This Great Battlefield of Shiloh: History, Memory, and the Establishment of a Civil War National Military Park

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.

Returning to the Pittsburg Landing battlefield, Sh...