1264 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
National pride of itself, if no other consideration existed, should 
prompt us to authorize the establishment of a museum in which the 
guns captured in foreign wars since the earliest times in which Ameri- 
can forces were engaged in battle can be assembled. But there is an 
additional incentive to such action in the fact that for many years the 
United States was far in advance of the other governments of the 
world in the production of artillery and ordnance, and no less interest- 
ing and desirable would it be to show that once again we are well to 
the front in those important matters. It is probable that such an 
exhibition of field and heavy guns as could now be made by our War 
and Navy Departments would be second to no other collection of this 
character now existing in any country in Europe. 
One of the most important objects to be accomplished by. the estab- 
lishment of a national military and naval museum will be the early 
preparation of a series of relief plans of the great spectacular battles 
of the late civil war. These plans will appropriately supplement and 
illustrate the official documentary history of the war now publishing 
under the auspices of the War Department. With the aid of the 
prominent officers of the armies of the Union and of the late Southern 
Confederacy who still survive, it will be possible to construct at a mod- 
erate cost models in plaster of Gettysburg, Nashville, Chickamauga, 
Chattanooga, and other fields of great battles, and to indicate by means 
of miniature figures representing the troops engaged the general char- 
acter of the movements of the contending forces. Such plans of bat- 
tlefields have been brought to a high degree of perfection in the 
National Museum of Germany and other European countries. The 
visitor to the Royal Ordnance Museum in Berlin finds there large relief 
plans of the character indicated, representing nearly. all the great 
national battlefields on which Prussian armies have contended for the 
mastery. 
It is not necessary to point out the great interest which would attach 
to such battle plans when placed on exhibition in the city of Washing- 
ton. If they were constructed with proper care and due attention to 
historical accuracy, it would be possible for any visitor to the museum 
in a few hours to gain from them a clearer idea of how the great battles 
of the war of the rebellion were actually fought than could be obtained 
from days of study of the literature of the war. To the veteran soldiers 
of all sections of the country such battle plans would prove intensely 
interesting, enabling them to recali the stirring events in which they 
participated, and to refresh their memories concerning the history of 
the great struggle in which they were engaged. As the years pass, the 
veteran officers and soldiers who were antagonists in’ the battles of the 
civil war manifest an increasing disposition to meet and fraternize upon 
the fields where they fought a quarter of a century ago. ‘The recent 
reunion of Northern and Southern veterans on the field of Gettysburg 
