Gettysburg National Military Park

The Gettysburg Battlefield is the area of the July 1–3, 1863, military engagements of the Battle of Gettysburg within and around the borough of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Military engagements of the Battle of Gettysburg extended from Knoxlyn Ridge on the west (a 4 acre site for the first shot) to East Cavalry Field; and from north to south, Oak Hill near the Susquehanna River Watershed to Bushman Hill southwest of Big Round Top. The general area includes the borough of Gettysburg, which had combat areas and sniper locations; several hills of over 500 ft (150 m) (Oak, Cemetery, Culp's, Little and Big Round Tops); and two somewhat parallel north-to south ridges (Seminary/Warfield and Cemetery Ridges) between which lies a stream valley with farmland and, to the south, elevated areas from the Peach Orchard to Devil's Den. Cemetery Ridge extends about 1 mile south from Cemetery Hill.

Geography

Within 10 miles of the Maryland/Pennsylvania state line, the Gettysburg Battlefield is situated in the Gettysburg-Newark Basin of the Pennsylvania Piedmont within the Potomac River Watershed. Military engagements occurred within and around the borough of Gettysburg (1863 pop. 2,400), which remains the population center for the battlefield area at the intersections of roads that connect the borough with 10 nearby Pennsylvania and Maryland towns (e.g., antebellum turnpikes to Chambersburg, York, and Baltimore.)

Topography

To the northwest, a series of low, parallel ridges lead to the towns of Cashtown and Chambersburg. Seminary Ridge, closest to Gettysburg, is named for the Lutheran Theological Seminary on its crest. Farther out are McPherson's Ridge, Herr's Ridge, and eventually South Mountain. Oak Ridge, a northward extension of both McPherson Ridge and Seminary Ridge, is capped by Oak Hill, a site for artillery that commanded a good area north of the town.

Directly south of the town is the gently-sloped Cemetery Hill named for the 1854 Evergreen Cemetery on its crest and where the 1863 Gettysburg Address dedicated the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Eastward are Culp's Hill and Steven's Knoll. Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill were subjected to assaults throughout the battle by Richard S. Ewell's Second Corps.

Southward from Cemetery Hill is Cemetery Ridge of only about 40 feet (12 m) above the surrounding terrain. The ridge includes The Angle's stone wall and the copse of trees at the High Water Mark of the Confederacy during Pickett's Charge. The southern end of Cemetery Ridge is Weikert Hill, north of Little Round Top.

The two highest battlefield points are at Round Top to the south with the higher round summit of Big Round Top, the lower oval summit of Little Round Top, and a saddle between. The Round Tops are rugged and strewn with large boulders; as is Devil's Den to the west. Round Top, known also to locals of the time as Sugar Loaf, is 116 feet (35 m) higher than its Little companion. Its steep slopes are heavily wooded, which made it unsuitable for siting artillery without a large effort to climb the heights with horse-drawn guns and clear lines of fire; Little Round Top was unwooded, but its steep and rocky form made it difficult to deploy artillery in mass. However, Cemetery Hill was an excellent site for artillery, commanding all of the Union lines on Cemetery Ridge and the approaches to them. Little Round Top and Devil's Den were key locations for General John Bell Hood's division in Longstreet's assault during the second day of battle, July 2, 1863. The Plum Run Valley between Houck's Ridge and the Round Tops earned the name Valley of Death on that day.

History

At the close of the battle, some of the ~22,000 wounded remained on the battlefield and were subsequently treated at the outlying Camp Letterman hospital or nearby field hospitals, houses, churches, and other buildings. Dead soldiers on the battlefield totaled 8,900; contractors such as David Warren were hired to bury men and animals (the majority where they fell); and thousands of relatives arrived for their dead and wounded.

On July 10, Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin visited Gettysburg and expressed the state's interest in finding its veterans, and attorney David Wills arranged for the purchase of 17 acres (0.069 km2) of Cemetery Hill battlefield land for a cemetery. On August 14, 1863, attorney David McConaughy recommended a preservation association to sell membership stock for battlefield fundraising. By September 16, 1863, battlefield protection had begun with McConaughy's purchase of "the heights of Cemetery Hill and" Little Round Top, and his total purchased area of 600 acres (2.4 km2) included Culp's Hill land.

On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery, which was completed in March 1864 with the last of 3,512 Union reburied. From 1870 to 1873, upon the initiative of the Ladies Memorial Associations of Richmond, Raleigh, Savannah, and Charleston, 3,320 bodies were disinterred and sent to cemeteries in those cities for reburial, 2,935 being interred in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond. Seventy-three bodies were reburied in home cemeteries. The last body was reburied in the national cemetery after being discovered in 1997.

