The Fourth of July

Gettysburg. The battlefield is less than an hour’s drive from my home in Maryland. It has become the place I go to when I want to get away from everything else. I have become very familiar with the town and the battlefield. It has a strange, almost metaphysical attraction to me. Although there are many well-known and historical places there, I am always attracted to Little Round Top, the spot where Joshua Chamberlain and the 20^th Maine fought off the Alabamians to save the vulnerable left flank of the Union army on the second day of the battle. I have often sat there on the rocky hill for hours at a time. In my mind’s eye I can see the Confederates charging the hill, over and over again. I can hear the screams of the wounded and the final prayers of the dying. I can smell the gunpowder, I can feel the spirit of the ghosts.  

In three days during the summer of 1863. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia faced off against the Union’s Army of the Potomac and its brand new commanding general George Meade. It was the most important battle in the history of our country. It was also the bloodiest. During those three days there were more than fifty thousand casualties. The Viet Nam War lasted 20 years, and during that time fifty eight thousand Americans died. If Lee had won at Gettysburg, the Civil War would have probably been over. There would have been nothing between him and Washington DC, Philadelphia or Baltimore. The United States would have been broken in two. The Confederate States of America would have continued its “peculiar institution” of slavery, and probably expanded it to Mexico, Central, and South America. The history of the world would have been very different. It all was in the balance on that field in Gettysburg.

When visiting the US Capitol today one of the things that is impossible to ignore are the many statues that are on display. It tells the story of our country thru the perspectives of the American people. Each state is allowed to have two statues of their own choosing. Some of the people that have been placed there may be unfamiliar to the average citizen, but upon further review, you will find that each has made a significant contribution to their particular state. The statues representing the state of Virginia are George Washington, and Robert E. Lee.

The battlefield at Gettysburg has been immaculately preserved. You can take an automobile tour by following clearly visible signs and relive all of the events that occurred there. Every military unit that participated has a monument on the very spot they were engaged. Most of the monuments tell you the State the unit was from, the casualties they suffered, and describes the actions they took. The largest of the monuments along Seminary Ridge, which housed the Confederate lines is Robert E. Lee. It is a beautiful, majestic statue of Lee sitting tall on his famous horse, Traveller. He is in the center of the Confederate line looking across the field toward Cemetery Ridge, which housed the Union lines, about three quarters of a mile away. He seems to be staring at a smaller statue of the Union Commander George Meade, which stands directly across from him, on the higher ground, in the center of the Union lines.

On the third day at Gettysburg Robert E. Lee made a decision that saved the Union. On the first day he had attacked on the Union’s right. On the second day he had attacked the Union left. On the third day he decided to go up the middle. He would send fifteen thousand men across that open field, directing them to converge on the middle of the Union line near a copse of trees. Lee ordered his best General, James Longstreet to organize the attack. Longstreet had his doubts the attack could succeed. I took my daughter to Gettysburg when she was still in elementary school. We stood near the clump of trees on Cemetery Ridge and when I showed her the open field and explained what Lee ordered his men to do, she said, “daddy that was stupid”. The ill-fated attack, forever known as Pickett’s charge, was a disaster. Confederate casualties were almost seven thousand.

There is a short pathway leading from Lee’s statue to the spot where he rode out to meet his troops as they retreated on that day. He is reported to have said, “It is all my fault”. He was right.

On the fourth day, the Confederates began their retreat back to Virginia in a pouring rain. Perhaps the rain was the tears of angels for the innocent young men that had died on the field. Perhaps it was God’s way of washing away the blood that could be found everywhere on what is now hallowed ground. Perhaps Lincoln was right when he said, “all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and … every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword…”.

The Confederates retreated on the fourth day, July fourth, eighteen sixty three. To me that was the day that THIS country was born. This was the day when America experienced a new birth of freedom. This is what I celebrate on the Fourth of July.