Administered by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, it occupies approximately 53 acres (21 ha), and is the site of 19,825 interments as of the end of 2005.

After President Lincoln's call for troops in April, 1861, the U.S. War Department sent then Brigadier-General William T. Sherman to Springfield, Illinois, to meet with Governor Richard Yates for the purpose of selecting a suitable site for a training facility.

Since Governor Yates was unfamiliar with the land around Springfield, the state capital of Illinois, he enlisted the aid of then-State Treasurer William Butler, who along with Ozias M. Hatch, Secretary of State of Illinois, took a carriage ride with William T. Sherman to examine land about 5 and 1/2 miles northeast of downtown Springfield.

It was quickly pressed into service to house the approximately 2,000 Confederate soldiers who had been taken prisoner at the surrender of Fort Donelson, in Tennessee on February 16, 1862.

The situation was aggravated by the poor living conditions the prisoners endured there, and they were interred in the cemetery in their own Confederate section.