Battles, service, and the memorials a country builds to remember them.
5,438 markers in this collection, across every conflict below — showing 421–480.
Atlanta, GA
At the Battle of Ezra Church on July 28, 1864, Confederate Gen. A.P. Stewart brought Walthall's and Loring's divisions forward to renew the assault on the Union lines west of Atlanta. Riding to this hill to assess Walthall's failed attack, Stewart was struck by a spent bullet; command passed to Walthall, who withdrew and called off further attacks. That night Hood pulled his battered troops back into Atlanta.
Atlanta, GA
This spot marked the extreme right of Gen. O.O. Howard's Army of the Tennessee during the Battle of Ezra Church on July 28, 1864. Lightburn's brigade of Logan's corps held the line here as Brown's four Confederate brigades tried to roll up the Federal flank, and again when Walthall's division attempted the same ground—both attacks failing to dislodge the Union defenders.
Galveston, TX
As part of the Union blockade, Commander W. B. Renshaw's fleet took the lightly defended port of Galveston on October 4, 1862. Determined to recapture Texas's most important harbor, Major General J. B. Magruder improvised a navy—refitting two steamers as 'cottonclad' gunboats manned by cavalry—and struck before dawn on January 1, 1863. In the fierce fight the Confederates boarded the Harriet Lane, the Union flagship Westfield exploded, and the remaining federal ships fled, leaving Galveston in Confederate hands for the rest of the war.
Philadelphia, PA · est. 1996
On October 4, 1777, the Revolutionary War came to the doorstep of Cliveden, the elegant country home of Pennsylvania Chief Justice Benjamin Chew. A British regiment barricaded itself inside the stone mansion and beat back a determined American assault, and more than seventy men fell on these grounds. Though Washington's army was defeated, the audacity of his coordinated attack impressed European observers.
Gonzales, TX
On October 2, 1835, near the Guadalupe River above Gonzales, Texian colonists fired the first shots of the Texas Revolution—earning the clash its nickname, the 'Lexington of Texas.' The trouble began when Mexican Col. Ugartechea demanded the return of a small cannon lent to the town for defense. The colonists buried it, dug it up, mounted it on ox-cart wheels, loaded it with scrap iron, and drove the Mexican dragoons back toward San Antonio.
Hanover, PA · est. 1954
On the morning of June 30, 1863, days before the armies collided at Gettysburg, Confederate horsemen under J.E.B. Stuart clashed with Union cavalry in the streets of Hanover. Stuart's troopers briefly seized the town before the Union counterattack drove them off, and by evening the Confederates withdrew. The running fight helped delay Stuart's raiders and kept them from rejoining Lee's army before the great battle to come.
Jasper County, SC
On November 30, 1864, Union forces under Brig. Gen. John P. Hatch pushed inland to sever the vital Charleston–Savannah railroad and met a smaller Confederate force dug in near Honey Hill. Confederate commander Col. Charles J. Colcock ordered a field of grass set ablaze to slow the advancing Federals, buying time to gather reinforcements behind strong earthworks. Short on ammunition and unable to break the position, the Union troops were repelled and withdrew.
Irvine, KY
On July 30, 1863, Confederate Col. John S. Scott and his troopers rode into Irvine intending to capture the 14th Kentucky Cavalry, but held the town only briefly. Union Col. W. P. Sanders pursued, catching part of Scott's rear guard, and the two forces exchanged fire across the river as Scott's men crossed and slipped away. It was the only Civil War engagement in this stretch of eastern Kentucky.
Jones Creek, TX
In 1824, Stephen F. Austin dispatched Captain Randal Jones with a company of 23 men to the lower Brazos amid conflict with the Karankawa people. Jones's scouts located the Karankawa camp near this site, and at dawn the Texans attacked, only to find the Karankawa ready with spears. The clash left about fifteen Karankawa dead and scattered the rest.
Clayton County, GA
On August 31, 1864, the opening day of the Battle of Jonesboro, Gen. O.O. Howard's Army of the Tennessee entrenched along the Flint River after marching up from Fairburn. Confederate corps under S.D. Lee and Hardee attacked the Union lines but could not break them, leaving the contest drawn and unresolved until the following day.
