Gettysburg Battlefield Museum: A Pennsylvania Family Day Trip

The American Civil War began in April 1861 with the bombardment of Fort Sumter in South Carolina. But the buildup had been building for decades. The Northern states and Southern states increasingly grew apart over the issue of slavery, with many in the north pushing for abolition and the south believing that an end to slavery would destroy its way of life.
The election of President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who opposed the expansion of slavery, in 1860 led 11 southern slavery states to secede and form the Confederate States of America. Hostilities began when federal troops refused to surrender Fort Sumter.

The battle of Gettysburg was the climax of southern General Robert E. Lee's plan to bring the war to northern soil. The confederates' defeat is widely seen as one of the major turning points in the war, and the north was never again threatened with invasion. The war ended in 1865.

The war and its causes are the subject of a 25-minute film that is the first thing a visitor sees at the museum. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, the movie does a good job of introducing the issue of slavery and why it tore the country apart when it did. Marcia Gay Harden and Sam Waterston help provide the voices for the film.

The movie also probes and examines the cause of freedom in the United States, an issue that still resonates today for many, many Americans.

After the movie you go up the escalator to a room containing the Gettysburg Cyclorama. Officially called The Battle of Gettysburg, the painting is just stunning. It encircles the room and places you in the middle of Pickett's Charge, the final attack by the Confederates on July 3, 1863. The cylindrical painting is an amazing 377 feet in circumference and 42 feet high, and was originally displayed in Boston in 1884.

The museum did a great job with the surroundings, placing bushes and other landscape features in front of the panting to make it even more realistic. Apparently this is the type of setting the original artist, Frenchman Paul Philippoteaux, originally designed the painting to be displayed in, and it works wonderfully in putting you in the scene.

The artist and his assistants painted the cyclorama only after interviewing several of the survivors of the battle and after visiting the battlefield. Even so, it is not 100 percent accurate, the park ranger tells us. The artist, for instance, put himself in the field as a participant in the battle! The painting is one long canvas, and the oil on it weighs four tons, the ranger said.

Above is a small part of the cyclorama, taken from the park service's brochure.

After the cyclorama you cross a lobby where a video shows how to load and fire a musket, instructions that my son listened to with a lot of interest, and enter the museum proper.

Be prepared to become immersed in the Civil War for several hours.

The museum begins with a history of slavery in the United States and why there was a growing breach between North and South over the issue. There is a very nice interactive display that contains speeches and recitations on the issue from every state in the country, so you can listen to what your own statesmen had to say about the issue at the time.

The museum carries you through the war's initial attack on Fort Sumter all the way through the surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, giving weight to most of the major battles in between such as Antietam and Chancellorsville.

Throughout the museum are short videos produced by the History Channel on different aspects of the war, and that also helped put things in perspective. Non-combat exhibits included displays on training, treating the wounded, and the home front. There's a room dedicated to the Gettysburg address, and one that shows the hardships that fell on the people in Gettysburg who had to deal with the dead and wounded after the battle.

The Battle of Gettysburg was a major turning point of the war. It was also incredibly bloody. Historians estimate as many as 46,000 to 51,000 men were killed, wounded or missing during the three days, with the Union side suffering 23,055 casualties. Confederate records were unreliable, with the estimates of Confederate casualties running from 23,000 to 28,000.

One of the more touching exhibits in the museum was a wall called ''Faces of the Battle.'' The wall is divided in half, with one side containing dozens of photos of Union soldiers who were casualties during Gettysburg, identified by state and name. The other side contains an equal number of photos of Confederates, identified similarly.

Step a few feet back, just far enough that you can't read the name of the their states, and it's hard to tell the northerners from the southerners. The faces, the haircuts, the expressions are similar, and all of them come across as just young men full of expectations of the future. They look like countrymen, every one.

I guess that's why Civil Wars are the saddest wars of all.

Pickett's Charge Reaching the Union Center at the Battle of Gettysburg, American Civil War

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Battle of Gettysburg - Civil War Panoramic Map
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