Gettysburg is a town filled to the brim with gift shops. At each place, a story–an interpretation of the battle–is told through the souvenirs for sale there. No place, however, spends more time pondering what story their items tell than Gettysburg National Military Park. There, every item for sale aligns with the Park’s interpretive mission for the battlefield. No matter how small or mundane, each item has something to say about the battle of Gettysburg.
In the gift shop attached to the visitor’s center, alongside the fully stocked bookshelves and across from the Gettysburg-themed fudge recipes, stands a shelf full of that most unassuming of souvenirs: Snow globes. These snow globes do not depict Gettysburg, sleepy with the weight of a fresh blanket of snow, nor do they show the battlefield, obscured in a fog of floating smoke. Only the armaments of war are housed within. A miniature cannon sits permanently fixed atop a mini hillock, with a rifle and a sword leaning upon its side. Upon its base flies an eagle, imbuing the piece with patriotic sentiment and pride in our nation’s martial past.
However, despite this explicit Civil War imagery, this piece manages to remain noticeably nondescript. If one was to take off the Gettysburg National Military Park stamping, little remains that directly connects this piece to Gettysburg specifically. The hilltop that the cannon sits upon may be Little Round Top or Culp’s Hill or Oak Ridge, or it might be any hilltop on any Civil War battlefield across the country. The globe features no distinct geographic features or historical figures to distinguish it as commemorating the bloodiest battle of the Civil War aside from the labeling. The contents of the globe capture the essence of the Civil War generally, but not Gettysburg specifically.
But what does this say about Gettysburg National Military Park’s interpretive mission? In the ever-changing intermingling of history and memory, Gettysburg’s myriad tour guides, caretakers, souvenir hawkers, and consumer marketers have frequently aimed to make the historic town and landscape into a memorial not only to the battle, but also to the overall war in which it occurred. Gettysburg, we are told, encapsulates the full range of personalities, conflicts, complexities, and big questions that defined the Civil War. For many visitors, it is their first, and sometimes only, Civil War battlefield visit—a visit which, in one fell swoop, can educate, inspire, and provoke the visitor to contemplate the enduring legacies of the Civil War as a whole. In the same fashion, this snow globe—a snapshot of an iconic symbol of the war, stamped with the name of the war’s most iconic battle—seeks to represent the war and its timeless swaying power in its entirety.
The Park works to keep the landscape as close as possible to that of 1863. In a constantly developing and modernizing world, the Gettysburg battlefield has tried to remain in the nineteenth century as much as possible. The conflict is kept alive through the commemoration and memorialization of the battlefield. In many ways, although Gettysburg National Military Park’s interpretation of the battle is constantly evolving and the historical memory of the battle continuously contested, the park’s hopes for touching the hearts and minds of its visitors through that interpretation and meticulous preservation remain constant, and are much like this snow globe: The landscape—even with its myriad post-war and twentieth-century commemorative monuments and markers—is somehow timeless. It is to provide a snapshot of the Civil War and the nineteenth century as a whole, frozen in time, a living memorial to the battle to ponder with great wonder. It unfolds before the visitor, seductively beautiful, bucolic, and serene, silently waiting for the visitor to come along, to ponder, and to shake it to life.
In the days, weeks, and months following the Battle of Gettysburg, journalists and newspaper editors feverishly attempted to recapture the full details, implications, and meaning of the massive fight that had transformed one small, formerly obscure, south-central Pennsylvania town into a household name. While some reporters struggled to ascertain the exact facts of the battle amidst the chaotic aftermath, others wrote with clear political agendas intended to sway the hearts and minds of their readership and, in turn, bolster their respective side’s support for the war effort. Still others searched for meaning in the aftermath through the prisms of religion, world history, and other lenses. In this mini-series, students will explore the myriad ways that 19th-century newspapers, throughout the North and South, “re-fought” the Battle of Gettysburg, its factual components, and its larger significance in print in the immediate aftermath of the fighting.