Jonesboro, GA
On September 1, 1864, the final pitched battle of the Atlanta Campaign was fought around Jonesboro. Hardee's Confederate corps, posted in a salient near the Warren house, was assaulted late in the day by three divisions of Davis's 14th Corps, aided by Stanley's 4th Corps advancing down the railroad. With nightfall Hardee withdrew south to Lovejoy's Station.
Cobb County, GA
On June 22, 1864, Union divisions of the 23rd and 20th Corps linked up near Kolb's farm on the Powder Springs Road as Sherman probed the Confederate left. Federal skirmishers, backed by the 14th Kentucky, seized a ridge and held it stubbornly, and when Stevenson's Confederate division advanced against the main line it was driven back.
Cobb County, GA
On June 22, 1864, as the Union right threatened to outflank the Confederate line, Gen. Joseph Johnston sent Hood's corps to his far left near Kolb's farm to stop the advance. Hood ordered Stevenson's four brigades against the 20th and 23rd Corps posted astride the Powder Springs Road, but this and later attempts failed to check the Federal push southward.
Cobb County, GA
On June 22, 1864, the 14th Kentucky and 123rd New York were posted as skirmishers east of the Kolb farmstead during the Battle of Kolb's Farm. Their stubborn resistance, together with Federal artillery fire, disrupted and delayed Stevenson's Confederate assault on the main Union line along the Powder Springs Road, helping to halt the attack short of its objective.
Progreso, TX
In 1859 and 1860 Juan N. Cortina led a series of raids on Texas settlements along the lower Rio Grande, sparking the clashes known as the Cortina Wars. On February 4, 1860, Cortina's raiders met Capt. John S. "Rip" Ford's Texas Rangers at La Bolsa Bend, where the Rangers beat back an attack on the riverboat Ranchero as it steamed down from Rio Grande City. Cortina slipped across into Mexico, where he later rose to become a general in the Mexican Army.
Mandeville, LA
On September 10, 1779, Captain William Pickles won a naval fight off this shore, and on October 16 the British living between Bayou Lacombe and the Tangipahoa River formally surrendered to him. The action helped bring the Revolutionary War's Gulf Coast fighting to a close in Spanish Louisiana. It was part of the wider struggle in which Spain, allied against Britain, pressed the British out of the lower Mississippi region.
Alamance County, NC
On September 13, 1781, Whig militia under John Butler clashed with Loyalist forces led by Colonel David Fanning at Lindley's Mill, four miles southwest of here. Butler's men were trying to rescue Governor Thomas Burke, whom Fanning had captured the day before, but they failed and the governor remained a prisoner. It was one of the largest and bloodiest militia battles of the Revolution in North Carolina.
London, KY
On August 17, 1862, Confederate Colonel John S. Scott led 500 cavalry against roughly 200 Union soldiers and 98 convalescents under Colonel L. C. Houk at London. The lopsided fight cost the Union thirteen killed, seventeen wounded, and over a hundred captured along with forty wagons, while Scott lost only a handful of men. Driven back to George W. Morgan's main force at Cumberland Gap, Houk's defeat helped sever Union supply lines and set the stage for Morgan's long retreat to Ohio.
Lone Jack, MO
On the morning of August 16, 1862, the war between the states erupted across this Missouri crossroads village when a Confederate force overwhelmed a smaller detachment of Union cavalry. The Battle of Lone Jack was one of the vicious, close-quarters fights that made the Missouri-Kansas border among the most bitterly divided theaters of the Civil War, where neighbors and guerrillas turned on one another. The engagement left dozens dead in the streets and fields around the town.
Leming, TX
In August 1813, amid the upheaval of Spain's collapsing empire, the Republican Army of the North—American volunteers, Tejanos, Mexicans, and Native Americans who had seized San Antonio in the name of an independent Texas—marched south and was ambushed near the Medina River. Spanish General Joaquín de Arredondo crushed them in the bloodiest battle ever fought on Texas soil; fewer than 100 of some 1,400 escaped, and most captives were executed. Among Arredondo's officers was a young Antonio López de Santa Anna, who would return decades later.
Lackawaxen Township, PA · est. 1948
On July 22, 1779, the Revolutionary War reached this stretch of the upper Delaware. Some 175 patriot militia attacked a force of roughly 300 Loyalists and allied Native fighters led by the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant, who was returning from raids on the New York frontier. The battle turned into a disaster for the settlers, most of whom were killed, while Brant slipped away.
