The game Red Dead Redemption 2 takes place in the US in 1899. In one area of the map you come across an abandoned Civil War battlefield with old cannons, trenches and barricades strewn about. Were there actually any visible remnants of Civil War battles as late as 1899?

Taking place over thirty years after the end of the conflict, we can say with a fair bit of certainty that there isn't quite that level of preservation of battlefields, but it is important to understand the context of the game here. I've written previously about another aspect of Civil War memory in the game, discussing the post-war presence of Confederate affiliated criminal groups, which strictly speaking also isn't accurate that long after the war (although in-game lore makes clear they haven't existed the entire 30 years, but rather are a recent resurgence). But what both of these elements point to, as well as other inclusions in the game, is a heavy lean in on common tropes of the Western, as many classic films, on which RDR2 is of course drawing inspiration from, use the Civil War or else its immediate aftermath as part of the backdrop against which their stories are set. The presence of a battlefield, still strewn with debris and while overgrown, done so in a way that suggests a few years have passed rather than a few decades, doesn't reflect reality of 1899, but it does reflect popular media. For me at least, it was quite hard not to think of the scene from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly where we come across the aftermath of a battle, and I'd hardly be surprised if that wasn't a direct inspiration, as it feels intentional.

Now, while it might not look exactly real, we can discuss the state of battlefields in the period. As already noted, the ones in the game are well kept all in all, and while this is not too far removed from the period when battlefield preservation began, they certainly didn't want to keep them in that sort of state. Early battlefield preservation was mostly focused on memorialization of the dead. Many battlefields had national cemeteries created on their grounds, or else nearby, where the Federal government interred the Union dead. Fredericksburg National Cemetery for instance was founded in 1865, Shiloh National Cemetery in 1866, and Gettysburg National Cemetery was created before the war even ended, in late 1863. Confederate dead were not placed in Federal cemeteries, but some of the earliest Confederate groups to form in the post-war were the Ladies' Memorial Associations who saw to the internment and maintenance of the cemeteries and memorials for the fallen traitors.

By the turn of the century, the battlefields themselves were beginning to be preserved as historical sites. This movement began in the 1890s, first with Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in 1890 and soon followed by Antietam National Battlefield was also in 1890. The process continued on for decades. Even before their official memorialization, many former battlefields were serving as grounds for reunions of veterans, and many battlefields were preserved by local veterans or memorial groups, such as the UCV, SCV, or UDC. This impulse especially came to the forefront in the 1890s as the preservation of such 'sacred ground' was seen as an important part of keeping alive the flame of the 'Lost Cause' that such groups in the South worked to perpetuate.

To be sure, some battlefields never saw significant efforts at preservation, but far from meaning they were left alone, more often than not that meant they became farmland again. Civilians needed to get back to their lives, and anything too broken for the armies to haul away with them, they would need to deal with instead, which could mean months of backbreaking labor by communities simply to reclaim their land for use again.

Even battles in forested areas, by 30 years onwards, often had seen those woods cleared for more farmland. And whatever the preservation state 30 years on, in the immediate aftermath, the most accessible detritus would long have disappeared. Battles were rarely fought far from settlement, and this certainly isn't the case in the game. After the armies left, civilian populations would scour the field and recover things they thought useful, and as noted, haul away anything simply in the way.

The military too, of course, would scour the field to remove the dead and such, a thoroughly distasteful job often forced upon the African-Americans supporting the armies, regardless of the side. At many battles, the dead were buried where they fell at first, and only later would parties come to rebury them properly, although there would of course be remains in the open that were missed. The remains were often buried under a few inches of soil, civilians commenting on the abhorrent stench that would remain for months. Quite literally buried where they lay, this often meant more work for the civilians who had to remove the bodies and rebury them elsewhere, not only to make their fields usable, but often because of makeshift graves literally on the doorstep or under their porch. Only wealthy officers would usually have the luxury of being shipped home to rest with their loved ones.

Even preserved battlefields have tons of material though! It just isn't out in the open like that. Trenchlines are often preserved, but natural erosion and weather means that they don't look as sharp, and wood elements such as the duckboards would long ago have rotted of course. Plenty of weapons are left behind, but by 30 years on, most would be buried, and require excavation to reveal. Even the best preserved battlefields occasionally have new finds of material that wasn't recovered the first time around. It is perhaps ironic that the closest thing you might find to ignoring such matters would be in the North. Few major engagements took place there, of course, but for the ones that did, while there was great concern about preserving the Northern honor, less attention was paid to the South there. At Antietam, for instance, while the Union dead were moved to the cemetery quickly, Confederate dead, buried on the battlefield itself, were mostly not dealt with for another decade, finally unburied in the 1870s, although not placed in the National Cemetery of course.

But in any case, to return to the original point, by 1899, many battlefields were well on their way to preservation as National Military Parks, and even those which didn't receive such treatment were hardly abandoned immediately after the battle to never be handled again. Even the small engagements saw efforts to clear up and memorialize the dead, and it is quite unreasonable to consider the representation of a former battlefield in RDR2 as close to reality. But it shouldn't be understood on those terms in any case, but rather understood for the Western tropes that it represents and the important place Civil War Memory has long held in the genre.

Sources

Adams, Michael CC. Living hell: The dark side of the Civil War. JHU Press, 2014.

Cashin, Joan E., ed. War Matters: Material Culture in the Civil War Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.

Janney, Caroline E.. Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies' Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause. University of North Carolina Press, Jan 2008.

Sellars, Richard West. Pilgrim places: Civil War battlefields, historic preservation, and America's first national military parks, 1863-1900. Vol. 3. Fort Washington, PA.: Eastern National, 2005.

Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. University of Oklahoma Press, Dec 1992.

Stone, Richard D, and Mary M Graham. 2007. “Selective Civil War Battlefield Preservation as a Method of Marketing The Southern ‘Lost Cause.’” In Conference on Historical Analysis & Research in Marketing, 221–27. Durham, NC.

Sutton, Robert K. "Commemorating the American Civil War in NAtional PArk Service battlefields" in The heritage of war. Gegner, Martin, and Bart Ziino, eds., Routledge, 2011.