Gratitude Friday 6 27 25 The Echoes of Gettysburg

Handshake Across the High Water Mark of the Civil War, Gettysburg PA

Recently, I had the opportunity to ride my bike through the Gettysburg National Military Park. For readers who may not know, the Battle of Gettysburg was perhaps the most horrific battle ever fought on US soil. It occurred 162 years ago, nearly to the day from July 1 to July 3, 1863. It pitted Union against Confederate armies, resulting in over 50,000 casualties and a Union victory, considered the war's turning point. The battle effectively ended General Robert E. Lee's second and most ambitious invasion of the North. There is a library in our State Capital Complex that has a painting of the battle in a building that was standing when it was fought. Lee was trying to cross the Susquehanna River and capture our state capital. He got within 40 miles of that objective and that room in our state capital.  

I have been to the park a few times, but I never rode a bike through it. Doing so provided me with a more intimate sense of the battle, the proximity of the forces to each other and the terrain they fought over. It is a relatively small area in which this decisive battle was fought. One of the places I rode through and reflected on was on Cemetery Ridge near the Pennsylvania monument. Near a group of trees along an unremarkable section of a small stone wall was a sign indicating that I was standing at the high-water mark of the Confederacy, the farthest point that the civil war reached north. It was as far as Pickett's Charge on July 3, 1863 reached, thousands died on that ground here on that day. There was also a picture, which I was able to find for this post of combatants from both armies shaking hands over the wall many years later.

One of the things that I have been thinking about since that bike ride was how torn apart this nation was in the era of the civil war and those wounds remain visible in our society today. That image of the soldiers, from the same nation but on different “sides” cost around 750,000 lives had healed in a few decades to the point where that handshake could take place. I also thought about the space that I consider the most sacred space on the National Mall. The Lincoln Memorial. Every time I visit the Lincoln memorial in which the Gettysburg Address is etched into the marble I get tears in my eyes reading it. Lincoln gave that address just four months after the battle in November of 1863 to dedicate the graveyard of those who fought and lost their lives on that same ground. That cemetery is just a few hundred yards from that high water mark. The Lincoln Memorial of course was also the place, 100 years later where Martin Luther King gave his famous I have a dream speech during the March on Washington, on the very same matters of oppression that had ripped our nation apart in 1861 when the first blood of the Civil War was spilled.

Now in 2025, we face quite similar challenges on some of the same issues, and it may well lead to division that shakes our nation to its very foundations. I am not sure who reading this would even want to consider repeating brother fighting brother and bloodshed in our streets and communities. We should not allow this to happen. One of the things that struck me was how the fields of Gettysburg have monuments to both sides. It would be interesting to hear how others feel about this, but for me, the more I consider it, the more complicated it gets. Slavery to me is abhorrent and wrong. But I suspect if I was born in the deep south, I would have carried the confederate flag and fought against its foes in “the great war of northern aggression.” We are all tied to place and people. If my people were from the deep south and there was a call to war, I would take up arms for my neighbors. Having monuments to both sides to me is to remind us how complicated all these things are and that at times people can take up causes that are wrong and overtime change. That last point, as a person in recovery from addiction but who had embraced destructive drug use in my youth are lessons of folly and error in thinking and action in my own life that ground me in humility from which I consider such things. I don’t want to ever forget that folly either.

Grateful for a ride through Gettysburg and what I was able to reflect on as a result. That handshake over the wall reminds me of how deep wounds in our national identity can heal. It is a lesson we should head and work towards. I am grateful for the sacred space that this battlefield is to remind me of that fact and that serves to show us how hard we have fought for much of what we take for granted now.

What are you grateful for today?