Conflicting Memories on the “River of Death”: The Chickamauga Battlefield and the Spanish-American War, 1863–1933

14. "œWhere American Valor Met American Valor"

249 H enry Boynton’s defense of the park and the criticisms he leveled at General Miles and the soldiers who complained about their service in the War with Spain were the latest in a long series of efforts by the Army of the Cumberland ’s veterans to uphold the honor and memory of their Civil War service. The battlefield was sacred ground that the veterans had willingly offered to the nation as a camp for its volunteers. Naming it Camp George H. Thomas was meant to honor the general who best represented the Army of the Cumberland ’s toughness, perseverance, and heroic devotion to duty. The disaster that overwhelmed the park in 1898 was a shocking slap in the face to their good intentions and threatened their carefully constructed commemorative landscape . Having stifled their most egregious critics, Boynton and the other commissioners worked to restore, repair, and re-sanctify their sacred landscape. Not content to return to the status quo, they then proceeded to push for even more recognition by advocating the creation of a permanent military installation on the edge of the park. A key step in the rehabilitation of the park and the reconstruction of Civil War memory was the continuation of commemorative rituals on the battlefield. The placement of state and unit monuments, along with the requisite dedication ceremonies, went a long way toward reestablishing the park’s primary purpose. During the park’s occupation, at least two monument dedications took place amid the military hoopla. Betts reported that on 12 May 1898, “the Tennessee state commissioners dedicated their monuments in Chickamauga Park and Snodgrass Hill,” and on 9 July the Wisconsin commissioners held a dedication on Orchard Knob in Chattanooga. In each case, “arrangements were made for the public’s comfort” by providing seating platforms or chairs.1 During the following year, additional state monuments and markers went up in the park as the landscape returned to normal. Indiana dedicated a total of thirty-seven monuments and seventy-five unit markers, including the “Where American Valor Met American Valor” fourteen 250 · conflicting memories on the “River of Death” impressive Wilder (Brigade Monument) Tower, on 23 September 1900. The event drew a crowd of over 1,000 that included the state’s governor, commissioners , and a host of its veterans. During this ceremony, General Boynton took the time to recognize the former Confederates, whose attendance “lifts today in your honor a lofty edifice of patriotism.” Speaking on behalf of the secretary of war, he intoned that “this monument of grand proportions to a splendid brigade, thus dedicated by North and South, is received, with a due sense of honor conferred into the perpetual care and keeping of our restored, indissoluble, and mighty Union.” The state of Illinois constructed “two state monuments of large dimensions and artistic design,” which were scheduled to be dedicated by its commission in January 1901. New York, whose troops had done most of their fighting around Chattanooga, placed the venerable Daniel Sickles at the head of its monument commission, which, according to Boynton, “promises to place New York at the head of all state efforts at the various battlefield parks.” He also noted that the state had a large sum of money available for the shaft of a monument on fig. 42: The Georgia monument was one of many state monuments placed throughout the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in the decade following the Spanish-American War. Dignitaries at the monument’s 1899 dedication included Gov. Allen Chandler and General Longstreet and his wife. Paul A Hiener Collection, Chattanooga–Hamilton County Bicentennial Library. “Where American Valor Met American Valor” · 251 Lookout Mountain and “a liberal appropriation for a colossal bronze group at the summit.” He predicted that New York’s effort “will place it far in advance of any monument on any military field in the country, not excepting New York on the Gettysburg field.”2 Kentucky and Georgia both dedicated “imposing state monuments” on 4 May 1899, in concurrent ceremonies. The Kentucky activities drew most of the press’s attention due to the presence of the state governor, W. O. Bradley , and former Confederate general James Longstreet. The newspaper article noted that the governor’s previous visit to the park had been “to alleviate the suffering of soldiers from Kentucky who had volunteered to fight under the old flag against Spain.” On this occasion, however, his task “was...