A few thoughts on Gettysburg

[blueraven95]

I just got back from a trip I took with my parents and younger sister to visit the monuments. We took the trip as a school field trip for my sister (who is home schooled) and they invited me along as the member of the family interested in American history (and I went because I haven't been since college). Honestly, I can't say that I really enjoy going to old battlefields because I tend to feel almost like I am desecrating sacred ground; its a little going to Ancient Egypt exhibits at art museums -- we refuse to give the dead their rest. (I don't mean this in a particularly religious way, just that the monuments, like the sarcophogi, feel like they should be left in peaceful quiet.) Today was a particularly bad trip because our air conditioning cut out a half hour into the drive there (from Baltimore, MD) and it was HOT.
To escape the heat we went and watched the electric show. For those who have never seen it, it is a program plotting out the three days of battle, skirmish by skirmish. It was almost like watching a game. As we walked outside to see the hundreds of rows of graves and the multitude of different statues, I was struck by the magnitude of dead.

On the drive home, I found myself thinking that what is so heinous about the current war is that for most Americans, it is like the electric show. Like a game, we have very little sense of actual loss. At Gettysburg, we lost 51,000 American lives in the course of three days. In Iraq, we have lost fewer than 1,000 lives over a year. The truth is that the Civil War was so devestating because all of the lives lost, were those of Americans, and civilians saw the carnage everyday. Today, we do not see that carnage, and we do not know any of the many more Iraqis who are losing their loved ones.
While I am not advocating a war on any soil, and I do not want a war on US land, I can't help but think that our lack of real threat has made us arrogent. Maybe we need that kind of a war to wake us up. (And by us, I do not mean individuals but Americans as a whole.)

Anyway, most of this is probably pretty self-evident to most people around here, and I probably should have written this a year and a half ago., but I had to get it off of my chest. Thanks for reading.

[Hoping4Change]

1. Well said.

[lapfog_1]

2. The art of war has changed

We will not have wars now or in the future where their are thousands
of soldiers killed over a period of time... there just isn't the need
for that many soldiers to fight a push button war. We will have wars
where we lose a few thousand due to long term attrition ( like Iraq )
and/or thousands will die in an instant because of the use of some WMD.
This will usually entail the loss of 100,000s of civilians as well.

Cannon fodder is just not a useful war tool anymore.

[FARAFIELD]

3. NICE READ BUT.....

51,000 people didnt die at Gettysburg, there were 51,000 casualties, generally accepted is 27,000 KIA and 24,000 wounded and missing, for the total of 51,000. Amazingly only 1, civilian casualty. AND the population of the town was only 2400 at the time of the battle. Also remember that half of the Civil War Deaths were from Disease, doesnt make the end result any better.

[blueraven95]

5. you're right, my mistake...

about the casualties....still quite a lot of deaths.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

7. There was actually a total of up to 7,655 killed in action at Gettysburg..

...from both armies. There was a grandtotal of about 51,000 casualties (dead, wounded, and captured) from both armies, 28,000 Confederate and 23,000 Union:

<http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/gettysburg/getty4.aspx>

============================================

Civil War historians have never been sure of the exact casualty numbers at Gettysburg because the rank and file Confederate dead were buried in mass trench-graves on the battlefield itself. In 1863 a good bit of the Gettysburg geographic area was heavily wooded, particularly the hills and ridges that are primary features of the local terrain. That made burial of some of the dead next to impossible, much less their eventual recovery by family and friends.

The link below describes how long it took for some of the Confederate dead to be recovered and shipped to various cemeteries in the South:

<http://home.ptd.net/~nikki/gburgcem.htm>

"According to the historian at Gettysburg National Military Park, 'The majority of southern dead remained in the hasty and scattered field burials until 1877 when ladies' memorial societies in South and North Carolina undertook efforts to have the bodies removed. South Carolina soldiers from the Charleston area that could be located were removed to a cemetery at Charleston, South Carolina. A large number of North Carolina soldiers were taken to Oakwood Cemetery in North Carolina. The remainder were removed and shipped to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia in 1878-79.'"

=========================================

MY NOTE: Gettysburg is truly a beautiful National Military Park. The National Park Service does an excellent job of maintaing the grounds, while private organizations like "Friends of the National Park at Gettysburg" raise funds to purchase privately-owned land that was part of the original battlefield, restore monuments damaged by weather and vandals, and restore the battlefield to the way it was on those three awful days in July 1863.

<http://www.friendsofgettysburg.org/>

[BlackVelvetElvis]

4. Another point to add..

Military regiments were created based on where the soldier was from. In many cases, an entire town's male population was decimated if a particularly bloody battle was fought.
I agree that we, as a nation, have little sense of loss. We have also not been asked to sacrifice either-we're told to go shopping instead.

