Confederate Martyrs Monument in Jeffersontown

Confederate Martyrs Monument In Jeffersontown

The Confederate Martyrs Monument at the Jeffersontown City Cemetery in Jeffersontown, Kentucky marks where four Confederate soldiers were executed "without cause or trial", due to Order #59, the creation of Union General Stephen G. Burbridge, known as "Butcher Burbridge" in Kentucky, which called for the execution of four Confederate prisoners for every unarmed Union citizen killed. The total number of executions performed as a result of this order was fifty. The four soldiers commemorated on the stone were Wilson P. Lilly, Rev. Sherwood Hatley, Lindsay Duke Buckner and M. Blincoe.

The execution of the four Confederate soldiers was the only significant event of the American Civil War in Jeffersontown. It was done in retaliation for the death of a Union soldier on Bardstown Pike. The soldiers were shot while confined, and their bodies were dumped in a ditch until their interment here.

The monument was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 17, 1997, the same day as the Louisville Confederate Monument and the Union Monument in Louisville. The Confederate Soldiers Martyrs Monument in Eminence, Kentucky, that was also established to honor victims of Order 59, was also established on the same day. In total, sixty-one different memorials to the Civil War in Kentucky were placed on the National Register that day.

Read more about Confederate Martyrs Monument In Jeffersontown:  Inscriptions, Gallery

Famous quotes containing the words confederate, martyrs and/or monument:

    Well, you Yankees and your holy principle about savin’ the Union. You’re plunderin’ pirates that’s what. Well, you think there’s no Confederate army where you’re goin’. You think our boys are asleep down here. Well, they’ll catch up to you and they’ll cut you to pieces you, you nameless, fatherless scum. I wish I could be there to see it.
    John Lee Mahin (1902–1984)

    No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.
    Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

    Their monument sticks like a fishbone
    in the city’s throat.
    Its Colonel is as lean
    as a compass-needle.
    Robert Lowell (1917–1977)