Monumental Confusion

A local pyramid seems to have been easier to build than to identify. For nearly a century, millions of visitors to the lower end of the Fredericksburg battlefield have viewed a 23-foot-high, 30-foot-square pyramid of unhewn granite stones. Most have gazed out from Prospect Hill and beyond the railroad tracks wondering what the pyramid memorializes.

The identification has now gone full cycle from a tribute to Confederate forces and Lieutenant General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson to Union Major General George Gordon Meade, and back to its Southern origins. The confusion had reached the point in 1978 that a local newspaper article referred to the mystery as "Fredericksburg's answer to the pharaohs."

Pyramid's Origin

The monument can be traced to 1897. The Confederate Memorial Literary Society (today's guardians of the Museum of the Confederacy and the Confederate White House in Richmond, Virginia) wanted to commemorate historic sites relating to the War Between The States. This group of women requested assistance from each railroad company operating in Virginia, hoping to mark significant battle sites along the railways for train travelers.

The Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad was the first to offer help. However, the railroad's president, Edmund T. D. Myers, was opposed to the suggested idea of placing wooden signs along the right-of-way. A former major and engineer for the South, Myers wrote that signs, "...would look too much like advertising...."

A more attractive and lasting marker was decided upon. It would indicate the only major battlefield along the 74 miles of pre-war train track from Richmond to Aquia Creek on the Potomac River. A 90-foot-high pyramid of unhewn granite which had been erected as a tribute to Confederate dead in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery proved to be the model. The railroad hauled 17 car loads of Virginia granite to fashion the Fredericksburg pyramid in 1898. The Literary Society's files indicate the monument was "...for the purpose of this memorializing the headquarters of General Thomas Jonathan Jackson 1862-63."

Becomes Part Of The Park

When the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park was established by Congress in 1927, early battlefield interpreters knew that Jackson's headquarters had been nearly two miles from the railroad, not alongside it. The society's 1897 plan had been geared to inform the "traveling public" but the formation of the park opened another possibility. This would permit visitors to reach the lower end of the battlefield via a park road.

Meade's Attack

During the December 13, 1862 battle, General George Meade's Federal force of 4,500 Pennsylvanians charged across the tracks to break "Stonewall" Jackson's defenses. The Confederates quickly countered to force Meade's men back down the hill and across the railroad. The 15 regiments of Meade's Third Division suffered more than 40 percent casualties. In just a bit over an hour, 1,853 Union soldiers were killed, wounded, missing, or taken prisoner. Today's granite pyramid is located where Meade's left flank approached the railroad. This helps explain how what had been built to honor the Southern efforts would become a Northern misnomer.

Park Service files indicate that "Up to now, the interpretive value of the marker has been to enable guides standing on Prospect Hill to point out for visitors the line of Meade's attack...." This was a comment in 1945, when the Literary Society offered to donate the pyramid and the accompanying half acre of land to the Park Service.

An interesting postscript to some of the post-World War II correspondence seemed to finalize the monument's designation as the Meade marker: "P.S. It would be interesting to know why a Confederate Society was instrumental in memorializing a site where the federal troops came closer to success than at any other point in the field during the battle of Fredericksburg." The pyramid site was finally transferred to the United States government in 1953.

In the early 1980's, the pyramid's identity was finally clarified when the National Park Service placed an interpretive sign at the site. The inscription on it reads: "A Southern Memorial." The sign is located at a vehicle pulloff along Lee Drive leading to Prospect Hill. The spot gives a vista beyond the tracks toward the pyramid. The swampy woods which resulted in a gap in the Confederate lines — and Meade's shortlived success — is still visible to the left of the monument.