Information Panel: The Bartow Monument
Colonel Francis S. Bartow was killed near here while leading the 7th Georgia Infantry in a counterattack. An ardent defender of slavery and state's rights, the Georgia politician was placed in command of a brigade of state troops shortly before the battle. His death at First Manassas rendered him one of the South's earliest military martyrs.
Six weeks after the battle, the men of Bartow's brigade commemorated their fallen leader, dedicating a stone shaft on the spot where he fell. The monument, possibly the first erected on any Civil War battlefield, disappeared by the following spring. The current marker dates to 1936.
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service