Regular readers of The Strawfoot know how much I cherish Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.  This past Saturday I was walking the grounds aimlessly when I came across the final resting place of Major General George Crockett Strong.  General Strong was wounded during the attack on Fort Wagner in July 1863 and died in New York a few weeks later.  Yes, this was the battle depicted in Glory.

Strong finished fifth in the West Point class of 1857.

The storming of Fort Wagner, lithograph by Kurz & Allison Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Earlier this week the New York Times wrote about a Confederate general interred in Green-Wood, Robert Selden Garnett.  According to the Times:

Robert Selden Garnett, the first general killed in the Civil War, was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, but his family did not want visitors to the cemetery to know it.

Named brigadier general in 1861, Garnett briefly commanded Confederate troops in western Virginia before being shot dead in the battle of Corrick’s Ford on July 13, 1861.

According to research by the cemetery, one of his last cries on the battlefield was “Three cheers for Jeff Davis!”

But that Confederate pride did not follow Garnett to the grave.

Union forces turned over Garnett’s body to his family, who buried him in Baltimore. Four years later, the family decided he should lie in Brooklyn alongside his wife and son, who had died before the war. They exhumed Garnett’s remains and secretly re-interred him in Green-Wood, leaving his grave unmarked for fear of anti-Southern sentiments.

If you are able, I hope you get the opportunity to visit Green-Wood.  There has never been a better time.