Ronnie,

I've read and re-read your posting to determine what you're looking for. Should I presume that you're attempting to determine if an individual soldier participated in a certain battle and how to prove that? If so, the best possibility for "knowing", as much as one can now, if an individual participated is to read his Compiled Military Service Record and or pension application file. Of course, just because a soldier is listed as "Present" during the period of a battle or other event, does not absolutely prove that the soldier was in the battle, but it does make it very likely. On more than one occasion, I've seen a service record that states a soldier was "Present" in November-December of 1862 and served in a unit that fought at Fredericksburg, December 13th. Later, I've reviewed this man's pension file or his journal/diary and discovered that he was on detached service as a teamster or a hospital steward or something else at the time of the battle. I guess one of the best ways to know if he was at a particular battle, is if he was a casualty.

If I'm understanding you correctly that you want to be able to confirm the participation of an individual in a certain battle, I would recommend a host of online "Order of Battle" sites like, "The Civil War Battles" page at http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/pottery/1080/ or Shotgun's "Home of the American Civil War" website at http://www.civilwarhome.com/, which includes Orders of Battle and finally the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion at http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/sources/records/ and http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/browse.monographs/waro.html . The Battles and Leaders four volume series is also a good resource for these orders of battle at http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/books/battles/index.cfm

Of course the most used online resource for finding soldiers in individual units is the Civil War Soldiers & Sailors System at http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/ .

There are a number of pay or subscription services that include some of this same information, but the free online information available and sites like the Arkansas in the CW Message Board make many of these services unnecessary.

I hope I understood what you were saying.

Jim Martin