Volume_29_Issue_3

Preservation & Progress Volume 29, Issue 3 11 An easily overlooked, but magnificent story of Gettysburg, is how compassion swiftly took the place of conflict. The residents of Gettysburg—no matter their class, race, or gender—sprang into action. Healing began by tending to the family of one of the town’s own: a young woman named Jennie Wade was randomly shot dead in her home while baking biscuits for the soldiers, the only civilian casualty of the battle. George and Elizabeth Spangler had a thriving farm near the battlefield. Their farm was transformed into a crisis center when the property was taken during the battle by the Union Army for a field hospital. Surgeons treated an estimated 1,800 soldiers there, both Union and Confederate, including Confederate General Lewis Armistead who helped lead the last major attack on the third day of the battle, famously known as “Pickett’s Charge.” Conditions were gruesome. One soldier recalled, “… hundreds have had limbs amputated, the barn more resembled a butcher shop than any other institution.” Yet, compassion replaced conflict. Rebecca Price , a volunteer nurse from the Union Army who was stationed at Spangler said, “Those who wore gray were cared for with our own boys in blue, as they lay side by side in the same tents.” Quaker nurses streamed in from adjoining towns to care for the wounded. Lydia Hamilton Smith —who had an African mother and Irish father—took a wagon into the countryside each day to gather supplies to help restock the town of Gettysburg. Gettysburg citizens were also tasked with the unthinkable task of burying the dead. Elizabeth Thorn took matters into her own hands by helping bury over 100 men while she was six-months pregnant, which is why there is a monument to a pregnant woman at Gettysburg. Gettysburg resident and attorney David Wills was designated by Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtain to organize the proper burial of Pennsylvania’s dead. Wills hosted a meeting of fellow state agents in his home, giving birth to the idea of a Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Governor Curtain authorized Wills to purchase 17 acres of land on Cemetery Hill, engaging landscape architect William Saunders to design the now-famous cemetery. Wills felt it was critical to appropriately consecrate the cemetery and issued invitations to dignitaries, including President Abraham Lincoln . Wills wrote: “It is desired that, after the Oration (given by Edward Everett), you, as Chief Executive of the Nation, formally set apart these grounds to their Sacred use by a few appropriate remarks.” Meanwhile, Basil Biggs was a free black man living in Gettysburg at the time of the battle. A veterinarian by trade, he and his family fled during the fighting out of fear that if captured they would be sent South into slavery. He had special reason to worry because he was allegedly a conductor in the Underground Railroad that spirited enslaved African-Americans to freedom. Ironically, his farm became a Confederate field hospital. The Biggs’ family returned to Gettysburg immediately following the fighting and Basil was commissioned to lead a crew of free blacks to disinter the Union dead and reinter them in the newly formed Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Mr. Biggs and his crew literally laid the ground so that Lincoln could deliver the words that called for “a new birth of freedom.” Lincoln’s “few appropriate remarks,” now famously known as The Gettysburg Address, are remarkable. Not only for his use of rhetoric but also for the tone. He doesn’t speak of the progress of the war, nor gloat about Union victory at Gettysburg; instead, Lincoln speaks with humility about sacrifice, healing, remembering, and what it means to fight for a more inclusive democracy. His Address was a welcome juxtaposition to the angry divisiveness of the war. Along with the citizens of Gettysburg, Lincoln started down a path to civility and healing that has been carried on for the last 155 years. Veterans from both sides of the battle returned to Gettysburg in 1913 to honor the fallen, reminisce with their friends, and extend their hands to their former enemies over fences where they once fired. The Eternal Light Peace Memorial was dedicated by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1938, at the 75th battle reunion, with the inscription: “Peace Eternal in a Nation United.” Its flame was lit by two 91-year-old Union and Confederate veterans and served as the inspiration for the eternal flame that burns at the grave of President John Kennedy. The Eternal Light’s flame still burns brightly on the grounds, serving as a stark reminder that Americans are so much better off when united, when conciliation triumphs over conflict, inclusion over division. Today, we must continue to reflect on the enduring relevancy of Lincoln’s stirring, closing words in the Gettysburg Address: “… that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion— that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”