3 July 2013
(GETTYSBURG, PA) - Gettysburg this year celebrates the
sesquicentennial – 150 years – of the two great events which made this small
Pennsylvania town famous: the Battle and the Address. This military buff visited Gettysburg for the
fourth time on the exact anniversary of the Battle, first to experience again
the mood of the place, and then to get a sense of what people feel when they
experience Gettysburg for themselves.
At the beginning of July the weather in Gettysburg is
usually hot. It was blistering hot the
days of the Battle. This year, the
weather was cool, humid, overcast, and threatened rain most of the time. When the sun did come out, it was like a heat
lamp had been turned on.
The town itself lies in the middle of the Battle
places. The major engagement on the
first day happened north of the old town, and the engagements on the final two
days occurred immediately south of it.
Only minor skirmishing occurred in the town itself, as the Federal
troops, broken in battle north of the town, streamed through it on their way to
rally on high ground to the south. The
historic buildings of that era are noted with small plaques outside, and their
exterior brickworks are carefully maintained.
A modern city has grown up in the northerly direction, around the battle
places of the first day. Development to
the south is completely blocked by the battlefield of the second and third day.
Anyone who has been to Gettysburg knows how well marked and
how well preserved the battlefield is.
While you can tour all the major sites and see the important monuments
in a day, it would take many days to find and read the inscription of most of
the monuments. There is a monument to
every little reserve artillery battery that was on the field; there is a
monument to a cavalry outfit that would like to have been in the battle, but
did not because it was ordered to guard the supply trains.
Gettysburg is the site of a national military cemetery, and
the dedication of that cemetery was the occasion at which President Abraham
Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.
After touring the cemetery and the battlefield south of town, one gets a
sense of the pain and the suffering that was inflicted on those three momentous
days as two armies fought desperately to win the decisive battle for their
cause. You get a sense of the courage
and the devotion, up to and including its last full measure, with which men
persevered to do their duty.
You look at the quiet shady hillside, the back of Little
Round Top, the 20th Maine memorial, and wonder how the better part
of a thousand could crowd into this place and fight with muskets and bayonets
up and down the rocky slope in terrific heat.
You look at the open, undulating field which Pickett’s Charge crossed, a
mile in the open, crisscrossed with fences and roads and wonder what could
possibly have been in Lee’s mind when he ordered it.
And then you go to where it ended - the high tide of the
Confederacy. You go to the copse of
trees. You see where Armistead fell,
where the 26th North Carolina was annihilated, save for its color
bearer, by a battery of canister at the wall, you imagine the crisis at the angle
as the Confederate wave crossed the wall, the smoke, the noise, the shouted
orders, the double canister at ten yards, Hancock goes down, the collapse of
the 71st Pennsylvania, the 69th Pennsylvania is
overwhelmed, the 19th Massachusetts and 42nd New
York rushing to contain the breach, the
volleys of fire from flanking regiments into the boiling Confederate mass, and
then - the utter collapse of the attack from lack of reserves.
Not only is the battle over, but the fate of a country has
been decided.
You wonder if people nowadays get a sense of the drama, the
devotion to duty, and the sheer importance of what happened at this very spot
one hundred and fifty years ago, July 3rd.
Now, the fields of Gettysburg are host to the camps of
re-enactors, who will play out and demonstrate for spectators in a tiny way
what happened here. Tourists with their
little cameras squint at the screen as they try to capture the image of a
monument. Children touch the cannons and
try to sit on the mound of balls, and otherwise run around. Dads read the inscriptions on the
plaques. Nerds regale their listeners
with facts, some of which are actually true.
All activities of peace.
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