The first Confederate monument on the Gettysburg battlefield was dedicated in 1884 to the 1st Maryland Battalion. It took years for the next to follow.
Southern states were impoverished after the war, Gettysburg was a Union victory fought on Union soil, and the battlefield commission was controlled by Union veterans whose rules discouraged the meaningful placement of Confederate monuments.
An effort by the War Department after 1900 to mark the locations of Confederate regiments failed due to lack of participation and even active opposition by surviving Confederate veterans.
As time went on the importance of the Battle of Gettysburg and a spirit of reconciliation combined to bring some southern monuments to this northern field. Many of the veterans who strongly associated with their regiments had passed on by then, and efforts were concentrated in state monuments.
Virginia was the first in 1917, but the last Confederate state monument, that of Tennessee, was not dedicated until 1982, and Maryland, whose monument is dedicated to its troops who fought on both sides, until 1994.
Virginia Monument at Gettysburg
