The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation

The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation PDF Author: Timothy B. Smith
Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
The 1890s, argues Timothy B. Smith in his new book, represented the climax of battlefield preservation in America. But what makes this decade so important? This decade was the perfect time for the establishment of these national parks. Five Civil War battlegrounds--at Gettysburg, Chickamauga and Chattanooga, Shiloh, Antietam, and Vicksburg--were commemorated as national sites during this time. Just past the bitterness and racial tensions of Reconstruction and prior to the explosive growth brought on by the Second Industrial Revolution, the time was right for the war's veterans from both sides to come together, in a spirit of reconciliation and brotherhood, to lead the efforts to open the parks. As yet unmarred by development, these battlefield sites were preserved mostly intact, just how the veterans would have remembered them. To date, they represent the country's finest preserved battlefields. Smith's book is the first to look at the process of battlefield reservation as a whole. He focuses on how each of these sites was established and the important individuals--the congressmen, the former soldiers, the veteran commissioners--who were the catalysts for the creation of these parks. The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation is a watershed book about an essential period in the history of battlefield preservation and will be of interest to any reader who wishes to have a better understanding how such preservation efforts were initiated. Timothy B. Smith is the author of This Great Battlefield of Shiloh: History, Memory, and the Establishment of a Civil War National Military Park and The Untold Story of Shiloh: The Battle and the Battlefield. He is a former park ranger at the Shiloh National Military Park and now teaches at the University of Tennessee at Martin.

The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation

The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation PDF Author: Timothy B. Smith
Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
The 1890s, argues Timothy B. Smith in his new book, represented the climax of battlefield preservation in America. But what makes this decade so important? This decade was the perfect time for the establishment of these national parks. Five Civil War battlegrounds--at Gettysburg, Chickamauga and Chattanooga, Shiloh, Antietam, and Vicksburg--were commemorated as national sites during this time. Just past the bitterness and racial tensions of Reconstruction and prior to the explosive growth brought on by the Second Industrial Revolution, the time was right for the war's veterans from both sides to come together, in a spirit of reconciliation and brotherhood, to lead the efforts to open the parks. As yet unmarred by development, these battlefield sites were preserved mostly intact, just how the veterans would have remembered them. To date, they represent the country's finest preserved battlefields. Smith's book is the first to look at the process of battlefield reservation as a whole. He focuses on how each of these sites was established and the important individuals--the congressmen, the former soldiers, the veteran commissioners--who were the catalysts for the creation of these parks. The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation is a watershed book about an essential period in the history of battlefield preservation and will be of interest to any reader who wishes to have a better understanding how such preservation efforts were initiated. Timothy B. Smith is the author of This Great Battlefield of Shiloh: History, Memory, and the Establishment of a Civil War National Military Park and The Untold Story of Shiloh: The Battle and the Battlefield. He is a former park ranger at the Shiloh National Military Park and now teaches at the University of Tennessee at Martin.

The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation

The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation PDF Author: Timothy B. Smith
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781621905837
Category : Antietam National Battlefield (Md.)
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description


Altogether Fitting and Proper

Altogether Fitting and Proper PDF Author: Timothy B. Smith
Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9781621903116
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the century and a half since the Civil War, both private and public entities, have earnestly sought to safeguard the legacy of that seismic conflict through the preservation of its battlefields. In Altogether Fitting and Proper, Timothy B. Smith provides the most comprehensive synthesis ever written of the long history of those preservation efforts. Smith traces the story of battlefield park establishment from the war and the Reconstruction era through the "Golden Age of Preservation" at the turn of the century, to the New Deal period and well beyond. While Smith's primary focus is on the famous national parks, he also examines the endeavors of state and local governments, as well as an assortment of private organizations, to establish parks and monuments for lesser-known battle sites. The ongoing conflicts between preservationists and commercial developers form another key element of the narrative. As Smith makes clear, the story of battlefield preservation is in many ways a story of people - from Civil War veterans like Henry Boynton, the Medal of Honor winner who oversaw the development of the first national military park at Chickamauga, to JIm LIghthizer, the president of the Civil War Trust, the private charitable organization spearheading the twenty-first-century preservation movement. In their dedication to this cause, such individuals and the groups they represent have kept a central event in American history alive in our collective memory. -- from back cover.

A Chickamauga Memorial

A Chickamauga Memorial PDF Author: Timothy B. Smith
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 157233679X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book tells the full and fascinating story of how the country's first federally preserved national military park came into being and how it paved the way for all that came afterwards, including preservation efforts today. As the author explains, most battlefield preservation and commemoration efforts before 1890 were done on a private and state level with veterans' groups and states marking unit positions on battlefields. The Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park has served from bringing veterans of the Civil War together and has played host to numerous military units during the Spanish-American War as well as World War I and II. The most important aspect was the creation of historical memory of the men who fought during those wars and the memorials that followed.

Paving Over the Past

Paving Over the Past PDF Author: Georgie Boge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this exhaustively researched book, Georgie Boge and Margie Boge analyze the issues and controversies surrounding the preservation of Civil War battlefield sites, and offer a pragmatic development program designed to accommodate the needs of both historic preservation and economic growth. Not only do they provide a framework for developing actual preservation strategies, they show how important historical, cultural, and natural resources can be preserved with economic benefit to the community. After exploring the special importance of battlefield sites to the nation, the Boges discuss existing policies for preservation. Through extensive case studies, they demonstrate the inadequacies of current mechanisms, and present a detailed policy program that could effectively protect the remaining land, and also help save other historically or culturally significant sites.

