Battlefield Preserved

American nationalism surged in the 1890s, leading to the creation of many museums, monuments, memorials, and statues. Civil War veterans seeking to strengthen national memory worked to establish national parks on some of the war’s most momentous battlefields, including Shiloh. Union and Confederate veterans joined to preserve the site and honor their dead comrades, forming the Shiloh Battlefield Association in 1893 to secure land options and lobby for a national park. Their campaign succeeded when Congress established Shiloh National Military Park on December 27, 1894. The following April, Secretary of War Daniel Lamont appointed a War Department commission of Shiloh veterans to return to the battlefield and develop the park. The War Department developed and administered the park through this appointed commission, which included veterans from the one Confederate and two Union armies engaged at Shiloh. Major David W. Reed, who had fought at Shiloh as a private with the 12th Iowa Infantry, served as secretary and historian of the commission and was its chairman from 1910 until 1916. Nearly forty years later, on June 10, 1933, the park was transferred to the National Park Service. Shiloh National Military Park preserves the memory of one of the crucial battles of the Civil War and the largest land battle fought during the 1862–1863 campaign for military control of the Mississippi River.

Shiloh, Tennessee · United States