In the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, commanders, soldiers, and civilians alike struggled to make sense of what really happened on the field. Often, even soldiers fighting on the same side and on the same field walked away with curiously different perceptions of the battle they had just endured. Additionally, in an age without instantaneous communications, the line between fact and fiction could be obscured, and rumors quickly turned into to “reality.” As first a trickle, and then a flood of first-and second-hand reports of the fighting at Gettysburg made their way back to the home front, both local and national newspaper publishers found themselves with a plethora of differing and contradicting information. Many newspapers, having no way of determining the cold hard facts, published stories that turned out to be less than true. However, other publishers, aware of the influence their pens wielded, capitalized on the confusion surrounding Gettysburg and its aftermath to bolster their respective war efforts, regardless of factuality. Two such articles, one published by the Northern New York Herald and the other by the Southern Camden Confederate, provide a glimpse into how the outcome of Gettysburg was construed or altered to serve ulterior motives in print.
Although these two articles stemmed from opposite sides of the conflict, they both overstate the gains of their respective nations, while understating the achievements of the enemy. Such reporting methodology was by no means unusual during the Civil War, but the extent to which each paper misconstrues events to paint its respective army in the best light possible ventures into the realm of the conscious spread of disinformation. The first article, published by the popular Northern paper, the New York Herald, paints the Union’s victory at Gettysburg as absolute. It opens with the direct statement that “the rebels staked their all upon the invasion of the North, and in losing the battle of Gettysburg have lost it all.” This characterization of the fighting leaves no room for misinterpretation: The Union utterly and completely defeated the Confederate army at Gettysburg. In fact, the paper goes on to claim, the victory was so complete that “a few skirmishes and guerilla fights will end the war, and our armies, as they advance, will occupy the rebel cities without opposition.” These are bold words from the Herald, and words which would not prove to be true.
Unfortunately for the North, the war would drag on for another year and a half, with the fate of its final outcome hanging desperately in the balance even as late as the summer of 1864. The solemn fact that, despite the hard-won victory at Gettysburg, the war was far from over is exactly why the Herald utilizes such uncompromising language: The war must go on after Gettysburg, and so the North must capitalize on the victory to combat war-weariness and continue to increase support for the conflict that had been lagging in the months leading up to the battle. This article, published on the 10th of July, 1863, appeared before the public eye only three days before the outbreak of the deadly draft riots in New York City. Many Northerners were tired of fighting and the Peace Democrats were gaining traction; thus the Herald understood that it must bend the facts a little if it was to improve public opinion of the conflict and maximize the influence of the battlefield victory on home front morale.
The other piece, published by the Camden Confederate, offers an exact opposite interpretation of what happened at Gettysburg. While the Herald’s language is a tad fanciful, it is still based on the plausible reasoning that if Lee’s army were truly destroyed, the war could not, in fact, continue for much longer. The Camden Confederate, however, actively spreads misinformation about the outcome of Gettysburg. Though the extent of the Union’s victory at Gettysburg may be up for debate, the reality of the Confederacy’s battlefield defeat is not disputable. Much in the same vein as the article from the Herald, this piece presents a complete and ultimate Southern victory at Gettysburg. “He [Lee] has been engaged with the whole force of the United States and has broken its backbone.” Any possibility of construing Lee’s withdrawal as a mere retreat is explained away by the fact that the Army of Northern Virginia is simply overburdened with wounded and prisoners that it must remove to safety, and that, after all, “Hagerstown is nearer to Washington than Gettysburg.”
While the propagandistic usefulness of this type of reporting is clearly evident in bolstering Southern support for the war, it is also worthwhile to note that the publishers of the Camden Confederate may not actually believe that the information they are reporting is inaccurate. The publishers note that they are receiving their information about the battle and its aftermath from the Richmond Examiner, a prominent Confederate newspaper based in Richmond, Virginia. The scarcity of accurate reporting in the South, especially in a place as far away from the action as Camden, South Carolina, means that Richmond was typically the determining agent in what was fact or fiction. If the Camden Confederate’s article proves to be untrue, individuals have nowhere else to turn to with blame than to the Richmond papers themselves.
