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In March of 2000, while on a two-week business trip to Philadelphia, I had the opportunity to spend a weekend in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Herewith is a narrative of my visit to the Gettysburg Battlefield:
A Visit to the Gettysburg Battlefield by Scott Brim
"Without slavery, the rebellion could never have existed. Without slavery, it could not continue."
-- Abraham Lincoln, 1862
On the way to Philadelphia, as our airliner flew over the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the passenger in the next seat said that he was a resident of this area, and that twenty-one years ago, during the TMI nuclear emergency, he sent his family away to a relative's farm in northern Pennsylvania. An experienced materials science engineer, he decided it was better to be safe than sorry, and not be standing too near when high technology goes awry.
In the summer of 1863, another kind of emergency threatened Harrisburg, an invasion of Pennsylvania by the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by the Confederacy's most capable soldier, General Robert E. Lee.
The issue in 1863 was the question of what moral, ethical, and political values we should hold as a people and as a nation, in the face of other fundamental questions concerning human dignity and human rights. The issue of 1979 was then, and still remains, what values we can maintain in the face of ever increasing complication in our lives, complication driven by powerful economic, cultural, and technological forces which seem to be remaking the world around us, and our individual roles in it, at an ever-increasing rate.
The highlight of our flight was passing directly over USS New Jersey as our plane came into Philadelphia Airport. She made quite an imposing sight, especially in comparison with the smaller inactive warships tied up at what was once the Philadelphia Navy Yard, which is slowly being converted to civilian use. At the time, Big J was slated to move to Camden, New Jersey, directly across the river, as a World War II memorial and museum.
What will become of these other warships now tied up in Philadelphia? Probably feedstock for some east coast scrap yard, more than likely.
Monday morning, we began our company meetings in central Philadelphia, starting with discussions as to how and when our field-deployed information systems should be upgraded. Several of our information technology people are Civil War buffs, all of them being staunch Unionists, as would be expected of natives of Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. A native of the Rocky Mountain west, I am firmly in the Unionist camp myself, having no sympathy for the southern aristocracy of the Civil War era, the ones who hijacked a legitimate issue, states rights, as a means of keeping their fellow men in bondage.
I related my plans for visiting the Gettysburg Battlefield over the upcoming weekend, and was immediately plied with a stack of maps and tour guides.
The corporate division I work for is up for sale, and when I first arrived at our Philadelphia offices, speculation was rife about our pending acquisition by another firm. Many of the staff were concerned for their future, knowing that a spate of staff downsizing inevitably follows such a takeover. Having been through this kind of thing several times in the last fifteen years, working for three of the nation's largest defense contractors, I've learned from first-hand experience that one's only job security these days lies in the current marketability of one's education and skills. To put it another way, the sum total of all of your past hard work, dedication, and loyalty -- plus seventy-five cents -- will get you a small cup of coffee in any restaurant.
"We're living here in Allentown. And they're closing all the factories down ... "
-- Billy Joel, 1982
Saturday morning arrived, I rented a car, and left Philadelphia heading west on Highway 30 towards Lancaster, intending to take that route all the way to Gettysburg. Eighteen years after Billy Joel's hit song 'Allentown', the theme of which is the decline of industrial America, (the 'rust belt' as it was labeled back then) what has become of the 'Pennsylvania we never knew', as the song's lyrics phrase it?
Agriculture plays a major role in the state's economy, as it always has, but the major trend is the growth of many small service and manufacturing businesses that dot every burg between major cities. This is a trend all across America, not just in Pennsylvania. People are finding new ways to make their living, and if this new economy isn't as rewarding for the elite of our nation's industrial workers, it does at least offer a chance for many to gain a representative slice of the American pie.
In contrast with the American west, where I make my home, few wide open spaces remain in Pennsylvania. Most every piece of ground has been transformed, in one way or another, to serve the needs of civilization. Pressures on the landscape from population expansion and from accelerating economic development are everywhere evident, with new houses and new condos sprouting on every hillside and in every hollow.
In his State of the Union speech of 1862, in a section concerning his analysis of the demographic trends of the time, Abraham Lincoln offered his prediction of 250 US million citizens by 1930. Actually, this figure wasn't attained until the late 1980's, with our population almost doubling since the end of World War II, in only fifty years time. As a nation, we now have ten times the population of the Civil War era, and one-hundred times the economic power and industrial resources.
