The Van Buren Confederate Monument
Near Fort Smith, Arkansas
Many men from Crawford County fought for the Confederacy, and in eighteen ninety-six the women of Van Buren organized the Mary Lee Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy to honor them. They hired a stonecutter and erected this monument in the Confederate section of Fairview Cemetery, where hundreds of Confederate soldiers lay buried, many of them mortally wounded at battles like Wilson's Creek, Pea Ridge, and Prairie Grove. The monument was dedicated on the tenth of October, eighteen ninety-nine, at the grave of a captain killed at Pea Ridge. Years later, the Sons of Confederate Veterans had it moved to a more prominent spot in front of the Crawford County Courthouse, where it stands now.
