Historic Plaques and Markers

On August 19, 1890, the U.S. Congress established the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park to preserve and suitably mark for historical and professional military study the fields of some of the most remarkable maneuvers and brilliant fighting in the war of the rebellion. In the early 1890s, the park’s three commissioners, all veterans of Chickamauga or Chattanooga, placed hundreds of cast-iron plaques and other markers on the battlefields. Each plaque identifies the location of a particular army, corps, division, brigade, or artillery battery at a specific time and describes military actions, using information contributed by hundreds of veterans who retraced their steps to determine the exact locations of their units. On the Chickamauga and Chattanooga battlefields, blue plaques mark Union positions, red plaques mark Confederate positions, cannon mark artillery batteries, fingerboards indicate directions, locations, or landmarks, large cannonball pyramids stacked 15-high mark places where brigade commanders were killed, and small cannonball pyramids stacked 7-high mark headquarters sites. Infantry units were organized theoretically as companies of 101 men commanded by a captain, regiments of 10 companies and 1,046 men commanded by a colonel, brigades of 2 or more regiments and 2,100 men commanded by a brigadier general, divisions of 2 or more brigades and 6,000 men commanded by a major general, and corps of 2 or more divisions and 18,000 men commanded by a major general, though most units entered battle at half-strength or less. Terms used in interpreting the battles include battery, a grouping of cannon usually four or six; casualties, soldiers wounded, killed, or missing in action, sometimes including those captured; enfilade, firing at an enemy line from an angle rather than from the front; flank, the right or left end of a line of troops; oblique, a direction diagonal to the line of battle; skirmish, a fight between small numbers of troops; and vedettes, sentries or pickets posted to report on enemy movements.

Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia · United States