[markses]

6. Gettysburg needs an update

The visitor's center at the Gettysburg National Park: well done on the exhibit, but can we lose the 1963 version light map? Think of all the multimedia expertise that goes into making a fucking bubblegum commercial. And we teach our children about the greatest battle fought on this continent with a light map circa Darren Stevens of Bewitched?? it is a national disgrace.

By the way, I love you southerners and all, but I love Gettysburg as well. We kicked your fucking asses there. I should tell a bit of a secret. When I was growing up (in NYC), we always took vacations down south, and we always visited the Civil War battlefields. I've been to Manassas 8 times, Fredricksburgh (you kicked our asses here), Wilderness, Chancelorsville, even Kenessaw National Park just north of Atlanta. I've been to the Antietam park - others, so many others. My Dad, ex-military, loved to walk us through. There are pcitures of me as a 5 year old sitting on the cannons at Bull Run (that's what we Yankees call it!). But the most moving is Gettysburg. I defy anyone to park in the spots after driving through the battlefield, and look out over the Union (hoo-ahh!) positions in front of Pickett's Charge (the "High Tide of the Confederacy), and not feel the utter strength of our brief idea: this idea that we make the power; we make the government; that power emerges from our interactions; we; us...together. The valor of the charging slave-holding states is often exalted, but think of the simple conscripted from New York, Pennsylvania, Maine, Ohio - standing against the onslaught. We. Us. Together.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

8. Here's a general comment, markses....the Civil War has been OVER...

...for quite some time...139 years to be exact. It's fine to talk about those battles in historical terms...as an amateur historian, the Civil War is one of my favorite topics. In fact, I've lost count of the number of times that I've traveled to Gettysburg to study that battle. That being said, IMHO, there is no longer ANY need to talk in terms of who whipped who at what battles. Things are divisive enough RIGHT NOW without digging up old regional animosities.

Here's the bottom line...there is no longer ANY "us" or "them" in terms of North vs South except in the minds of a few. But there is a war being fought in this country along religious, political, and economic lines. If we don't win that war, we will ALL be in big trouble.

[blueraven95]

10. I agree completely

Unfortunately, it seems so hard to see a war without a body count.

[markses]

11. Of course you are right

It still needs reminding that it was a war about principles, and to the extent that the current wars replay those principle-struggles, and to the extent that far to many operate as apologists for those who lost, who were defeated both militarily and ideologically, it serves reminding that to hold principles of progress means to repudiate the Southern cause; or rather, to repudiate those segments of the Southern cause that were feudal in there orientation, and generally destructive to human welfare on a variety of political lines. And that heritage doies not cut it as apologetics. Is it divisive now? probably. But the divisiveness is about fundamental disputes. Hell, at the end of the day I think New York City should secede from the union. I'm afraid of Americans. There's gonna be another Civil War in this country, and you damn well know it. We've come to a point where the fundamental struggle over values cannot be reconciled with discussion. You know it, and I know it. So, at this crucial time, a little reminder about the collapse of a particular historical model (in 1861, feudalism of the South fighting against the capitalism of the North, today, regressive capitalism (feudal-capital) fighting against the overcoming of capital) is worth noting. You can save the unity shit. It is an illusion and a weakness at this point.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

14. You have a real funny way of demonstrating your "agreement"....

I see that you've launched yet another divisive post, one that I find to be personally insulting, to be honest.

Okay, tell me the "principles" over which you believe the Civil War was fought. Tell me what you mean by "apologists for those who lost" and just how many of those people do you believe are actually in existence today.

To be brutally honest, simply regurgitating what you were taught in high school and/or college from broad generic historical text books tells me nothing. In fact, from your commentary, I can tell that you know NOTHING about the economics of the South or why so many dirt-poor Southerners who went off to war whose family-lines had NEVER owned slaves.

And how about the Northern states that allowed slavery? Pennsylvania allowed slavery until 1850, Minnesota until 1858, Iowa until 1846, and Wisconsin until 1848. Here are some maps:

States and Dates of Abolition
<http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/geography/slavery_abolition_us.htm>

The Missouri Compromise 1820
<http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/fi/00000075.htm>

Free States and Slave States, before the Civil War
<http://www.learner.org/biographyofamerica/prog10/maps/>

Now let's talk about the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862. You do know that Lincoln freed only those slaves still living in areas under Confederate rule, don't you? All of the slaves still living in Northern state, border states, AND those areas of the South already occupied by the Union were NOT freed. Repeat...NOT freed. Why do you think that was the case? What great "principles" were being exhibited by Lincoln with that proclamation? Could one think of the proclamation as just another political tool used to unsettle the Confederacy?