Can we honestly claim we have any coherent vision as to what purposes this economic power should be put to, other than our own self-enrichment?
"What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change."
-- Abraham Lincoln, November 10th, 1864
Before leaving Philadelphia, I am warned of the possibility of encountering ghosts, depending on where I might choose to stay in Gettysburg on Saturday evening. Unfortunately, when I call ahead for reservations at a bed & breakfast known to be haunted, the most promising prospect for confronting a ghost is booked up. A Women's History Month seminar is being held in town this weekend, concerning the role of women in the Civil War, and the most historically interesting lodgings are full.
Eventually, I find a room at the Gettysburg Holiday Inn. The staff is thoroughly hospitable; and the quality of service excellent, with my waiter at dinner even giving me a quick rundown of the battlefield action that had occurred on the very ground where this hotel stands, near Cemetery Hill. But as for the hotel itself, it is a plasticized, thoroughly modernistic structure, one which no self-respecting Civil War ghost would likely choose to inhabit.
After checking into my room, I wander over to the Jennie Wade House Museum & Gift Shop, just up the street from the Holiday Inn, named after the only civilian fatality of the Gettysburg battle, an innocent woman who died in her sister's kitchen while baking bread for Union soldiers. She was killed by a minnie ball fired by a soldier who was apparently testing his marksmanship by shooting at a door-knob. The ball passed through two doors and struck her in the back, killing her instantly.
Most private museums in Gettysburg are true commercial establishments, and have to be to survive without government subsidies. But as for the theme of this particular establishment, one has to wonder at the decency of using Jennie Wade's name, and the home she died in, for any kind of commercial purpose, limited though it may be.
Before turning in for the evening, I watch the film "Groundhog Day", in which Bill Murray plays a character caught in a time warp in a small Pennsylvania town, who must re-live the same February day over and over again, to the strains of 'The Pennsylvania Polka'. This sticky tune implants itself in my mind for a day or more, requiring a triple combination of 'Paint It Black', 'Yellow Submarine', and 'Bonnie Blue Flag' to drive it from my consciousness.
"The enemy is there, and I am going to strike him."
-- General Robert E. Lee, July 3rd, 1863
Gettysburg's location as a central hub in the network of roads crisscrossing southeast Pennsylvania, combined with a variety of topographical features suitable as props for an intense battlefield drama - Cemetery Hill, Culps Hill, Cemetery Ridge, Seminary Ridge, Little Round Top, Big Round Top, the Devil's Den, the Wheat Field, the Peach Orchard, The Angle, the Copse of Trees, The Railroad Cut --fueled a long-held opinion of Gettysburg as a destined host for this largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere
This notion is conjecture, nothing more. However, if the opening scenes of the feature film "Gettysburg" are an accurate portrayal of history, the Union cavalry general John Buford was the first to recognize the potential of this natural amphitheater for influencing the psychology of the oncoming contest -- as well as its strategy and its tactics -- once the battle had firmly embedded itself in this setting.
Sunday morning arrives, cold and very windy, and I find myself on Seminary Ridge in front of the Virginia Memorial. While looking out across this panorama, with Little Round Top and Big Round Top to my right, Cemetery Ridge in the center, and the town of Gettysburg on my left, I try to imagine what might have passed through Robert E. Lee's thoughts on the afternoon of July 3rd 1863, as he waited near this spot for his Confederate troops to begin their march towards the low hill roughly three-quarters of a mile away on the eastern side of this valley.
Over two previous days of bitter fighting on the northern and southern ends of the battlefield, General Lee had failed to gain a clear cut victory for his Army of Northern Virginia, and he was counting on a major effort towards the center of the Union line to gain the clear upper hand in this struggle; or better yet, the complete rout of his northern foe. The imminent charge across this open field and onward towards the Emmitsburg Road was a key part of Lee's strategic plan for the engagement, as it had been for several days, while the course of the battle was developing.
General James Longstreet -- who became Lee's most trusted subordinate after Stonewall Jackson's death at Chancellorsville -- advised against making this attack, known to history as Pickett's Charge, so named for a then obscure southern general whose distinction would be linked forever after, through no real fault of his own, to the wisdom that discretion is often the better part of valor.
