Altogether Fitting and Proper: Civil War Battlefield Preservation in History, Memory, and Policy, 1861–2015 by Timothy B. Smith (review)

In this book, Timothy B. Smith traces the evolution of Civil War battlefield preservation from Civil War veterans' initial designation of burial plots and early marking of regimental positions to the rise and recession of federal, state, and private preservation efforts. Using examples ranging from small county parks to the iconic battlefields overseen by the National Park Service (NPS) at Gettysburg and Chickamauga, Smith shows how battlefield preservation has been shaped by the political clout and personal agendas of interested individuals and by the evolution of American memory of the war itself.

Smith identifies different eras of battlefield preservation. Although highly partisan, the initial veteran-led efforts in preservation and monumentation, from the late 1860s through the 1880s, paved the way for the 1890s "golden age" of preservation in which veterans serving in Congress secured funding from the federal government to create and interpret the first battlefield parks at Chickamauga, Antietam, Shiloh, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg (chap. 2). In addition to shaping the interpretive focus of these sites, this era also established the two major approaches to battlefield preservation that shaped the land acquisition process and the creation of future battlefield parks: Henry Boynton's approach, which championed total battlefield preservation, and George Davis's "Antietam Plan," which stressed the cost-effective (and pragmatic) practice of limited preservation focused on saving critical strips of battlefield land (p. 48).

What Smith calls the "interregnum" period of the early twentieth century saw the rise of the War Department as both the major battlefield steward and the primary designator of different classifications of battlefields based on historical significance (chap. 3). Although only "shells" of several battlefields were preserved during the interregnum, the shifting focus toward preservation for the sake of historical instruction set the stage for the 1933 transfer of War Department battlefields to the NPS (p. 81). During the New Deal, battlefield preservation focused on promoting tourism and recreation, and while New Deal money helped fund numerous road improvement and landscape restoration projects, individual states began to assume more responsibility for the creation of battlefield parks.

State-led efforts continued to drive preservation through the 1960s, with sectional animosities returning as many of the new southern parks turned their interpretive and preservation mission toward the celebration of the Confederate cause and ideals. This sectionalism came to a head during the Civil War centennial, when the racial tensions of the civil rights era and the rise of the New Social History spawned heated debates over the role of slavery in the coming of the war and over slavery's postwar legacies. The ensuing "dark age," which lasted until the 1990s, saw a dearth of preservation in the wake of the centennial, the war-weariness of the Vietnam era, and the conservative federal regimes that reduced funding for preservation efforts (chap. 6). Despite the benefits of the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act, only local and private preservation groups achieved much success before the preservation "renaissance" of the 1990s and early 2000s (chap. 7).

Galvanized by Ken Burns's epic 1990 documentary, a new national interest in the broader interpretive themes of the war, and the rise of both the government-sponsored American Battlefield Protection Program and private preservation entities, battlefield preservation has received new life in the twenty-first century. Smith suggests that the successes of Jim Lighthizer and the Civil War Trust, in particular, stem from strong partnerships between grassroots groups and government agencies. Smith argues for a continued focus on education, the importance of rehabilitation and reclamation of battlefields rather than just acquisition, and the need to work with businesses, tourism centers, historians, environmentalists, and farmers in a multipronged partnership.

Despite an occasional tendency to get caught in the weeds of specific preservation policies and the sometimes overwhelming number and detail of his case studies, Smith...