Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

As you may have picked up in reading this blog, I am not a fan of war (who really is?), and I don't much like visiting war memorials.  To me, it's a shame that all over the country you are practically tripping over one war memorial after the other, yet we have to go out of our way to find the much less common Peace Gardens or other tributes to the endorsement of non-violence.  As luck would have it (dumb luck), 2011 marked the 150 year anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, and we happened to be touring in the areas where key battles and events of this war are commemorated, most especially the Battle of Gettysburg.

I simply cannot fathom how Americans fighting one another for four years, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers and an undetermined number of civilian casualties, could ever happen. Historians estimate the death toll at 10% of all Northern males 20–45 years old, and 30% of all Southern white males aged 18–40. The Civil War remains the deadliest war in American history, with the 3 day Battle of Gettysburg claiming between 46,000 - 51,000 lives.

But however much the topic of war distresses me, there was no way we couldn't visit Gettysburg while in Pennsylvania.  Miles and miles, acre upon acre on the edges of town are set aside in a permanent memorial to those who lost their lives in this bloody battle.  There is a museum and visitor's center as well, and countless war artifacts everywhere you turn.  To me it felt quite eerie to be walking upon the very spots where so many lost their lives.  Even as a part of me honors those lost lives, and I understand the innumerable memorials dedicated to so many young soldiers, I mostly just feel deep sorrow that it ever happened to begin with.