Gettysburg National Military Park

What does a nation owe to those who serve it in time of war? Since its inception, the United States has struggled with this question. In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we share with you the story of one such soldier: Joseph Pierce of Berlin, Connecticut, by way of Canton, China. Though a work of historical fiction, few authors have better described the composition of the Union Army than Michael Shaara in his novel the Killer Angels. Of the Army ...of the Potomac he wrote, It is a strange new kind of army, a polyglot mass of vastly dissimilar men, fighting for union. There are strange accents and strange religions and many who do not speak English at all. Nothing like this army has been seen upon the planet. Shaara might well have been referring to men like Corporal Joseph Pierce of the 14th Connecticut. Pierce fought at Gettysburg and defended the Union line on Cemetery Ridge during Pickett’s Charge. At Antietam, Maryland, he had been wounded. A braver or more dedicated Union soldier would have been difficult to find. He was also one of the very few Chinese Americans to serve in the ranks of the United States Army during the Civil War. As a young boy he had been adopted by an American Sea Captain who had been visiting the far side of the world. He survived the war, but in the late 19th century was confronted with a host of exclusionist and racist policies put forth by the United States, including the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited the immigration of all Chinese laborers to the United States, and the Geary Act of 1892 which put additional restrictions on Asian immigration to the US, including those who were already citizens. His plight was reported on by the New York Tribune in April of 1894, which stated that he feared the new acts may lead to his deportation Joseph Pierce remained in the United States for the rest of his life. He died on January 3rd, 1916 and is buried in Meriden, Connecticut. He is remembered today by the 14th Connecticut Monument on Cemetery Ridge, and is included in the Wall of Faces in the galleries of the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum of the American Civil War. #Gettysburg #findyourpark #AsianPacificAmericanHeritageMonth * The image below, including caption, is from the official regimental history of the 14th Connecticut, published 1906 and available in full here: https://archive.org//historyoffourtee01/page/130/mode/2up

Reminder: Beginning May 1, 2021, the Gettysburg Foundation Museum & Visitor Center has returned to daily hours of operation and will be open daily from 9 am to 5 pm through September. See website for full details: https://www.gettysburgfoundation.org//museum-visitor-cente.

In honor of National #FirefighterAppreciationDay, we reshare this post from September 11, 2020. The New York Fireman’s Association (NYFA) aided the veterans of the 73rd New York Infantry to erect a monument in Gettysburg in 1897. The NYFA’s act of kindness was not its first in a long history of generosity. Before the Civil War, there was a strong relationship between the firemen of Columbia, South Carolina and the New York City Fire Department. For several years, the South Ca...rolina firemen traveled to New York to learn about new fire technology and effective ways to fight fires. The war put an end to this for a time. In February 1865, the Burning of Columbia left one fire department standing in the city. A year later, the city's fire chief asked fire stations across the country to help them rebuild. The NYFA came to lend their old friends a hand. On March 16, 1867, Harpers Weekly reported that the NYFA raised $5,000 to buy a brand-new fire engine for Columbia and painted the New York and South Carolina coat-of-arms on it. Unfortunately, the donated engine and equipment sunk off the coast of Cape Hatteras. The NYFA decided to buy more equipment and a better engine to replace what was lost in the ship’s sinking. For this aide, former Confederate Colonel Samuel Melton stated, Should misfortune ever be yours, I hope Columbia would obey that golden rule by which you have been prompted in the performance of this most munificent kindness to a people in distress. Melton did not realize it would take 134 years to repay that debt. The events of September 11, 2001 left the New York City Fire Department in tatters. 343 firemen were killed, and millions of dollars of equipment were destroyed after they responded to the World Trade Center. Principal Nancy Turner, of White Knoll Middle School in South Carolina reached out to retired Columbia Fire Chief John Jansen for help. He remembered the historic relationship between the two cities and decided to lend a hand. The Columbia Fire Department, White Knoll Middle School, and other partners raised $500,000 to purchase a new ladder truck for FDNY. Columbia firemen arrived in Brooklyn to dedicate the new ladder truck on June 2, 2002, 135 years after the New York firemen arrived in Columbia. #untoldstories #findyourpark #gettysburgnationalmilitarypark

Gettysburg National Military Park and Eisenhower National Historic Site have finalized changes to the Superintendent’s Compendium related to park hours and the appropriateness of organized, competitive recreational events on park roadways. Full details on our website: https://www.nps.gov/gett/learn/news/sc-update-may-21.htm

Follow along as our friends at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields National Military Park chronicle the anniversary of the decisive Battle of Chancellorsville!

