GETTYSBURG, Pennsylvania — People began flocking to this tiny central Pennsylvania farm town after the three-day battle in July 1863, even before all of the dead had had a proper burial; some looking for mementos, others looking to help, others still looking to find some meaning in the war between the states that was collapsing our union before their very eyes.
It is a glorious Sunday morning here: The sun is high in the sky, and the clouds seem perfect, symmetrical, doing their slow dance over the visitors below who came to this sacred ground today in a time of crisis; to connect, reflect, and remember we as a country and a people have been through and survived calamity before.
M.J. Friday and her husband Eric sat at the pitch of Oak Hill. The Eternal Light Peace Memorial at Gettysburg National Military Park is towering behind them. The scenery in front of them is peaceful now, but on July 1, 1863, it was the site of a vicious and bloody struggle between the Confederates of Gen. Henry Heth’s division and the Union cavalry under Gen. John Buford. In the distance is McPherson’s Ridge.
“When you think about what happened here and the solemnness of what our country was going through when that first battle happened here…” she says as her voice trails off. “And then you think about where we are today and the sacrifices we have to make with our jobs, seeing friends and family, it is a good place to come and reflect.”
Historian Michael Kraus has been coming to Gettysburg since he was a kid in the ’70s and has continued that homage as a reenactor and the curator of Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall.
“Some people just come as tourists, and they kind of breeze in, breeze out, but there’s a lot of people who come to reflect, understand, and try to take in the significance of the battlefield and the men who fought and died there,” he said.
“Gettysburg is really significant because it happens to fall in the midwar, and it’s a turning point when the South started to decline,” he said. “That’s why if you go there at the site of the July 3 battle of Pickett’s Charge, it’s called the high-water mark, the ultimate height of the Confederacy at its power. And from that moment on, it started to decline.”
Between July 1 and 3, roughly 175,000 soldiers were in this area participating — about 104,000 Union soldiers and 71,000 Confederates. By July 4, 3,000 to 5,000 dead were laying on the fields of Gettysburg and 14,000 to 20,000 wounded were in the immediate vicinity, Kraus said.
He says he understood why people would be drawn here, where so many gave their lives in the time of a crisis.
“A lot of what this town means to people is wrapped up in [President Abraham] Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, where he really summed it up for everybody and kind of made the place holy, sanctified,” he said.
“What is important to remember that at the time Lincoln gave that speech, no one thought much of it, the Northern press panned it, even made fun of it in the moment. It wasn’t until 30 years later that people started to reflect on the power of those few short paragraphs,” he said.
“If you know history at all, you know the press didn’t care much for Lincoln much. They just railed on them. If you look at some of the cartoons in the Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s [Illustrated Newspaper], he’s portrayed as an ape, he’s very gangly and ugly, and they’re not complimentary at all. They’re all biting at his heels,” Kraus said.
“Somethings never change,” he added.
Michael Crow, 56, and his wife Donna, 58, are standing across from the commanding equestrian statue of Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, the first battlefield monument you see as you head into the town from the west. They drove up from Sabillasville, in Harbaugh Valley of Frederick County, Maryland.
“This was a good place for us to come to be reflective,” Michael said. “It is an important piece of our history, and it is important to remind ourselves of the sacrifices that were made to hold this country together here in those three days of battle, and to be thankful for them and to be thankful now for the people who are now making sacrifices so that we are all healthy and safe from the virus.”
Donna, who went back to school to get her bachelor of science in nursing, says she and her husband were just discussing Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan asking retired nurses to come out of retirement.
“You have to think about all of the young people who stepped up here,” she says.
Ryan McCauley and Heavenly Smith were just walking down the terraced summit surrounding the Eternal Light Peace Memorial. The couple drove down U.S. 15 from Harrisburg looking for fresh air and a place to put what is going on in perspective.
“I think there’s a weight, some intensity here,” McCauley said. “Just reading some of the markers here at the memorial makes you think. The Civil War came up on this town, and no one expected it, it was just a sleepy little town, and everything changed for them. It is like what we are facing now. In January, we were living our lives and in the last few weeks here in the U.S. I think seeing a battlefield and people actually died makes the battle more real.”
Behind him is the marker for the dedication for the Peace Memorial, whose eternal light was lit for the first time in 1938 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the 75th anniversary of the battle.
On that day, Union solider Overton Menett, 89, of Los Angeles extended his hand to James Robert Paul, 105, of North Carolina, the only survivor of Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s 42nd Infantry, Company K. In the same place where McCauley and Smith stood, Menett said to Paul in that moment, “We are all Americans.”
“Coming here makes you wonder, what did the people who live here think about their lives and their town becoming the center stage of the Civil War? How did they react?” McCauley mused. “Well, if you read the accounts, they helped at hospitals even if they didn’t have experience and helped with burying the dead, people they never knew. They rose to the occasion. It really makes you think.”
