Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz

Mound City National Cemetery, being one of twelve original National Cemeteries, was established in 1864 pursuant to the Act of July 17, 1862, whereby President Abraham Lincoln was authorized "to purchase cemetery grounds...to be used as a National Cemetery for soldiers who shall have died in the service of their country." The land was purchased by the United States in two separate parcels from S.S. Taylor and Edwin Parsons, Trustees.

Though Mound City and nearby Cairo, Illinois were not in the combat theater of the Civil War, their location near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers made these areas important staging points for dispatch of men and material during the campaigns of the west which opened the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers for the Union Forces. Several of the famous Eads iron-clad gunboats were built at the Mound City Marine Ways and Shipyard. These specially designed shallow draft iron-clads played an important part in the western campaign giving valuable support to the Union troops on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers and at Vicksburg.

Grim casualty lists of the wounded and sick became a part of life as the war dragged on. Large army general hospitals were established at Mound City and at Cairo to care for some of the war casualties.

In 1861 a large brick building in Mound City was taken over by the U.S. Government for use as a general hospital. In service throughout the war, it was one of the largest military hospitals in the west. Another large hospital was established at Cairo. The services of Roman Catholic nuns of the Order of the Holy Cross at Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana were utilized as nurses to staff these hospitals. The establishment of these large hospitals was a determining factor in the location of the cemetery at Mound City, which later became Mound City National Cemetery. The hospital at Mound City was able to accommodate from 1,000-1,500 patients, and has been described as one of the best administered of the military general hospitals. Mother Angela, who was in charge of a school at South Bend when the war began, became supervisor of nurses at the Mound City hospital and rendered outstanding service. Among the outstanding surgeons at the hospital were Dr. E.S. Franklin and Dr. H. Warder, who was later in charge of the Illinois State Hospital at Anna, Illinois.

The first patients at the Mound City General Hospital were the wounded from the battle of Belmont, KY, November 7, 1861. Heavy fighting at Fort Donelson, February 13-16, 1862, and at Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862 brought many more patients to the Mound City and Cairo hospitals. The death rate from wounds and all too prevalent diseases was high in the hospitals of the Civil War period. The report of the inspector of National Cemeteries for 1869 indicates that the original interments in the Mound City National Cemetery from the area hospitals numbered 1,644 decedents. Additional reinterments of remains recovered from isolated locations along the Mississippi, Cache and Ohio rivers and from Cairo, Illinois, Columbus and Paducah, Kentucky brought the 1869 total of interments in the cemetery to 4,808, of which the number 2,441 remains were decedents who could not be identified and were buried as unknowns.

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