Alexandria National Cemetery: Civil War & USCT Heroes

Established in 1862 — two years before Arlington — Alexandria National Cemetery is one of America's original national cemeteries, and the final resting place of more than 4,230 souls. This illustrated volume tells the story of the ground itself and the lives beneath it: the occupied city of thirty wartime hospitals that filled it, the wooden headboards that gave way to stone, and the December 1864 petition in which 443 wounded United States Colored Troops demanded burial beside their white comrades — one of the earliest organized civil rights protests in American history, and the act that made this the nation's first integrated federal military burial ground.

Among the stories told here: Corporal William Marsh, mortally wounded in the burning thickets of the Wilderness; Private John H. Thompson, the Union cavalryman executed for desertion whose death warrant was approved by Lincoln himself; the twenty-one artillerymen killed in an instant when the Fort Lyon powder magazine exploded; the civilians lost aboard the Black Diamond during the hunt for Lincoln's assassin; Private Shadrach Murphy, whose burial sparked the petition; Tobias Trout, the fifer who fought at the Crater and was arrested for refusing to bury his comrade in segregated ground; and the six Buffalo Soldiers who carried the USCT legacy into a new century.

Drawn from cemetery registers, quartermaster correspondence, pension files, and period newspapers, the volume includes:

• Full biographical essays with period photographs, documents, and engravings
• The complete story of the L'Ouverture Hospital petition and the desegregation of the cemetery
• Section and site locations for visitors who want to stand at the stones themselves

Whether you're tracing a Union soldier's final journey, walking the Wilkes Street Cemetery Complex, or drawn to the fight for equality that began before the war had ended, this is the cemetery's definitive companion.

Digital PDF edition • 55 pages • By David Heiby • Published by Gravestone Stories, 2026