NATIONAL MONUMENTS SYSTEM 297 



tute an Outdoor Museum System of some nobility. 

 What is needed, all, in fact, that is needed, is official 

 recognition that this System exists as such, and a 

 little inexpensive machinery, the simpler the more 

 effective, to define standards, clean it of dross, de- 

 termine the units which shall be admitted to it and 

 administer it through an organization which shall 

 combine representatives of the three Departments 

 with experts appointed from outside of government. 



NATIONAL MILITARY PARKS 



The wonder is that National Military Parks 

 were so long in coming. It took a quarter of a cen- 

 tury after the close of the Civil War to create the 

 first reservation, that which encloses the ten square 

 miles in Tennessee in which had been fought the 

 great battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga. It 

 was called the Chickamauga and Chattanooga Na- 

 tional Military Park. The impulse swept into crea- 

 tion in the very same Congress the battle-field of 

 Antietam in Maryland, under similar title. The 

 year was 1890. These parks naturally were refer- 

 red to the War Department for administration. 



There was at this time, of course, no plan for 

 building a system, but the seed was sown. Other 

 Civil War battle-fields were proposed, but none was 

 made till 1894, when the Shiloh National Military 

 Park was created at Pittsburgh Landing, Tennes- 



