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165  henry van ness boynton and chickamauga the pillars of the modern military park movement Timothy B. Smith The two veterans were obviously moved at the sight on that beautiful summer Sunday in 1888. Having fought at the Civil War battlefield of Chickamauga some twenty-five years earlier, these two ageing men were here remembering, reflecting, and rejoicing. The trees had just put on their newly grown leaves and the landscape almost sang with peace and tranquility. Then, the two old soldiers passed a small church, from which they heard “the voice of solemn song.” Yet even amid the serenity, the veterans could not help but remember their horrific ordeal of nearly three decades earlier. One of them remembered, “The last music which had fallen on our ears, as we left that field a quarter of a century before, was the screech, the rattle, the roar, the thunder of that hell of battle which had loaded the air with horror through all that earlier and well-remembered Sabbath.”1 If Union veterans Henry Van Ness Boynton and Ferdinand Van Derveer were at Chickamauga that summer of 1888 to remember and reflect, they had little thought of the reconciliation then beginning to sweep the nation. Indeed, as the two followed their own Union lines, the idea hit them that “this field should be a western Gettysburg—a Chickamauga memorial.” At Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, a private association had bought land and marked, with state cooperation, the Union lines on the battlefield. Impressed with the serenity at Chickamauga, Boynton and Van Derveer wanted their battlefield to be preserved as a Union memorial just like the one at Gettysburg.2 As the diminutive but heavily bearded Boynton stood silently on the battlefield, however, he had “a flash forward in thought.” Why preserve only the Union side, as had occurred at Gettysburg? “Aye, it should be more than Gettysburg, with its monuments along one side alone; the lines of both armies should be equally marked,” Boynton thought. The two old soldiers, becoming :RRGZRUWK&KLQGG $0 timothy b. smith 166 increasingly excited, traced the lines, as best they could, of the Confederate army as well. The results were spectacular. “Born in the mind” that day was not only the novel idea of one small but all-inclusive park at Chickamauga, but also the entire military park system as we know it today.3 Henry Van Ness Boynton was born in the small mountain community of West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on July 22, 1835. There, on the extreme western side of the Bay State, almost on the line with New York, young Henry spent his first eleven years with his parents, notable Presbyterian minister Rev. Charles B. Boynton and Maria Van Buskirk Boynton. In 1846, the Boyntons moved westward to Ohio, settling in Cincinnati, where young Henry earned a degree from Woodward College in 1855. Wanting a technical education, Henry secured an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He visited the school before making his final decision and “looked the institution over with that care and precision that characterized his entire life work,” one newspaper reported. Desiring the education but not wanting a military career, Boynton turned down the nomination and instead matriculated at the nearby Kentucky Military Institute . He graduated at the top of his class from that well-known institution in 1858 and was retained at the institute as a professor of mechanics and astronomy from 1859 to 1860. While teaching at the school, Boynton was also learning, gaining a master of arts degree in 1859 and a civil engineering degree in 1860.4 The young man was obviously talented and looked forward to a successful career, but war intervened. He quickly found himself caught up in the preparations for war. Because of President Abraham Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand volunteers, officers were sorely needed. Henry Boynton became a training instructor for the new recruits forming into regiments at Cincinnati. He drilled hundreds of troops in those early days of the war.5 By midsummer of 1861, officers were now needed to lead those trained troops to the field. Boynton helped recruit and organize the 35th Ohio Volunteer Infantry at Hamilton, Ohio, and he was commissioned its major, mustering into Federal service on September 20, 1861. Boynton signed on for three years and served his entire time in the army with the 35th. The regiment was first employed in guarding...

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