Today we have finished our tour of the battlefield of Gettysburg and passed through the museum that is here. In the museum we viewed the massive Gettysburg Cyclorama. Completed in 1883 by the Frenchman Paul Philippoteaux, it is 22 feet high and 359 feet in circumference. It was truly an amazing work, depicting the struggle as Picket's division smashed through the union center but was quickly encircled on the third and final day of fighting. The museum that is a part of the complex illustrates the point that these soldiers were all normal men.
Both sides were forced to conscript large numbers of men. Many believed the war would be over quickly, and none desired the carnage that would follow. As the war raged on, especially after Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg, it become increasingly apparent that the South's cause was hopeless. Yet they fought on. These men knew what they believed in and they fought for a cause, a transient ideal which gradually become hopeless. These men fought not for revenge, or money, or territory, or slaves. The men fighting and dying at places such as Gettysburg did not fight and die to keep or free slaves. They fought because they believed in their right to government. They were independent and committed. For the northerners, under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln, they fought to preserve the idea of union. Union had meaning to them, one that would be utterly lost if they compromised. For the South, they fought under the leadership of men like Jefferson Davis and Robert Lee. Lee was a respected army general and kept many friends in the northern army. He could have been Lincolns right hand man, and he was severely grieved to learn that his beloved Virginia had succeeded. But he fought because he believed in loyalty; loyalty to what one has been taught and to protected the rights of his fellow man. Both sides are examples to the ages of what duty is. On the top of little round top, overlooking the hillside where so many men died grotesque deaths, there is a memorial to a union regiment. On the sides it has the words, FRATERNITY and DUTY. These men, on both sides, did their duty to the bitter end.
"We cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . ."
Well said.
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