Mount Sterling, KY
On March 22, 1863, some 300 Confederate cavalrymen under Colonel R. S. Cluke swept into Mount Sterling and captured the town, taking 438 prisoners along with wagonloads of military stores, hundreds of mules, and a thousand stand of arms. The raid cost each side only a handful of casualties but stripped the Union garrison of its supplies. It was one of the many mounted strikes that made Civil War Kentucky a running contest of cavalry.
Nacogdoches, TX
On August 2, 1832, in one of the opening clashes leading toward Texas independence, Nacogdoches settlers resisted Mexican commander Col. José de las Piedras after he ordered them to surrender their firearms. Forming a "National Militia" under James W. Bullock, the townspeople fought house-to-house, seized the stone fort, and drove Piedras's roughly 300 troops from the square. The Mexicans fled in the night, were captured the next day, and a peace treaty followed on August 6—after which Mexican troops were never again garrisoned in East Texas.
Lefors, TX
On September 29, 1872, Colonel Ranald MacKenzie's cavalry and infantry surprised a 262-tepee Comanche village here on the North Fork of the Red River, whose people had refused to be confined to reservations. The troops seized the village in about half an hour, though Chief Mow-Way's warriors fought fiercely from the creek banks — and that night the Comanches slipped back and recaptured their horse herd. The lesson MacKenzie drew shaped his decisive 1874 campaign against the Southern Plains tribes.
Brownsville, TX
On May 12–13, 1865 — more than a month after Lee's surrender at Appomattox — Union and Confederate forces clashed near this spot in the last land engagement of the Civil War. Federal troops advancing from Brazos Island toward Fort Brown were checked by Confederate cavalry under Col. John S. "Rip" Ford until his artillery and a flanking charge forced a Union retreat. In a strange coda to a war already lost, the Confederates carried the field, reporting no fatalities while Union losses ran to more than a hundred.
Pinal County, AZ
This memorial marks the Battle of Picacho Pass, fought April 15, 1862, near a jagged peak in the Arizona desert. A small clash between Union cavalry from California and a Confederate patrol from Texas, it is often called the westernmost battle of the Civil War. Though tiny in scale, it signaled how far the war's reach extended into the Southwest.
Piqua, OH
In the Ohio Country of the early 1750s, the Miami village of Pickawillany grew into a thriving hub of the deerskin trade, where the leader Memeskia welcomed British traders and drew nearby tribes away from their older French alliances. That defiance made the town a target: in the summer of 1752 a French-allied war party swept down from the Great Lakes, destroyed the village, and killed Memeskia, breaking Britain's foothold in the region. The raid is often remembered as one of the sparks that would ignite the French and Indian War.
Paulding County, GA
On May 27, 1864, following the fighting at New Hope Church, Union Maj. Gen. O.O. Howard pushed over 18,000 men toward the Confederate right, hoping to find and turn its flank. Instead, three Federal brigades blundered into a deep, wooded ravine and were cut down one after another by Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne's Confederates firing from three directions, handing the South a clear victory in a five-hour battle.
Paulding County, GA
After the defense at New Hope Church in late May 1864, Confederate Gen. Johnston extended his right to counter Sherman's flanking moves. At Pickett's Mill, more than 18,000 Union troops under Maj. Gen. O.O. Howard sought the Confederate flank, but their brigades were funneled into a deep ravine and defeated in detail by Patrick Cleburne's men, who held the field after a fierce five-hour fight.
Lockhart, TX
By 1840 the young Republic of Texas and the Comanche and Kiowa nations were locked in escalating violence, inflamed by President Lamar's aggressive policies and the deadly Council House Fight in San Antonio. In revenge, a large war party swept to the coast and sacked Linnville before turning inland laden with plunder. On August 12, 1840, Texan volunteers under Felix Huston, Edward Burleson, and Mathew Caldwell—joined by Tonkawa allies—intercepted them at Plum Creek in a running fight across the prairie.