Look out through Robert E. Lee's eyes at this expansive scene, out across this open ground to the hill on the other side, towards The Angle and the Copse of Trees, and think about the warning General Longstreet had spoken, no fifteen thousand men ever arrayed for battle can take that hill. Ask yourself why General Lee would ignore this warning.
What kind of psychology could prevent Lee from acknowledging the self-evident point his chief commander was making? Was it personal pride in the soundness of his own strategy? The natural stubbornness of an older man in the face of a younger man's self-appointed advice? The possibility of losing face in the eyes of his other commanders, if he retreated from his original plan?
Such influences hold no explanation, simply because Robert E. Lee was too natural and confident a leader, and too honorable an officer, to be affected by any such emotions. No, the answer is to be found, I think, in the power of this battleground to influence the mindset of the warriors who fought over it, and to do so in ways they themselves could not recognize while the battle was in progress.
In the moments following General Longstreet's warning, can we suppose General Lee gave quick but careful thought to Longstreet's words? After all, across this valley was a battle-hardened army, in an obviously favorable position, commanded by a recently appointed general, George Gordon Meade, one known to possess few of the weaknesses of his predecessors and many of the leadership qualities needed to deal with these very circumstances.
No, General Lee gave little real thought to Longstreet's words. At this moment in history, Lee was incapable of seeing the truth of the situation.
The panoramic setting of this engagement, in displaying its own visual cues to the Confederate commander, had presented General Lee with a reflection of his own preconceived view of the contest. It had done so in terms which were clear and uncomplicated, in terms that were a central facet of Lee's own character. The outcome of this contest, as the contest must be played in this setting, depended upon the limitless application of courage, a relentless display of bravery, and a resolute determination to prevail; all of these in the face of very nearly impossible odds.
Within the framework of this engagement; and within the mindset of this commander, a man steeped in the warrior ethic of the antebellum South, the role of guile, wit, and cunning -- skills of warfare useful in a more complicated tactical situation -- became inferior methods, perhaps even tainted methods for the honorable prosecution of battle. Such methods -- indispensable tools in modern conflicts, but in some ways incompatible with basic principles of honor -- became all the more distasteful in Lee's perceptions, once this grand opportunity for the employment of traditional means had presented itself.
The panorama before him cemented Lee's decision to proceed, unfettered by any real need to examine more thoroughly the odds that he faced. Soon enough, the retreat of his shattered divisions would force Lee's acknowledgement of the bitter realities of his circumstances.
Up men! Up and to your posts! And remember this day, you are from Old Virginia!
-- Gen. George Pickett, July 3rd, 1863
While standing here before the Virginia Memorial, pondering the nature of General Lee's psychology, my thoughts are interrupted by the presence another visitor and his wife. Both appear to be in their late 50s or early 60s, and both are dressed in various pastel shades of gray. I myself am dressed in my usual apparel for a casual weekend outing; blue jeans, a blue work shirt, my black baseball cap, and for this time of year, a navy blue work coat
We strike up a conversation, and the man reveals he is recently retired from the military. From his knowledge of strategy and tactics, from his precise way of speaking, and just from the way he carries himself, I surmise he is a former officer. He and his wife now live in West Virginia, and make a point of visiting Gettysburg at least twice every year. At this juncture in our conversation, I fully realize I am in the company of true southerners. They perceive just as quickly they are in the company of a true northerner. Not a dyed-in-the-wool Yankee mind you, but close enough to the real thing so that my true allegiance is unmistakable.
Earlier, about twenty minutes ago, another group of visitors, ten or so, gathered in front of the memorial, had a few brief words together, and began walking across the open field towards Cemetery Ridge. Passing very near me, just a few feet away, they took no real notice of me, and said nothing. I took them to be southerners as well, intent on making communion with the ghosts of their Confederate ancestors. They too were dressed in various pastel shades, all of them in modern clothing, but with very little evidence of dark blue or black on their person. Is my choice of apparel, and theirs, some kind of unconscious signal of our attitudes and loyalties?
The retired officer and his wife remark that on Saturday, they took a personally guided tour of the battlefield, employing the services of one of the local expert guides. One of the topics covered in yesterday's tour was speculation regarding what might have happened at Gettysburg had Stonewall Jackson not been killed at Chancellorsville. The guide and this officer held differing opinions, the guide believing in a more costly Union victory, but a victory just the same; with the officer believing that had Jackson been there to press the effort, he might have turned either of the Union flanks.
