Pennsylvania Getaways: Gettysburg

The sun is still sleeping as I sit down to write this morning and I’ve been up for a while. It’s raining substantially for the first time in a long time and with recent water restrictions issued by the state, New Jersey certainly needed this.

I’m sipping on steaming Earl Gray from my favorite mug at the kitchen table while cooking a batch of steel cut oats on the stove. I hear them bubble and breathe behind me under my lax supervision and am already dreaming of spoonfuls swirled with hints of creamy peanut butter and real maple syrup.

I have been trying to think of how best to start this post for a few days now, with no luck. The words evaded me, creeping in my wake like the shadow of a silent army whose next move I couldn’t predict. Sometimes first lines attack by surprise and facing them becomes urgent.

This one’s about three days in July of 1863.

Growing up, I visited Gettysburg a few times with my family, my dad and my uncle being huge history buffs, but I was never quite old enough to appreciate the sobering significance of the town’s quaint streets and picturesque scenery: rolling hills dotted with clusters of trees, farms, orchards, rocky outcrops, and majestic monuments. This time felt different, however, and I went in more prepared to experience the weight of the place.

Driving through downtown Gettysburg on a Friday evening in early November, it wasn’t obvious that the town was much different from any other historic location we’d visited in the eastern US. The streets were lined with small businesses, shops, restaurants, and colorful, old buildings. The red brick sidewalks around Lincoln Square were packed with tourists on their way to dinner, drinks, or an evening walking tour, little shopping bags swinging in hand with purchases from specialty boutiques and souvenir shops from among the town’s plethora of offerings.

We continued on our drive down Baltimore Street to our hotel, Best Western Gettysburg, located in the historic part of town, across the street from the battlefield. On our way, we passed more historic looking buildings mixed in amongst even more gift shops, museums, art galleries, ghost tour companies, and taverns.

“That’s where we’re going tonight,” I said to Mike as we passed Dobbin House Tavern, gesturing to a stone house on our right, set back a little from the road. Each of its colonial style windows flickered with inviting candlelight and I found myself looking forward to dinner. I knew I had been there before as a kid, but couldn’t picture the inside other than a vague memory of a historical diorama of an underground railroad refuge.

We checked into the hotel, got settled in our room, and met my sister and her husband back down in the lobby. The restaurant was only a short walk from the hotel, but it was chilly outside and the cozy tavern, its waiting area appointed with a huge hearth and rustic, colonial furnishings, offered us much appreciated respite from the wind. We found my dad standing near the host stand among a small crowd of others waiting to be seated and he greeted us with his usual enthusiasm and urged us to go check out the secret hideout that was partway up a narrow staircase off the waiting room.

He looked around the little waiting area and said, “I don’t know where mom went.” We didn’t know either and had not seen her outside. While my dad went out to solve that mystery, the rest of us went to check out the underground railroad display. The crawlspace was even smaller than I remembered and contained life-size mannequin depictions of people in hiding within its cramped confines, representing a stop on their harrowing journey to escape enslavement, one fraught with peril and risk of capture at any turn, even north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

It turned out my mom had been looking for us outside along Baltimore Street, but we had come in from the road that ran behind the tavern instead and did not initially cross paths. Once reunited, it wasn’t long before a woman dressed in colonial attire summoned us all to follow her and seated us in the main dining room, which had a cozy, refined atmosphere with low-lit overhead fixtures and wooden tables adorned with blue and white dinnerware and candlesticks sheathed in hurricane glass.

We enjoyed the hearty tavern fare and good conversation, a highlight of which was when my dad dropped his voice to an awed whisper to tell us, “This is the oldest house in Gettysburg.” According to the tavern’s website, the house was built in 1776 and was the home of Reverend Alexander Dobbin and his family. Guided tours of the house are available for those looking to delve deeper into the home’s history as well as that of the Dobbin family. We, however, opted only to dine on this visit.

While at dinner, we established some plans to take a bus tour of the battlefield and visit the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Cyclorama the next day. After finishing our meal, we all headed back to the hotel and turned in for the night to decompress from the long drive and to get some rest. While the room was very comfortable, I won’t pretend like I wasn’t a little worried I’d wake up in the middle of the night to find the ghost of a civil war soldier hovering by the foot of the bed. Pushing my irrational fears of phantom soldiers aside, I slept well and, needless to say, my worries did not materialize.

I’ve been to many a historic place with my family, but we frequented Gettysburg more than others and because of this, I’ve always known that it holds a unique sort of charm for people fascinated by American history- and rightly so. The streets of the town and its surrounding farms, fields, and woods were, after all, the site of the bloodiest battle fought on American soil.

