All Hallows and All Saints at Gettysburg

Me on Little Round Top teaching near Gouverneur Warren Monument

Well my friends I have been up in Gettysburg the past two days, actually I drove up with my class for the Staff Ride on Friday. Last night which was Halloween I toured the Jenny Wade House which is according to those that pursue the paranormal is consistently rated one of the haunted spots in the United States, since the house sits not twenty feet from the hotel that I stay each time I come up here, that is fascinating because ever since I was a kid and saw a misty figure in my grandfather’s bedroom where I was sleeping since he was in hospital back in early 1970 I have been fascinated with such things. But I digress…

Anyway, today was a good day out with my students and their families as del walked the battlefield in some very cold and raw weather, yes winter is coming sooner than any one of us want to admit….

Anyway, I always feel a special, almost spiritual connection to those who fought and died at Gettysburg. Walt Whitman wrote in his poem “Ashes of Dead Soldiers”:

Ashes of soldiers South or North, As I muse retrospective murmuring a chant in thought, The war resumes, again to my sense your shapes, And again the advance of the armies. Noiseless as mists and vapors, From their graves in the trenches ascending, From cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee, From every point of the compass out of the countless graves, In wafted clouds, in myriads large, or squads of twos or threes or single ones they come, And silently gather round me…”

After dinner with my student’s at the Farnsworth House I took a few minutes and wandered East Cemetery Hill where the Union forces helped hold back the army of Robert E. Lee. I have been to the hill many times, but never after dark. It was surreal.

Monument of Oliver Howard at Night

Anyway, I will as always write more about Gettysburg, the battle, campaign and the people but tonight just a thought that sometimes things remain that we cannot explain, As Joshua Chamberlain wrote:

“In great deeds, something abides. On great fields, something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls… generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.”

I am one of those people, a member of a generation who knew them not but one who is heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them.  And yes, for me, ever since my first visit to this hallowed ground in the spring of 1997, the shadow of a mighty presence wraps me in its bosom, and the power of their vision passes into my soul.

Today as always I took my class around the battlefield and traced the events of July 1st and 2nd 1863, days when tens of thousands of men were killed, wounded, or captured. This evening I went to dinner with about half of the group, and met for a couple of beers as well as interesting talk with some others after my stroll on the dark Cemetery Hill. Tomorrow I will lead my class to Culp’s Hill, and then back across the battlefield where we will trace the route of Pickett’s division during Pickett’s Charge, before we discuss the High Water Mark of the Confederacy, take a group photo at General George Meade’s headquarters behind Cemetery Ridge and going on to the Soldier’s Cemetery where Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address.

I am going to try to get some rest since we “fall back” in a couple of hours. It would be nice to sleep. However, since my sleep so resembles what Gouverneur Warren described in 1867. Warren recounted in a letter to his wife:

“I wish I did not dream so much. They make me sometimes to dread to go to sleep. Scenes from the war, are so constantly recalled, with bitter feelings I wish never to experience again. Lies, vanity, treachery, and carnage.”

Have a nice night and a better tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+