Gettysburg. A Civil War battle site where Confederate troops met Union troops over three days in July 1863, and Robert E. Lee's drive north was stopped. We spent 5 hours touring the different aspects of this three-day battle in these hot, humid, rolling hills, fully a month before the actual battle occurred. At first the plans on both sides of attack and retreat were balanced, but Union troops withdrew to high ground, and with the Confederate troops' last attack over Pickett Field: some 12,000 men advanced in a line nearly a mile wide, with no cover, into canon and rifle fire. Lee's frontal strategy failed. Some 5,000 men were lost in one hour, 51,000 died over the three days.

The Gettysburg National Park tells the story of the Battle of Gettysburg from both sides, with monuments dotting the landscape. A Visitor's Center took us three hours to view the many artifacts, letters, and commentary. The fields are peaceful, and a solemn air pervades as we drove through the 24-mile auto-tour, coming to know the physical reality of McPherson Ridge, Pitzer Woods, Spangler's Spring, and the High Water Mark, all places where individual acts of great courage took place. Major General Meade devised a fish-hook strategy that put his troops on high ground and that allowed him to move men as needed quickly inside the fish-hook. The attacking Confederate forces were on the outside of the fish-hook, on low ground, with a wider perimeter to move troops.

Here in November, 1863, Lincoln spoke his 227-word iconic Gettysburg Address to heal the nation, following a two-hour oration by a prominent politician. His words, taking just a few minutes, were mocked by some but have lasted and still reverberate.

The many monuments large and small, several by 20th Century sculptor Gutzon Borglum, of Mount Rushmore fame, capture the sense of dedication, sacrifice and loss, as Borglum's memorial to North Carolina does.



What I will remember most from this now peaceful national park, with fields and forest edged with wooden fences, is a time of great effort and sacrifice, to affirm, as Lincoln said, "the proposition that all men are created equal." Like today, hidden economic interests in the north and south propelled us to war, but both sides were driven by ideals and a sense that government should be "by the people, for the people." What this means today is that no matter how large our country, we should all have a say in the decisions that are made, politically, economically, socially, and strategically.

Driving up along the Mississippi River, we stopped over one day in Natchez (over 500 ante-bellum houses, their gardens full of azaleas, flowering dogwood trees, and wisteria), and then two days in Vicksburg visiting family we haven’t seen in far too long.

Today, we spent the morning at the National Military Park that memorializes the Civil War battle of Vicksburg. The sun shone beautifully today, after two days of intense rain and the Mississippi River running at flood stage.

Unlike most Civil War battles, the Seige of Vicksburg seems almost modern. Its trench warfare over hilly terrain ended in a six-week siege and the Northern forces gaining control over the critical Mississippi River, cutting off supplies to the Confederacy. Union forces dug trenches and repeatedly attempted to take Vicksburg by direct assault. We could see Confederate and Union cannons still facing each other and drove along a 16-mile parkway filled with stone memorials and gun emplacements. One Union attempt to dynamite Confederate fortifications resulted in several Confederate slave workers being blown up; one man survived. He said he was “blown to freedom”.

We walked through the recently reconstructed U.S.S. Cairo, an early ironclad that was torpedoed (actually by an underwater bomb, what we would call a mine today). Only the top part of the ship was fitted with iron plating; under the water line, the wooden ship was entirely vulnerable.

The Cairo sank in under 12 minutes, but no one was lost. The Cairo lay in the mud of the Yazoo River for 100 years and was salvaged in 1960. Interestingly, the original crew was international, including men from everywhere, even Sweden, with ages ranging from 14 to 60. I'd always thought that shortages of troops was a problem more for the Confederacy, but in reality, both sides were desperate for troops.

I found a lovely classic book, Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad. People along the underground railroad used patterns in quilts to show runaway slaves how to get safely to Canada. So those well known patterns (shoofly, log cabin, bear’s paw, bow tie, flying geese, drunkard’s path and stars), all had a hidden meaning during the Civil War era.

I also learned that more than one woman disguised herself as a man and served in Union forces. You might be amused by this picture that shows how tiny the women were (the men were rather short as well, with the average height of men being about 5’4”).

Tomorrow we’ll drive up toward Tennessee along the Natchez Trace, an old trade route from the Tennessee Valley to the Mississippi and New Orleans, heading north again. May you have a good week!