Gettysburg

Time to play catchup. For some reason my computer died on me just as I was about to make the Gettysburg post last night, so I'm making that post now.

On Tuesday we arrived in Gettysburg, PA. We then started on the auto tour. Some friends of ours had loaned this to us and it quickly proved invaluable. What the auto tour did was this: the park has roads all over the battlefield so that you can drive along the different positions of both sides during the battle, and they have an audio CD with a tour guide telling you where you are and why that location is significant. Without this we would have been mostly lost.
There are also monuments almost everywhere on the battlefield. There are 1300 monuments total, ranging from individual unit monuments such as infantry, artillary, and cavalry units, to statues for individual generals, to state monuments honoring all the soldiers from that state. Seeing the battlefield took all afternoon but we could have spent much longer if we had the time. Here are some pictures of Gettysburg.

This is Jacob and Alyssa standing in front of a canon that was stationed on a small hill in the Confederate lines where some fighting took place on the first of the three days.

This is the South Carolina monument. One in every four Confederate soliders who fell at Gettysburg was from South Carolina.

Here are more guns stationed on Confederate lines. These are stationed in a tree line right behind the South Carolina monument.

Here is the Virginia monument. Of course, General Lee is atop the monument. He is looking out over the field on which Pickett's charge was made.

Here is a picture that Dad took. The camera is where the primer for the gun would be, this is looking from the Confederate side over the fields toward the Union lines.

The fields of Gettysburg where thousands of men fought and where many of them died in combat.

This is the view from Little Round Top. It is unbelievable that soliders would try to make it up this terrain and take the hill, their courage is astounding.

And at last, the Union lines on Cemetery Hill. This is where Pickett's charge was aimed. This is the grove of trees which were part of the target, the trees that saw it all.

The field across which over 12,000 men charged toward the Union lines, but only a comparative few actually made it.

This is the approximate spot where General Armistead fell.

This is General Meade. He is looking out over the field. General Lee at the Virginia monument is just on the other side looking back at him.

Well, that's it for the battlefield. There is so much more that I could post about. The next day we went to see a film that the visitor's center had on the battle with a little bit on the war in general. After that was the cyclorama. It is a 360 degree painting of the battle that was done in the 1800's. It has light and sound affects to draw you into the battle. We also went to the home of Dwight D. Eisenhower. He owned a farm on the battlefield. It was great, Eisenhower would show foreign dignitaries the battlefield and he would show them his prize-winning herd of Black Angus cattle. The decor inside the house reminded Mom and Dad of their parents'/grandparents' homes.
We also saw the museum which had hundreds if not thousands of artifacts from the battle. They had everything from Bibles and rifles, to buttons, belt buckles, and uniforms.
They call Gettysburg sacred ground. Before we came here I didn't really understand how ground could be sacred. Now I think that I do understand to a degree how ground can be sacred. The thousands and thousands of men who fought here, were wounded, and many of whom died have made this ground sacred. Regardless of why they were fighting, each man on that field fought hard, showed amazing courage and bravery, and stood by his comrades. No matter who it was, Confederate or Union.

Quote: No quote for today, just reverent silence in honor of those who fought on the fields of Gettysburg.