Gettysburg launches my discovery of America. I had visited before (detailed in another post). The battlefield is hallowed ground, like Pearl Harbor that I visited in February. I mourn my wife’s death so these places hold a special appeal. A moment to pause, to reflect, quiet, private, although often strangers are with me. What is their moment? Who are they remembering? Or is it no one, just an idea, or ideals. In addition to my personal rationale, I cannot avoided the current national turmoil with its violence and hatred. Gettysburg is emblematic of America’s struggle to define what it was, what it is, and what America might become.
I arrived at Gettysburg by road from a different direction — I was tempted to write “a very different direction” but hear George Orwell’s dictum to reduce adjectives, avoid adverbs, and speak directly. But my direction is both a compass direction, arriving from the Northwest, and a subsequent direction for understanding that requires the reinforcement of a “very different direction”.
On this visit, I came via the Mummasburg Road behind the extended Confederate lines from Seminary Ridge. The Eternal Flame Monument stand on my approach, which overlooks the site of the first two days of fighting. On other visits, I entered Gettysburg via the Lincoln Highway — now Route 30 and formerly the York Pike — directly into the town. Consequently, I approached through and into the Union positions. This time was different. Very different.
Not only was my approach new, but the experience of the battlefield has changed in the intervening years. Most notably, there’s “An App for That” as the formerly ranger led tour is now a self-service audio tour directing you in your vehicle from placarded stop-to-stop along a specified route. The auto-tour begins where I had arrived with the Confederate positions and runs largely counter-clockwise ending at the cemetery with a memorial to Lincoln to commemorate his famous address.
On the audio tour, I sense a glorification on the Civil War story in the ranger’s narration. The Confederates bring glamor with their daring; their commanders have charisma; they are the underdogs in manpower and industrial might; their soldiers are valiant; they have brilliant generals against plodding, often inept, Northern leadership. As mere defenders, with seeming limitless reinforcements, the North lacks innovation and sacrifices small units, like the 20th Maine, to hold a position to the death.
The Confederate state monuments reinforce that version. The earliest Confederate memorials — Virginia and North Carolina dedicated in 1917, Alabama in 1933 — are grand and declarative, all bronze muscle and marble height. General Lee, on horseback, looms forty feet above the crowd. The later ones — Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi — appeared during the 1960s and 70s, when the South was fighting another, quieter, but equally brutal war to emancipated black American over memory and rights. Tennessee was the last, in 1982, nearly a century and a quarter after the battle.
Simple regimental monuments dominate the Union lines. Some, like those at Big Round Top, require tramping through the woods, up a neglected path, to their unit memorials and, although the North erected monuments and statuary to memorialize specific generals, they are mostly simple. The exception is Pennsylvania Monument, which holds the place of honor as the battlefield lies in its territory and the state mustered more soldiers than any Confederate or Union state.
In this visit to the battlefield, I did not find the hallowed ground and peace I had expected. Instead I discovered that the fight continues. Confederate glorification in memorials obscures the cause for the war: it was simply slavery. It was a moral fight. This is lost in the tour. The flamboyant monuments of the southern states echo a martial history and not reconciliation. The constitution of the Confederated States not only made slavery legal but specifically, in Article 1, Section 9(4), Negro slavery. The Union fight was a righteous one against a depraved economic system and a racist regime
Note: You can test my view of the narration; I’ll be the first to acknowledge any bias I might bring to my interpretation. Go to the App Store or to the web for NPS.GOV — it is a really great app and you can search for any park in the system. Many have audio tours.
Postscript: This article (I hope you can reach it behind the paywall) came out during my reflections on my Gettysburg trip:
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