One of the best parts of homeschooling is that I get to learn so much, too. Our studies of American History have been especially enlightening because we get to experience so much of what we're learning (and because so much of it is new to me as a Canadian!). When we studied the native tribes of this area, we were able to visit a recreated Indian Village and study a variety of archeological finds. When we studied the European settlers of the 1600s, we were able to visit Jamestown and St. Mary's City. We went to old tobacco plantations, stood on ancient battlefields, walked through slaves quarters, and saw the birthplace of a U.S. president.
And when we studied the civil war, we were able to spend a day at Gettysburg. What a powerful experience that was! I highly recommend a visit there some day.... in the meantime, allow us to take you on a tour.
The Entrance: First We Meet Lincoln
The Visitor Center: Cyclorama
In the 1880s, a French artist named Paul Philippoteaux created a painting of the Battle of Gettysburg. He researched the battle, talked with veterans, and spent months on the battlefield. Then, over twelve months, he produced a detailed painting 377 feet long and 42 feet high. (Did you catch those dimensions? It's huge!) The painting is displayed in a circular room at the Gettysburg Visitor Center, with a platform in the middle (where we stood) and the painting surrounding us. The floor around the painting has been set up with dirt, rocks, grass and props to blend in with the painting. It is incredible! I could have stood there for hours!
Here's an example of the ground scenery leading up to the painting.
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| (the lighting from my flash makes the scenery and painting look less similar than they really were) |
And here's a closeup of one of the scenes in the painting.
I enjoyed learning that the artist painted himself into the painting as his signature, even though he wasn't at the battle himself... in the painting he's away from the action a bit, leaning against a tree (not shown in my photos).
It was intriguing to think that this painting has been on display for over a hundred years. In October 1883, it was first set up in Chicago. It toured around to eight different cities and approximately 200,000 people viewed the painting. It was on display at the World Fair in 1933. Here is the poster that advertised the painting.... and its ten cent entry fee.
Not only was I deeply moved by the action and stories shown in the painting, I was very aware of the fact that thousands and thousands of people have also been moved by the stories shown in the painting, including many veterans of the Gettysburg battles. The images were so real that one veteran was quoted as saying, "You see that puff of smoke? Just wait a moment till that clears away, and I'll show you just where I stood."
Here Jon is looking at a smaller image of the cyclorama painting in a museum area that provided explanations of the different scenes.
The Visitor Center: Museum
Oh, what a museum this was! There were plenty of artifacts from the battlefields, as well as detailed stories of each day of the Gettysburg battle. So well done. The museum had an excellent Junior Ranger program that helped the kids seek out really interesting tidbits and get a thorough overall mental picture of what happened here. We saw some cannonballs that had been fired. We saw a Bible that was lost on the field and then picked up by another soldier (both men wrote an inscription on the front pages of the Bible, and both men survived the war). We saw photos of civilians who found themselves living in the middle of a battlefield and whose front lawns became littered with dead horses and people - civilians who transformed their living rooms and dining rooms into infirmaries.
Pictures of the exhibits didn't really work out so well. Here's one Aidan took - the sword caught his eye. It was all done so well!
This huge display was quite powerful: a photo collage wall of Confederate soldiers who lost their lives and a wall of Union soldiers who lost their lives. So many youthful, earnest faces.
The Battlefield
The battlefield is a large area of rural Pennsylvania. You can rent a tour guide to take you around, you can purchase a CD of information to listen to as you drive, or you can take along a written guide and read information at various viewpoints. We did the last option, which worked well for us.
The area is very beautiful. We went at the end of November, when nothing looks as good as it does at other times of the year. And we found it to be peaceful and lovely.
There are hundreds of monuments around the park. Many of them are small statues or plaques that honour specific people or battalions that fought in Gettysburg.
Some of them are quite elaborate.
Each of the kids studied one of the memorials in detail.
This memorial showed the holding line of the battle on the last day; the farthest place that the Confederates pushed through.
This next photo is of the field in which that final battle took place. It was called Pickett's Charge. If you know that story at all, you know how much blood was shed on this land. It was day three of the battle, and General Lee (i.e. the South) planned a big attack. First he launched an artillery bombardment meant to greatly decrease the Union's ammunition. Then 12,500 Confederate men stormed across these open fields for three quarters of a mile. Half of them didn't make it. The Union fired hard on the soldiers running up this field. It was this charge that ended that battle of Gettysburg, in the Union's favor.
Little Round Top (the hill in the picture below) was the site of the fighting on Day 2 in Gettysburg.
A lot of fighting happened here. To make the long story simple, the Confederate soldiers had had a successful Day 1. Then here, on Day 2, the Union soldiers were mostly up on Little Round Top and the Confederates were (in part) at Devil's Den (which is where I was standing when I took the above photo). At one point, the Confederate men surged up the hill toward Little Round Top and the Union soldiers surged down. There was so much death - more than six hundred soldiers. Over 1,200 were wounded.
Here is Jon standing among the rocks at Devil's Den. These rocks are the same rocks that in 1863 provided protection for hot, tired, scared, fighting men in the middle of war.
And here's a wider view, standing on a rock up on Little Round Top, looking down at Devil's Den. The area on the left, in the sloping area down from the trees, has been labelled the Valley of Death.
The National Cemetery
At first, the local farmers and civilians buried thousands of casualties wherever they could on the battlefields. A few months later, land was set aside for a national cemetery and the bodies moved. We went to the cemetery and walked around. It's a beautiful, meaningful place.
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(there are iron plaques throughout the cemetery quoting verses of the
poem "The Bivouac of the Dead" by Theodore O'Hara) |
The cemetery was officially opened in November of 1863, and at the dedication ceremony Mr. Edward Everett gave a two hour speech and then President Lincoln said a few brief words. We stood at the spot where Lincoln spoke these words, the Gettysburg Address, and we stood there at the same time of year - bare trees, pale sunshine, leaves of orange and yellow crunching under our feet.
After all that we've learned about the civil war, I appreciate his speech as a respectful and beautifully crafted tribute:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a
new nation,
conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
or any
nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met
on a great
battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion
of that field, as a
final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that
nation might
live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not
hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,
have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will
little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget
what
they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here
to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It
is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us --
that
from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause
for
which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here
highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation,
under God, shall
have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of
the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