We love this colorized photo from the 1920's, showing early visitors to Devil's Den. Gettysburg has long attracted tourists and educational groups to the battlefield, such as these young railroaders from Altoona, PA. Thanks to the Railroaders Memorial Museum for sharing!

One of the more mysterious characters in the #daystodedication story is Samuel Weaver. It is ironic that little is known about this man, as he played a central role in the creation of the National Cemetery. He was contracted to be the superintendent for the exhuming of the bodies of union soldiers on the battlefield. Meaning, he was placed in charge of opening the temporary graves on the battlefield and moving the Union dead to the cemetery. He was born in 1812 and worked... as a teamster in Gettysburg. In 1841 he married a woman named Elizabeth Rinehart. Together they had a son named Rufus Weaver. Rufus would also play a prominent role in the aftermath of the Battle. Rufus was a medical doctor having received his degrees from Pennsylvania College and Pennsylvania Medical College. He went on to teach medicine in Philadelphia. In 1871 his father was killed in a railroad accident. That same year he was asked by a group of concerned southern citizens if he would be willing to assist in the relocation of the Confederate dead from the battlefield. He was targeted for this work because his father’s records of Confederate burial locations had fallen into his possession following Samuel’s death. After considerable pressure he agreed and by 1873 he superintended the relocation of more than 3,300 remains of Confederate soldiers. They were shipped to Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Image: Samuel (left) and Rufus (right) Weaver. #findyourpark #encuentratuparque

How are you feeling this morning? Do you need to go see the Regimental Surgeon? Can you pass a Civil War medical exam? Join some of our ranger team as they explore another bugle call, Sick Call. Be sure to head on over to our Education page and follow along for more great videos like this one as we continue to follow The School of a Civil War Soldier. A video series focused for k-2nd grade on the life of a Civil War soldier. #bythebugle #findyourpark #gettysburgnationalmilitarypark #intothelandscape

As David Wills and William Saunders finalized their plans for the National Cemetery in August 1863, their next step was to reinter the Union dead into the cemetery. They began to craft advertisements for workers to aid in the reburial of over 3,500 Union soldiers, but the heat of August and an order from Union headquarters halted the entire process. On August 10, Major General Darius N. Couch, commander of the Department of the Susquehanna in Pennsylvania, issued an order to ...the townspeople of Gettysburg to halt all disinterments for the months of August and September. This not only blocked the reburial into the cemetery, but blocked families from other Union states to disinter their loved ones and rebury them back home. This order gave Wills and Saunders the needed time to lay out their plans for Cemetery Hill. However, it is estimated that over 1,000 soldiers between July and August were disinterred by family members and reburied back home. Most families only had letters written by doctors, officers, or soldiers describing what happened to their loved ones and where they could locate them. Some letters described landmarks near the burial sites to aide their efforts. Unfortunately, due to the poor weather after the battle and unfamiliarity to the area, families had a hard time locating the burial sites. In early October, word came from Major General Couch to resume the disinterments in Gettysburg. Wills restarted reburial efforts and families continued to travel to Gettysburg in search of their loved ones. #daystodedication #findyourpark #gettysburgnationalmilitarypark IMAGE: Union dead on the battlefield.

