Old Man Higgins woke up one morning, stretched, yawned, shook himself like a dog, and
stumbled out of bed. It was barely 4.30 a.m., and time to milk the cows. After that
chore was completed, Higgins led his cows back into the pasture so they could eat, and
there he met a new resident of his dairy farm. In the middle of the field was a large
marble slab.

Now, Higgins didn't have the greatest eyesight in the world, so he had to walk
back inside and get his glasses, because there had been something written on that slab.
When he walked back out, he discovered that his pasture was an old Civil War battleground,
and that someone, presumably the State Department, had placed a monument commemorating
the battle overnight. This is what the monument had to say:

This Civil War Memorial is here to immortalize the heroic veterans of the American Civil
War who died here, in the Battle of Crawford, and to perpetuate their legacy of honor
regardless of their political affiliations. It may have been a small battle, but the
consequences, for both the participants and their country, was large.

ABBOTT, William G. - 12th Tenn Inf, CSA
DICKINSON, William Chesley - 12th Tenn Inf, CSA
DUNN, T.J. - Pvt 12th Tenn Inf, CSA
KELLETT, E. James - 12th Tenn Inf, CSA
PRUITT, William O. - Co. F, Pvt, 88th Ohio Inf, USA; also 14th Ark Inf, CSA
SALES, Phillip - Co. F, 88th Ohio Inf, USA
WARREN, G.W. - 12th Tenn Inf, CSA

Well, Higgins was, naturally, moved to tears at the thought of these brave soldiers
toughing it out, fighting and dying, on the land that he now owned and fed his cows off of.
Everything in the field took on a new meaning for him. That patch of begonias might be the
grave of one of these soldiers. That copse of trees might cover a corpse. One of his cows
could be standing in the same place a soldier stood, many years ago.

Old Man Higgins was so excited by this that he rushed to tell all his neighbors
about his Civil War battlefield. In a few days, the Battle of Crawford was the talk of the
town, and the history teacher at the nearby school was planning to include it in his lecture
on the Civil War. The lecture would probably go something like this:

"Students, as you know, the War Between the States, also known as the Civil War, had huge
political ramifications on the United States of America. But how many of you knew that one
of the battles was fought just a few miles from here? Yes, the Battle of Crawford, a little
known battle, was fought in what is now Old Man Higgins' cow pasture. It is unique among all
Civil War battles in that it only had seven casualties, showing that it must have been a fairly
small battle. But, we know that the 12th Tenn Infantry and the 88th Ohio Infantry were fairly
large units. Perhaps only part of the companies fought here, and the rest of the battle was
nearby? But no, we don't want to speculate here."

And so on. The lecture notes this history teacher, one Alfred Warble, prepared would
become the basis for a short treatise on the Battle of Crawford by a visiting professor from
the University of Arkansas. This treatise was butchered and cut up to fill a short space in
the 8th grade Tennessee History textbook. Thousands of young Tennessee children grew up knowing
about the Battle of Crawford, and how it had the fewest casualties of any Civil War battle. Old
Man Higgins pasture became a minor tourist attraction, attracting a few families on any given weekend.

And the Psychology students who had placed the fictional monument in Higgins' field to
observe what happened wrote an excellent term paper on the results and received their doctorates.