Out to Gettysburg

My favorite mini-trip was last Saturday, when I went out to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
The director of the program I am interning for was a history teacher in a previous life, so he said that if we asked nicely, he would take us on an exclusive tour of the Gettysburg battleground. I talked to him and we organized a trip for three fellow interns and me. He drove us to the battlefield, which is about two hours from Washington, D.C. He described the events of the Civil War up to that point as we drove. I was amazed by the beauty of the scenery we passed. I never thought that Virginia and Pennsylvania could be so lovely and lush, although I scoffed at the so-called "mountains" we passed.

The Pennsylvania monument features a balcony that you can climb to look out on the battlefield.

This is the only monument to a chaplain. He was stationed with an Irish Catholic unit from the Union. Before the battle began, he granted the entire unit absolution for their sins, then told his Fighting Irish that the church would not give a Christian burial to anyone who turned back in cowardice. That unit had an 82 percent casualty rate in the charge, but they took and kept their position.

The South charged from the right side of the road on Day One of battle. The monument shown features a dog named Sally. The night after Day One of battle, Sally refused to leave the Union unit she was with - she stayed with the wounded and the dead all night long. Her protection was important - some of the farmer's hogs had gotten loose and escaped onto the battlefield, where they nosed about among the dead and the helpless wounded all night long. Sally, however, refused to leave her unit until the army eventually came from them when a truce was declared. She was killed in a later battle.

Gettysburg is still a tiny and charming town today. During the battle, the Southern Army chased the Northern troops through the town, and they fought between buildings and in the streets. The Southern soldiers then raided the homes, refusing to allow the townspeople to harbor even wounded soldiers. When the battle was over, the people of Gettysburg were left to bury the dead and care for the Union wounded. The Confederate wounded, meanwhile, were taken back to the South in a wagon train that stretched a full 17 miles behind the Southern Army.

The wheat field is where the misnamed Pickett's Charge occurred, where the proud Southern line was broken into chaos. The field changed sides six times, meaning the soldiers would literally have been running over the top of their dead and wounded comrades over and over again as they charged back and forth across the field.

The wheat field changed hands six times. Journals say that when the battle was over, you could walk across the entire field and never touch the ground because it was covered with the dead and wounded.

The picture below shows where the main Union army cannons were stationed on Day Two. Journals say that when the fighting stopped for the night, the field looked like it was full of writhing snakes, because the wounded were crawling for water or help, and neither side dared go out until they negotiated a short truce on July 4.

The ironic thing is that, up to that point, the South had won eight out of nine of the battles, and the North had won zero, tied one. The battle of Gettysburg lasted for three days, and the South won Days One and Two. The only thing that kept them from routing the North once and for all was one far-thinking Union General Howe, who decided to fortify the hills around Gettysburg in case they needed to retreat, but the only reason the North had those hills to begin with was because of a miscommunication between Southern generals about where to fight! The fortified hills convinced a war-weary South to retreat for the night and then fight another day, and on that third day, they lost for the first time in the war. The North simply held the hills, which forced the South to run at the fortifications while cannon fire rained down. The North won only by a combination of luck and refusing to relinquish the high ground.

This is Little Round Top, a steep hill that the Union Army barely held on Day Two. The Union soldiers had to carry the cannon to the top by hand because it was too steep for horses. The Alabama unit ran up the front side seven times in repeated charges.