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Altogether Fitting and Proper: Civil War Battlefield Preservation in History, Memory, and Policy, 1861–2015. By Timothy B. Smith. Foreword by Jim Lighthizer. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2017. Pp. xxiv, 328. $39.95, ISBN 978-1-62190-311-6.)
In this book, Timothy B. Smith traces the evolution of Civil War battlefield preservation from Civil War veterans' initial designation of burial plots and early marking of regimental positions to the rise and recession of federal, state, and private preservation efforts. Using examples ranging from small county parks to the iconic battlefields overseen by the National Park Service (NPS) at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, Smith shows how battlefield preservation has been shaped by the political clout and personal agendas of interested individuals and by the evolution of American memory of the war itself.
Smith identifies different eras of battlefield preservation. Although highly partisan, the initial veteran-led efforts in preservation and monumentation, from the late 1860s through the 1880s, paved the way for the 1890s "golden age" of preservation in which veterans serving in Congress secured funding from the federal government to create and interpret the first battlefield parks at Chickamauga, Antietam, Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg (chap. 2). In addition to shaping the interpretive...