Confederate Monument

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Site 2—CONTEDERATE MONUMENT and the newly installed historical marker. The monument unveiling took place on April 26, 1905. There was a huge crowd on hand to hear Okolona's Mr. Henry Lacey give the dedication speech. Listeners appreciated his grand classical reference to the women of ancient Carthage, likening them to the women of the war-torn South.rn The monument's shaft is original, but the stone soldier above toppled into the street in the mid-1940s, according to Mr. Walter Chandler, the eminent local historian. The soldier was heavily restored or replaced and returned to his place, to look out over the Prairie. (Unfortunately, he is armed with a bolt-action rifle more suited to a First World War doughboy than to a Confederate soldier.) The marker describes Okolona's importance in the Civil War.