My own take on the question is that Jackson might have advised General Lee against making the direct attack known as Pickett's Charge, and would have supported General Longstreet in advising a flanking strategy. If that approach hadn't produced a clear victory, at least it might have avoided a clear defeat.
In various other places on my tour of the battlefield, I will encounter the retired officer and his wife four or five different times. In each place, we will discuss a different facet of the Gettysburg experience, the traditions and lore that surround the various monuments, and the kinds of people we see around us; in other words, who comes to this battlefield and why. One of the topics we discuss is that of the approximately three thousand soldiers buried in the Gettysburg military cemetery, only one is Confederate, all the others are Union. He was buried there in 1995, after being found in the Road Cut. The other fifteen-hundred or so remaining Confederate dead lie in unmarked graves in various places around the field.
While standing near the granite walls of the cemetery, I come to realize that on this one particular Sunday in March 2000, the southerners own the field at Gettysburg. On some other day, the northerners might own it, or the neutrals might own it. Judging from the license plates of the cars I see, most with a northern allegiance are at the Cyclorama participating in the Women's History conference. A number of neutrals are present too, mostly from the tour buses, but these people are generally hitting only the high points, and don't taken the time to walk the many nooks and crannies of the battlefield. For the most part, it's the southerners I encounter today in these off-the-main-loop places.
"Tell them... Tell the world... I only loved America."
-- Jefferson Davis, 1889
It's late afternoon, I'm hungry, and it's time to grab a bite to eat. Looking northwest from the Copse of Trees across the High Water Mark of the Confederacy and out towards Seminary Ridge, I spy another landmark of sorts, the high water mark of commercial encroachment against this battlefield -- the Golden Arches Salient. Under these circumstances, I can't give in to the lure of my usual Big Mac, and so I forsake the golden arches for Hardee's next door, an establishment just a bit less bold in flaunting its commercialistic focus.
Sitting at a table in Hardee's, looking out the window towards the Gettysburg visitor's center and museum, I recall hearing talk that the existing museum building will be razed, and a new one built elsewhere in a spot less intrusive of this pivotal location. However, believing that the existing structure represents an architectural bridge between the era of the 1860's and the modern era of the Twentieth Century, I can't agree with this decision. Whatever it will look like, the new edifice which replaces the current museum will represent someone's modernistic interpretation of the meaning of past events. Like the plastic, the formica, and the stainless steel which surrounds me here in Hardee's, it will have far less spiritual connection with the events of 1863 than does the brick, the mortar, and the wrought iron of the existing museum.
Before leaving Gettysburg for Philadelphia, I decide to make one last tour through the central portion of the field. While making a stop in the vicinity of the Trostle Farm House, memorable for the post-battle photograph of all those dead horses in front of it, I notice a Dodge minivan parked in the farmhouse driveway, obviously the property of the current residents. Seeing this vehicle -- a ubiquitous example of our most all-pervasive technological gadget -- prompts a question in my mind as to whether modern farming methods are being used to keep this battleground in its current condition, or whether the agricultural methods of the 1860's keep this landscape locked in its apparent time warp. On my next visit here, I must remind myself to inquire about this subject.
Walking through these rolling hills and meadows near the Peach Orchard, where Confederate and Union infantry fought a series of pitched battles for control of the south-central portion of the battlefield, one experiences the same kind of eerie feeling one has while standing on the rolling hills east of the Little Big Horn River in Montana. There, on a summer day in 1876, an alliance of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors administered the ultimate reality check against George Armstrong Custer's ambitions to use military victories over the Indians as a means of propelling himself into the Presidency.
As an active participant in these encounter sessions with America's famous 19th century battlefields, at any moment you expect a troop of soldiers -- or a band of Indian braves -- to come over the crest of the hill and let loose with a volley of musket balls, or let fly with a shower of arrows. If ghosts truly do inhabit these battlegrounds, they are mirror images of our own inner reflections on the sacrifice made at such places.
For people like myself, those who have never faced the hardships and dangers of being a soldier, the real ghosts haunt the quiet places in our minds where our knowledge of history, and our own critical self-examination, meld into a faintly-acknowledged companion, one who quietly offers this question: Could you yourself make this kind of sacrifice, for your ideals or for your way of life?
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in -- to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."
-- Abraham Lincoln, March 4th, 1865
"A Visit to the Gettysburg Battlefield". Copyright 2001, Scott Brim
Dick B wrote:Nice job, Yank!
