That neither General Strong nor General Schimmelfennig is buried here might be accounted for by the fact that, though they died by reason of their having served in this department, they died at the North.  But even General Mitchell, whose flag of command was last unfurled in this department, who died in Beaufort, and was originally buried under the sycamores of the Episcopal churchyard, now sleeps in the shades of Greenwood, and not (as he would probably have preferred, could he have foreseen this cemetery) among the brave men whom he commanded.

The best known names among those here buried (to use a pardonable Hibernianism) are among the “unknown.”  For here, as we may believe, in unknown graves, rest the remains of Colonel Robert G. Shaw, of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts (colored), Colonel Haldimand S. Putnam, of the Seventh New Hampshire, Lieutenant-Colonel James M. Green, of the Forty-eighth New York, and many other gallant officers and men who were killed in the assault on Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, and who were first buried by the Confederates in the sands of Morris Island.

Many a Northern college is represented here.  Among those to whom tablets have been erected in the Memorial Hall of Harvard University, who are buried here, besides Colonel Shaw, are Captains Winthrop P. Boynton and William D. Crane, who were killed at Honey Hill, November 30, 1864; and Captain Cabot J. Russell, who fell with Shaw at Fort Wagner.  Yet these are but the beginning of the list of the sons of Massachusetts who rest in this “garden of graves.”

Among the many gallant men of the navy buried here is Acting-Master Charles W. Howard, of the ironclad steam-frigate New Ironsides, whom Lieutentant Glassell shot during his bold attempt to blow up the New Ironsides with the torpedo steamer David, October 5, 1863.  Another is Thomas Jackson, coxswain of the Wabash, the beau ideal of an American sailor, who was killed in the battle of Port Royal, November 7, 1861.

Death, like a true democrat, levels all distinctions.  Still, it may be mentioned that Lieutenant-Colonel William N. Reed, who was mortally wounded at Olustee while in command of the Thirty-fifth United States colored troops, February 20, 1864, was, while living, the highest officer in rank, whose grave is known here.  Other gallant officers, killed at Olustee, are buried near him.  Among these, probably, is Colonel Charles W. Fribley, of the Eighth United States colored troops; though he may be still sleeping beneath the sighing pines of Olustee.

As far as practicable, all Federal soldiers and sailors buried along the seaboard of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, have been removed to Beaufort Cemetery; and, as Governor Alexander H. Bullock said:  “Wherever they offered up their lives, amid the thunder of battle, or on the exhausting march, in victory or in defeat, in hospital or in prison, officers and privates, soldiers and sailors, patriots all, they fell like the beauty of Israel on their high places, burying all distinctions of rank in the august equality of death.”