Gettysburg

Vicki had never seen Gettyburg, and I hadn't seen it since the early 00s when Rachel (a history major) and I visited it. We began at the visitor center and the excellent video there, narrated by Morgan Freeman, which gives the big picture. I was reminded of a bumper sticker that said "I want my life to be narrated by Morgan Freeman".

After the video you see the Cyclorama, a 360
degree oil painting depicting the battle; a special
building has been built to display the painting,
reputedly the largest oil painting and canvas
in North America; above is a tiny segment

The painting was done by the Frenchman
Philippoteax and his assistants in the 1880s and
displayed in such places as Boston and Philadelphia
(not Richmond nor Atlanta)

Honest Abe in his Bubba Gump pose

What's a minie ball worth these days?

The Union's General Abner
Doubleday, who, if he did not invent
baseball, popularized it among the
Union troops during the war; it was
played according to "New York rules"
in those days; Doubleday was from
Cooperstown; oh, yes, he was a hero
at Gettysburg, too

Looking back toward Seminary Ridge

Part of the Lutheran seminary, as it was in the
1860s

From Seminary Ridge, we drove Confederate
Avenue, which leads through the entire battle
line of the rebels; and then up the Roundtops
to Cemetery Ridge, which the Federals defended

Artillery where Hill's batteries were located

At the Virginia memorial, looking across the field
to the Union side

The Virginia memorial, the largest Confederate
memorial, among scores of them

Gen. James Longstreet, Lee's "Old War Horse," who
differed with Lee on the battle plan July 3, and told
him "It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men
ever arranged for battle can take that position";
Longstreet, a great general. has been reviled in
the South for 150 years; two months after his
triumphs at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville,
Lee suffered from what the Japanese later described
as "the victory disease"

Now turning to the Union battle line

The Pennsylvania memorial

Among the scores of Union memorials

The "angle"; just to the right is the "high water
mark," where the rebels briefly breached the
Union line 

Looking back across that field of death (Pickett's
Charge," etc.) to the Virginia memorial

"After Gettysburg": from the fall of
Vicksburg on July 4th, 1863, that war
was mostly about U. S. Grant; nearly
all the Union victories prior to
Gettysburg, in the West, were Grant's
too

Sunset over Gettysburg

An unforgettable place, so recently desecrated by
Trump...