Memorial association era

The Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association (GBMA) was chartered on April 30, 1864, to mark the battlefield's "great deeds of valor … and the signal events". The GBMA sold stock to raise money, hired a superintendent at $1000/yr, added to McConaughy's land holdings, and operated a wooden observation tower on East Cemetery Hill from 1878-95. Due to its proximity to major eastern cities, the Gettysburg Battlefield was one of the most popular tourist destinations of all the battlefields. The GBMA was initially led by local officials, and in 1880 GBMA officers were Grand Army of the Republic members from various states (by late 1882, GBMA funds were nearly exhausted.):4 Commercial development in the 19th century included the 1884 Round Top Branch of the Gettysburg and Harrisburg Railroad to Round Top Park near the 1888 Round Top Museum. After March 1892, Tipton Park operated on the east side of Plum Run near Devil's Den. The Gettysburg Electric Railway was chartered August 4, 1891, and operated from 1894-1916.

Historians and preservationists

Union Gettysburg veteran Emmor Cope was detailed to annotate the battlefield's troop positions and his "Map of the Battlefield of Gettysburg from the original survey made August to October, 1863" was displayed at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Also in 1863, John B. Bachelder escorted convalescing officers at Gettysburg to identify battlefield locations. During the next winter he interviewed Union officers, and post-war, invited over 1,000 officers, including 49 generals, to revisit the field with him (his unpublished typescript was included in a 1994 collection of his records.) Bachelder also produced a battlefield survey with 1880 federal funds (initiated by Senator Wade Hampton III, a Confederate general), from 1883-7 he was the GBMA's Superintendent of Tablets and Legends, and in 1889 Bachelder conceived the 1892 tablet for the High-water mark of the Confederacy.. He was 1 of 3 on the first Gettysburg National Military Park Commission on May 25, 1893.

Two Union generals who fought at Gettysburg played a prominent role in preservation. Samuel W. Crawford, who led the Pennsylvania Reserve Division in the V Corps had a great desire to promote his contributions to the battle. He purchased a 47-acre (19 ha) tract of land that included Devil's Den and the Valley of Death, and this area became known as Crawford Park. He promoted a scheme to build a prominent Memorial Hall on the top of Little Round Top, a building over 120 feet (37 m) long that would contain monuments and memorabilia of all of the individual Pennsylvania units that fought in that area. He angered battlefield preservationists by selling the right-of-way for the trolley line to Tipton for one dollar.

The second general, Congressman Daniel Sickles, initiated a May 31, 1894, resolution “to acquire by purchase (or by condemnation) … such lands, or interests in lands, upon or in the vicinity of said battle field”, and the 1895 "Sickles Gettysburg Park Bill" acquired the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Commission land for the War Department.

Monuments

The 1st battlefield monument was an 1867 marble urn in the National Cemetery dedicated to the 1st Minnesota Infantry, and the 1st memorial outside of the cemetery was the 1878 marble tablet where Strong Vincent was killed on Little Round Top.:210 By May 1887 before the 25th battle reunion, there were 90 regimental and battery monuments on the battlefield.

For the battle's 1888 25th anniversary, veterans groups and state governments erected numerous monuments. By the 1890s, Gettysburg had "one of the largest outdoor collections of outdoor sculptures in the world. For the Union side, virtually every regiment, battery, brigade, division, and corps has a monument, generally placed in the portion of the battlefield where that unit made the greatest contribution (as judged by the veterans themselves).

Fewer Confederate monuments than Union monuments are on the battlefield, for several reasons. First, the initial emphasis was to preserve the land on which the Union army fought, not the land held by the Confederates. Second, the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union veterans' association, strongly resisted such monuments. The Confederates had their own reservations. If they placed monuments on the field where the Union Army defeated them, would they be glorifying the Union victory? Third, southern funds were limited during Reconstruction. Fourth, Bachelder had a strict requirement that monuments were only to be erected along lines of battle. There are only two Confederate monuments inside the areas of battle held by the Union. The first is a plaque near The Angle commemorating Lewis Addison Armistead's farthest advance on July 3, the second is a monument to the 2nd Maryland Infantry on Culp's Hill.

The battlefield was used by the 1884 Camp Gettysburg and other summer encampments of the PA National Guard. The federal Gettysburg National Park Commission was established on March 3, 1893; after which Congressman Daniel Sickles initiated a May 31, 1894, resolution “to acquire by purchase (or by condemnation) … such lands, or interests in lands, upon or in the vicinity of said battle field”. The memorial association era ended when the 1895 "Sickles Gettysburg Park Bill" (28 Stat. 651) acquired the Gettysburg National Military Park for the War Department. Subsequent battlefield improvements included the removal of the 1878 Cemetery Hill tower and completion of the War Department's 1st Cope Truss observation tower on Big Round Top in 1895 before the department acquired the GBMA's land in 1896.