Gordon County, GA
On May 13, 1864, Union Gen. McPherson's corps emerged from Snake Creek Gap to open the Battle of Resaca, with Judson Kilpatrick's cavalry leading the advance until he was wounded by Confederate skirmishers. Over the next day Federal forces deployed along ridges overlooking Camp Creek as the battle opened in earnest against Hood's and Hardee's lines.
Resaca, GA
On May 16, 1864, Gen. Johnston's Confederate army slipped across the Oostanaula River on pontoon and railroad bridges, ending the Battle of Resaca. Union forces rebuilt the burned bridges and pursued southward while other columns fanned out toward Rome and the Coosawattee crossings, and the Army of the Tennessee forded the river downstream at Lay's Ferry.
Gordon County, GA
During the Battle of Resaca on May 13–14, 1864, Union corps deployed along ridges west of Camp Creek opposite Leonidas Polk's Confederate corps. On May 14 the Federals drove Polk's men across the creek and, by evening, carried and held his new position on the hills beyond, forcing Polk to fall back toward the Dalton–Resaca road.
Mableton, GA
On July 4, 1864, Union Brig. Gen. John Fuller's brigade probed east from Nickajack Creek to test the strength of the Confederate position near Ruff's Mill. Finding it strongly held, Fuller returned, then advanced again with support and after a bitter struggle seized the first line of Confederate works. The action, paired with fighting at Smyrna, was part of pressuring Johnston's retreat from Kennesaw toward the Chattahoochee.
Houston, TX
On the afternoon of April 21, 1836, Sam Houston's roughly one thousand Texans stormed Santa Anna's larger Mexican army in a charge that lasted only eighteen minutes yet decided a continent's future. Crying "Remember the Alamo!" and "Remember Goliad!" as their band played a love song, the Texans routed the enemy, capturing Santa Anna himself the next day. The stunning victory secured Texas independence and, with annexation nine years later, set in motion the U.S. acquisition of vast western lands.
San Patricio, TX
In the predawn hours of February 27, 1836, during the Texas Revolution, Mexican General José Urrea's troops surprised a Texan force in the streets of Old San Patricio. The Texans, remnants of an ill-fated expedition against Matamoros led by Francis W. Johnson and Dr. James Grant, were scattered — sixteen killed and thirty taken prisoner — while a few, including Johnson, escaped. Days later Urrea crushed Grant's remaining men at Agua Dulce Creek, sending the survivors into months of captivity in Matamoros.
Spokane County, WA
This monument marks the Battle of Spokane Plains, fought on September 5, 1858, when U.S. troops under Colonel George Wright defeated allied Coeur d'Alene, Palouse, and Spokane warriors. The clash was part of the wider conflict that opened the interior Pacific Northwest to settlement following disputes over land and passage. Wright's campaign, remembered for its harsh aftermath, effectively ended organized Native resistance in the region.
Ball Ground, GA
About 1755, near the confluence of Long-Swamp Creek and the Etowah River, the great Cherokee war-chief Oconostota led some 500 warriors to a decisive victory over a larger Creek force in the Battle of Taliwa. The defeat was so complete that the Creeks withdrew south of the Chattahoochee River, ceding to the Cherokee the region that would later become the heart of the Cherokee Nation.
San Antonio, TX
On June 20, 1813, the plains just west of San Antonio saw one clash in the violent struggle that convulsed Spanish Texas as insurgents rose against royal rule. Colonel Ygnacio Elizondo, who had already switched sides twice, camped carelessly near the Alazán and was overwhelmed at dawn by the republican Army of the North under Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara, who charged straight through the Spanish camp behind a solid green banner. Only the best-mounted royalists escaped the two-hour battle.
Hondo, TX
In 1842 the Mexican Army launched three invasions to reclaim Texas after the revolution, and in September General Adrián Woll's forces seized San Antonio. As Texan volunteers rallied, fighting spread across South Texas — at Salado Creek on September 18 and again on September 21 at Hondo Creek (Arroyo Hondo) near this site. Hampered by dissension and unclear leadership, the Texans failed to rout Woll's retreating army, an outcome that helped prompt the ill-fated Somervell Expedition.
East Whiteland Township, PA
Just five days after the bruising defeat at Brandywine, George Washington tried to make another stand against the advancing British here on September 16, 1777. As the armies maneuvered into position, a violent rainstorm swept in and soaked the soldiers' ammunition, forcing Washington to withdraw before a major clash could unfold — giving the aborted engagement its evocative name, the Battle of the Clouds.
