On a sacred Pennsylvania hillside, the masses gathered, again, with their picnic baskets and their binoculars. They wore hats and their finest Company Clothes, and their faces betrayed their anticipation: they could hardly contain their excitement. They sat lazily on a hallowed bone yard, and honored our sacred dead by watching their friends pretend to die.
“The war had been a daily thought, a continual consciousness in her life for two years, but never a real presence. Battles were things that were fought somewhere else, won somehow, by someone, and lost by someone else. Now as she stood by her own door and listened to the cannons, it was with a chilling, dreadfully full and clear realization that men were out on the field beneath that gray cloud taking each other’s lives.” -Elizabeth Grace Foley, War Memorial-A Short Story
The battle has been fought. Again.
This year marks the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. The cannons have again rolled. The soldiers polished brass buttons and boots. The logistics of the preparations for the reenactment are mind-boggling. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 people (about one-third the number that actually were there) participated in a painstakingly authentic reenactment of the bloody battle. The weapons were authentic. The food rations, authentic. The field hospitals were authentic. Every. Single. Detail. had to be perfect: this was our gravest hour, America at her worst and best. We try to honor the warriors of Gettysburg and our bloody history by remembering and portraying these things as accurately as possible.
Beneath the costumed feet of thousands of men, the silent ground cries still. The bones of the dead lie beneath the pretenders, and I wonder, are those bones restless? Are the spirits of those dead warriors aware of these actions in their honor, and if so, what must they think? Do these reenactments offend them? Is our display vulgar? Or, are they pleased somehow, knowing that at least these people have not forgotten them?
“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia…could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.” -Abraham Lincoln
Between Paula Dean and George Zimmerman, it is glaringly evident that the wounds of Gettysburg have not healed well, though they have been bound and we treat them in the best ways we know how. Our efforts are often abysmal, but they are efforts, nonetheless, and that is good.
Some wounds are too deep to heal completely. Sometimes, people and countries must learn to live with their scars.
As this long weekend approaches, and we celebrate our the birth of our wonderful country with cookouts and fireworks and elaborately accurate pretending, take a minute to stop and remember Gettysburg. Remember Little Round Top. Tell the children you love about George Pickett and his charging men. Teach them of valor, and the worth of men’s blood.
And then, in the quiet, after the smoke and noise of the fireworks have faded, the company has gone, and the kitchen has more or less been returned to normal, sit for a moment in the quiet dark and consider that sacred field again, but consider it from the opposite side.
“As he grew more and more parched, waiting near the Emmitsburg Road that reached up to Gettysburg, Jake thought of peaches and water, until he saw movement across the way, near a pile of wooden fence rails. Rebel skirmishers had been using those rails as cover all morning. Jake set the rear trigger of his Sharps. He prepared to barely caress its forward trigger, the hair trigger, as he waited for a chance to kill someone Jake knew, in all likelihood, was not so different from himself.” -Charles Phillips, The Sharpshooter 1862-1864