Scott Brim wrote:Thanks for the compliment, Reb.
Recently I read a book published in 2007 entitled Reading the Man: A Portait of Robert E. Lee Through His Letters.
Judging from what I have read in these letters -- six years after this essay was written -- I think that when Lee made his decision to stay with his native state Virginia, and abide by Virginia's decision to leave the Union, he must have given at least some minimal prior thought as to how deeply the odds might be stacked against the Confederacy in a long war.
In weighing the decision, such thoughts had to have been thoroughly discounted in his mind when balanced against the loss of personal honor he would have suffered among his family and his fellow Virginia citizens, had he gone with the Union.
I suspect that at Gettysburg, a similar conflict was at work in his mind and in his heart as he formulated a strategy for attacking the Union position.
To do anything other than go straight up the middle was, to his way of thinking, not the honorable way to defeat this particular foe on this particular battlefield.
And so the extremely long odds he faced in attempting to force the center of the Union position were pretty much dismissed from consideration before they could ever be seriously thought about.
Dick B wrote:I think you're on to something there. There has always been a spiritual bent to the Southern soul / heart, that ignores the calculus and just goes for it. The classic Southerner's gripe with Yankees has always been their calculating nature and commercial attitude, while the Southerner's head was full of mystical notions of land, history, blood and fire, never weighing the cost, only the duty.
The mists that shroud the bottoms of the Broad River, the Valley, the Combahee, the New, and the Savannah are the shades of those generations gone; the breezes stirring the festoons of moss, their voices, reminding us of what once was, and what is no more.
I'm not saying what I want to say very well, but the whole idea is the essence of the differences that made us then and still do now, to a small extent, truly two different peoples. It is the sense that we are still an occupied country, given the vast numbers of New Englanders and New Yorkers now resident in the old South.
Doc Martyn wrote:war is
The roundheads; right but rotten
The Royalists; wrong but romantic.
Scott Brim wrote:DickB: I think you're on to something there. There has always been a spiritual bent to the Southern soul / heart, that ignores the calculus and just goes for it. The classic Southerner's gripe with Yankees has always been their calculating nature and commercial attitude, while the Southerner's head was full of mystical notions of land, history, blood and fire, never weighing the cost, only the duty.
That's a very concise appraisal of the two psychologies, although one might also include additionally a dry, piercing, and sometimes irritating wit on the part of the Yankees and a tendency on the part of some Southerners to be too dismissive of alternative modes of thinking.
DickB: The mists that shroud the bottoms of the Broad River, the Valley, the Combahee, the New, and the Savannah are the shades of those generations gone; the breezes stirring the festoons of moss, their voices, reminding us of what once was, and what is no more.
As a technologist and sometime student of industrial history, I have similar feelings about the now-empty canyons of America's 20th century industrial and scientific revolutions. It's largely gone and it's not likely coming back.
DickB: I'm not saying what I want to say very well, but the whole idea is the essence of the differences that made us then and still do now, to a small extent, truly two different peoples. It is the sense that we are still an occupied country, given the vast numbers of New Englanders and New Yorkers now resident in the old South.
The Yankees are moving south for a variety of reasons. I've spent the last ten months in Aiken SC and I'm seeing confirmation of opinions I've held for some time as to why this is happening in such a big way.
Life in the South seems generally to be more sane. Everyone isn't going in three directions at once trying to get somewhere else -- while not really knowing where or what that "somewhere else" really is.
In comparison with much of the South, the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic are becoming extremely crowded and the cost of pursuing any kind of business activity or any kind of enhanced lifestyle (a larger, nicer house etc.) is becoming ever more expensive with every passing year.
And the other major factor is that the South tends to be more business friendly, and that those Yankees who still harbor any kind of strong entreprenurial spirit find it much easier to work their ambitions in the South than is currently possible in the North, the northern Midwest, the Northwest, and the Far West.
The climate and weather of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic are not especially comfortable year around for an aging US population. I've met any number of fifty-ish Yankees who cited all the above reasons for coming here, and who were most especially glad to be rid of the snow and the cold. (I don't miss it myself, truth be told.)
If one wants to see the poster child of growth in the Southeast, it has to be Atlanta -- a little more than a million people were living in the Atlanta metro area thirty years ago, now more than four million are. What do they all do for a living?
