Gettysburg - Part I

When I lived in the east I didn’t do as many day or weekend exploration trips as I did from Chicago – when I went away it was usually to visit friends. When I finally made it to Fallingwater (from Chicago), I realized that Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are within driving distance of each other – that is, from Chicago I regularly drove those distances, but when I lived in Philadelphia the other end of the state would have been too far. With my newfound concept of distance, I’d been thinking about Gettysburg for years - especially after my Thanksgiving trip to Chattanooga that included tours of the Civil War battlefield there and Chicamauga. I thought one year I’d tack Gettysburg onto a Reunions Memorial Day weekend and really make use of that extra day. I suggested to my friend Mike, who lives in the Philadelphia area and is a Lincoln buff, that we go together, and this year we decided to finally make it happen. Memorial Day didn’t work and one day wouldn’t have been enough anyway. We made it there this October, a beautiful time of year to be out there.

Mike recommended that I read “The Killer Angels” before I go, and I finally picked it up about a week before we went – and couldn’t put it down! I’m glad I read it so close to the trip, because the descriptions of the battles and the terrain were fresh in my mind. The book is the middle book in a trilogy; the other books are lesser-known but help frame the entire war, at least in Virginia and surroundings. I’ve finished one and am about to start the other. And now I’m interested in what was going on in other areas – Tennessee, Mississippi – but I think I may move on to other subjects rather than read more Civil War stories.

I took the train to Philadelphia and met Mike on the commuter train out to the suburbs. We ran into a neighbor of his – who happened to be related to one of the Confederate generals who fought at Gettysburg (Pettigrew). Mike knew the name was the same but didn’t know the actual connection until then! So we paid special attention when we saw his name. We loaded the family into the car – Mike and Tobi’s kids are at a good travel age – and it took about 2 ½ hours to get there. We ate at General Pickett’s buffet (it’s about what you’d imagine it to be) and retired early.


The next morning, we started at the visitor center – it’s a couple of years old and is quite grand. A short film lent some context. One part was disturbing though – Sam Waterston read the Gettysburg Address, and when he read, “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” he emphasized, “people” each time. I’d always put the emphasis on the words that are different – as did Mike, who read a book about the speech which says that that construction is one of the most marvelous ever; he constructs some of his legal arguments with the same cadence. We let it go (though we heard it again more than once, wincing each time) and went to the Cyclorama. This 360-degree painting of the battle was painted in the 1880s and recently restored. It’s both hokey and inspiring, as light and sound re-create some idea of what it might have been like to be in the middle of it as the battle rages all around you. Outside, the peaceful pastoral scene of today – albeit littered with monuments and markers – is quite a contrast.