I’m a history major, but would hardly describe myself as a historian. But a visit to Gettysburg certainly sheds some light on the price of war. On television, we see war reports from a limited area. We more often think of war as a football game in the confines of a stadium. Even in my personal reality, war had a limited perspective limited to perhaps a half mile while on Army maneuvers.
A visit to Gettysburg is different. We think of massive bloodshed as the tragedy of 9-11. But it is dwarfed by comparison where nearly 8,000 were slain and more than 27,000 more were wounded in just three days of fierce battle. They are numbers that are mind numbing. They far exceed our casualties in both Afganistan and Iraq.
It was here that Lee’s quest to bring the war to the north ended. It is here that the largest battle was ever held on North American soil as about 165,000 men fought one another without ceasing for three days.
Gettysburg takes the numbers and makes you understand the scope. Throughout the park are scores of monuments for various military units which took part in the carnage. The battle was not fought in an arena, but over miles of fields and woods, whose ground was soaked with blood. Many of the final resting places of the dead are marked with simple three-digit numbers.
I stood at the site where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg address about four months later. By then, the battle lines were back in the south and there were still years of conflict to come. I couldn’t help but think about how America today is still being torn by strife, with red states and blue states and media and mad men fighting over power and political positioning. And I wonder why we have any enemies at all?Because we shall surely destroy ourselves without any help from terrorists.
Finially I think of my personal civil war, with its mauled and wounded barely clinging to the hope that we can survive and maybe even thrive. I realize that the casualties extend far beyond the combatants. And as Lincoln noted “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us” what that task is, I’m not quite sure. I hope it involves healing the wounded.
I guess I’ll settle for “With malice toward none, with charity for all, ...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, ...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
