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Creating the First National Military Park:
In 1890, the battlefields of Chickamauga and Chattanooga became the nation's first official military park. President Benjamin Harrison signed the designation into law on August 19 -- five years before a similar status was conferred on Gettysburg, and 26 years before the National Park Service was established.
Civil War veterans, then at the apex of political power, had spearheaded the legislation through Congress. Inspired by fervent patriotism and a desire for commemoration, the bill exemplified reconciliation between North and South. It passed the House of Representatives in only 23 minutes and met no opposition in the Senate, whose members included seven veterans who had fought at Chickamauga.
The Birth of Historic-Site Preservation:
The 1890 national military park legislation set the United States government on a course of preserving historic sites. The act defined four primary goals: preservation, through federal acquisition of thousands of acres of battlefield land; education, through identifying lines of battle and troop movements; commemoration, through establishing monuments to the valor of North and South; and access, through controlling roads leading to the battlefields, opening new roads, and repairing historic traces. By 1895, the government had acquired nearly 10 square miles of land at Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge.
Ohio Congressman Charles H. Grosvenor introduced a bill in the House of Representatives proposing a national military park in May 1890 -- 27 years after the battle in which he had served as the colonel of an infantry regiment.
Henry Van Ness Boynton, a former lieutenant colonel of the 35th Ohio Infantry and a Medal of Honor winner at Missionary Ridge, drafted the bill introduced by Congressman Grosvenor and then served as the first government historian on the park's original commission.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That for the purposes of preserving and suitably marking for historical and professional military study the fields of some of the most remarkable maneuvers and most brilliant fighting in the war of the rebellion... |