Our friends in Baltimore recommended that we make a slight detour from our planned route to Gettysburg in order to visit Harpers Ferry. We're glad they did.
It was only about 50 miles out of our way, and well worth it. It made our day into a rare four-stater, touching Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
Like Appomattox Court House, Harpers Ferry is more of a museum piece than an actual town. The buildings have been mostly rebuilt after being destroyed by the war and repeated flooding. It's now a National Historical Park.
Geographically, the location is beautiful. The town is built on a rocky point in a river gorge carved deep into the Blue Ridge Mountains by the confluence of the Potomac and the Shenandoah.
Well, as deep as these dinky mountains allow.
Harpers Ferry was a hub of industry by the early 1800s. The energy supplied by two major rivers provided the power needed for a wide variety of manufacturing companies. The Lewis and Clark expedition stopped here to acquire most of the equipment needed by the Corps of Discovery.
By the 1850s, it was an important railway hub and a center for weapons production. Which is why John Brown decided to raid the armory here as the beginning of his plan to free and arm the slaves.
And why Lee made the town a main target in his 1862 invasion of Maryland. All the factories and much of the townwere destroyed by the war and the catastrophic flood of 1877.
What's left is a charming little tourist attraction.
There are several cute shops selling souvenirs and crafts.
We hiked up to Jefferson Rock from whence in 1783 our third president proclaimed the view "worth a voyage across the Atlantic." I guess they had lower standards for scenic vistas in those days, because we found it underwhelming.
Rather more picturesque were these overgrown ruins of St. John's Episcopal church.
The B&O railroad line still runs through the town.
And this 19th century ad for talcum powder is still visible on the mountainside opposite town.
The look of the rolling stock has changed, though.
This display made me wonder if maybe Putin has a point about Ukraine being corrupted by Satanic gays.
In Gettysburg, we bought tickets for a battlefield tour by bus the following day. We had just enough time (about two hours) to go through the very detailed museum at the visitor center. The museum has thousands of artifacts and gives a thorough, day-by-day account of the battle and its aftermath.
We were especially impressed by the section that deals with the consequences of the emancipation of the slaves, the betrayal of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the rise of Jim Crow, the rule of white supremacy, the marches and victories of the 1960s, and the necessity to continue the struggle for equality.
The high point of the museum is the cyclorama of Pickett's charge. It's a huge 360 degree painting, a restoration of the 1883 original. The original, by French artist Paul Philippoteaux and five assistants, took a year and a half to complete and stood 22' high and 279' long. The restoration is 42' high and 377' long.
It's impressive.
We had dinner at Dobbin House Tavern, right across the street. Built in 1776, the tavern is the oldest building still standing in the town of Gettysburg, a town that boasts over 200 very old buildings.
Dobbin House was one of the first stops north of the Mason-Dixon line on the Underground Railway. This concealed space between the floor was built to hide runaway slaves on the journey to freedom.
Like most tourist attractions, almost everything in Gettysburg revolves around one main theme.
There are dozens of statues of Lincoln, Blue and Gray sports bars, even Confederate gifts.
The next morning, we took a bus tour through the vast battlefield.
Our first view of Big and Little Roundtop, the southern anchors of the Union lines.
The view north from Little Roundtop looks straight up the Union line on Cemetary Ridge and encompasses almost the whole battlefield. Seminary Ridge, where Lee's army massed to attack, is clearly visible across the far fields.
Directly in front is the Wheatfield and beyond that the Peach Orchard, capitalized because they were the sites of some of the most worst fighting the battle. The fight in the Wheatfield is said to have been so intense that the soldiers were up to their ankles in blood. At the end, 4,000 bodies covered the field so thickly that you could walk across the battlefield without ever touching ground.
Looking southwest across the Valley of Death to the Devil's Den, the pile of rock at the curve of the road. The tree in the center marks the Slaughter Pen, where sharpshooters on both sides cut down hundreds.
The tour and the museum gave us a good overview of the battle. Later we hiked another section of the battlefield around Culp's Hill at the northern end of the Union lines.
Walking the ground where the fight took place gives you a very different perspective than just reading about the various incidents.
The battlefield is crowded with monuments placed over the years by the survivors and other interested groups.
The little stone block marks the right flank of the 68th New York Infantry during their successful defense of Cemetery Hill on July 3, the last day of the battle.
Stones marking the left and right flanks of the various regiments engaged are everywhere and really help give you a picture of the troop positions. Often a regiment, nominally 1,000 men, but probably attrited to around 300 at this time of the war, was crammed into a frontline of about 50 yards. New York regiments stood shoulder to shoulder with regiments from Ohio, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, every state in the Union, in a practically continuous line 4.5 miles long.
The temperature was about 85; the humidity was high; the hygiene was poor. And the troops on both sides were dressed in thick wool uniforms. Miserable even without the fighting.
Cannon have been placed to mark the positions of the batteries on the final day of battle. The tubes are real, but the mounts are reproductions.
There are two types of cannon at Gettysburg--the green-patinaed copper tubes are smoothbore pieces firing solid shot about a mile and canister at shorter ranges. Smaller black pieces have rifled barrels for longer-range (up to 4 miles) and more accurate shooting.
The woods are rapidly greening, the dogwoods and other flowering trees are bursting with color. It's hard to imagine the suffering and death that took place here all those years ago.
Gettyburg is one of the most studied battles in history. Towers like this one on the summit Culp's Hill were built to give military historians and tacticians a bird's eye view of the terrain where the most significant actions took place.
And to give gawkers like us a superb view of the surrounding countryside.
P.
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