Commemorative era

For payment of the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association's debts of $1960.46, on February 4, 1896, the War Department acquired 124 GBMA tracts totaling 522 acres (0.816 sq mi), including 320 monuments and about 17 miles of roads. Commercial development after Tipton Park was abolished in the fall of 1901 included the July 1902 Hudson Park picnic grove north of Little Round Top (including a boxing arena) A dancing pavilion was erected at the Round Top Museum in 1902 (and served as a restaurant and small hotel), and in the saddle area between the Round Tops, David Weikert operated an eating house moved from Tipton Park after it closed. Landscape preservation began in 1906 when 20,000 battlefield trees were planted, and trees are periodically removed from battlefield areas that had been logged prior to the battle.

Battlefield visitors through the early 20th century typically arrived by train at the borough's 1884 Gettysburg & Harrisburg RR Station or the 1859 Gettysburg Railroad Station and used horse-drawn jitneys to tour the battlefield. The borough licensed automobile taxis first in 1913, and the War Department expanded the battlefield roads throughout the commemorative era. Early 20th century battlefield excursions included those by "The Hod Carriers Consolidated Union of Baltimore" and the annual "Topton Day" autumn foliage tours from near Berks County, Pennsylvania.

For the battle's 50th anniversary, about 80,000 people attended the 1913 Gettysburg reunion of 53,407 civil war veterans. A July 3, 1913, flag ceremony by soldiers of 2 opposing Pickett's Charge units was held at The Angle, with the units each advancing about 50 ft to flags at the stone wall where they "clasped hands and buried their faces on each other's shoulders" (the 2 units' 1906 ceremony had returned Lewis Addison Armistead's sword). In 1915, the "National Park Commission" tested the battlefield guides and, due to the limited knowledge (particularly of the most experienced, e.g., only 1 in 8 could name the 7 avenues), established a school for licensing tour guides to charge fees. In World War I, the 1918 Camp Colt commanded by Brevet Lt. Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower was a Tank Corps encampment on the battlefield, and excursions to the battlefield area brought alcohol and prostitution. The 1922 Camp Harding included a Marine Corps reenactment of Pickett's Charge observed by President Warren Harding, followed by a next-day simulation of the same attack with modern weapons and tactics.

The battlefield's commemorative era ended in 1927, and use of the national park for military camps continued under an 1896 federal law (29 Stat. 120), e.g., a 1928 artillery and cavalry camp was held at Culp's Hill in conjunction with President Calvin Coolidge's Memorial Day address in the cemetery's rostrum.

Development era

In 1933, administration of the GNMP transferred from the War Department to the 1916 National Park Service (NPS), which initiated Great Depression projects, including 1933 Civil Works Administration improvements and 2 Civilian Conservation Corps camps were subsequently built for battlefield maintenance and construction projects. Development of new battlefield structures included a 1934 plan for roadside ranger stations (the west NPS rustic station was completed on May 21, 1937), and in April 1938, the Works Progress Administration added battlefield parking areas. Numerous private facilities near national park land were also developed on the battlefield, particularly during the 1950s "Golden Age of Capitalism" in the United States (e.g., motels, eateries, & visitor attractions).

The battlefield's 2nd largest monument, the Eternal Light Peace Memorial, was developed for the 1938 Gettysburg reunion, and the dedication by President Franklin D. Roosevelt attracted over 300,000 battlefield visitors. In 1939, the 1st of the Gettysburg National Museum's 14 expansions was completed (the electric map auditorium was added in 1963 and closed April 13, 2008). During World War II, Pitzer Woods was the site of Camp Sharpe, and McMillan Woods had a German POW camp (the latter was used for post-war housing of migrant workers for local production). Heads-of-state at the battlefield included a 1943 Winston Churchill auto tour with President Roosevelt, President Eisenhower escorting President Charles De Gaulle (1960), and President Jimmy Carter hosting President Anwar Sadat and Prime Minister Menachem Begin (1978).

Mission 66

Battlefield development for the 1966 NPS 50th anniversary included restoring the park's historic houses, resurfacing 31 miles of avenues, and replacing the Reynolds Ave bridge over the railway cut. Mission 66 funding also restored the 1884 Gettysburg Cyclorama and constructed the battlefield's 1st national park visitor center, the 1962 Cyclorama Building at Gettysburg.

In 1967, the NPS purchased the 1921 Gettysburg National Museum, and after the NPS began operating it in 1971, it was the Main Visitor Center from the 1990s until April 2008. Also in 1971, the NPS acquired the Round Top Museum and used it as an environmental resource center until demolished circa 1982. The private Gettysburg National Tower of 393 ft (120 m) was completed in 1974 to provide several observation levels for viewing the battlefield, and the tower was purchased under eminent domain and demolished in 2000.

In 2008, the GNMP had 1,320 monuments, 410 cannon, 148 historic buildings, 2½ Cope Truss towers, and 41 miles of avenues, roads, and lanes (8 unpaved). In February 2009, The David Wills House, where Lincoln completed his Gettysburg Address was added to the national park by Public Law 106-290 of October 10, 2000 and is operated by Main Street Gettysburg.