The Battle for the Nation.

The impressive Pennsylvania Memorial.

Gettysburg is famous as the site of the biggest battle of the American Civil War, fought over three days. More men died in this battle than in any other - around  50,000 -  and the defeat of Robert E. Lee's Virginian Army halted his invasion of the North. Nowadays there's an impressive museum with exhibits and films, as well as the most impressive 'Gettysburg Cyclorama'.

This is just a section of this impressive work. It was a 360 degree panorama.

This is a painting in the round from 1884, (21 years after the battle) by Thure de Thuistrup. It was exhibited around America, and then forgotten about and left to rot. Fortunately it was rediscovered, restored and hung in a purpose made gallery, with set dressing in front of it spanning the 360 degrees. It sounds naff, but is in fact a very impressive piece of work.

Can you see the join between the foreground set dressing and the painting?

The whole scene is full of such detail...

We chose to walk to the battle site and get a feel of the terrain. Here is not the place to detail the event - there are a multitude of resources for the curious, we're simply recording our impressions of the site.

The battle is much easier to understand when on the spot. The heights of the inclines, the distance the soldiers had to cover over open ground, the positioning of the guns - all this helps to decipher what occured on those fateful days of 1863. What we both found astonishing was the frontal attack up a hill over open ground. Looking at the view today it seems suicidal, yet the Confederate soldiers almost made it, at one point capturing some Union guns on the ridge. But the attack couldn't be sustained, and the Confederates withdrew.

This is the open ground the Confederates attacked across...

...the Union soldiers were here on the ridge behind the wall, firing down with cannon and rifles.

In England, our civil war battlefields have very few monuments. In Worcester where the final decisive battle was fought between Cromwell and King Charles II there are a few noticeboards explaining the events, but that's about it. In America things are different.

Just some of the memorials.

We couldn't believe the number of monuments honouring the regiments that fought at Gettysburg. There are rows of them lining the roads - we counted over 20 on Cemetery Ridge alone including the largest, the State of Pennsylvania Monument. Apparently in total there are around 1200 at Gettysburg. Presumably no-one wanted to be left out. We prefer the Shakers quiet confidence of one memorial for everyone

As a reminder of why the American Civil War was fought, here's Lincolns post battle speech at Gettysburg:

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 battlefield 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 cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot 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.

But the area isn't completely safe from harm. A lot of the surrounding land is private property, and on July 20, 2009, a Comfort Inn and Suites opened on Cemetery Hill adjacent to Evergreen Cemetery. 

Capitalism may yet get the better of America's history.