Gettysburg National Military Park Museum

… next fall there will be a great change in public opinion at the North. The Republicans will be destroyed & I think the friends of peace will become so strong that the next administration will go in on that basis.

Robert E. Lee, in a letter to his wife dated April 19, 1863.

I think of the Gettysburg Campaign as the last-ditch attempt of a cornered animal to break free. No other metaphor seems to convey the ferocity and almost suicidal nature of the Army of Northern Virginia’s attack against the Union’s Army of the Potomac on its own turf.

When the Union blockaded its ports in the summer of 1861, the struggle for the continued existence of the Confederate States of America essentially became a lost cause. The south’s agrarian-based economy was dependent on trade with Europe for manufactured goods and munitions. With this irreplaceable source of supplies cut off, Lee needed to bring the war to an end as quickly as possible. He decided to follow through on his successful defense of the capital of Virginia at Richmond with an attack on Union forces in Northern territory. If Lee’s army could threaten Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, that would only encourage a growing peace movement in the north.

The ensuing invasion of the north is now known as the Gettysburg Campaign, which culminated in the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1–3, 1863. Between 46,000 and 51,000 Americans were casualties in the three-day battle, making it the worst battle ever fought on American soil. On July 3 the battle climaxed in a dramatic assault by 12,500 Confederate infantrymen against the center of the Union line, an attack that went down in history as Pickett’s Charge. Although some Confederates were able to breach the low stone wall that shielded many of the Union defenders, they could not maintain their hold and were repulsed with over 50% casualties. The farthest point reached by the attack has been referred to as the high-water mark of the Confederacy, i.e. the cornered animal was defeated.

The Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center is an awesome memorial to the battle that ravaged this town, and to the people whose lives were changed forever by the events that occurred here. The visitor center is a brand new facility which opened to the public in September 2008. One attraction is the Gettysburg Cyclorama depicting Pickett’s Charge; a work which first opened to the public in the 1880s. For those of you who are too young to remember them, a cyclorama is a panoramic painting that forms a complete circle, designed to provide a viewer standing in the middle with a 360° view of the painting. In its day the Gettysburg Cyclorama was said to be quite realistic – many veterans of the war were reported to have wept upon seeing it. At the Visitor Center small groups are brought into the cyclorama at regularly scheduled times. Once everyone is ready, the story of the battle is told while sections of the painting are spotlighted in synchronization with the audio.

The cyclorama is impressive, and touring the battlefield is a must, but what makes the visit truly worthwhile is the museum. It is arranged as a single passageway that is a progression through time. Each physical section in the passageway is dedicated to one phase in the story. The first sections cover the buildup towards the war, and the next ones tell the story of the early phases of the war. Following are three sections each devoted to one day in the Battle of Gettysburg, and these are followed by sections dedicated to the immediate aftermath of the battle, the final stages of the war, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Each section starts with a brief orientation video. After viewing the video you proceed to the exhibits themselves, which display a small sample of the museum’s collections, accompanied by most helpful interpretive signs.

The story of the war battle has been told many times by much greater experts than myself, and photos of the battlefield would simply show you pictures of empty fields, so I decided to show some of the photographs that I took while inside the museum. The exhibits are almost without exception enclosed in transparent cases, so please understand the lack of quality in some of the photos.

Gettysburg National Military Park
1195 Baltimore Pike, Suite 100
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 17325

Both of these flags are from the year 1861. The 34 stars on the United States flag include the Confederate states, whose stars remained on the U.S. flag throughout the war. Below is the first national flag of the Confederate States of America (CSA), which was changed in 1863 in order to avoid confusion with the U.S. flag on the battlefield. The placement of slogans on national flags was not a customary practice.

Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were both born in Kentucky – one year and only about 80 miles apart. Each man came to represent a different part of the nation and a different way of life, and each became a president.

On the left is a Union tin “Smoothside” canteen, manufactured in 1861. On the right is a CSA wooden canteen c. 1862. The disparity in quality exhibited here typifies differences between the way Union and Confederate soldiers were equipped.

Confederate soldiers tended to carry less equipment than Union soldiers, partly because the Confederacy had a harder time keeping its soldiers supplied. Most favored a rolled blanket over a knapsack. Many Confederate troops also scooped up gear left behind by Union soldiers during a retreat or march.

Assembling an army containing tens of thousands of soldiers was difficult enough, but keeping them fed and clothed was a colossal challenge. When the Army of Northern Virginia headed north towards Pennsylvania, the wagons in its supply train stretched for 60 miles. Tens of thousands of African Americans accompanied both armies on their way to Pennsylvania, working as teamsters, cooks, servants, laborers and many other roles.

Henry Mayo of the 147th New York Infantry wrote his name and regiment on the bottom of this drum. A bloodstain obscures part of the writing. He lost his drum and his life on July 1.

Bronze Napoleon cannon were one of the most common artillery pieces of the war. Effective at up to a mile, they fired solid shot, exploding shells, or canister shot, which is something like a giant shotgun shell. On the move, the cannon was hooked up to a limber (an ammunition chest on wheels, shown in the lower photograph), and a team of six horses pulled both.

Assistant surgeons stuck close to their regiments as they moved into battle. First, they searched for a safe spot to gather the wounded. As the wounded began to arrive, the surgeon’s main job was to stop the bleeding, bandage a wound, and get the patient on his way to a field hospital. Shown above is a kitchen table from a farm just east of the battlefield, used as an operating table during the battle. In the close-up is the medical chest of Dr. James Chapman of the 123rd New York Infantry.

This map of the battlefield at Gettysburg was created in July 1863. The landscape held thousands of temporary graves, marked here as tiny parallel lines.