The Sphinx erected in Boston’s Mount Auburn Cemetery (1872) commemorated the end of the Civil War. The body of a lion symbolized the enslaved while the woman’s face with an American bald eagle on her headdress symbolized white Americans. Together, this was meant to represent how white and black Americans would build a new future. The Latin inscription on the pedestal translated to “American Union Preserved; African Slavery Destroyed; by the Uprising of a Great People; By the Blood of Fallen Heroes.”
In Richmond, Virginia’s Hollywood Cemetery, a 90-foot high granite pyramid completed in 1869, was chosen as a memorial to the 18,000 Confederate soldiers buried in the cemetery.
Images by Detroit Publishing Co. both between 1890 – 1901. Courtesy of Library of Congress.
For more about cemeteries see Discovering Quacks, Utopias, and Cemeteries: Modern Lessons from Historical Themes