The monument was located within a circular walking path north of Pagoda Drive, just within Garfield Park's south road entrance on East Southern Avenue.

On its north face, the granite shaft contained the following inscription: "ERECTED BY THE UNITED STATES TO MARK THE BURIAL PLACE OF 1616 CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS AND SAILORS WHO DIED HERE WHILE PRISONERS OF WAR AND WHOSE GRAVES CANNOT NOW BE IDENTIFIED".

A small number of the Confederate dead from Camp Morton were identified and returned to their families after the war, but 1,616 soldiers were buried in a mass grave at Greenlawn Cemetery.

[6] The monument was separated from the grave site and moved to its present location near an entrance of Garfield Park; it was officially re-dedicated on Memorial Day in 1929.

[10] While ultimately unsuccessful in moving the monument, the effort resulted in a new memorial being installed in 1993 at Crown Hill's Confederate Mound that includes all of the soldier's names and regiments on 10 new markers with bronze plaques.

On August 17, City-County Council President Maggie A. Lewis released a statement expressing a desire to start a conversation about the monument's location in Garfield Park.

[16] Lewis and Mike McQuillen, Council's Republican minority leader, suggested an inventory of all public monuments in Marion County be conducted, so there can be a better understanding of their content, and whether they might cause offense.

On June 4, 2020, after days of Black Lives Matter protests in Indianapolis and throughout the country after the murder of George Floyd, Mayor Joe Hogsett announced that the city was currently identifying the source of an estimated $50,000–$100,000 which would be required to dismantle the monument, which he said could happen within a week.

[24] In his statement, Hogsett said that the city believed the monument belonged in a museum instead of its location in the public park, but that no organization stepped up to assume responsibility, and so "time is up.

Efforts by public officials active in the Ku Klux Klan in 1928 lead to the monument's relocation to Garfield Park to make it more visible.