Visiting Gettysburg

Last weekend my devoted husband and daughter went with me to visit Gettysburg, the site of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. As I’ve been reading copiously about the battle, studying numerous accounts and maps and watching the movie, it only seemed fitting that I complete my research by visiting the actual site.

Stone monuments are erected throughout the area where the heaviest fighting occurred, naming the various regiments involved. The number of monuments is staggering, but when you consider that the casualties from this one battle are estimated at 51,000 (including dead, wounded, and missing), you can only imagine the number of men who engaged in the three days of fighting there, from July 1-3 of 1863.

Of particular interest to me are the Eastern Shore Infantry of the U.S.A and the First Maryland Infantry of the C.S.A. (Confederate States Army). As I’ve mentioned previously, Maryland was a Border State with divided loyalties. In the same state, the same county, even in the same household, there were men who came to opposing conclusions on the issue of States Rights verses Federal Law and enlisted accordingly. These two regiments, although technically enemies, were composed of friends, cousins, and brothers who found themselves facing one another on the battlefield of Gettysburg.

Colonel Wallace of the Union 1st Maryland wrote, “The 1st Maryland Confederate Regiment met us and were cut to pieces. We sorrowfully gathered up many of our old friends and acquaintances and had them carefully and tenderly cared for.”

The ten thousand dead soldiers from both sides were hastily buried to prevent disease, laid to rest in shallow graves on the battlefield with wooden boards to mark their identities. As wind and rain eroded these crudely penciled markers, the citizens of the town requested that a national cemetery be created to honor the Union dead.

In October of the same year, the bodies were disinterred and the Federal remains were buried at Gettysburg National Cemetery. Confederate dead were relocated to cemeteries in the South, in Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas.

It was at the dedication ceremony of this cemetery where Lincoln delivered his famous “Gettysburg Address.”

Although this town has been inevitably converted into a tourist attraction, it memorializes a tragic time in our nation’s history when politics ran deeper than blood and the line between love and hate blurred and overlapped. As I study the war, and specifically this battle, it grieves me to know how easily peace can be lost and how violent the cost of inflexible pride.