One of the most important steps in the #daystodedication was the design of the cemetery itself. With the military’s moratorium put on reinternments in late July, Wills and the cemetery committee had more time to allow their chosen landscape architect to create a fitting layout for the cemetery. In the decades prior to the Civil War, ideas about the design and use of cemeteries in Western culture were undergoing significant change. For centuries, burials occurred in churchyard...s or small family plots, but as the population of urban areas grew rapidly, landscapers began creating large, park-like cemeteries on the edge of cities and towns that doubled not only as burial spaces, but also as recreational parks where visitors could come to reflect on the memory of the dead and enjoy the open, green spaces. Having already designed Oak Ridge Cemetery in Illinois and assisted with the creation of New York’s Central Park, William Saunders hoped to follow this trend in Gettysburg. The plot’s long, slender shape led Saunders to arrange the graves in a semi-circle, at the center of which would stand a large monument. All of this would be surrounded by trees, shrubs, and a network of walking trails to allow for contemplative recreation. Originally, Wills hoped that the soldiers’ would be buried without any distinction for their state a truly national cemetery, but when other state agents argued against that concept, Saunders set his design to have a separate section for each Union state, one for the United States regulars, and two for the unknown burials. Saunders’s design would create a serene haven amidst the battle-scarred landscape, where generations have come to contemplate both the sacrifices made by those buried there and, as Lincoln put, the great task remaining before us. IMAGE: William Saunders’s 1863 plan for the Soldiers’ National Cemetery ("The Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg," 1874)

The concept of a National Cemetery was new to the United States. There were no cookie cutter plans for reference and David Wills was not a landscape architect. Wills would reach out to the War Department for help. A leading landscape architect in Washington, William Saunders would be sent to design the Soldiers’ National Cemetery here in Gettysburg. Born in Scotland in 1822, Saunders came from a long line of landscape architects. He would attend Madras College at St. Andrews... University before transferring to the University of Edinburgh to study horticulture and landscape gardening. After working briefly in London, William Saunders immigrated to the United States in 1848. During his early years in the United States he worked as a gardener in Connecticut and Maryland on several large estates. Eventually, he started his own landscape design firm in Philadelphia in 1854. While there his work included such projects as Rose Hill and Oak Ridge Cemeteries in Illinois as well as the plan for Hunting Park in Philadelphia. In 1862 Saunders would move again, this time to Washington DC to work for the US Department of Agriculture. He would spend the rest of his career here serving as the superintendent for the department's experimental gardens. While in this position he did far more than design landscaping. He introduced hundreds of economically important plants including 300 varieties of winter-hardy apples from Russia and the Washington Naval Orange, the latter of which revolutionized agriculture in California. His career was filled with many more notable accomplishments. Besides the introduction of many new plant species and the landscape design of the Gettysburg Soldiers National Cemetery, he also went on to found the National Grange of the Patrons Of Husbandry. His story is just one of many which made the vision of the Soldiers National Cemetery possible. #daystodedication #SoldiersNationalCemetery #GettysburgNationalMilitaryPark #USDA

Once it was agreed upon between David Wills, the State Agents and Governor Curtin, that a new cemetery would be constructed for the Union dead from the Battle of Gettysburg, the selection of a proper site for the final resting place began. This decision-making process would be executed in large part by David Wills, acting as an agent for the Governor. Wills decided that a fitting location for the cemetery would be on Cemetery Hill. This location situated near the middle of t...he battlefield served as an important artillery position during the fighting on July 2nd and 3rd. Purchasing the necessary land would prove to be a difficult task. In the preceding weeks David McConaughy and the Evergreen Cemetery board made verbal agreements with farmers on the hillside to sell their land to Evergreen and not Wills. These agreements had to be undone. Eventually, using state issued funds, Wills purchased five separate tracts of land which together formed the necessary seventeen-acre plot of land needed for the new National Cemetery. The site selected by Wills would eventually lead to some confusion for visitors to the park today. Many assume that Cemetery Hill was named for the National Cemetery however, that name pre-dates the battle as it is in reference to the Evergreen Cemetery which was opened in 1854. #daystodedication #findyourpark #EncuentraTuParque Image: The cemetery location as seen on the S.G. Elliott Map of 1864.

