On a Great Battlefield

Of the more than seventy sites associated with the Civil War era that the National ParkService manages, none hold more national appeal and recognition than Gettysburg NationalMilitary Park. Welcoming more than one million visitors annually from across thenation and around the world, the National Park Service at Gettysburg holds the enormousresponsibility of preserving the war’s “hallowed ground” and educating the public, notonly on the battle, but also about the Civil War as the nation’s defining moment. Althoughhistorians and enthusiasts continually add to the shelves of Gettysburg scholarship, theyhave paid only minimal attention to the battlefield itself and the process of preserving,interpreting, and remembering the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. In On a Great Battlefield,Jennifer M. Murray provides a critical perspective to Gettysburg historiography byoffering an in-depth exploration of the national military park and how the Gettysburgbattlefield has evolved since the National Park Service acquired the site in August 1933.As Murray reveals, the history of the Gettysburg battlefield underscores the complexityof preserving and interpreting a historic landscape. After a short overview of earlyefforts to preserve the battlefield by the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association(1864–1895) and the United States War Department (1895–1933), Murray chronicles theadministration of the National Park Service and the multitude of external factors—includingthe Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II, the Civil War Centennial, andrecent sesquicentennial celebrations—that influenced operations and molded Americans’understanding of the battle and its history. Haphazard landscape practices, promotion oftourism, encouragement of recreational pursuits, ill-defined policies of preserving culturalresources, and the inevitable turnover of administrators guided by very differentpreservation values regularly influenced the direction of the park and the presentationof the Civil War’s popular memory. By highlighting the complicated nexus between preservation,tourism, popular culture, interpretation, and memory, On a Great Battlefieldprovides a unique perspective on the Mecca of Civil War landscapes.Jennifer M. Murray, assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia’s Collegeat Wise, is the author of The Civil War Begins. Her articles have appeared in Civil WarHistory, Civil War Times, and Civil War Times Illustrated.