Confederate Soldier Laid to Rest With Home State Honors
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COLUMBIA, S.C. — An unknown Confederate soldier, killed during a skirmish in Virginia in 1862, was awarded South Carolina’s highest honor Saturday and buried in his home state.
A horse-drawn wagon carried the soldier’s coffin, draped with a Confederate battle flag, from the Statehouse, down Main Street to a cemetery where other unknown soldiers of the Civil War are buried.
In a ceremony on the Statehouse steps, Lt. Gov.-elect Nick Theodore presented the Confederate with “The Order of the Palmetto,” the highest honor bestowed by the South Carolina governor.
“We are gathered today to honor a South Carolinian who like so many other soldiers has a name that is known only to God,” Theodore said.
Developers of a town house complex in Fairfax County, Va., unearthed the soldier’s remains. With the bones, diggers found four brass buttons bearing the insignia of a palmetto tree and the letters “S.C.”
The unknown Confederate soldier is believed to have died during a skirmish near Manassas Junction, Va. He probably served under Confederate hero Gen. Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson.
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