I know last night’s post was just me talking about all that I did and didn’t have any pictures. Well hopefully this post will remedy that. This post is just going to be pictures from Gettysburg with a word of explanation on each of them to explain what you’re looking at.
This is the memorial placed to mark where Lewis Armistead fell in Pickett’s charge. He lead one of three of Pickett’s brigades and made it over the wall in the background. There were about 10-15 thousand who started across the open field but only 200 or so made it over the wall.
This is the stonewall in the background of the above picture. In the background of this picture you can see the monument of the New York regiment that sued to have it’s monument placed there. It is the one with the soldier wielding it’s rifle like a club.
This is the tablet erected near the North Carolina Memorial that explains the sacrifice of North Carolina at the battle. A quarter of all fallen Confederates were North Carolinians at Gettysburg.
This is the North Carolina Memorial Statue. It was hard to get a picture without many people in it. One of the annoying things about going over the battlefield were the large and noisy tour busses. It’s great having people visit the battlefield but when 30-40 people get off a bus at the same time and then you have two sometimes even three busses at stops then it can get crowded and noisy. Even with just a few people in this picture I liked getting the shot of the lower left guy pointing at the camera.
This is a small part of the Virginia Memorial Statue. This picture is of Robert E. Lee on his horse. It is supposed to be where he watched Pickett’s charge from though I don’t know if that is true or not.
This is a picture of Devil’s Den. These rocks were left behind by a glacier that moved through during the last ice age. Some of the toughest fighting occurred here on the second day. These rocks are at the base of Little Round Top and were a sharpshooters nest for the Confederates once they took it over. I wanted to get the people in this shot to provide a sense of scale for how big the rocks are.
This is the statue that is at the center of the National Cemetery on the battlefield. Some 3,500 men are buried there, all from the North and all of them died during the course of the battle. The war still going on for two more years after Gettysburg there are no Southern casualties buried here. This statue was erected after Lincoln’s famous address and stands as a memorial for all of those who died at Gettysburg.
The real Gettysburg address was given by Edward Everett, a Democrat from Massachusetts and political opponent of Lincoln. It was two hours long and was followed up by Lincoln. His speech lasted just two minutes and the crowd was taken aback when he finished and didn’t quite know what to do. The newspapers of the day even Republican newspapers said little of it or even openly criticized it. I think with Lincoln’s assassination the following words have come to mean more and I couldn’t think of a better way to close this post than with his…
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.
