Windwalker's Mountain Post: Washington, D.C.. -- Day 3 -- Gettysburg

Another early morning call. We get up, have breakfast, and Olivia (with the help of Google Maps) leads us to our rental car garage. Soon, we are weaving our way through the morning rush in D.C. We navigate one roundabout after another with only one false turn. All-of-a-sudden, off to the right we see the National Cathedral. "Let's stop," says Grandma Pam. "We have plenty of time." We turn onto Wisconsin Ave and are soon parked at the Cathedral.

After taking several pictures of the Cathedral, we enter by the open visitor's door. We are all softly, ohhhing and ahhing, struck by the interior magnificence in the early morning light. The stained glass windows are illuminated as if each has its own light. The buttresses, carvings, ceiling, and statues are amazing. I spend a good amount of time trying to get a picture of George Washington, flowers at his feet, and a rainbow from the Windows overhead splashed on the wall.

Soft organ music permeates the quiet of the church. Daric stands in the center aisle taking a panorama on his iPhone. Olivia is taking pictures of the many colored Windows overhead. Pam has gone up the center aisle to photograph the main altar. I move to the midpoint of the main aisle and stop to take a picture of the baptismal font, then turn and walk slowly up the aisle to the front of the church. I stop and take a few pictures, unaware of the maintenance man who has approached from the side aisle. "How did you come in here?" He asks. "We came by the visitor's door at the side," I explain. "No," he says. "The Cathedral is not open now. It will open later. You cannot be here." I tell him again of the open visitor's door. "No," he says. "You must go now."

As I turn to gather the troops, I think to myself, "No wonder we were here all by ourselves. Too good to be true, but how fortunate we have been." The man waits for us and then leads us, like the transgressors we are to the side door. He stands to make sure we all leave. We celebrate our good fortune, take a few more pictures outside, mount up, and continue our pilgrimage to Gettysburg.

An hour later, after passing out of Virginia, into and through Maryland, to arrive in Pennsylvania, we check in at the Gettysburg Battlefield National Park. How it has changed since we were first here with Mark and Eric, and then years later with Great Grandma and Grandpa J. We check in at registration, confirm our 1:00 trip with our Battlefield Guide, Chuck Burkell, then buy tickets for the movie, narrated by Morgan Freeman, the Cyclorama, and the Museum. The movie is new and wonderful. We exit and move upstairs for the performance at the Cyclorama. A shabby mural when we first saw it, the painting (some 300 feet in length) has been refurbished and mounted on a circular wall. We stand with others in the middle. The lights dim, the narrator begins to speak as we watch the sunrise over the battlefield on July 1, 1863. With lights, sound, and narration we relive the three day battle of Gettysburg.

Knowing that the South had neither manpower nor resources to win the Civil War, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis decide that a decisive battle in a Northern town would win for the South favorable terms for an end to the war. General George G. Meade was given command of the Army of the Potomac just as General Robert E. Lee led the Army of Virginia toward Gettysburg. The two armies met in the fields outside of the town on the afternoon of July 1, 1863.

By evening, Lee's 30,000 confederate troops had driven the advance division of Yankees and a few reinforcements through the town but could not dislodge them from the high ground they held. During the night, the rest of Meade's troops arrive and they formed a fish hook line of defense protecting the ridges near the town. The second day's fighting was mostly a draw with a great loss of life on both sides, but advantages going to neither. On day three, Lee thought to weaken and then breech the middle of the Union lines. After a two hour barrage of cannon fire, Lee sent General Longstreet and General Pickett's men on what is now called Pickett's Charge. The soldiers swarmed over a mile of open field, their Generals thinking that the Union cannons were out of ammunition. As the Rebels came within a quarter of a mile, the Union canons opened fire. Of the 13,000 men who began the charge, only 600 breeched the Union lines...and they were killed as they fought. This is often referred to as the high water mark of the Civil War. Understanding that he had lost the battle, on the morning of July 4, 1863 Lee pulled his army back and retreated to Virginia. Although the war raged on for two more years, the South would never again move this far North.

The morning after the battle ended, Gettysburg towns people began to emerge from places of shelter and evacuation. Fields, the town, and many homes were glutted with war casualties: dead, maimed, wounded, and barley alive. The task of burying the dead began. Most of us know that on November 19, 1863 Edward Everett, a renowned speaker was invited to deliver the main address at the dedication of the Battlefield Cemetery. He spoke for two hours. Then President Lincoln (a last minute addition to the program) got up and delivered a two minute address that we all know now as the Gettysburg Address. Later, Everett wrote to Lincoln, "I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes." In that letter, Everett asked for and was given a handwritten copy of Lincoln's remarks. Our battlefield guide ended our almost three hour tour by reciting those words:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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 battle field of that war. We come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do.

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 hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, 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.

With our hearts full, and our heads resounding with Lincoln's simple eloquence, we returned to Washington, D.C..

Impressions of the Day:

Daric: Fascinating. Mind blowing. Inspiring and sad to learn about people dying for their country and the idea of keeping it all together. It was interesting to learn how the Generals thought strategically, but it was hard to wrap your mind around how they could do that in the middle of battle. Like how the general figured out how to defend the high ground at Little Round Top.

Olivia: At the National Cathedral as I was walking around, I thought it was interesting how people could unite thinking about one thing, like the Cathedral and the religious beliefs it represented. People agreed on those beliefs. And then we got to the battlefield and I was shocked at how people could come apart in such a violent way over a disagreement about ideas. For me, it was a day of contrasts