Gray-bearded Capt. Fred Beall was conspicuously absent from the 1920 dedication ceremony for a memorial amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery. The influential commander of the Washington, D.C., Confederate Veterans camp refused to attend because his organization was excluded from the event’s planning. Moreover, the new structure was inscribed with the names of only federal leaders, which was not in the spirit of “a memorial to valorous and patriotic Americans from any State or section.”
Beall, a native Georgian raised in Alabama and educated in Tennessee, taught mathematics in Mississippi when the war began. In 1862, he joined a company of Mississippi Partisan Rangers that became part of the state’s 10th Cavalry. “I never missed a fight from the time I enlisted till the close of the war, and we were engaged in many hard battles,” he recalled. The unit’s battles included the Battle of Iuka, where Beall was promoted to first sergeant.
