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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| On Visiting Civil War Battlefields |
| 2019-08-25 |
| BLUF On Gettysburg [NR] Abraham Lincoln knew this, and he marked that place mere months after the battle with his famous address. "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here." We know from contemporaneous accounts that, as he concluded, Lincoln emphasized his words in a way that those who read them aloud today often neglect: "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." We visit the grounds of Gettysburg, and of the war, to sustain our memory of why those battles took place and still matter today ‐ in defense of the Union and its republican constitutional democracy, the form of government that best respects the natural equality and rights of all people. It is grim, perhaps, to tread the steps where both armies marched, to revisit a time when our nation was at war with itself. It is grimmer still to cherish these places where Americans killed one another, to preserve them with care, to mark them with stones and placards and statues for the men we lost. But it is good for us to remember what they did, and why they did it. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #9 Shiloh at dusk is downright spooky... |
| Posted by: borgboy 2019-08-25 23:30 |
| #8 WRT Gettysburg. We took the advice to hire a driving tour guide. Unless you're very well versed in the details, you'd probably find it worth it too. |
| Posted by: james 2019-08-25 17:04 |
| #7 If you live in the South, the reminders of the Civil War are ever-present wherever you go. In the North there are not the reminders of this important era in our history. Today, the geographical divisions such as the Mason-Dixson line have faded into history with the widespread mobility of people in the U.S. since the Civil War. Today, the divisions within the country are largely ideological but every bit as bitter. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2019-08-25 15:45 |
| #6 A Northern California school district recently got a bee (not Babylon Bee) in its bonnet about one of their schools named Dixie. The woke faction, nationwide, has gone mad. It's a contagion. Maybe we're not yet at the Bleeding Kansas stage, but it is indeed beginning to feel a bit like the Pierce or Buchanan era... |
| Posted by: Lex 2019-08-25 12:31 |
| #5 |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2019-08-25 12:08 |
| #4 Re Antietam (Sharpsburg for Southern folk), just don't lose your cigars... |
| Posted by: Lex 2019-08-25 12:03 |
| #3 Antietam is also well worth a visit. Good to make a bike trip there: you can better appreciate the terrain and its impact on the course of the battle. |
| Posted by: Lex 2019-08-25 12:02 |
| #2 Historic battlefield visits are valuable. When I was at Gettysburg some years ago an instructor from the Army War College was teaching his class at the same stop I was explaining the battle to my kids. Have also gone to Vicksburg and Chickamauga. I have visited a similar suite of important Revolutionary War sites - Valley Forge, Cowpens, Fort Ticonderoga, Yorktown. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2019-08-25 10:06 |
| #1 ...I visited Gettysburg 24 years ago, and it is still one of the most powerful experiences of my life, especially up on Little Round Top where the battle was really decided. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2019-08-25 06:43 |