NATIONAL MILITARY PARK
One of our first trips as a married couple was to Washington DC. On the way back we stopped at Gettysburg. This is the site of the deadliest battle in US history.
After a decisive Confederate victory at Chancellorsville, Lee headed North hoping for another big victory and an end to the war. Lee’s troops were looking forward to better foraging in farm rich Pennsylvania. War ravaged Virginia was picked clean.
For those wanting more detail on the battle here is a link to the animated map by Battlefield Trust.
Hundreds of books, thousands of articles, movies and documentaries produced about Gettysburg but the definitive statement lasted 2 minutes and contained 272 words.
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.
Abraham Lincoln
Edward Everett spoke before Lincoln. His speech lasted 2 hours. He is best known as the other person that spoke at Gettysburg.
Eternal Light Peace Memorial
Virginia Monument
State of Pennsylvania Monument
Soldiers National Monument
Lee was hoping for an end to the war. Gettysburg marked the half way point to the carnage.
THANKS FOR VISTING, STEVE