The first efforts at Civil War battlefield preservation and memorialization came during the war, with the establishment of National Cemeteries at Gettysburg, Mill Springs and Chattanooga. Soldiers began erecting markers on battlefields beginning with the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. The oldest surviving monument is the
Hazen Brigade Monument near
Murfreesboro in
Central Tennessee, built in the summer of 1863 by soldiers in Union Col.
William B. Hazen's brigade to mark the spot where they buried their dead, following the Battle of Stones River.