July 23: The Battlefield at Gettysburg

Today was a wonderful day, if not tiring...
Began early because we were advised to be there at 8 am in order to get a personal guide for a tour of the battlefield. Of course, we were there early....like 7 am. We took the guy at his word; and we were first....ahhhh....about 1/2 hour before anybody else showed up at the visitor center.
This is the 36 star American flag; I had never seen one before. But the Union flew this flag throughout the war, even though the Confederate States had seceded from the Union....or so they thought.

Our early bird tactics paid off. This is Bill, an extremely knowledgable man about the Battle of Gettysburg. He has read so much about the war and all of the personalities, i.e. generals, etc., in it, that he has actually figured out his ideas about their motive, the reasons behind what they did, etc. He had the psyche of the personalities all figured out. He said that this battlefield was way too small for all the egos unleashed there in the north and the southern troops.

Here Bill is explaining some dynamics of of a part of the three battles.

General Meade had a "fish hook" strategy. It was their line of defense andn was about 3 miles long. Behind that was the protected area: food, injured, weapons and supplies. Bill used these hand made "teaching tools" to explain this theory. The larger hook was General Lee's line, and it was about 5 miles long. It was too long to send messages back and forth.

This is Little Round Top (to the left of Big Round Top). It was the eye of the Union fish hook. It was from the middle of the fish hook that the Union blew apart Pickets Charge.

Bill had all of this so well digested and explained, it made everything so real. One thing we figured out by the end of our 2.5 hour tour was that he had 2 different presentations: one if his people on the tour were northerners, and another for southerners. This means that to us he explained that from the end of the battle on July 3, Lee was defeated and retreated to south of the Blue Ridge Mntns. to leave Pennsylvania. To southerners, who still think the battle was a "draw" between the two armies, Lee just withdrew to the south to regroup his soulders. OK....whatever it takes. They are still fighting the Civil War.

Was an educational day...

Until we connect again....