The bus tour was fine. In hindsight, we should have done the museum first and then the tour, so that’s on me for booking our combo tickets in the wrong order. Personally, I think I would opt for a self-guided driving tour next time due to personal humiliation reasons. Our guide made lots of attempts at jokes that didn’t really land and it felt like being in some mobile, history class detention where the punishment was rapid-fire, pop quiz questions asked aloud at random, for which you paid $46 for the study material, but it didn’t arrive on time.

I’ll explain further. To my horror, I was called on by the tour guide as we stood overlooking Oak Hill and Ridge, after he gave a scenario during which my mind inconveniently wandered. I’ll relive it for you all now in hopes of processing it better myself.

After the bus tour was over, I buried my recent tussle with shame deep down with all the other fun stuff and we grabbed a quick lunch at the cafe in the Visitor’s Center. Next, we queued up for our timed entry to The Gettysburg Cyclorama film and painting. My mom was most excited for this part and I was eager to see the painting with the intriguing name that she kept mentioning.

The film portion of the experience, narrated by Morgan Freeman, was informative and interesting and provided a summary and timeline of the events and circumstances that led to the start of the American Civil War up through the battle of Gettysburg. It discussed the deeply rooted economic and moral issues upon which the elite of the American south had founded and sustained their fortunes: the issue of “Slave Labor” vs. “Free Labor”, free labor meaning that the laborer was free to earn income from the fruits of their own labor.

After the short film, we were led up to The Cyclorama, a striking, 360 degree painting depicting Pickett’s Charge. The massive oil painting is the work of French cyclorama painter, Paul Philippoteaux, and his team of assistants, and provides a unique insight into the experience of the battlefield on July 3, 1863, the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg. In more recent years, sculptural installations have been added in addition to the accompanying light and audio show and narration to further immerse the viewer in the painting.

The experience of viewing this impressive work will surely move any observer and garner their attention for the scale and chaos of the final day of the bloodiest battle in history fought on American soil that squashed General Lee and the Confederate Army’s final hopes of overtaking the northern states. The artist and his team visited and studied the battlefield nineteen years after the battle took place and gathered information using guidebooks, maps, and interviews with veterans in order to depict the scene with accuracy. If you go to Gettysburg, do not pass up the opportunity to see this incredible piece.

Armed with a visual of the battlefield in action, we headed into the museum. The Gettysburg Foundation website recommends allotting two hours for this museum, but if you are really interested in all of the details, civilian accounts, and original artifacts, it would be wise to allow yourself much more time. A few standouts from the museum for me were:

Three days in Gettysburg led to an estimated 51,000 casualties across both sides and one civilian death- a young woman named Jennie Wade, who was shot through two doors in her sister Georgia’s kitchen while preparing dough for bread to help feed the Union Army. She was originally buried in the front yard of her sister’s home with the help of Union soldiers, and has since been relocated to the Evergreen Cemetery, the site of Lincoln’s delivery of The Gettysburg Address, and not far from her beau, Jack Skelly.

On our final day in Gettysburg, we revisited some of the sites covered on our bus tour and some, surprisingly not. We drove up to Little Round Top and walked to the lookout to take in the beautiful, sprawling view of the fields and hills below and afar. Below to our left was the outcrop known as Devil’s Den. We walked down the hill to explore there further and vague memories of the place stirred in me at the sight of children running around and playing on and through the boulders. My first memories of Gettysburg from when I was a little kid involve climbing on cannons with my cousins and sister and wanting McDonalds. And they’d let that kid lead the Confederate Army? I don’t think so.

Gettysburg will play tricks on you. At times, it can be easy to forget that you are standing on what is essentially a sprawling cemetery because it is a place full of natural beauty, not to mention it has also been heavily influenced by commercial tourism over the years. But then there are moments when the picture becomes clearer: when you can imagine the drums and the cannon fire, the shots and the battle cries of soldiers charging ahead into uncertain fates, where you can smell the stench of fear and overwhelming loss in the air, see the grass stained purple with hot blood, soldiers and civilians collecting the fallen in the aftermath, following the muffled utterances of the wounded still holding on.

There is never a monument far to remind visitors of the immense sacrifice on both sides during this battle. Our tour guide told us that Gettysburg is one of the most decorated battlefields in the world and that wherever monuments were erected indicated where those soldiers fought during the battle. It was sobering and weighty as I knew it would be and I’m glad we went back together.

For our last stop on our trip, we visited the grounds of President Eisenhower’s farm. The house was closed for the season, but strolling around between the buildings and the helipad ended our trip on a lighter note than the image of craggy entrapment that Devil’s Den conjured up for me. I remember writing a book report on President Eisenhower in the fourth grade and I’ll just say that I didn’t do very well on it. I hope you will enjoy this post more than Ms. Masters enjoyed my book report. This concludes my Pennsylvania posts, so mourn or celebrate that as you will and, as always, thanks for reading.