After his appointment, David Wills was tasked with handling the proper burial of the Union dead. Most of the men left behind by both armies were hastily buried and marked by temporary headstones. The sights, smells, and need to relocate the dead prompted Wills to act quickly. On July 24, 1863, two weeks after Governor Curtin’s visit, David Wills sent a preliminary plan to Governor Curtin. The plan explained that the Union dead would be reinterred to a permanent cemetery, org...anized by the states and regiments present at the battle. Wills negotiated with the 17 Union states present at the battle and reached an agreement to jointly purchase land to create a cemetery. However, this plan ran into some complications with the president of the Evergreen Cemetery Association, David McConaughy. McConaughy wanted to designate a section in his cemetery to the Pennsylvania dead and wrote to Governor Curtin for his approval on July 25. He also purchased 7 acres of land to expand for future Union burials. However, McConaughy was unable to obtain state support and approval to reinterred the dead into his cemetery. Wills, now in charge of the cemetery planning, disliked McConaughy and feuded with him over a possible location for the cemetery. Unable to put personal differences aside with McConaughy, David Wills decided that Evergreen was not the location to bury the Union dead. Wills was then tasked in locating a proper spot to relocate the 3,500 Union soldiers that gave their last full measure. #daystodedication #findyourpark #gettysburgnationalmilitarypark

If we could talk to Civil War veterans what might they tell us? Today, they'd probably tell us to go VOTE! Veterans of the battle of Gettysburg, especially Union veterans, often mentioned voting in their speeches on the battlefield. They understood that the Republic they helped to save at Gettysburg was only as good as the generation that inherited it. They believed and hoped that future Americans, inspired by their sacrifices, would carry on "the Great Task" of nurturing th...e American experiment. And so in that spirit we share with you the words of one such veteran... "...this day has bright omens for the future; the generation is now at hand that will make it possible for the humblest citizen to cast an honest ballot and have that counted. The generation is now at hand that will save this country to honest citizenship and ensure it unbounded prosperity. This is not the age for the pessimistic philosopher; he cannot flourish here where the soil was deluged with the life blood of brave and patriotic men as an offering to liberty. In this field of shafts that perpetuate the memories of noble lives freely offered up, he may unlearn his folly. He may here learn that the manhood of this Republic stands for all that is good in their kind and in the institutions of their country." - Capt. J. C. Johnson, at the dedication of the monument to the 149th Pennsylvania, Sept. 11, 1889

There was no greater driving force for the creation of the cemetery in the #daystodedication than David Wills. Born in 1831 in the northern part of Adams County, Wills moved to Gettysburg at the age of twelve with his widowed father and sister. Shortly thereafter, he enrolled in the preparatory school at Pennsylvania (now Gettysburg) College and ultimately graduated from the college in 1851. He then left Pennsylvania and served as principal and an instructor for a year at an ...academy in Cahaba, Alabama. Returning to Pennsylvania the next year, he began studying law at the Lancaster law office of Thaddeus Stevens. Wills was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1854 and opened a law practice in town. Two years later, he married Catherine Jane Smyser, with whom he would eventually have seven children. Upon reestablishing his roots in Gettysburg, Wills became thoroughly invested in the community and its social and economic development. He was elected a burgess of the borough and served as the first superintendent of the Adams County public schools, in which capacity he founded the area’s first teachers’ association. In the years leading up to the Civil War, he served as the president of the Bank of Gettysburg, and played important roles in the creation of the Gettysburg Railroad Company, which established the town’s first rail link (the same Lincoln would take to come here in 1863) and the Gettysburg Gas Company, which provided lighting for the town before the Civil War. By the time of the battle, David Wills had proven himself to be an ambitious man invested in the welfare of his community. When Govern Andrew Curtin need to find someone to manage the state’s affairs in the aftermath of the battle, Wills was the clear choice. Image: David Wills in the 1850s (NPS)

Join us as we dive #intothestacks to learn this week about one special map created after the battle, the Elliott Map. The "Into the Stacks" series is designed for teachers and educators to use in the classroom, demonstrating classroom ready material related to primary sources and the battle of Gettysburg. Be sure to check out the park Education page for more great videos and activities. #daystodedication #gettysburgnationalmilitarypark #intothelandscape

