MEDIA
Army of Tennessee Memorial
Original Author: Detroit Publishing Company
Created: ca. 1910
Medium: Glass-plate negative
Publisher: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division

Army of Tennessee Memorial, Metairie Cemetery, New Orleans

A glass-plate photograph taken around 1910 shows the memorial to the Confederate Army of Tennessee at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana. The memorial contains forty-eight crypts in a vaulted Gothic chapel that is surrounded by a grass-covered earthen mound known as a tumulus. (A second tumulus in the cemetery is dedicated to the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.) Atop the monument to the Army of Tennessee is a bronze sculpture of Confederate general Albert Sydney Johnston, who holds binoculars as he sits atop his horse Fire Eater. New York sculptor Alexander Doyle made the equestrian statue, which was dedicated in 1887, as well as the other sculpture that stands at the foot of the entrance to the tomb. The second figure is that of a Confederate sergeant about to read the roll of those who died during the war.

General Johnston was originally interred in this memorial, but his remains were subsequently moved to Texas. Confederate general G. T. Beauregard, who took over Johnston's command after he was killed at the Battle of Shiloh, is buried here. Beauregard died in New Orleans on February 20, 1893, after a series of illnesses, and was given a state funeral.