File:Sign - federal Confederate Cemetery Memorial - Point Lookout Maryland - 2012-01-15.jpg

English: Signage at the Point Lookout Confederate Cemetery at Point Lookout, Maryland. This is the southernmost point of the state of Maryland. It exists at the mouth of the Potomac River, as it empties into the Atlantic Ocean.

Point Lookout became a very important Union base during the American Civil War. The federal government erected Hammond Hospital at the tip of the point to care for Union wounded. The following year, after the Battle of Gettysburg, Union authorities established a prisoner of war camp there as well. Designed to hold 10,000 prisoners, it swelled to ore than 20,000 within a year. The prisoner of war camp had wooden walls, and prisoners were housed in tents. More than 50,000 pirsoners passed through the camp from 1863 to 1865, making it the largest Union POW of all. A smallpox and malaria epidemic in 1864 killed 4,000 of them. (This was a death rate of 8 percent. Ironically, the death of soldiers in the field was 16 percent!) In 1864, Confederate General Bradley T. Johnson planned to raid the prison, free and arm the prisoners, and then march on Washington, D.C. Union authorities learned of his plan and set an ambush. Johnson cancelled the raid when he learned of the ambush. African-American soldiers of the United States Colored Troops guarded the POW camp. Among them were Sgt. Christian Fleetwood (a Medal of Honor winner) and Sgt. Charles Douglass (son of Frederick Douglass).

The Confederate prisoners who died at Point Lookout were originally buried on the shores of the Potomac River. But the POW camp and hospital fell beneath the waterline shortly after the Civil War due to extensive erosion of the shoreline. The bodies were removed in 1870 and reinterred at a new cemetery inland. Because the state did not keep track of which name went with which body, the Confedrate dead were reinterred in a common grave. In 1876, the state of Maryland erected a white marble memorial to the dead on Route 5 near the entrance to the cemetery. In 1910, the state of Maryland asked that the federal government take over maintenance of the cemetery. The government erected an 80 foot tall granite obelisk to mark the common grave. The monument includes 12 bronze tablets inscribed with the names and command of the 3,382 known Confederate soldiers and sailors and 44 civilians buried at the grave site. The Van Amridge Granite Company created the monument.

In 1965, the Maryland State Forest and Park Service began development of Point Lookout State Park. Today the park comprises 1,064 acres.