No pen can paint the awful picture of desolation, devastation and death that was present here to the shuddering beholders who traversed these localities Death in its ghastliest and most abhorrent forms everywhere. Festering corpses at every step It was a hideous and revolting sight -John Howard Wert July 6,1863 In the wake of the battle of Gettysburg more than 7,000 dead lay strewn across the battlefield. Some 20,000 more lay in field hospitals and homes throughout the ...town. The fields were littered with the debris of battle, fields trampled and stained with blood, orchards destroyed from artillery shells. Quaint farmhouses and barns were covered with dead and wounded from both sides. On July 10, 1863, Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania arrived to view the battlefield of Gettysburg. He was taken on a tour of the field and saw heads, legs, and arms of the dead protruding from the earth - the true horrors of war. As he witnessed hogs and other animals routing up the bodies of the dead he would ask, Is this any way to honor the dead? This question would spark the beginning of the creation of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg. Curtin appointed David Wills, a prominent lawyer in town, to be the state's agent in Gettysburg, seeing to the needs of Pennsylvania's wounded, and ensuring that the state's dead received honorable burials, preferably at their homes. Ultimately, he would play a leading role in the creation of the cemetery. The following months would be filled with exhumations of the dead on the field, the identification of the dead, and the care of the wounded left behind. Follow along as we begin to chronicle #daystodedication. All month we will be sharing the story of the Soldiers National Cemetery from the immediate aftermath of the battle to the dedication of its hallowed grounds and the famed Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863. #GettysburgNationalMilitaryPark #GettysburgAddress #findyourpark

Park Closure Notice: A gentle reminder...the park closes at 10 pm tonight. Beginning tomorrow, the park will close at 7 pm. Full details on our website: https://www.nps.gov/gett/planyourvisit/hours.htm.

As the sun sets on this final day of October, and as Americans begin the celebration of Halloween night, we can't help but to reflect a bit on the "haunted" nature of Gettysburg. Battlefield ghost stories and the search for the paranormal at Gettysburg are largely creations of the 20th Century. Those coming to Gettysburg seeking to commune with the unearthly might be surprised to know that as late as the 1960's few such spectral stories could be connected to the battle. Hist...orian Bruce Catton remarked on this in his 1952 book, Glory Road, writing of Gettysburg as a place that proved "that men killed in battle send forth no restless ghosts to plague comfortable civilians at night." Among the few that shared ghostly accounts of the battle was Union hero Joshua Chamberlain. In Through Blood and Fire at Gettysburg, Chamberlain's 1913 account of the Battle of Little Round Top, he shared a rumor that swept down the marching columns of the 5th Corps as they tramped toward Gettysburg the night of July 1st, 1863. Soldiers spread news that the ghostly manifestation of Gen. George Washington had been seen riding the ridges south of Gettysburg at sunset. "Let no one smile at me!," Chamberlain admonished his readers, "I half believed it myself, so did the powers of the other world draw nigh!" More common were the memories of veterans like Eppa Hunton. Hunton, a survivor of Pickett's Charge, was forever scarred by his time at Gettysburg, and loathe to see the battlefield again. I have frequently been invited to go over the battlefield of Gettysburg, Hunton would write, but I never could summon the courage to do so. To Hunton, Gettysburg was a place of ghosts. Not the spectral, supernatural kind, but the kind that haunt dreams and inhabit the darkest corners of memory. If I were to go over the line of our charge I would say, ‘Here fell Captain Green’; ‘Here fell Captain Bissell’; ‘Here fell Captain Grayson’; ‘Here fell Captain Ayres’ and a host of others. It would nearly kill me to see where so many brave men fell all of them among the best friends I ever had. #Gettysburg #FindYourPark

In the build up to the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, we'll be starting a new series on our Facebook page tomorrow, meaning will be pivoting away from our #Gettysburgparkhistory story for a while. We thought it would be appropriate then, to take a moment and reflect on where the park stands today. Gettysburg National Military Park is nearly seven thousand acres in size and sees just under one million visitors per year from around the globe that care about and for th...is wonderful place. The park succeeds at what it does through strong partnerships with organizations involved in preserving the Gettysburg story and its landscape. The park is also home to a highly motivated staff of park employees, dedicated to the work they do on a daily basis. In the coming years the next chapter of our park history will unfold, be on the lookout for upcoming projects concerning the preservation of the park’s valuable and beloved resources, new waysides for better understanding the battle, and new trails that will allow better access to this wonderful place. We are excited for the next series, set to kick off tomorrow, but for now we hope you have enjoyed our #Gettysburgparkhistory story thus far. Image: a visitor reading tablets on the Pennsylvania Memorial.