East Whiteland Township, PA · est. 2014
In September 1777, with the British marching on the rebel capital of Philadelphia, Washington's Continental Army fell back from its defeat at Brandywine to regroup along Swedesford Road near the White Horse Tavern. As the two armies maneuvered toward a decisive fight, a sudden violent downpour soaked the soldiers' gunpowder and made battle impossible. The outnumbered Americans used the reprieve to slip northwest, resupply, and fight another day.
Crosbyton, TX
In September 1871 Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie led the 4th U.S. Cavalry from Fort Griffin against Comanche who had refused to move to their reservation. Near the mouth of Blanco Canyon on October 11, Comanche warriors surprised the camp on the Freshwater Fork of the Brazos, stampeding dozens of horses and sparking a running pursuit of more than forty miles in which two Comanche and a soldier were killed and both Mackenzie and Lt. Robert Carter were wounded. The clash marked the first meeting of Mackenzie with Quanah Parker and the Quahadi Comanche—and the beginning of the end of Comanche dominance in the Panhandle, culminating in the Red River War of 1874.
Decatur, TX
On November 10, 1837, eighteen Republic of Texas soldiers under Lt. A. B. Benthuysen clashed near this site with roughly 150 Native American fighters. Ten of the Texans were killed—their names recorded on the marker—while Indian losses were estimated at fifty. The rugged geologic feature called the Knobs now stands as a natural memorial to the soldiers left on the field.
Archer City, TX
On the North Texas frontier in July 1870, Captain Curwen B. McLellan led 56 troopers of the 6th Cavalry out of Fort Richardson in response to a raid on a mail stage. Near the forks of the Little Wichita his small command ran into a Kiowa war party of some 250 fighters under Kicking Bird and was forced into a fighting retreat that cost the lives of two soldiers. The clash was one of the sharp Southern Plains engagements of the post-Civil War era, and an extraordinary thirteen Medals of Honor were awarded for the day's fighting.
Van, TX
On July 15–16, 1839, some 500 troops of the Republic of Texas clashed with roughly 800 Cherokee and allied Delaware and Shawnee fighters in the main engagement of the Cherokee War. Remarkably, the republic's vice president and secretary of war took part in the fighting. The aged Cherokee leader Chief Bowles was killed carrying a sword once given to him by Sam Houston, and the defeat scattered the tribes from settled East Texas.
Wildwood Crest, NJ
On June 29, 1776 — just days before the Declaration of Independence — the American brigantine Nancy, running a precious cargo of gunpowder up the coast, was chased by British warships and ran aground at Turtle Gut Inlet near present-day Wildwood Crest. Patriot sailors and Continental crews fought a sharp engagement to unload the powder before the ship was lost, then blew up the Nancy to keep her from the enemy. It was one of the earliest naval actions of the Revolution off the New Jersey shore.
Seven Springs, NC
On December 15–16, 1862, Union troops under General J. G. Foster raided the village of Whitehall (now Seven Springs) during operations along the Neuse River. In the fighting they damaged the Confederate ironclad ram 'Neuse,' then under construction along the river. The clash was part of Foster's broader expedition against Confederate supply lines in eastern North Carolina.
Town of Wilton, NY
This marker in the town of Wilton commemorates a military engagement remembered as the Battle of Wilton. Saratoga County lies in the strategically vital upper Hudson Valley — a corridor fought over repeatedly from the colonial wars through the American Revolution, when control of the route between Canada and Albany carried national stakes.
Wyoming, PA · est. 1952
On July 3, 1778, the Revolution reached the Susquehanna frontier in one of its bloodiest backcountry episodes. A small force of about 300 patriots under Colonel Zebulon Butler marched out to meet a much larger column of British, Loyalists, and allied Iroquois led by Major John Butler. The patriots were routed, many captives were killed, and terrified survivors fled to the refuge of Forty Fort.
New York, NY
On August 27, 1776, the Battle of Long Island—the first major engagement after the Declaration of Independence—swept across the wooded hills and passes of what is now Brooklyn. Battle Pass, where old roads cut through the ridge separating Flatbush from Brooklyn and Gowanus, was a key point Continental troops tried to hold and barricade against advancing British and Hessian forces. Though the Americans were driven back, Washington's daring night withdrawal across the East River saved his army to fight another day.
