Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation,
and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863-1900, Part III
Editor's note: In part three of his look at the history and
preservation of America's Civil War battlefields, as captured in
Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation,
and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863-1900,
historian Richard West Sellars looks at the earliest efforts to
honor those who fought and died during the Civil War. (You can
purchase the entire article, complete with footnotes and
photographs, from Eastern National).   By Richard West Sellars
Part III: Civil War Battlefield Monuments and Cemeteries  As
with the southern Pennsylvania countryside surrounding the town
of Gettysburg, the struggles between the United States and
Confederate armies from 1861 to 1865 often brought war to
beautiful places, with many battles fought in the pastoral
landscapes of eastern, southern, and middle America— in rolling
fields and woods, along rivers and str