Back to Gettysburg
The National Park Service does a pretty good job of preserving our country's historic places, but the historical interpretation sometimes seems molded to conform to current presidential policy. By William Marvel
Thirty-eight years ago the Class of 1967 filed out of the steaming gymnasium at Kennett High School in Conway, New Hampshire, 133 strong, and most of us carried fresh diplomas. During the graduation ceremony there had been a great deal of talk about heading down the highway of life and fulfilling our dreams, and I took it literally. I handed my gown to my mother, retrieved a knapsack from the family car, and struck off down Route 16 with my thumb out, headed for Gettysburg.
For most of my seventeen years the Civil War had formed the focal point of my interest in history, and in Civil War history all roads lead to Gettysburg. As it happened, that trip provided an education of its own, offering my first glimpses of city expressways, ghettoes, and suburban tract housing, all of which offended my rural sensibilities. West of Philadelphia, though, the turnpikes gave way to straight, narrow roads that glided over broad expanses of lush, rolling farmland. Quaint little brick villages punctuated that fertile landscape, where Amish and Mennonite residents had only begun to see their culture exploited for the profits of others.
Ignoring the tacky tourism that infected the town of Gettysburg, I went straight to the battlefield. It was the first time I ever wittingly stood where legendary events took place, and my sense of cosmic connection to that not-so-distant past seemed even stronger than it does now, after nearly four more decades of immersion in the sources of that era. I spent three days there, subsisting on peanut butter and crackers and sleeping surreptitiously on the battlefield at night.
The National Park Service interpretation at Gettysburg focused heavily on the theme of national reconciliation. The riots of 1968 and the antiwar movement had not yet riven the country into hostile camps, and it was still possible to argue that the mayhem of the 1860s had forged a better nation, especially if one overlooked the civil rights failures of Reconstruction and the corporate victory over Populist America. It all seemed logical to a boy from the sticks, and it took half a lifetime of concentrated study to revise that misconception.
Last week I returned to my childhood Mecca, foregoing the hitchhiking and outdoor sleeping in favor of a fuel-efficient van that doubles as a motel room. The final approach was not so pleasant: one generation later, the pleasant vistas of southeastern Pennsylvania are nearly gone. In their stead lie broad concrete and asphalt highways bordered by endless miles of new homes and commercial excreta. Where such blight has not intruded, endless orange road-construction signs promise to bring it.
The battlefield remains nearly the same, meanwhile, except for a maze of one-way roads and a more obvious police presence. Backpacks such as I carried in 1967 are now forbidden in the visitor center, and I suspect that I might be asked to explain myself if I were again spotted wandering the park for three successive days, but the greatest difference that I detected lay in the historical interpretation. I overheard a park ranger haranguing a crowd of visitors about the Gettysburg Address, and just as I began to notice how much he sounded like a preacher he reiterated the George W. Bush mantra for foreign intervention: the men who died at Gettysburg, said the ranger, were all fighting for "freedom and democracy," so the United States could spread those ideals around the world.
Perhaps he forgot that the Confederacy was based on the very opposite of freedom. Perhaps he never knew that a significant percentage of Union soldiers held no sympathy for emancipation, and resented being tricked into fighting a war for abolition. Perhaps useful rhetoric trumps inconvenient fact, especially in the case of government-owned history.
That Orwellian distortion notwithstanding, my latest hadj to Gettysburg remained a pleasant excursion into my own and my country’s past. The Park Service has made extensive efforts to restore the terrain to its 1863 appearance by clearing overgrown pastures, planting orchards, and maintaining fields. Deer, rabbits, and rare birds still thrive under federal protection. There are still kindred spirits walking the battlefield with whom a historical hobo can commune, including teenagers seeking the truth of that watershed epoch. The challenges they face today seem even more daunting than those of my youth, but if they search far enough beyond the myths of official dogma, they may actually find it.
Click for Full Text!