23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Monument

The Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry was the first Ohio regiment mustered for three years’ service in the Civil War, and also the first Ohio regiment in which the field officers were appointed by the governor of Ohio. Known as the “Regiment of Presidents,” the 23rd OVI had among its ranks several future politicians, including two future presidents: Commissary Sergeant William McKinley and Lieutenant Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes. The 23rd OVI suffered its greatest losses in the 1862 Antietam Campaign in the battles of South Mountain on September 14 and Antietam on September 17. While a large number of its wounded members, including Lieutenant Colonel Hayes, were lying in hospitals near the battlefields, the convalescing soldiers resolved to erect a regimental monument to the dead, and a subscription was started. (Continued on other side)

[Side B]: (Continued from other side) The city donated a plot at Woodland Cemetery, and Myers, Uhl & Co. was contracted to build the monument for five hundred dollars. At the close of the war, the regiment had raised all the funds necessary for the monument within its own membership. The monument was dedicated in a ceremony on July 29, 1865, when the regiment arrived at Cleveland after being mustered out at Cumberland, Maryland. The monument is a twenty-two-foot obelisk made of Italian marble with the national flag sculpted around its apex, and its five-foot-tall pedestal features the names of the regiment’s dead.