A Civil War Cannon: Liberty and Union, Now and Forever

By editor

Livingston, Park County, Montana

The 3-inch Ordnance Rifle that rests on the old courthouse lawn in Livingston is a relic born of fire and smoke, a weapon that once spat iron and death amid the tangled woods and rolling hills of Gettysburg. It is not a monument to glory, but a fragment of war’s relentless grind. The United States War Department gave this cannon to the Grand Army of the Republic, Farragut Post 7, and it was set in place on May 11, 1912, marked by a marble slab etched with the words "Liberty and Union, Now and Forever," and the stark dates--1861 to 1865--that frame the nation’s most brutal rupture.

The cannon’s journey westward was quiet, almost overlooked. The local Woman's Relief Corps, an auxiliary to the GAR, collected ten dollars to pay for the wooden carriage that now cradles the iron barrel. They were reimbursed by the GAR, but the cannon itself came free of charge, shipped from Fort Harrison in Helena. The WRC’s efforts did not stop at funds; they raised the money needed to place the piece here, on the courthouse lawn, where the law of the land now rules over what once was ruled by cannon fire.

The Grand Army of the Republic was born in 1866, a year after the war’s guns fell silent, formed by veterans bound not by victory but by shared suffering and loss. Its principles were fraternity, charity, and loyalty--words meant to heal, though the scars remained raw. Livingston’s post formed in 1886, named for David Glasgow Farragut, the Navy’s first admiral, a man who famously commanded, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" at Mobile Bay. The post was a gathering place for men who had marched through mud and blood, and for their families who carried those memories west, to this new frontier.

Many of these veterans came from both North and South, drawn westward by the promise of land and new beginnings. The war had cost 620,000 lives--an unimaginable number that made every surviving soldier a keeper of grim stories. The cannon here is one such story, forged in iron and shadow.

The 3-inch Ordnance Rifle is a marvel of Civil War-era engineering. Made of wrought iron by the Phoenix Iron Company of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, it weighs 820 pounds and measures 69 inches long. It fires a 9.5-pound projectile at 1,215 feet per second and can reach a distance of 1,830 yards at five degrees elevation. The barrel’s strength came from a rolling process that layered wrought iron to resist bursting, making it far more reliable than earlier cast iron cannons. It was the most widely used cannon of the war, present in battles from Antietam to Gettysburg.

At Gettysburg in July 1863, this cannon would have roared in the confusion that swallowed 165,000 men over three days. The terrain was a checkerboard of farms, fences, and hills, with the sun bearing down in unbearable heat. The air was thick with smoke and the cries of the wounded. Artillery crews worked feverishly, loading and firing as the enemy drew closer. Lieutenant Charles E. Hazlett, commander of Battery D, 5th U.S. Artillery, was killed by a sharpshooter while manning his guns on Little Round Top, a grim reminder that even behind the cannon, death was relentless and random.

The official reports of the battle describe the artillery’s role as decisive, but the men who fired these guns knew the truth was more tangled. One soldier recalled the cacophony: "The roar was deafening--the acrid smell of gunpowder stung my eyes, and the ground shook beneath my feet. One moment I was loading the cannon, the next, a shell exploded nearby, sending shards through the air. There was no time to think, only to act." The officer’s report might note a battery’s success in repulsing an attack, but in the mud and smoke, victories were measured in inches and seconds.

After Gettysburg, this particular Ordnance Rifle was sent to General Nelson A. Miles, a Union officer who would later command the Army of the Pacific and play a major role in Indian Wars across Montana and the West. Miles understood war’s relentless grind, having seen battlefields from Virginia to the plains. The cannon’s transfer to him was less about ceremony and more about utility--guns were tools of war, to be moved and used where needed.

The GAR faded as its members aged and passed away. The last member died in 1956, marking the end of an era. Yet the organization laid the groundwork for modern veterans’ groups, advocating for pensions, healthcare, and remembrance. The Woman's Relief Corps, born from the same soil, survives today. Its members continue to honor veterans of all wars, maintaining allegiance to the ideals their forebears fought to preserve.

This cannon on the courthouse lawn is not just a piece of metal. It is a fragment of the past that refuses to grow quiet. Its presence in Montana, far from the fields of Pennsylvania and Virginia, speaks to how the Civil War’s reach extended beyond the battle lines, carried westward by men and women seeking new lives amid the towering peaks and endless skies.

If you stand close, you can see the worn iron, the faded markings, the faint scars of battle--signs not just of war but of survival. The marble slab’s inscription, "Liberty and Union, Now and Forever," is a phrase uttered by Daniel Webster in his famous Second Reply to Hayne in 1830, words meant to bind a fracturing nation. Here, beneath Montana’s wide sky, it takes on new weight, a reminder that the wounds of war linger long after the guns fall silent.

See also

• A Civil War Cannon at Livingston, Park County
• Hepburn's Mesa at Pray, Park County
• Fort Ellis at Bozeman, Gallatin County