Civil War Battlefields Must Be Protected as Signs of American Bravery
By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
As most of the Western world honored the warriors who died on June 6, 1944, on that great sweep of beaches along the coast of Normandy, I was standing on a Pennsylvania hillock Saturday, looking at a farmer's field.
In the summer of 1863, John Rose had a fine crop of grain growing on those 20 acres when, on the evening of July 2, the second of three days of fighting around the town of Gettysburg, the Union and Confederate armies collided there. This small plot of land became known forever as "the Wheatfield."
I don't mean to, nor could I, take anything away from the men who fought on Utah and Omaha beaches on D-Day. If you have walked those golden sands, and looked up at the bluffs they had to take, and the commanding position of the German gun emplacements, you recognize bravery.
But you don't have to go to France to witness American courage.
Indeed, America suffered greater casualties in two hours at the little Wheatfield than on all the beaches at Normandy during all the fighting on D-Day. Imagine that. Imagine the carnage brought to the screen in Saving Private Ryan, and think of it happening in two hours, on just 20 acres, here in the U.S. of A.
Because the Civil War pitted American against American, I am counting casualties from both sides at the Wheatfield, and only our soldiers at Normandy. But then the Wheatfield was just a corner of the great battle that also made Devil's Den and Little Round Top and the Peach Orchard famous, and culminated the next day with Pickett's Charge up Cemetery Hill.
I was at Gettysburg as a guest of the Civil War Preservation Trust, a nonprofit organization that rescues Civil War battlefields from bulldozers. Last weekend was the annual four-day conference of this group of tens of thousands of Americans, from North and South, who chip in each year to save "hallowed ground" from development.
The Trust uses that money to qualify for federal and state matching funds, and lures Hollywood and literary stars (Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Duvall, Jeff Shaara) to help publicize the cause, but it and other preservation groups are running a losing race against rising property values in the exurbs of Washington, D.C., Richmond, Atlanta, and other cities. Capitalism is remorseless. A few weeks back, I wrote here about the CWPT and the uphill, ongoing struggle to try and stop Wal-Mart from building a shopping center on the Wilderness battlefield in Virginia.
It is an interesting mix of people who choose to spend their money buying land they will never own, and saving it for the rest of us. Most are military history buffs. Most are guys. Many are veterans. The old soldiers know their stuff, and mix easily with the nerds. There were a surprising number of Marines, when one considers that the corps played such a negligible role in the Civil War.
(I am being deliberately provocative. What is a good Civil War discussion without a controversy? Your turn, leathernecks.)
The highlights of the CWPT conference are the guided tours. Among historians, there are eminent scholars who can't talk, and some great talkers who don't do the history. A great guide is a bit of both; Gettysburg has some of the best in the business, and the CWPT brought in others. If you go to the battlefield—which has just opened a new multimillion-dollar visitors' center in time for the 150th anniversary of the war in 2011—invest the time and money to hire one of the licensed guides. Garry Adelman, Timothy Smith, and Charles Fennell (to whom I am indebted for the D-Day and Wheatfield comparison) were my tour guides, and I recommend them all.
The guides spend a large part of their time taking junior high and middle school classes through the battlefield, and so they have to be sharp, funny, and entertaining to keep the interest of our jaded youth. They are anything but dull. Fennell led us for eight hours on Friday, through seven or eight miles of mud, swollen streams, soggy weeds and woods, in a steady downpour, and suffered only 10 percent casualties.
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Reader Comments
Thank you!
Your articles remind us why these issues are so important. I am happy to hear you had the opportunity to follow such skilled guides, as interpretation, as anyone who has done it knows, is an art form.
And to Mark B of Al:
I'll tell you a story first. There was a similar problem on the campus of the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA several years ago. The gun emplacements used by Confederate forces in December of 1862 and May of 1863 and vanished under academic buildings, dorms, and a dining hall. One remains today, out of (by my conservative estimate) at least fourteen. The BOV was hesitant to place a sign at the site, and bikers had used the lunette as a ramp for many years. It took an outcry from several departments and a movement headed by two great friends of mine to finally have the site preserved.
So why am I telling you this? You can't give up, just because they tried to appease you by putting a marker up. Tell your neighbors, your friends, they people you meet on the street. It sounds like people just don't know it's there, and perhaps if they did, there would be more of a push to preserve it. Just keep riding the BOE until they cave.
I'm no expert, but that's my two pennies on the issue. Best of luck.
P.S. Do you have any pictures of the site?
Fort Gilmer (Phenix City Al.)
In Phenix City Al. their is a dirt fort on top of one of the heightest hills in town . The Board of Edcuation owns the land the fort sits on . Four wheelers have just about destroyed this fort . I tried 20 year ago to get something done about saving the fort but they said their were no funds to do anything about it.They finaly put up a marker telling about the fort , but not preserving it. Does anybody know way's to get this fort preserved . This fort was from the last battle of the Civle war to take Columbus Ga.
Civil War Battlefields
The writer of this article is so on base. First of all, I am a military history buff(civil war first), second I am a veteran, and third I am a guy. If we don't do what we can now to protect and preserve these battlefields, our generation, will rightly so, be blamed for the loss of these irreplacable historic sites. Mr. Aloysius mentions the Civil War Preservation Trust, which I am a proud member. This organization has saved over 25,000 acres of endangered battlefields over the last few years and is still fighting to save more. The Wal-Mart fight in the Wilderness is at the top of their list right now. This is one fight we can't afford to loose. The brave men in blue and gray who fought there in May of 1864 deserve better than what Wal-Mart has in mind for them and their memory. Let's keep fighting the good fight. God bless America and God bless these heroes who fought on these fields so long ago.
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