The first permanent informational plaques placed in national cemeteries after the Civil War were affixed to upright cannons to brand these sites as a shrine to Union dead. Major and Brevet Colonel Oscar A. Mack, the inspector of national cemeteries, recommended the plaques in his April 1872 report. By then, the U.S. Army oversaw 72 national cemeteries and an estimated 250,000 Union graves, most marked by wooden headboards.
Many cemeteries already contained “large iron guns…planted vertically on their bases as monuments.” Mack observed that “a bronze shield, bearing in raised (cast) letters…might be attached to one of these guns…in such a way to improve its appearance and increase its usefulness as a monument.” Mack’s superior, Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, agreed that “no cemetery can be considered properly furnished till some considerable monumental brass bears an inscription recording its establishment, and the number of dead soldiers it contains.”
On October 5, 1872, Secretary of War William Belknap authorized the acquisition of bronze shield plaques as far as the annual appropriation for the national cemeteries, which paid for lodge construction, headboards, superintendent’s salaries, and other expenses, would allow. The Quartermaster General’s office immediately wrote to a Philadelphia foundry, describing the shield and for each, “a drill and tap and bronze screws” to secure it to the gun.
The manufacturer of the shield is not known, but Mack’s 1874 inspection confirms it was designed to fit on the 24-pounder cannon common to most cemeteries. Springfield National Cemetery in Missouri contained six “gun-monuments.” Among these, Mack reported, were two flanking the main drive, and “one of these has the prescribed bronze shield on it.”
The plaque’s Federal-style eagle with outspread wings and shield cast with stars and stripes is representative of the Republic’s nineteenth-century seal. Beneath the eagle is the cemetery name, establishment year, and number of known and unknown interments. To either side are military symbols of the Civil War era: cannon for artillery, swords for cavalry, bugle for infantry, and flags to denote regiments.
By Sara Amy Leach
Senior Historian, National Cemetery Administration
Share this story
Related Stories
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 87: Shoulder Patch for Veterans Administration Military Personnel in World War II
For a time during and after World War II, active duty military personnel were assigned to the Veterans Administration.
That assignment was represented by a blue circle with a golden phoenix rising from the ashes. This was the shoulder patch worn by the more than 1,000 physicians, dentists, and other medical professionals serving in the U.S. Army at VA medical centers.
This was the same patch worn by Gen. Omar Bradley during his time as VA administrator after the war concluded.
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 86: The Roll of Honor
“The following pages are devoted to the memory of those heroes who have given up their lives upon the altar of their country, in defense of the American Union.”
So opened the preface to the first volume of the Roll of Honor, a compendium of over 300,000 Federal soldiers who died during the Civil War and were interred in national and other cemeteries. The genesis of this 27-volume collection published between 1865 and 1871 can be traced to Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs and the department he oversaw for a remarkable 21 years from 1861 to 1882.
History of VA in 100 Objects
Object 85: Congressman Claypool’s “$1 Per Day Pension” Ribbon
Founded in 1866 as fraternal organization for Union Veterans, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) embraced a new mission in the 1880s: political activism. The GAR formed a pension committee in 1881 for the express purpose of lobbying Congress for more generous pension benefits.
An artifact from the political wrangling over pensions is now part of the permanent collection of the National VA History Center in Dayton, Ohio. The item is a small pension ribbon displaying the message: “I endorse the $1 per day pension as recommended by the Departments of Ohio and Indiana G.A.R.” The button attached to the ribbon features two American flags and the phrase “saved by the boys of ’61-65.” The back of the ribbon bears the signature of Horatio C. Claypool, a Democratic judge who ran for the seat in Ohio’s eleventh Congressional district in the 1910 mid-term elections.
