to appomattox courthouse by the time he surrendered on april 9th of 1865 he only had 590 men left in his command hey here's another interesting little tidbit his uh sister flora cook was uh married to jeb stewart i do want to take just a quick moment to show you just this tangled array of headstones that i'm going through here at hollywood cemetery uh man finding these graves is proving to be a little bit more difficult than what i anticipated but anyway we're going to keep going [Music] well they sure as heck put this one on the side of a hill fortunately i have some stairs that i can go up so this that we're coming up on is the grave of john daniel imboden who was a brigadier general in the confederate army and um he was at chambersburg in gettysburg and shenandoah and then during the valley campaign in 1864 he got typhoid and uh had to set out the rest of the war pretty much he was on prison duty uh but anyway yeah there's another one of uh jefferson davis's generals in bowdoin what we're looking at here has nothing to do with a general but i did want to mention it because it's kind of an iconic uh piece here at the hollywood cemetery in richmond uh this is the grave of a little girl who died in 1862 and standing over her is this cast iron dog and the way the story goes is the confederacy was calling on all people to surrender metals that they had to be melted down so that they could make bullets and could make artillery pieces and things like that well the family didn't want to do that so they moved the dog here to the grave of their daughter because cemetery items were exempt from that meltdown alright so we are now moving into what is known as the confederate officers section here at hollywood cemetery and i believe that there are a few generals who are buried in this section uh one of which is well at least his marker is right over here here is the marker for general edward johnson better known by his nickname alexanie johnson uh he was also known as old clubby which i think is a cool nickname as well now we don't know exactly where he is but he is he is buried here in this plot somewhere uh so johnson is is pretty well known for his assault on corpse hill on day two of the battle of gettysburg um in in may of 1864 uh at the battle of spotsylvania he and his division were in some bloody hand-to-hand fighting and he and most of the division ended up being taken prisoner so he went to a prisoner of war camp was exchanged got back in the game and then was part of the debacles at spring hill and at the battle of franklin in tennessee uh we have a few videos on the battle of franklin and then he ended up getting captured again for a second time at the battle of nashville and uh i referenced the american battlefield trust whenever i was researching alejany johnson and they said that he has the distinction of having been shifted to three of the most notorious prisoner of war camps in the civil war and he's here somewhere here's another case of a marker that has been left for uh general david rumpf jones which i like that middle name because we don't know exactly where he's buried but but he's in here somewhere he was chief of staff for pgt beauregard and offered the terms of surrender at the battle of fort sumter and then after antietam the the stress of combat aggravated a heart condition that he had and uh he ended up he ended up passing away in january of 1863. yeah there's final resting place of david rumpf jones here's yet again another marker for a confederate general whose exact location is unknown this is for general john caldwell calhoun sanders who look at the dates born april of 1840 died august 21st of 1864. this was one of the youngest generals in the confederate army and he died at the siege of petersburg [Music] major general samuel jones this is another one who really isn't very well known as far as battlefield commanders he was at the first battle of bull run uh you can look him up if you want to learn more about him well i guess that whenever you are the nephew of robert e lee well you get the the big stone over your head whenever you die uh this is the grave of fitzhal lee he was a graduate of west point in 1856 i believe and served in the confederate cavalry uh he was at antietam chancellorsville gettysburg spotsylvania so really a lot of the the big battles in the east and he ended up getting wounded at the third battle of winchester and that that pretty much knocked him out of the war here's something that i find really interesting about fitzhalle though uh he ended up serving for the us army later on in life at uh havana cuba in the spanish-american war so kind of interesting that he served against the united states and then served for the united states later on in life one quick note i was just looking at these cross-shaped stones that are lying flat here on the ground for the other members of the lee family and noticed that they have a marker here in memory of vice admiral fitzhalith iii who was buried at sea the pacific ocean in 1992 so i'll have to check out that story and see what's up with that all right we're going to go off topic for just a moment this is not a general this is the grave of hunter holmes mcguire who was a confederate battlefield surgeon and the surgeon who amputated stonewall jackson's arm so yeah i thought that was kind of interesting and wanted to include it all right just found another one this one was kind of hidden away behind some others this is eppa hunting who was a brigadier general in the confederate army and uh over here i don't know a lot about him really i don't know anything about him says he was a member of the constitutional convention of virginia in 1861 uh representative in congress and a u.s senator