Knoxville National Cemetery

Historic veterans cemetery in Knox County, Tennessee

Knoxville National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery located in the city of Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Established during the Civil War in 1863, the cemetery currently encompasses , and as of the end of 2007, had 9,006 interments. The 60 feet (18 m) Union Soldier monument, which stands in the eastern corner of the cemetery, is one of the largest Union monuments in the South. In 1996, the cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places as part of a multiple properties submission for national cemeteries.

Knoxville National Cemetery was established by Major General Ambrose Burnside, whose Union forces had liberated Knoxville in September 1863 at the height of the Civil War. Burnside assigned the task of layout out the cemetery to his assistant quartermaster, Captain E. B. Chamberlain. The cemetery's first burials were Union dead exhumed and moved from Cumberland Gap and other parts of the region. Chamberlain's plan was so effective, that the cemetery was one of the few in the nation that required no alterations upon being designated a national cemetery at the end of the war.

The graves at Knoxville National Cemetery are arranged in a circular pattern, with each burial section separated by walkways. The burial sections each form one quarter of the circle, with the headstones converging toward the middle, where there is a flagpole and cloth canopy. A stone wall surrounds the perimeter, the southeast section of which divides the cemetery from the adjacent Old Gray Cemetery. The northeast section of the wall, which contains the main entrance, is topped by an iron fence, with the entrance secured by an iron double gate. The administrative office and service building is located just inside the gate. A marker containing several lines from the Theodore O'Hara poem, Bivouac of the Dead, faces the graves in the northeast corner.