Gettysburg

For 3 days in July 1863, a Pennsylvania market town of about 2,400 people became the site of the largest battle ever fought in North America. When it was over, the 2 armies had suffered roughly 50,000 casualties between them, and Gettysburg was a town of field hospitals and shallow graves.

The battle came almost by accident. Robert E. Lee had marched his Army of Northern Virginia north, and the roads of the region met at Gettysburg like spokes on a wheel. On July 1, Confederate forces pushed Union troops back through the streets to Cemetery Hill. On July 2, the fighting moved south, to Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard and Devil's Den. On July 3, Lee sent about 12,500 men across an open mile of farmland in what came to be called Pickett's Charge. It failed, and Lee retreated to Virginia.

Photographers arrived within days. Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan were on the field while many of the dead were still unburied, and their pictures shocked the public. It is now well established that at least one of the most famous images, a dead Confederate soldier among the rocks of Devil's Den, was arranged. The body was moved to make a better composition. That does not make the pictures false, but it is worth knowing that a camera on a battlefield was already telling a story.

The prints are a different thing entirely. The grand lithographs of Pickett's Charge were made for parlor walls, years after the fact, and they show a tidy, heroic fight full of flags and gun smoke. Put one next to a Gardner photograph of the same ground and you see 2 ideas of war at once.

Lincoln came in November 1863 to dedicate the new soldiers' cemetery. Edward Everett gave the main oration and spoke for about 2 hours. Lincoln spoke for about 2 minutes. The board also follows the battlefield after the war, through the veterans' reunions, including the big one in 1913 for the 50th anniversary, and the National Park Service brochures that teach it to visitors now.