 |
| Battle of Gettysburg Thure de Thulstrup (PD) |
One thing I've always wanted to do was set up camp somewhere near Washington DC and explore the Eastern Theater of the the Great Unpleasantness of 1861 to 1865.¹ Now that The Nuke lives in Maryland and I'm retired, I have the opportunity and the means. So here I am.
Two years ago we visited the battlefield of Antietam, so that was my first foray into "walking the ground" of the Eastern Theater. This year, it's Gettysburg.
Now I know it may seem odd to some to have a "favorite" battle. After all, battles are not glorious, nor are they something to be "loved." That being said, as an amateur historian, I do have favorite areas of study, two of those favorite areas are the Battles of Waterloo and of Gettysburg. So yeah, "favorite" battles.
As you're reading this we'll be heading up the old Baltimore Pike to visit the town of Gettysburg. Of course, we're not really visiting the town so much as the terrain around that town. Yup, gonna walk the ground and see what John Buford saw.
Yes, love the film, seen it multiple times, and really love the book, read it multiple times. Both gave me the best understanding and the deepest appreciation of that battle more so than any other sources.²
The American Battlefield Trust's video of the battle is also superb.
After Action Report to follow, gonna be out there a couple of days.
¹ Get snotty with me over what the name of that war is and I'll delete your Gorram comment so fast it'll make your Gorram head spin. You've been warned. I'm getting too old to have any patience with such nonsense, the war ended one hundred and sixty years ago. Let the dead rest in peace. I've heard enough political bullshit over the past few years that I've had my fill, from both sides.
² The Killer Angels, of course, by Michael Shaara.
Last Tuesday, I finished reading The Devil to Pay: Buford at Gettysburg, by Eric Wittenburg.
ReplyDeleteWOW, just about sums up what I think of Buford.
But, being from Wisconsin, with a Great Great Grandpa Sue ens, who wound up in Anderson ille, I might be biased.
HUZZAH FOR THE IRON BRIGADE!
They were a very good outfit.
DeleteStevens, not Sue ens.
ReplyDeleteSounds better.
DeleteI'm from the west and the civil war was just another war they taught in school, it took the internet for me to find people (on both sides of the conflict!) who are STILL really into that 160 year old history lesson...
ReplyDeleteHave a good trip!
Thanks, Rob!
DeleteYah Sarge, Killer Angels.....his son wrote a prequel and sequel to Gettysburg also.
ReplyDeleteHis son is a very good author.
DeleteVisited a couple of years back. I swear you could smell the smoke and hear the echos of guns, cannons, men and horses. Little Round Top especially made an impact on me.
ReplyDeleteMy family and I have been there twice. If ever a place on earth is haunted, that is it.
DeleteEd
Had the Army of Northern Virginia moved just after midnight as General Lee ordered, Little Round Top's reinforcement would not have been as effective and much blood shed avoided.
DeleteDave
Ralph - Little Round Top was our first main stop.
DeleteAny Mouse @ 11:44 - Moving all those men at night would've been very chaotic.
DeleteEd - Agree.
DeleteWave- I'm headed in the other direction between G'burg and Baltimore today.
ReplyDeleteSobering experience to vust this or any other battlefield to ponder who did what and why, and at what cost.
JB
Was that you? 😁
DeleteOh, so intensely envious Sarge. That sounds like the perfect way to spend retirement.
ReplyDelete(Like Rob, I am from "Not the East" and so it was very much a historical note in text books, not the sort of history it is for those that live in the vicinity.)
So far, so good.
DeleteI have a friend and old college roommate who is a battlefield guide there. Outstanding knowledge of the battle and a hoot to be around. Contact me and I'll give you his information.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure he is. I'm well-versed on this battle.
Delete"Men in tall hats and gold watch fobs will thump their chests...." One heck of an epithet. We were at the 145th anniversary. Not on the actual ground, but east of town a couple of miles. Altogether about 20,000 of us. Out here in CA we were lucky to have maybe 200 military reenactors at a BIG event. Nothing but a minor skirmish. But to see what would pass for a middle of the War regiments form up, march and deploy was amazing. In this, the march out, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXGDv5INB-4&list=PL65DC02AED0DB4096 I was just off screen to the right, waiting for the infantry to get past so I could use my pickup to tow the gun to the field. It took about 45 minutes for all the infantry to march past. Seeing the smoke from a volley of 500 muskets, or 50 guns rolling out in a solid cloud make you realize that those sharp, stylized paintings with what looks like rolls of unwashed cotton billowing in front of infantry or guns makes you realize that those paintings weren't far off.
ReplyDeleteThat event also gave me an appreciation of how dangerous a "loose cannon" in. The genius who laid out the camps put the artillery park on a grassy slope, maybe a 6% grade. Did you know that wet grass is slick? Even with hobnailed shoes. I got to see, while waiting to return our gun to the artillery park, three loose cannons when someone slipped. People jumping out of the way, left an right just like in the cartoons or Keystone Cops movies. And the gun, in one case gun and limber, picking up speed. Two of them stopped when they got to flattish ground. One came down the slope, across the road, down anther slope, jumped a small creeks, and ended up in the side of a van on an access road to the vehicle parking area. Left quite a dent.
There's a reason you're supposed to chock the wheels and drive a spike through the tow loop at the end of the gun carriage. Even on flat ground. Let alone on even a gentle slope.
DeleteTrue. But unlimbering and positioning by hand means that you can't have the wheels chocked, the brakes chain on the wheel, or a spike through the lunette.
DeleteHad a Rugby player buddy who did re-enactments... He was in the movie about (oh crap I can't remember it... had to do with Missouri /Arkansas) Quantrells Raiders as union cavalry.
