GETTYSBURG, Pa. – June 30, 1863, is the last day this was simply a little-known farm community. From then on, Gettysburg no longer was a town but a battle, the largest ever on American soil.
And while the fighting took place here more than 140 years ago, it leaves a fresh, haunting imprint on those who visit this peaceful, rural-Pennsylvania neck of the woods.
The setting was anything but placid during the brutal three-day Battle of Gettysburg, which began July 1. More men fought – 70,000 in Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and 93,000 in Gen. George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac – than ever before. And more men were killed, wounded, captured or missing – 28,000 Confederate and 23,000 Union soldiers. It was the most significant battle of the Civil War.
And it all began by chance. Neither Lee nor Meade intended to fight at Gettysburg, which then had 2,400 people and 11 roads leading to it. But on June 30, Union calvary searching for Confederate forces entered Gettysburg and discovered infantry scouts of Lee’s army to the west of town. Commanding Gen. John Buford determined correctly that Lee was moving on the crossroads com-
munity, scouted the area and concluded that this would be an ideal location for the Army of the Potomac to meet the Confederates. The next day their fateful meeting was on.
It would be another two years before the Civil War ended, but Gettysburg is considered the turning point. Lee’s soldiers were never again able to mount an offense against Union forces after suffering such defeat.
It came on the last day. Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s prediction of a failed attack came true. Lee’s army could not take Cemetery Ridge, the high ground where Meade’s troops were positioned. Nonetheless, the exuberant Gen. George Pickett led 15,000 Confederate troops across an open field, a deadly assault that has come to be known as Pickett’s Charge. More than 5,000 soldiers were casualties in 50 minutes. The next afternoon, Lee retreated.
At dawn, a fall mist hangs over the farm fields. From the highway, Gen. Meade can be seen tall in the saddle atop his horse Old Baldy. The Gettysburg National Military Park is quiet this October morning – except for whispers from the past.
Few visitors are wandering the park this early, but they have lots of company. Generals, officers, infantrymen and sharpshooters embellish the field in bronze and granite. They are part of the more than 1,500 monuments and markers that have been placed throughout the 7,000-acre grounds. Erected to commemorate a particular unit’s position during the battle, each silent sentinel speaks loudly of the bloody three days – the most-talked-about battle of the war. To get a good idea of what happened where, walk the field and read the inscriptions, which describe the action that took place on that very spot.
The National Park Service is trying to restore the battlefield to its 1863 appearance and has stepped up efforts to do so (see separate story). Open fields were open fields then. Wooded areas were wooded then. Farm land is planted with milo, just as it was then. Cannons are positioned pretty much where they were. And barns, which served as hospitals during the battle – they did only one operation, amputation – are still standing, as are farmhouses. From atop Cemetery Ridge, look out over the still-wide-open area and visualize the deadly field Pickett’s troops had to cross under a barrage of Union fire.
Monuments, many carved from the states’ native stone, started decorating the battlefield in the 1870s and 1880s. Union monuments are on one part of the field and Confederate monuments on the opposite, because of their battle positions. The early ones were all Union because the Northern survivors didn’t want Southern monuments on the field.
All the monuments tell stories, mostly sad ones. Some are simple, like the Georgia State Memorial, a slender column with a moving message: “We sleep here in obedience to law/When duty called, we came/When country called, we died.”
Some are distinctive works of art. The Pennsylvania State Memorial, dedicated in 1910, honors the 35,000 Pennsylvanians who served the Union cause on their own soil. It features a massive dome, stately columns and four arched entryways. The names of every Pennsylvanian who fought at Gettysburg are carved on 90 tablets around the parapet and on the inner wall of the arches.
The 44th New York Infantry monument, dedicated July 3, 1893, honors that unit and two companies of the 12th New York Infantry. It is 44 feet high and 12 feet square. Visitors may climb a circular interior staircase to an observation area on top.
Gutzon Borglum, best known for sculpting the four presidents at Mount Rushmore, created the dramatic North Carolina State Memorial, dedicated July 3, 1929. The bronze work depicts five brave soldiers, with anguished faces, in Pickett’s Charge. One-fourth of the Confederate casualties at Gettysburg were from North Carolina.
The Virginia State Memorial, dedicated in 1917 and the first Southern monument to be erected at Gettysburg, honors both the soldiers and their commanding general, Robert E. Lee. The bronze figures of Lee and his beloved horse Traveller, in the same vicinity where he overlooked the charge, are 1 1/2 times life-size. The sculptor used the death mask of Lee’s face and studied Traveller’s skeleton to create the eerie likeness. Detailed figures of seven Virginia soldiers are carved on the base of the monument, with an inscription, “Virginia to her sons at Gettysburg.”
