Gettysburg

There are so many historic sites at Gettysburg that it's impossible to blog them all in one...or six...evenings. I'm a Civil War buff...not a radical one but I have a lot of interest in it and nothing compares to visiting a battlefield and seeing the terrain, and the challenges and advantages it presented to both sides.

If you think about it, the Civil War was unusual. On one hand, men slaughtered each other en masse during the battles...but when there were truces the Yanks and Rebs cooperated to move their dead from the field. During the winter, they even sang songs to each other across the lines, and traded goods that were in short supply on one side or the other. And after the war, after each side had killed hundreds of thousands of men on the other, there was an almost universal amnesty as the country began the difficult job of reconstruction. How do the losers in most civil wars usually fare? They usually get shot, or thrown in jail with the key thrown away. But, by and large, that was not the case in our Civil War. Most likely that was a good thing, but very unusual in the context of world history.

This picture is of a statue of general Robert E. Lee, topping the Virginia monument at Gettysburg. Lee was regarded by everyone on both sides as a class act. Just before the war started, Lincoln offered Lee command of the Union forces. Lee replied that he could not forsake his state, Virginia, so despite a distinguished military career in the U.S. army he opted to join the Confederate forces. The monument is near the site from where Pickett's charge originated.