Washington Confederate Cemetery (within Rose Hill Cemetery)

Washington Confederate Cemetery, a section within Hagerstown’s Rose Hill Cemetery, holds the remains of 2,468 Confederate soldiers, mostly unknown, killed in the Antietam, South Mountain, and other battles.

When work began on Antietam National Cemetery in 1866, trustees of the cemetery refused to permit Confederate reburials.  In 1870, after several years of negotiation and fundraising, the Maryland General Assembly established the Washington Confederate Cemetery, a “cemetery within a cemetery” on the western perimeter of Hagerstown’s Rose Hill Cemetery.  After several more years of work, it was dedicated on June 12th, 1877. Nearly 2500 Confederate soldiers killed in the battles of South Mountain and Antietam were exhumed and re-buried here, arranged in a half-circle radiating out from the “Hope” statue in the center. Less than 400 of the remains were able to be identified.