Greetings! Or perhaps a smart salute!

Although it feels like I’m double-time marching toward summer, I wasn’t quite ready after last month’s post to leave behind the rolling, frozen-in-Civil-War-time hills of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I didn’t get around to listing a few more of the ways a person can enter into the experience of this country-defining 1863 battle that I found on my second day of exploring – and to sharing a personal surprise that came along with!

Back in my kid-hood, our road tripping family’s first act on arriving at a National Park was to hit the Visitor Center to get information, get our bearings – annnd probably get a look at the restrooms. I think Visitor Centers are a must to check out but, like I said last time, with fantastic tools like the National Park Service’s app, they don’t necessarily have to be first on the agenda. Hitting the one at Gettysburg National Military Park was almost the last stop I made.

Truth be told, while I generally like to keep it light with these posts, that’s a bit of a challenge when discussing a battle and a war as devastating as this one was. That said, one of my own early points of entry into this period of American history actually was comedy! Dad had a record album of Bob Newhart’s stand-up routines – one of which was a wickedly funny bit where Newhart plays a modern-day press agent who creates and desperately tries to preserve the folksy image of the President Abraham Lincoln we know. He telephones Lincoln ahead of the Gettysburg Address (“Hi Abe, sweetheart, how are ya, kid?”), begging his client not to change phrases like “four score and seven” to “87” because “four score” test marketed better!

No doubt Newhart’s PR guy would’ve approved of my buying a t-shirt at the Visitor Center – he’d encouraged Influencer Abe to tell the Gettysburg peeps that new shirts were about to drop! But I did do more than shop there. I bought a Park map (one of those paper things you unfold and can never figure out how fold back up) and a ticket covering viewings of the “Film, Cyclorama & Museum” – even though I wasn’t 100% sure what that was going to be. I mean, “Film” I got. “Museum” I got. But “Cycloramas” not so much. Turns out this was one of the ways that details of the Battle were brought to the public in an era before film and tv:

We ticket-holders were ushered into this circular room where it was kind of like standing inside an enormous soda can. Displayed all the way around us and enhanced with light and sound was an enormous oil painting memorializing Pickett’s Charge. Originally created in 1883 by French artist Paul Dominique Philippoteaux for display in Boston, this colossal work showing the doomed Confederate assault on entrenched Union lines has been restored to offer another link in the long chain of efforts to convey the Battle’s story.

Next up were the great documentary film and the museum! During my battlefield tour the day before, I got a big-picture view of events – but the museum filled in the time line and added a more personal layer to the three days of fighting, with photos and belongings of individuals who fought.

After pretty thoroughly covering the Visitor Center (including lunch!), I wound up bookending my Gettysburg pilgrimage by paying respects again at the place where I’d begun – at Little Round Top. 

While it was an important spot during the Battle, it’s also been a sort of family touchstone! I can date our history with the place at least as far back as this picture of Mum and Grandpa Jack (taken by Grandma Helen):

Mum thought they were posing by a statue of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. As I noted last time, it’s actually Gouverneur Kemble Warren who still seems to be scanning the battlefield, making sure this key strategic point is secure. I also mentioned that the Park Ranger leading the tour introduced our group to figures we hadn’t all heard of who played critical roles on this mountaintop at one end of the Union lines. 

It was a good lesson to consider all the individual efforts it truly took to defend the ridge that day – but in the end, I can’t help sticking with Team Chamberlain! Dad was a longtime admirer of his. On a family trip to Maine, he made sure we stopped at Bowdoin College where before rising to a General, this professor (as Dad was) studied and taught. The man’s commitment to helping preserve the Union was so strong that when he was given time off from teaching to study in Europe, he enlisted instead. 

Like myself, the Little Round Top tourist next to me had arrived with images in mind from the TNT film “Gettysburg” that brought to harrowing life the courageous part Chamberlain and his 20th Maine regiment played – among them, his hollering to the men to fix their bayonets in a last-ditch effort to hold the line. (Whether entirely accurate or not, I’m telling you the moment plays!) When I showed the film to Dad, he’d been skeptical that anyone could do justice to his idol – but on seeing the wonderful portrayal by Jeff Daniels, he was entirely sold!

While Dad felt a kinship with this Civil War hero, we were also aware and proud of our own kin who fought – including great, great grandfather, Silas Parmeter! And there was a coda to Silas’s story that I hadn’t known until my time at the Visitor Center. That’s where I found a computer room with a staffer who helps tourists research their military relatives. She confirmed what I knew of my three Union granddads – and that Silas had been in a regiment of sharpshooters formed in Minnesota. (Dad and my nephew inherited his keen eye!) He was mustered out toward the end of 1862, but the regiment and the men with with whom Silas fought went on to see action in many other places –

Including at the Battle of Gettysburg.

For me, this fact brought the Battle even closer to home. I can’t help wondering now what would have happened to Silas had he been there. Would he have survived? Or would he be among the thousands of soldiers who, as Lincoln said at the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery, gave the last full measure of devotion to their country..?

In that Bob Newhart sketch, “Abe” balks at other Gettysburg Address phrases like the one about how people will “little note nor long remember” what he says in the speech. His agent assures him that of course people will remember – he’s just going for “the old humble bit” with the line.

Hopefully the agent is right and we’ll continue to use Lincoln’s brief but eloquent speech as a touchstone, including its thoughts on democracy and on tasks as a nation that may yet remain unfinished. In whatever way we enter into some understanding of the Battle of Gettysburg – whether by a visit, an app, a book, a movie or documentary – I believe the vital point is to remember those who gave their lives on that ground, and to honor Lincoln’s words. 

Every one. 

Cheers.