This Great Battlefield of Shiloh

This Great Battlefield of Shiloh PDF Author: Timothy B. Smith
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781572332812
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Get Book Here

Book Description
Around the turn of the last century, feelings of patriotism, nationalism, and sectional reconciliation swept the United States and led to a nationwide memorialization of American military history in general and the Civil War in particular. The 1894 establishment of the Shiloh National Military Park, for example, grew out of an effort by veterans themselves to preserve and protect the site of one of the Civil War's most important engagements.

Mississippi in the Civil War

Mississippi in the Civil War PDF Author: Timothy B. Smith
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1626744386
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 503

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Mississippi in the Civil War: The Home Front, Timothy B. Smith examines Mississippi's Civil War defeat by both outside and inside forces. From without, the Union army dismantled the state's political system, infrastructure, economy, and fighting capability. The state saw extensive military operations, destruction, and bloodshed within her borders. One of the most frightful and extended sieges of the war ended in a crucial Confederate defeat at Vicksburg, the capstone to a tremendous Union campaign. As Confederate forces and Mississippi became overwhelmed militarily, the populace's morale began to crumble. Realizing that the enemy could roll unchecked over the state, civilians, Smith argues, began to lose the will to continue the struggle. Many white Confederates chose to return to the Union rather than see continued destruction in the name of a victory that seemed ever more improbable. When the tide turned, Unionists and African Americans boldly stepped up their endeavors. The result, Smith finds, was a state vanquished and destined to endure suffering far into its future. The first examination of the state's Civil War home front in seventy years, this book tells the story of all classes of Mississippians during the war, focusing new light on previously neglected groups such as women and African Americans. The result is a revelation of the heart of a populace facing the devastating impact of total war.

The Tennessee Campaign of 1864

The Tennessee Campaign of 1864 PDF Author: Steven E. Woodworth
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809334534
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
Few American Civil War operations matched the controversy, intensity, and bloodshed of Confederate general John Bell Hood’s ill-fated 1864 campaign against Union forces in Tennessee. In the first-ever anthology on the subject, The Tennessee Campaign of 1864, edited by Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear, fourteen prominent historians and emerging scholars examine the three-month operation, covering the battles of Allatoona, Spring Hill, and Franklin, as well as the decimation of Hood’s army at Nashville. Contributors explore the campaign’s battlefield action, including how Major General Andrew J. Smith’s three aggressive divisions of the Army of Tennessee became the most successful Federal unit at Nashville, how vastly outnumbered Union troops held the Allatoona Pass, why Hood failed at Spring Hill and how the event has been perceived, and why so many of the Army of Tennessee’s officer corps died at the Battle of Franklin, where the Confederacy suffered a disastrous blow. An exciting inclusion is the diary of Confederate major general Patrick R. Cleburne, which covers the first phase of the campaign. Essays on the strained relationship between Ulysses S. Grant and George H. Thomas and on Thomas’s approach to warfare reveal much about the personalities involved, and chapters about civilians in the campaign’s path and those miles away show how the war affected people not involved in the fighting. An innovative case study of the fighting at Franklin investigates the emotional and psychological impact of killing on the battlefield, and other implications of the campaign include how the courageous actions of the U.S. Colored Troops at Nashville made a lasting impact on the African American community and how preservation efforts met with differing results at Franklin and Nashville. Canvassing both military and social history, this well-researched volume offers new, illuminating perspectives while furthering long-running debates on more familiar topics. These in-depth essays provide an expert appraisal of one of the most brutal and notorious campaigns in Civil War history.

Dollar$ and Sense of Battlefield Preservation

Dollar$ and Sense of Battlefield Preservation PDF Author: Frances H. Kennedy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780891332572
Category : Battlefields
Languages : en
Pages : 99

Get Book Here

Book Description


On a Great Battlefield

On a Great Battlefield PDF Author: Jennifer M. Murray
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 1621900819
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Get Book Here

Book Description
Of the more than seventy sites associated with the Civil War era that the National Park Service manages, none hold more national appeal and recognition than Gettysburg National Military Park. Welcoming more than one million visitors annually from across the nation and around the world, the National Park Service at Gettysburg holds the enormous responsibility of preserving the war’s “hallowed ground” and educating the public, not only on the battle, but also about the Civil War as the nation’s defining moment. Although historians and enthusiasts continually add to the shelves of Gettysburg scholarship, they have paid only minimal attention to the battlefield itself and the process of preserving, interpreting, and remembering the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. In On a Great Battlefield, Jennifer M. Murray provides a critical perspective to Gettysburg historiography by offering an in-depth exploration of the national military park and how the Gettysburg battlefield has evolved since the National Park Service acquired the site in August 1933. As Murray reveals, the history of the Gettysburg battlefield underscores the complexity of preserving and interpreting a historic landscape. After a short overview of early efforts to preserve the battlefield by the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association (1864–1895) and the United States War Department (1895–1933), Murray chronicles the administration of the National Park Service and the multitude of external factors—including the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II, the Civil War Centennial, and recent sesquicentennial celebrations—that influenced operations and molded Americans’ understanding of the battle and its history. Haphazard landscape practices, promotion of tourism, encouragement of recreational pursuits, ill-defined policies of preserving cultural resources, and the inevitable turnover of administrators guided by very different preservation values regularly influenced the direction of the park and the presentation of the Civil War’s popular memory. By highlighting the complicated nexus between preservation, tourism, popular culture, interpretation, and memory, On a Great Battlefield provides a unique perspective on the Mecca of Civil War landscapes. Jennifer M. Murray, assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, is the author of The Civil War Begins. Her articles have appeared in Civil War History, Civil War Times, and Civil War Times Illustrated.