Vicksburg National Cemetery

Seventeen thousand Union soldiers rest in concentric arcs on the hillside where they fell. Nearly thirteen thousand have no names. Vicksburg National Cemetery was established in 1866, three years after the siege ended — time enough to understand the scale of what had happened here, not enough to know who most of the dead were. This is the second-largest Civil War national cemetery after Arlington. The headstones curve along the terrain in rows that follow the bluff's contour, a geometry that makes the count visible. Civil War interments continued through 1874. The cemetery holds 18,244 burials spanning every American conflict from the Civil War through Vietnam, including one Commonwealth war grave — a Royal Australian Air Force airman from World War II. The Confederate dead were buried separately at Cedar Hill Cemetery. After the war, local women gathered the remains and interred them across town. The division holds: two cemeteries, two causes, one siege that gave the Union control of the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy in half. Vicksburg National Cemetery lies within Vicksburg National Military Park, which preserves the siege site and the broader campaign. The park includes 1,325 monuments, 20 miles of historic trenches, and the restored gunboat USS Cairo, sunk by torpedo in 1862 and raised from the Yazoo River in 1964. The Illinois Memorial has 47 steps, one for each day the city was besieged. The cemetery is open daily, dawn to dusk. Free.