Then there are the animal monuments.
One depicts a tree with a bird’s nest and a shell. According to legend, a soldier from the 90th Pennsylvania noticed that a baby bird was knocked out of its nest. So, right in the middle of the battle, he put down his rifle, picked up the bird and returned it to the nest.
Another honors Ephraim, a Boston terrier Union mascot who was shot by a Southerner after the dog ran up and down the Confederate line barking. A Union officer was so angry he tore across the field after the guy and the two had a fistfight in the middle of the battle. At the end of the war his regiment got him another dog, which he named Ephraim II.
A monument to Sally honors a dog that disappeared the first day of the battle and was thought to be dead. But before the end of the third day, Sally came running out of the woods. Schoolchildren and others leave dog bones at the monument for Sally.
Then there is the poignant green granite Irish Brigade Monument, in the form of a Celtic cross, dedicated on July 2. 1888. Men in three New York infantry regiments that composed the brigade had immigrated to the United States only a few years before the battle. A life-size Irish wolfhound lies eternally at the base of the memorial.
A directional sign and paved walkway point the way to the simple granite 20th Maine Monument, high atop Little Round Top. This is where Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, on the left flank of the Union forces on Day 2, was told not to retreat no matter what. He mounted a fixed bayonet charge when his regiment began running out of ammunition, and his gallant men successfully pushed back Alabama troops that had climbed the steep hill in their attack. (The Union right flank also was successfully defended on Culp’s Hill.)
The Maine monument was marked after the popularity of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Killer Angels,” by Michael Shaara, and the subsequent movie “Gettysburg,” based on the book, which play up this action. People started asking where it was.
“Killer Angels” isn’t the first book on Gettysburg, but it has received literary acclaim. First published in July 1975, Shaara tells the story as a historical novel, relating supposed conversations he gleaned through the men’s letters and other documents.
Visitors want to climb the rocky hill to sense the drama, which is described for 30 pages in Shaara’s paperback version and makes Chamberlain the legitimate hero.
Chamberlain received the Medal of Honor for his bravery at Little Round Top and was selected by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to receive Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Va. A Phi Beta Kappa student who spoke seven languages, he gave up his academic life as a professor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, to serve in the Army. He later was elected governor of Maine four times and became president of Bowdoin. He died at age 83 in 1914.
Touring the battlefield can be daunting because it is so vast. An 18-mile self-guided auto tour, with an audio tape and map, traces the battle in chronological order with 16 numbered stops along the way.
A better plan, however – because you can ask questions – is to hire a licensed guide for a two-hour tour in your car. Licensed guides, available through the Gettysburg National Military Park Visitor Center, have been leading tours since 1915. Before then, local residents acted as guides after relatives of the dead and wounded soldiers deluged the town in search of their loved ones immediately after the battle.
Gary Ratay, a former high school history teacher, has been guiding for 22 years. He relates stories we might otherwise never have known.
He details the unfortunate fate of Jenny Wade – formally Mary Virginia Wade – age 20, who was killed on July 3, 1863, while baking bread for Union soldiers. The only civilian killed during the battle, she is buried in the town cemetery, where an American flag flies at her grave, as ordered by Congress.
“She was at her sister’s house baking bread when a bullet goes through two doors and kills her,” Ratay says. “It’s hard to believe that we only lost one civilian in town because we had 51,000 soldiers killed and wounded.”
Ratay tells about the Oregon tourist five years ago who was looking at monuments and saw a skeleton that had been uncovered by erosion at a railroad cut.
“He virtually uncovered a body,” Ratay says. “The Park Service came out and exhumed the body and took it to Washington. They did tests. They knew he was a Civil War soldier, but was he a Northerner or a Southerner? Archaeologists were looking for buttons – their only clue – but couldn’t find any. So they buried that guy in the national cemetery with full military honors.”
Ratay says two of the then-three Civil War widows were guests at the ceremonies.
“They were much younger women who had married much older men. One woman was 18 when she married a guy 81. Remember, when 600,000 people died in the Civil War, you’re not going to have many people to choose from. The strangest part is, when he died, do you know who she married? His grandson. How many people marry their husband’s grandson?”
Ratay says the Civil War has become “a pretty hot commodity.”
“I think it’s because so many people found out they had relatives in the battle. That’s one good thing the movie did. I used to get so many tourists who would say, ‘Now what war was this? What were they fighting about?’ I don’t run into that much anymore.”
