Gettysburg

Gettysburg National Military Park.
We spend the day touring the Gettysburg Battlefield, where 40,000 of the Civil War’s 650,000 battle deaths and injuries occurred from July 1-3, 1863. As we view the 1,100 monuments to Union and Confederate leaders, regiments, troops and soldiers dotting the 25 square-mile killing ground, we realize how pivotal Gettysburg was, and how massive and devastating the conflict that took place. Bodies and blood, desolation and death everywhere. Many dead could not be identified and were buried en masse in huge trenches. . . Others were given individual plots, but only a number. The grave markers tell the story – U.S. Regulars, 132 bodies. . . . New York Regiment, 85. . . . We walk through the National Soldier’s Cemetary knowing that beneath our feet are sons and fathers and grandsons and husbands and brothers – Yankee or Rebel- who were fervent and strong in the belief they were fighting for the right reason – and the right side. Like most warriors, when they joined up they did not fully comprehend that deliberately trying to maim or kill someone in order to prevent them from doing so to you is brutal, bloody, horrifying and inhuman. What is most incomprehensible about this battlefield is that it was NOT a battlefield – it was farmland, pastoral and serene . . . cows grazed in green pastures, split rail fences separated one farm from the next and fields of corn were tilled and ready for planting. . . and then the armies with their guns and swords and grenades and cannons came.
A Southern officer wrote at the end of the first day regarding the slaughter, “This morning I saw a sight which was perfectly sickening and heart-rending in the extreme. It would have satiated the most blood-thirsty and cruel man on God’s earth. There were [with]in a few feet of us, by actual count, 79 North Carolinians laying dead in a straight line. I stood on the right and looked down their line . . . Great God! When will this horrid war stop?”