Names of 584 Civil War dead who were buried in Macon unearthed in old news clipping

The other day in Soldiers Square, a panoramic hillside burial plot at Rose Hill Cemetery, I was looking for an angle on a Memorial Day story — maybe a piece about a little-known hero or perhaps a take on the hallowed setting overlooking the Ocmulgee River — when a dead soldier’s name caught my eye: Nathan Angel.

It had a valiant ring and sounded straight from the Civil War, which it was.

All Pvt. Angel’s tombstone said was that he served in a Confederate regiment from Kentucky. His grave bore no date of birth or death.

When I got back to the newspaper office, I typed his name into an archive that lets us view articles dating back to 1860 and see them as they appeared on the printed page. The archive, searchable using any name or word you choose, is a trove of local history.

Nathan Angel’s name was there. In tiny print, it appeared in a three-column list in an April 1878 edition of the Georgia Weekly Telegraph and Journal & Messenger. It was published on the eve of a monument dedication at the cemetery a dozen years after the war.

In the small, handset type of the day, Angel’s name doesn’t stand out so much.

What does stand out is the length of that that list, the 584 names in that ancient news clipping — names of fallen soldiers from Georgia and other Southern states — who died in the Civil War in 1863 and 1864. All of whom are buried at Rose Hill.

While there are cemetery records noting the burial plots and locations of the Civil War’s fallen, this list, in full, hasn’t seen the light of print since 1878.

The list and the short essay that accompanied it in the newspaper then seems a fitting salute, not just to those who died in the War Between the States, but to the military women and men who have sacrificed their lives before and since.

Even in the overwrought, almost hymnal prose of the time, much of it reads reverently enough with a message that endures today:

Once more do we sorrowfully search the archives of the war, and bring forth to view that treasured scroll, upon which is inscribed the immortal names of the Confederate dead who sleep in our midst. ... With life and hope and courage, they moved among us, our noble sons, sires, brothers, husbands and lovers, animating all hearts with their enthusiasm. ... Today let us read this long list and recall the name of every hero anew.

This story was originally published May 25, 2017 at 6:36 PM with the headline "Names of 584 Civil War dead who were buried in Macon unearthed in old news clipping."