Preserve Civil War sites

The Tennessean, Nashville, Tenn.: In early August, retired history teacher Steve Bartlett of Waverly, Tenn., wrote to urge our state’s congressional delegation to support legislation to acquire lands that saw fighting in some of the most storied battles of the Civil War.

Many people may not realize the national military parks at Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Petersburg do not contain the entire battlefields. Nearby sites of historic significance are privately owned, and in some cases have modern developments sitting on them. That’s the sort of thing that makes historians cringe. It should give the rest of us pause, too.

As Bartlett noted, Tennesseans fought and fell in those three battles. There is a direct connection to the Volunteer State. We don’t yet know how the legislation to expand those parks will fare. But it’s encouraging to see how here, in Middle Tennessee, efforts on a smaller scale to recover Civil War battle sites are succeeding.

Gettysburg, Pa., may be the only Civil War site that the general public could name these days — which explains in part why these preservation efforts are needed.

Bloody battles

Bloody battles large and small were fought for two years before and two years after Gettysburg, and more battles were fought in Tennessee than any state except Virginia. One of them, the Battle of Franklin, is slowly coming to light through bit-by-bit acquisition of the land where nearly 2,000 Union and Confederate troops died on Nov. 30, 1864.