DeleteHe recounted a re-enactment where they "charged" Reb artillery with 1/2 charges of powder ... said it blew their faces off. Said he couldn't imagine facing double charges of grape or canister.
Joe - Loose cannons are bad, very bad.
DeleteDV - Saw a fellow get blown from his horse by riding in front of a cannon just as it fired!
DeleteSeeing and walking the battlefields is an will stir you. My son and I walked Cowpens a few years ago. Living in the Rockies, I've visited a few Indian battlefields, Summit Springs, Milk Creek, and the Fetterman Massacre among others. So peaceful now, it is hard for me to imagine the intensity of the conflicts.
ReplyDeleteNear Trinidad is the site of the Ludlow Massacre, a labor strike conflict where the Colorado Militia committed horrible atrocities. In years past the monument was desecrated with the heads of statues decapitated. Visiting that site is a sobering experience.
The history of the now Colorado National Guard is convoluted. Their heroic fight for Glorieta Pass in New Mexico was tarnished by the Sand Creek Massacre and later, the Ludlow Massacre. Vietnam era, the Air Guard flying F-100's, delivered some of the most precise air strikes supporting our ground troops of any unit. My interest stems from ancestors who were members or worked in support.
History can be very personal.
DeleteEnvious... Did an epic road trip with my boys in 2017. Alamo, uss Texas, uss Kidd. Nawleans, uss Alabama, uss No.Carolina, Bull Run, Arlington(3 changing of the guards), DC., Antietam, Gettysburg. where I grew up, Black Hills, Little Bighorn.
ReplyDeleteOne of the main things that hit me was you Have to see the terrain to understand. Example. Antietam, sunken lane, I'd seen maps showing troop displacements, and wondered why the union didn't get Destroyed at the sunken lane. Then I stood there... in the lane, topography revealing those in the lane couldn't see anything beyond 50-100 yards, and those attacking the lane would be "covered" until they emerged point-blank. Brutal for both, but I think It saved the Union a defeat.
We ought to get a handfull of us "history" buffs to meet and explore "places", from time to time.
Sunken road surprised me as well. The topography wasn't anything like I'd expected.
DeleteAnother chilling battlefield scene I've not seen anyone else recount, Little Bighorn... above and behind the crest of Last stand hill, are the dual grave markers of many troops. They were there to "hold the mounts of the others when "skirmishing", they died back to back protecting each other and their horses. In pairs close together, fighting for each other to the end.
ReplyDeleteYou have to walk the ground.
The Little Bighorn is something I've thought about writing about. But it's just too haunting.
DeleteI visited Little Bighorn in 2016. It is a well maintained park and well worth the visit - but yes, haunting: https://thefortyfive.blogspot.com/2016/08/vacation-views-little-bighorn.html
DeleteI've also thought about some fact based historical fiction, However writers gotta' write, and I don't enough. If I was to take on the (a) story about the Greasy Grass battle. I think I'd have to camp in the area for a week, and talk to anyone. I'd like to believe I've gained the wisdom over the years to convey the hatred each side felt toward the other, even if hate is too strong. Simplicity... "Hey you have to live like this now..." "Leave us alone..."
DeleteThat's the thing that I always come up against. I simply don't know how the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, et al, really felt about the invasion of their homelands. I know how I would feel.
DeleteRelevant books that might help include Mari Sandoz's "Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas" (Published in 1942, it included some interviews with surviving Sioux), Joseph Marshall III's "The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota Journey" (2004), Herman Viola's "It is a Good Day to Die: Indian Eyewitnesses Tell the Story of the Battle of Little Bighorn" (again, first person interviews), and Anthony R McGinnis' "Counting Coup and Cutting Horses: Intertribal Warfare on the Northern Plans, 1738- 1889".
DeleteThanks.
DeleteMy mother (another history buff) and I visited Gettysburg in 2014, the year after my father died. It remains one of our favorite memories that we share.
ReplyDeleteSadly, I've heard that the Woke have been at their shenanigans. We also visited Washington & Lee: they've changed the presentation there also , including, I'm told, the General's tomb. We will not go back, but I hope you find it interesting & thought-provoking, Chris. I'm sure parts of it will be quite sobering, as they were for me. Although a proud Southerner, I yield to none in my admiration for the defenders of Little Round Top; although the wave broke before covering the crest, I respect the dedication of the men who marched into a form of hell as part of Pickett's Charge.
Viewing and standing in a place where so many men strove to defend their beliefs, and gave lives, limbs, and innocence in so doing, can't be other than powerfully affecting. Safe travels.
--Tennessee Budd
Seeing the ground those boys charged over, I tipped my hat to Longstreet's troops.
DeleteWell said TN Build!
DeleteJB
The "Copse" of trees at the High Water, always gives me chills when I visit. when I was there in high school you could drive up and park right up to the stone wall. Now they've torn out the pavement and you have to "walk the ground" , though Big and Little Round Top are Much more accessible now with the road they put in.
DeleteI was there Saturday. I had expected, at some point, to be somewhat overwhelmed with emotion. It happened on Cemetery Ridge, when I saw the monument to the 13th Vermont. From that point on I was something of a wreck. More on that tomorrow.
DeleteI have not been able to visit (it is on my wish list), but some of my family were there in 1863.
ReplyDeleteDon't know if I did or not, my two known family members who fought in that war weren't at Gettysburg.
DeleteRead the stories, they still taught actual history when I was a kid, thankfully. What surprised me most was your picture of the hill, the topography. Chilling to contemplate assaulting that position with a muzzeloader.
ReplyDelete