Sculpted by Gary Casteel
 
1863 Signed and Numbered Limited Edition Monument Replicas
 
“I have never, on the field of battle, sent you where I was unwilling to go myself; nor would I now advise you to a course which I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers, you can be good citizens. Obey the laws, preserve your honor, and the Government to which you have surrendered can afford to be, and will be, magnanimous.” 
 
N.B. Forrest, Lieut.-General
Headquarters, Forrest’s Cavalry Corps
Gainesville, Alabama
May 9, 1865
General Orders No. 22
 
Above is an excerpt from General Nathan B. Forrest’s General Orders No. 22, which expressed his farewell to his troops.  The memorial located in Beech Grove Confederate Cemetery contains a larger excerpt from those farewell Orders.  The soldiers originally buried at Beech Grove were killed in the Battle of Hoover’s Gap (June 24-26, 1863), which was part of the Tullahoma Campaign and an important turning point in the Civil War, though overshadowed by two other Union victories that summer of 1863, the Siege of Vicksburg and the Battle of Gettysburg. 
 
What is known of the origins of the Beech Grove Confederate Cemetery located near the intersection of Gossburg Road and Highway 41 in Beech Grove, TN, is best expressed by a letter that was published in the Manchester Times in 1904 to W.T. Wilson from Major Willam Hume, a “gallant Confederate soldier and former resident of Beech Grove.” 
 
Dear Friend and Comrade:
As you are aware, nearly every man able to bear arms in the First, Second and Third Districts of Coffee County and adjoining districts of Rutherford and Bedford Counties was in the Confederate Army and made the best of soldiers.
 
In the spring of 1866 quite a number of men assembled at Beech Grove, and reports were made that many Confederate soldiers had been hastily buried in the fields and pastures nearby, and in some instances the graves were so shallow that portions of the remains were showing. These men all lately having returned to their homes, with fences and stock to a great extent destroyed or stolen and the country devastated, at once agreed to have all these bodies of Confederate soldiers taken up and given a suitable resting place. They selected the top of the hill in the old burying ground on Manchester Pike, near the Rutherford County line, and in full view of the pike, on the land then owned by David Lawrence, had a nice walnut coffin made for each and re-interred there, putting boards on each grave, but being unable to put any name, as all were unknown. They also put a nice paling fence around the graves.
 
This was done by the people there at their own expense, never calling on any other section for help, and was the first Confederate soldiers’ graveyard in the South that I have knowledge of.
 
The majority of these veterans and their fathers are dead. Possibly Stokely Jacobs, Bud Jacobs, and Henry Bivins could give you some information in regard to this. I think it is due your county to have the honor, as it was done at a time when the Confederate soldier did not occupy the position in the State of Tennessee, and the United States that he does today, and it was entirely the work of love for fallen comrades.
 
Yours,
William Hume
 
The cemetery is a monument to the honor, love, and loyalty of the area’s Confederate soldiers toward one another, and is also a solemn reminder of the horrors and costs of war.
 
The monument was dedicated in 1954 and is located in Beech Grove Confederate Cemetery, near Beech Grove, Tennessee.