2.08.2012 – 2.08.2012  35 °C

We left Philadelphia early in the morning heading north up to Gettysburg. I probably should have mentioned yesterday, where the state of Pennsylvania came from. Pennsylvania is named for William Penn. William was given this huge swathe of land in Nth America (modern day Pennsylvania, Delaware and ever state west of Pennsylvania!) to pay off a debt that King Charles owed to his father. This suited William as he was a Quaker and wanted to increase his practice of religious freedoms in a new surrounding. He founded the city of Philadelphia and set out the original laws of Pennsylvania, that were later used as the foundation for the laws of the United States.

The drive up to Gettysburg had us pass thru Pennsylvania Dutch country, which translates to Amish territory. The one thing I love about the Amish areas is how neat and tidy their homesteads are. Everything is neatly painted (or probably whitewashed), their vege gardens are neat, animals seem happy. Everything about the area says we love our homes and we love our way of life!

We stopped and had morning tea in the heart of Dutch country (by the way if you are wondering where the “Dutch” comes from—they didn’t originate from the Netherlands, they were called “Dutch” because they couldn’t understand when the Amish people said “Deutsch”). We could have ordered a “shoo fly pie” but decided that this sounded a little concerning so stuck with a plain old lemon muffin. The muffin was a sweet style cake muffin but the lady had cut the muffin in half, toasted each side and buttered the muffins…. Mmmmm… Sooo gooood… Next time you have a sweet muffin for morning tea, try toasting one side with butter, you’ll never go back to just eating a cold muffin again! I did find out what a Shoo-fly pie is made of… lots of brown sugar and molasses baked into a pie crust. Apparently, the ladies used to bake these pies first and place them on the window sills (for the flies to eat). This would then ensure that their daily baking wasn’t ruined by the pesky little devils.

We arrived in Gettysburg just before lunchtime. Rather than go straight to the battlefield we decided to find ourselves a hotel and get ourselves some picnic stuff to take out to the field. The hotel wasn’t very hard (as it is chain motel mecca here in Gettysburg) and we got ourselves a really nice place at a great price. After we had checked in and stowed our gear we went hunting a super market for some bread, meat and cheese.

The town of Gettysburg is surrounded by the civil war battlegrounds. The town is like the centre of wheel with the main arterials spoking outwards. Most of the new development (hotels, shops etc) are on the outside of the wheel, past the battleground. The interior of the town still has the main arterials all meet in a large central market place with the same buildings surrounding the market. The town has largely been left as it was just after the war. Most of the buildings survived the war (as most of the heavy shelling occurred on the outer fringes of the town) so it is almost like a bit of a time capsule.

The heavy concentration of the battles occurred to the south west of the town, and not that surprisingly, the Visitor Centre for the national monument is housed in this part of town. We arrived and started our afternoon out by having our picnic lunch in the adjoining picnic area. 20 min later and we were ready to go and see what the museum and visitor centre had to offer.

The Battle of Gettysburg occurred over 3 days. It is the only large scale battle that was fought on Union soil, and it was fought here more by accident than by good planning. General Lee had moved his troops out of Virginia and had struck northwards into Union territory. It was clear that if the Confederacy was going to survive it couldn’t just take a defensive position and fight when the Union attacked. Main reason was that the Union was blockading the Southern ports. Without exports and imports the South was going to slowly end up starving or rock bottom broke.

Similarly, the Union had taken the stance that the cessation was unlawful and therefore the rebellion had to be overthrown. IT was therefore inevitable that one side or the other had to attack and conquer all of the territory in order to uphold their political beliefs. Why did the civil war begin? From everything I’ve read or heard (whilst here in the US) the war began due to money (don’t most wars?). For years, the congress was deadlocked over whether or not slavery was lawful. The Southern states wanted to continue the practice and in fact, wanted to expand the practice. Many of people in the Northern states actually supported the Southern States in wanting to keep slavery (as it profited them to retain slavery) but the majority in the Nth wanted slavery to not be expanded into any of the new territories.

Originally, the civil war was never about abolishing slavery it was just about not letting it expand into the new states (Kansas as an example). That is until the Republican party’s (which began at this time) candidate, Abraham Lincoln, was elected as President of the US. The Southern States all declared that if he was elected they would secede, and before he had even taken the oath of office the South was already declared as the Confederate States of America and had elected Jefferson Davis as their President.

Back to the Gettysburg Battle.. It was both the first and last major Confederacy campaign in Union territories. As I said earlier, it was a bit of a mistake that the two sides met here in Gettysburg, mainly because Lee wasn’t too sure where the Union forces were. Both sides knew the strategic importance of Gettysburg because it was a town that controlled major arterial roads (like I said earlier five arterials all spoke off the main market square in Gettysburg). The Union forces had already built defences on the high ground in the town and the northern portion of these defences were overwhelmed by the end of the first day.

If Lee had’ve continued to attack later into the evening on that first day then potentially the whole battle story would now be different. As it was, once the Union forces had retreated thru the town to the Southern defences, Lee called the first day over and bivouacked for the evening.

During the evening General Meade was able to reinforce his garrison in Gettysburg and the battle and the war was at this point over (from a Confederacy point of view). Over the next two days Lee sent the bulk of his army at the Union lines and could not break thru. After almost 50,000 casualties (between both the Union and Confederate armies) Lee had to retreat his army back to Virginian lines. Sadly, this was the beginning of the end for Lee’s crack Virginian Regiment. Within two years the entire Confederacy will be under Union rule and the Southern states will sue for peace…

The museum at Gettysburg is top class. We must have spent hours wandering thru the displays to understand the whole story of the civil war—it was really, really impressive! One part of the museum is a Cyclorama. What is a Cyclorama, I hear you ask (I was asking the same thing)? It is a painting that covers an entire wall and that wall is circular. You stand in the middle and the painting is almost like a landscape of the area around you. Cyclorama’s were popular back before mass TV and movie theatres, they were used to tell stories and make you feel like you “were actually there”. In this case, the story is of the final day of the battle, the narrator tells the story of the final day and the painting is lit up in different sections to highlight the story. Pretty impressive for something that is over a hundred years old!

We actually left the museum right on closing time and headed out in our car to drive around the battlefield. It was a great afternoon for driving and taking photos. Late afternoon sun (which was still blazing hot) and plenty of wavy grass dotted with cannons and marble monuments. One thing I have to credit the American’s with; they know how to preserve and protect battlefields… They do a great job of not only explaining the battles but showing you exactly where they took place.

Song of the Day- John Lennon, Give peace a chance