Clayton County, GA
The deep gully south of this marker — the bed of a small stream running to the Flint River — was one of the few natural landmarks of the fighting here on August 31, 1864. Along and north of it, Union divisions of the 15th and 16th Corps formed a refused line bent back to the river. When Hardee's Confederate divisions attacked from south of the gully, the ravine became a fatal obstacle, breaking up their assault against the entrenched Federal infantry and artillery near Jonesboro.
Atlanta, GA
When Lt. Gen. John B. Hood took command of the Army of Tennessee on July 18, 1864, he moved quickly to strike the Federal armies closing on Atlanta. His first blow fell on July 20 against Thomas's Army of the Cumberland as it crossed Peachtree Creek, but a delay in Confederate deployment let the Federals secure ground south of the stream. The battle spread west across fields bisected by Collier Road, from Clear Creek to Howell Mill Road.
Seguin, TX
On this prairie in March 1839, General Edward Burleson and about 80 volunteers of the young Republic of Texas overtook and defeated a force led by Vicente Córdova, breaking up the so-called Córdova Rebellion—an anti-Texan uprising that had drawn together Mexican loyalists, Native fighters, and others. The clash drove the rebels from Texas and ended the episode. The state placed this marker during the 1936 centennial.
Town of Riverhead, NY
During the War of 1812, the shores of Long Island's North Fork became a front line as British warships blockaded Long Island Sound and preyed on coastal shipping. This marker recalls two waterfront clashes in which local farmers, militia, and a small revenue cutter's crew stood against far larger Royal Navy vessels — saving one American sloop and putting up a days-long defense before another vessel was taken. The named British man-of-war Sylph places these skirmishes squarely in that era of raids and improvised coastal resistance.
Whitfield County, GA
In 1864 the rail towns of northwest Georgia became a battleground during Sherman's drive on Atlanta. This spot saw a May delaying action as Confederates withdrew toward Resaca, and an October assault in which part of French's Division shelled a blockhouse held by some 300 men of the 17th Iowa Veteran Volunteer Infantry, forcing their surrender after a fight of several hours.
Cherokee County, KS
On October 6, 1863, Union General James G. Blunt and roughly a hundred men were ambushed near Baxter's Springs by William Quantrill's Confederate guerrillas, some disguised in Union blue. The deception let the raiders close in before the escort could react, and much of Blunt's party was cut down in the fighting that followed. The episode was one of the bloodiest guerrilla actions on the Kansas-Missouri border.
Bay City, TX
Built in 1941 on land loaned by the Pierce Estate, the Bay City U.S.O. was one of sixteen such centers raised that year across Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma to serve both townspeople and soldiers training at nearby Camp Hulen. Dedicated in 1942 and run by the Y.M.C.A. under U.S.O. auspices, its programs drew more than 150,000 service personnel before operations ended in 1945 and the building passed to the American Legion. With its banded windows, cantilevered overhangs, and flat roof, the buff-brick, International-style hall is the last of five Gulf Coast wartime U.S.O. buildings still standing.
Baytown, TX
In the spring of 1861 Dr. Ashbel Smith raised a company of volunteers from the Galveston Bay settlements, drilling them on his own plantation before they mustered into Confederate service as part of what became the Second Texas Infantry. Among their ranks were sons of Republic of Texas presidents Sam Houston and Anson Jones. The regiment fought at Shiloh, where half the company fell, and endured the forty-six-day siege of Vicksburg before its survivors were paroled and served out the war along the Texas coast.
Baytown, TX
In the wreckage the Civil War left across Texas, Henry Gillette and a small group of citizens gathered in 1866 to care for the children of Confederate soldiers, and the Texas Legislature chartered their orphanage that September. On a bluff overlooking Tabbs Bay, a two-story brick house became home to a growing family of children—76 of them by 1870—sustained by donated land, stocks, and a state grant of tens of thousands of acres. When support shifted toward Houston, the home relocated in 1888 and, through many changes of name and mission, endures today as Harris County's Burnett Bayland Rehabilitation Center.