so even after the civil war he went on to serve in politics in the us government okay i think it's time to come to grips with the fact that they're just some of these guys that i'm not going to find walter gwyn i have no idea where you are but you're here somewhere in hollywood cemetery uh so anyway we're gonna get as close as we can to finding all the generals i got a few more that that we're going to seek out here here's the grave of henry wise and there's nothing here on his tomb that indicates that he was a general in the confederacy he was part of the virginia delegation of secession and was appointed as a brigadier general wasn't very successful at it though and uh kind of sad the the war ended up costing him his son so he like many others paid a pretty heavy price dear heavens now i don't know if i would have ever found this one had it not been for the foot marker that was placed here uh this is brigadier general william edwin stark and he was at the first battle of bull run second battle of bull run and was killed at antietam was shot three times now here's something that i've got to investigate next to him is an edwin b stark lieutenant of the confederate states of america also killed in 1862 so i have to wonder if this is a father and son pair who both died in the civil war in the same year that that must have been awful for their family had a little trouble finding this one this is brigadier general ruben lindsey walker he was in the first battle of bull run and amazingly was in all of the major campaigns of the east uh i read that he was in 63 battles and engagements and was never wounded and uh yeah promoted to brigadier general in 1865. oh merciful days here's another one that was difficult to find and there's also a little bit of a climb to get to uh this is thomas muldrop logan and uh he was there at the beginning and there at the end he was in the first battle of bull run uh was at chickamauga and uh knoxville and uh led the last confederate cavalry charge at the battle of bentonville in north carolina so yeah that's general logan here's another one who didn't live to see the end of the war uh brigadier general john piegram he was at chickamauga and the wilderness also in the shenandoah valley campaign and he was killed in february of 1865 at says the battle of hatcher's run [Music] [Applause] [Music] holy smokes well we have put some walking miles on these boots today and uh we found every general that that i can find in the cemetery that that was with the confederacy and we just have one more grave left to visit it's that of the only president of the confederacy jefferson davis well here is the final resting place of jefferson davis here at hollywood cemetery now you can see there are two graves here uh the one on the left is jefferson davis the one on the right is for his wife and if you look at this monument up here it lists some of the things that the jefferson davis did throughout his career so um was a west point graduate 1828 was in the house of representatives uh was in the mexican-american war served as a general in the us army was in the senate was the secretary of war and yet when the time came to choose uh he chose to side with the confederates now this this monument was was erected by his uh his daughter margaret howe davis hayes and i i should probably address a few things on it that i personally find problematic it says jefferson davis at rest an american soldier and defender of the constitution so when you rebel against the united states to me it's hard to say that you're defending the constitution even though i understand that's the viewpoint that they took and then on the back side here it says president of the confederate states of america 1861 to 1865 uh faithful to all trusts a martyr to principle he lived and died the most consistent of american soldiers and statesmen and then it quotes the bible and it says blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven [Music] so yeah there there are some issues that i would have with that [Music] well since i've probably angered half of the people watching i might as well go ahead and anger the other half as well even though i personally have some problems with the the verbiage on the monument over the grave of jefferson davis i don't think that means that it should be taken down and here's why i think that for one it helps to explain the attitudes that people in the past had right after the civil war whenever we learn more about human nature well we learn a little bit more about our own weaknesses and it helps us to uh you know keep from making the the same mistakes of the past and and kind of the the second reason ties in with that uh it teaches me a little bit more about myself and and gives me some warnings to myself there's a bible verse that's on the grave of jefferson davis um he fully believed that what he was doing was the right thing so it gives me pause that even whenever i think that i'm absolutely right about something well maybe i need to exhibit a little bit of humility and make sure that what i think is right is actually right but anyway that was uh jefferson davis and at least some of his generals not all of them here at hollywood cemetery in richmond virginia very very cool place [Music] so you

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 99,420

Rating: 4.8919702 out of 5

Keywords: history, history channel, documentary, gettysburg, travel, history traveler, history underground, jd history traveler, battle of gettysburg, confederacy, famous graves, graves, gettysburg ghosts, civil war, civil war documentary, jefferson davis, lee, confederate generals

Id: LDzEfhTNrH8

Length: 24min 35sec (1475 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021