This monument is erected by authority of an Act of the Pennsylvania Legislature, approved June 13, 1907, to commemorate the patriotic devotion, heroism, and self-sacrifice of the officers and soldiers of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, who died while confined as prisoners of war in the Confederate Military Prison at Salisbury, North Carolina, during the War of the Rebellion and were interred among the unknown Union Soldiers and Sailors or in the the eighteen trenches southeast of this monument. A grateful Commonwealth renders this tribute to their honor and memory.