Gettysburg - Part III

I was hoping we would have time to see the Eisenhower home – Ike and Mamie bought a house near Gettysburg in 1950 and retired there; it was the only home they ever owned, and they entertained heads of state there. A great chance to continue the presidential theme – and get another National Parks Passport stamp. We left the rest of the family to swim and headed over – but the power at the home was down! So, another time (and also for another time – the cavalry battlefield, a couple of miles away – there’s a separate self-guided tour. In other words, you have to really be a buff to go. Or, another time one could take horseback tours of the battlefield – that would be cool!). Just as well – stick to the Civil War! We proceeded on (a little Lewis and Clark phrase for you) with the driving route, going to Culp’s Hill, the northern flank of the battle. Along with everything else, Mike had brought a book by James McPherson, Princeton professor and author of a civil war bestseller (which I have thought about getting a few times – but it always seemed so dense). This book was a walk in the battlefield with him – and it really felt like you were walking through the battlefield with him! I borrowed the book so that when I got back I could finish what I didn’t read of it over the weekend.


We picked up the family for the climax of the battle and the battlefield – Cemetery Ridge and Pickett’s charge. Pickett and his men left the safety of the woods and marched across two miles of open field – getting shelled the entire time – with the objective of a copse of trees that still exists. Thinking that the earlier attacks on the flanks had caused the Federals to leave the middle exposed and that an hour or so of artillery bombing had left the Union guns spent, Lee thought that Pickett would be able to break through the Federal middle. They did not. And Lee’s idea of attacking the north, thus forcing an end to the war, were over. There were more casualties on these three days than during the Vietnam War. More than in any other single battle of the Civil War. Being on the ridge and being able to visualize it (and I visualized a sanitized version…) made my heart ache.


There were also some reenactors on Cemetery Ridge, and we talked to them for a little while – particularly a female doctor and a woman in the Signal Corps. Who knew? I also hadn’t thought much about the impact on the town – most of the houses became makeshift hospitals, and the town created the cemetery for the Union dead (the southerners eventually came up to retrieve most of their dead). The battle was over on July 3, 1863 and the cemetery dedication was that November; it was there that Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address. We went to the cemetery – there are about 3500 Union dead and another 3000 or so graves of military from every war since.


We then went into the town of Gettysburg, which has some nice brick houses, restaurants and shops. We went to the David Wills House, where Lincoln stayed the night before giving the speech (and which had a passport stamp); the bed and desk are still there (so is the Sam Waterston audio version). It was a nice way to end the trip. On the way back, from the bridge over the Susquehanna, we saw Three Mile Island – I didn’t realize it was that close to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. That brought back some 20th century history….