Crown Hill Confederate Plot, within the confines of the privately owned Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, Indiana, is the final resting place for more than 1,600 Confederate prisoners of war.  The mass grave is marked with a granite obelisk. The names of those believed to be buried there are listed on ten bronze plaques mounted on granite blocks in front of the monument.

Early in the Civil War, Camp Morton, located just north of Indianapolis served as an important recruitment and training center for the Union Army.  The camp later became a major detention facility after the Union victory at Fort Donelson, Tennessee, in February 1862, when the Union sent thousands of captured Confederates north as prisoners of war.  From 1862 to 1865, more than 9,000 prisoners passed through Camp Morton; an estimated 1,700 died from disease and injury, often exacerbated by the poor camp conditions. 

The Confederate dead from Camp Morton were first buried in Indianapolis’ Greenlawn Cemetery.  Initially, volunteers buried Confederate soldiers, as national cemeteries were built only for Union soldiers.  Until the turn of the 20th century, Congress made no effort to provide for or identify Confederate burial sites.  In 1912, the Federal Government erected a 27-foot tall monument to commemorate the Confederate dead at Greenlawn, as individual graves could not be identified and marked with headstones.  In 1928, this monument was relocated to Garfield Park, three miles south of downtown, where it still stands today.  In 1933, the remains of the Confederate soldiers were reinterred to a mass grave located in Crown Hill Cemetery and marked by a new six-foot tall granite monument.  A plaque dedicates the memorial to the “1,616 Unknown Confederate Soldiers who died at Indianapolis while Prisoners of War.”  Sixty years later, an effort led by two Indianapolis police officers to identify the remains buried in the mass grave culminated in the dedication of ten markers that list the names of Confederates who died at Camp Morton and are believed to be buried in the Confederate plot. 

The plot is located near the center of Crown Hill Cemetery, in Section 32, Lot 285, approximately 1,700 feet northwest of the main gate, and 1,300 feet northeast of the Crown Hill National Cemetery.  The plot is marked by a simple, white post-and-chain fence.