Battle of Nashville Monument Park — Local services in Nashville-Davidson

The anniversaries flow one into the other.

One hundred and fifty years ago, come December, the Battle of Nashville destroyed the last hope of the Confederacy for independence.

A century ago, on June 28, 1914, an anarchist’s bullet killed the crown prince of a decrepit empire and plunged the world into the worst war that ever was.

Fifteen years ago, a strange sculpture, commemorating both wars, was dedicated on Granny White Pike, just off Woodmont Boulevard.

The Battle of Nashville Monument (sometimes called the “Peace Monument”) had originally been an enterprise of women civic leaders in this Southern city to mark the end of their impossible dream. But they also meant for it to honor the men who went to France in 1917-18, reuniting one nation in common cause.

What if the South had won the Civil War? Giuseppe Moretti, commissioned by those patriotic women to create the monument, knew the preservation of the Union had been a near thing. If General John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee had retaken Nashville in December 1864, the North would have sued for peace—and Southern independence.

Would the remaining United States, 50 years on, have had the resources to muster, feed, and equip soldiers for the fronts, saving Belgium, France, and England from the Kaiser’s jackboot?

Moretti’s great sculpture, which would grace any city in the world, depicts two charging horses, yoked together by a young man. The steeds represent the old warring sections; the youth stands for those who died in the Great War. A poem by John Trotwood Moore, incised into the granite, declares that the Civil War made us “now and forever Americans.”

Go visit this exquisite work of art. (But ignore the flashy marker put up by the Tennessee Historical Commission; it tells only half the story.) Hold church picnics and engagement parties on the site!

Somebody could even take an om-pah-pah band there for a Saturday afternoon! Laurence Binyon, a Red Cross volunteer in Europe in 1917-18, wrote: “There is music in the midst of desolation / And a glory that shines...

When we showed up a lady was walking her dog and we had to wait till he was done pooping to take pictures, I thought it was disrespectful. The monument itself is very impressive. However parking included is on a small lot. Grass had not been mowed. It's a huge breathtaking monument. Tucked away in the middle of upscale houses. Right next to very loud corridor road. It's a situation were you really wished it had been moved so it could get the credit it deserves. Or the grounds improved to make it look as grateful as we...

The monument is a key landmark at the little space of field here. This park carries memorials from the battle of Nashville dating back to 1864. What remains from that battle is a structure with some engraved inscription and poems, the “Witness Tree” as well as several events that are held here yearly. Battle of Nashville Monument Park is free access to the public, open 24/7 and worth visiting for a stroll and to take...