Additionally, tell me what "principles" were involved in the decision to wage what amounts to total war on the South. You do understand that when the war was over, the South was left with very little in the way of crops and livestock. Very few historians, if any, have touched on the number of babies and young children that starved to death in the South following the war. Too bad that you didn't visit any Southern cemeteries while you were visiting all of those battlefields in the South...maybe your education could have been broadened by seeing the number of young people that died within a couple of years of the end of the war.

My comment about "unity" was in terms of ALL Democrats standing together to rid ourselves of the NeoCon Evil Empire. I can certainly see that such idealistic thinking was wasted on such a "principiled" person like yourself.

As far as another Civil War taking place, never has that threat been stronger than it is today. But I certainly didn't need you to tell me that...I've been watching this one grow on the horizon since JFK was killed in 1963.

[markses]

15. I agree...it is a strange way

First of all, all of the supposed historical esoterica that you've cited here is well known by most eighth graders: yes, the majority of southerners were not slave-holders (that they were dirt-poor doesn't mean that they didn't live in and support a feudal system); yes, Lincoln's "emanicipation" proclamation proclamtion was mostly a cynical political maneuver (that he didn't understand his own economic-political advance doesn't negate it as a historical movement); yes, the South was destroyed in the total war of 1864-1865, as everyone knows (that the first movement of the kind of population genocide we would see in the twentieth century occurs in the 19th century doesn't undermine its appearance as a new kind of operation).

I vistied plenty of Southern cemeteries while we visited all those battlefields. In fact, the laughable and resentful Southern version was quite attractive to me for a long time. Until I recognized its retrograde qualities. The Northern version has retrograde qualities as well, of course. But at the end of the day, the heritage movement in the South is part of the retrograde movement toward feudalism. If you plan on wowing me with your historical sensibility, you might at least bring some historical facts not well known to the majority of junior high school students.

[graham67]

9. Is it still the same light show?

I think I sat through that when I was 10 years old. Little glowing orange lights for campfires?

[markses]

12. Yup

Saw it again in December 2003; same damn light show I saw in 1986.

[blueraven95]

13. yep.

yes it is...and as corny as it is, it is effective in laying out the battle.

[Tsiyu]

16. As a Damned Yankee*

I just have one question. Are Southerners glad to be in the Union now or what? Seems we've been through a mess of conflicts TOGETHER but around my parts and in much of the South, there are still those who fly the Rebel flag as if Sherman was just around the corner. A few of them were replaced with the Stars and Stripes after September 11th (it was funny and odd to me to suddenly hear Southerners speak fondly of New York. Prior to 9/11, when a Southerner asked where i was from I'd answer with a question of my own: "Well, which state do you hate the most?" 99.9% of the time they'd guess correctly - New York State. The rest of the time they'd say "Alabama")

And why are so many white Southerners eager to "forget" and 'move past" (read: forget about prosecuting) the atrocities done to their black brethren during Civil Rights days, but unwilling or unable to forget what was done to them in wartime 100 years earlier? Huh? Huh?

BTW* Damn Yankees are those who come South and stay....

[markses]

18. Ding Ding Ding, especially with respect to the heirtage argument

Heritage is always...erm...selective, yes?

Resentment.

[Tom Kitten]

21. these posts are a fucking joke, right?

Do you keep tabs on the number of southerners who died on D-Day during the big one (WW2) and compare them to the numbers of northerners who died?

I mean what's your fucking point? Lots of Northerners died in "The War of Northern Aggression" lest you forget...Why is the South so special that it must be revered so?

[HarveyBriggs]

19. We never finished the job God sent us to do.

God gets his terrible swift sword all sharpened up and we let 'em go?

And for what? They still hate the government. And the same folks who worship Henry Wirz, are the same folks who say torturing POWs today is a good thing today.

Things just haven't changed.

I lived amongst the suckers for 12 years and came to learn that if Sherman had nuclear weapons this nation would be a far, far better place today.

Harvey Briggs

[ClassWarrior]

17. Thanks for saying it.

It's very true. Look at how the nightly news helped turn people's heads during the Vietnam War.

Gettysburg Battlefield really does take one's breath away, doesn't it?

[sampsonblk]

20. Well put, and well worth it

I am taking my son for the first time, in a few weeks. He's only two. I intend for him to know what happened there. He can take from it what he pleases, but he's going to know it like the back of his ass. It matters, if only for perspective on US history.

Thinking is good.