When my wife said we would go anywhere I wanted for my birthday, I don’t think she expected that my choice would be a long weekend in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. We had started planning a trip to Tucson, but didn’t snatch up the cheap flights. The weekend we wanted to travel was during school vacation week, so flights were pretty much booked. I recently decided I wanted to visit every national park, monument and historic site, and this was one I could get to in a long weekend. The dog could come too, so that was a bonus.

Our trip turned out to be amazing. When we drove through the battlefield as we arrived, the sun was setting, and meadowlarks and blackbirds dotted the fences lining Emmitsburg Road. The beauty of the area struck me – the rolling hills, blooming redbuds, and old stone houses. When I think of Pennsylvania, I think of the cities, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, coal mining and the steel industry. I don’t think farms and rolling hills. I guess I wasn’t paying attention on all those trips across the Pennsylvania Turnpike we took when I was a kid. I kept saying, “I didn’t realize it was so beautiful here.” My wife, a Pennsylvania native, took offense. “Of course it’s beautiful!” she said. “It’s Pennsylvania!”

The drive getting there and back was longer than expected, but the B & B I found on BringFido was awesome. The Battlefield B & B alone made it worth planning a return trip. The grounds were beautiful, with farm animals and cats that seemed to elude our elderly pup. The place featured an amazing breakfast and a morning history lecture. One of our morning history talks covered the town after the battle, how the battle affected the residents, (the women, in particular) and how they dealt with the wounded, the dead, the ruined fields, and the unexploded ordinance. Another morning featured a Union reenactor, who explained some advances in weaponry, talked about the experience for the average rank and file soldier, and let us all shoot his rifle. What better way to celebrate your birthday than shooting some blanks?

When we arrived, the B & B folks sent us back into town to a tavern that smacked of Ye Olde Charm. It was more than a little kitschy, lots of souvenirs, but served a very fine “frosty tumbler of draught beer” and really nice French onion soup. Once again I impressed my wife with my cluelessness when I told her that I didn’t realize Gettysburg would be such a tourist place. There were ghost tours, fudge shoppees, boy scouts, children dressed in their Union Blue, and a greyhound owner convention. The boy scouts I expected, the Segway tours I did not. But despite the trinkets and commercialism, it was inspiring to see so many people gathering on a non-holiday weekend at one of the most important historic sites in the country.

When we went to the park visitor center the next morning, we were amazed by the size of the place, and by the number of people there. (Once again, clueless.) We didn’t want to pay the money to go into the cyclorama, watch the movie and tour the museum. We had been preparing for the trip by watching Ken Burns, so we felt like we had a good handle on the history and significance of the site. The day was beautiful and we both wanted to walk the battlefield. I picked up a couple walking tour guides & we splurged on a driving tour CD, complete with sound effects.

From the visitor center, we walked to Cemetery Ridge and the farmhouse General Meade used as his headquarters before it was hit by Confederate shells. Our brochures had photographs of the home after the battle, where dead horses littered the yard. The true scope of the conflict began to sink in. As we walked the monuments toward The Angle where Pickett’s Charge was repelled, I thought of the words of Faulkner:

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances…

– William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

East of the main battlefield, there is another battlefield far from the crowds, where Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart led his cavalry units to attack the Union lines from behind during Pickett’s Charge. Union forces, including my great-great grandfather, a private in the Michigan 7th cavalry commanded by General George Armstrong Custer, met them. Custer shouted, “Come on you Wolverines!” as the regiment charged. The fighting here was described by a Confederate officer as “hand to hand, blow for blow, cut for cut, and oath for oath, it seemed as if the very furies from the infernal regions were turned loose on each other.” In the peaceful field, imagining the violence that happened there was not possible. Red-winged Blackbird calls broke quiet, and we were alone on the battlefield. The sunlight was fading fast, throwing beautiful light on the monuments.

Earlier in the day, as we stood on Little Round Top and looked out over Devils Den, the fields and the mountains beyond, it was hard to imagine a more beautiful place. And it does feel like hallowed ground. Standing at any point, sitting down on any rock, I wondered if someone died on that spot. And if someone died defending that spot and another man died trying to take it. As we were taking in the view, some young women came by, sweaty from a run. “I like to sit on the rocks here and contemplate my life,” I overheard one say to the other. Looking over that landscape, it is hard not to.

But, it is also a place for thinking about this country, why these men fought so violently in the pastures, orchards and fields, and why the symbols of the South’s cause are still proudly displayed. The idea that the Confederate cause was states’ rights and the desire to preserve the ideals of the traditional South is a romantic notion, that ignores that the traditional South was built upon the economies of slavery. And while I understand the desire to honor one’s grandfathers who fought for the South, I am reminded of General Grant recalling Lee’s eventual surrender at Appomattox:

“I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and who had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”
– General Ulysses S. Grant