(37 miles)
Here are two 19th-century Maryland houses I passed on the way north to Gettysburg, PA. Both houses have the same symmetrical layout with four windows and a door on the first level, five windows on the second level, and a fireplaces on each end. The exteriors are different.
The second house has a stone foundation, but I wonder why the house above the foundation is a mix of stone and framing? Perhaps they ran out of stone? Also, why is there no front porch like on the first house?
There may be several good reasons to join a volunteer fire and rescue service, but perhaps the best reason is to be of service to others in a time of urgent need.
Is excitement really a good reason?
“Hey, we just got a call that the candle factory is on fire. That’s exciting! Lets go over there and sing Happy Birthday.”
(Editor comment: tip of the hat to David Miller for the random joke.)
I’ve read that General Lee had a great victory in the battle of Chancellorsville, VA in early May 1863, and then led his army northward, possibly heading to Harrisburg, the capital of PA.
I don’t know where Lee crossed the Potomac or where he entered PA to get to Gettysburg. I echoed Lee’s northward travel, but crossed the Potomac at Harpers Ferry, and entered PA between two corn fields on Bull Frog Road.
Bull Frog Road and Taneytown Pike are 19th century roads; both are present on 1863 Gettysburg maps.
Bull Frog Road is a winding, local road, and Taneytown Pike runs from Gettysburg to Taneytown, MD. The Gettysburg National Battlefield is on Taneytown Pike a few miles north. Both Union and Confederate solders were in this area in late June / early July, 1863.
I got off my bike and walked into this unidentified hayfield. Except for the communications tower in the distance, this field probably looked pretty much as it did in July, 1863.
I thought about the solders who may have passed through this area: Union, Confederate, or both, ranging in age from their late teens and twenties up to whatever. Union solders, who came from several states, possibly rode by train to Harrisburg, and marched south carrying their gear 45 miles over hilly terrain to get here. The Army of Northern Virginia made a similar northward march of 135 miles after the battle of Chancellorsville
I had plenty of water with me on my bike, and while the hills and sun provided a good workout, I knew I had shower, a bed, an air-conditioned room, and my choice of restaurants waiting for me in Gettysburg. The solders here in 1863 had another night sleeping on the ground, minimal food and water, and the real possibility that the next day would be their last day on Earth. I wonder what they thought about as the fell asleep, knowing that their enemy was nearby.
Here is another marker along the road heading to Gettysburg.
I was in a somber mood, and could not move my thoughts beyond what I imagined these solders endured. Below is a battlefield photo, taken two days after the battle ended, that pretty well shows what I was imagining.
But this photo does not capture the non-stop sound of gun fire, bombardment, and the screams of wounded men who had not yet died.
I wonder what last words were cried out by these men as they died: “God help me”, or possibly the name of their wife, or maybe just “water . . . “
As I continued northward I was startled by the jarring incongruity of resort being paired with battlefield. How could battlefield and resort possibly have anything in common?
Hmm . . . how about Auschwitz Bed and Breakfast? or Slave Ship Cruise Lines, or Trail of Tears Fun Run?
I can’t grasp the meaning of a battlefield resort.
The main battlefield is too large to capture in one photo. Here’s a view of part of the battlefield taken from behind the fence along Taneytown Pike. There are many monuments scattered in the battlefield.
Here’s the inscription on one monument. I’m intrigued that the time of the engagement is included in the description.
I didn’t walk in the field with the monuments, but instead walked in the field on the other side of Taneytown Road.
There are no monuments in this field, but I suspect the soil remembers the blood that was spilled.
(Editor’s comment: those not interested in reading President Lincoln’s reaction to the battle of Gettysburg may want to skip ahead to the last image in this post.)
In October, 1863 President Lincoln issued a proclamation setting aside the fourth Thursday in November to be a day of Thanksgiving to God. Here are the last two sentences of the proclamation:
. . . I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.
And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.
On the third Thursday in November, 1863, one week before the Day of Thanksgiving, Lincoln visited the Soldiers’ National Cemetery (now known as Gettysburg National Cemetery), and gave this speech:
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 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.
Lincoln was reelected President the following year, and in March 1865, just one month before General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, VA, and five weeks before he was as assassinated, Lincoln gave his second inaugural address. Here is the last sentence of that speech
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Hmm . . with malice toward none, with charity for all . . to bind up the nation’s wounds . . we need a president today who actually understands how to make America great again.
The Second Inaugural Address and the Gettysburg Address are inscribed in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.
One last observation: I was surprised to learn something from Google Maps that I never learned in school: Lincoln’s Gettysburg address was 123 Taneytown Road