The dichotomous narratives created by these two drastically different (content-wise), yet similar (methodology-wise), articles offer a further glimpse into the nature of reporting during the Civil War. As is true of much of today’s journalism, reporting did not always contain true, raw, evidence-backed facts, as both ulterior political motives and the difficulty of procuring reliable information in places so far from where the fighting occurred and in such a short span of time often blurred, if not totally obscured, the line between fact and fiction. Gettysburg may not have been the absolute victory that the Herald or the Confederate speak of, but due in large part to the written words of both battle participants and period newspapers such as these, how the public has perceived its outcomes and aftermath has been ever shifting, whether it be a week after the battle, or a century-and-a-half.
Sarah Kipp is the Conservation Coordinator for the Land Conservancy of Adams County, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the rural landscape of Adams County, Pennsylvania. She recently sat down with CWI Fellow, McKenna White ‘25 to talk a bit about the Land Conservancy and how people can get involved.
CWI: “First and foremost, what is a Land Conservancy and what do you at the Land Conservancy of Adams County do?”
Kipp: “The kind of organization that we are called is a Land Trust, which means that we’re a qualified conservation organization that can either preserve land using land acquisition, which means we would own the property outright, or through a conservation easement. A lot of Land Trusts do both, sometimes they have properties that they own and then open to the public nature trails, nature preserves, things like that, but we actually don’t do any active pursuit of land acquisition.
All the land that we preserve is through a Conservation Easement, which is a tool that preserves open land including farmland, open space, and natural habitats through deals with private landowners who decide to protect their property in perpetuity. A conservation easement is a unique tool that we can use in this country based on our legal system that allows property owners to permanently encumber their property in a way that protects its open space value. It is a perpetual document that gets reported to the courthouse and associated with the property deed in perpetuity. Basically, it identifies the particular resources of the property and then limits activity and uses in the future to protect those resources.
The main things that they typically do are: 1) limit subdivision and development by either limiting how much impervious surface can be on the property, ie. limiting rooftops and pavements, or 2) identify a particular location on the property where all buildings have to be clustered so that the rest of the property remains open. We also restrict activity use and uses that would be incompatible with protecting the resources there. If it’s a farm, we might require that they follow a conservation plan so that it’s sustainable agriculture. If it’s forest land we require that they follow a forest management plan so that they are still trying to maintain sustainable woodland. And of course, it would limit things like oil and gas extraction that would be environmentally detrimental to the property. Those are also things that we totally prohibit from happening in the future.
Every time that property is sold to someone else or passed on to heirs, the future property owners have to adhere to the easement terms. Our responsibility as the land trust, the conservation organization, is to work with those property owners, make sure they understand the terms of the easement and that they are adhering to those terms. We conduct annual inspections on every property just to check-in with landowners and report any changes to make sure the easements are being followed. We also have an obligation to legally enforce any easement if there is ever a violation. So, when we do the annual inspections, if we saw any kind of activity that wasn’t permitted, we would have an obligation to correct that; hopefully working with the property owner to correct that, but if not then we would take them to court.”
CWI: “When was the Land Conservancy of Adams County Founded?”
Kipp: “We were founded in 1995 and actually, when we were founded someone did donate a small amount of acreage to us. They donated six acres, so we do actually own six acres, but since then it’s all been conservation easements. Today we now hold 173 conservation easements, which is over 12,200 acres of land that is protected through those. For reference, the [Gettysburg] battlefield is about 6-7,000 acres, so we have 1 ½ or two times the battlefield that is protected lands, but of course the land we protect is all over the county.
Adams County also has a preservation program through the county government though they just do farmland preservation. So they do an agricultural program and they have protected 23,000 acres and Michaux State Forest has another 20,000 acres. We are actually quite small in the preservation game in Adams County, but always growing.”
CWI: “Apart from the landowners, do you partner with some of those other organizations that you mentioned earlier on projects?”
Kipp: “We do! We partner with county programs, because Adams County is sort of unique, especially on the western side towards Michaux, which is the steeper area with a lot of woodlands. Sometimes they get applications to their programs that have a lot of property with a fair amount of woodland which wouldn’t be considered for preservation through a farmland preservation program. So, sometimes we work with the landowner and the County to jointly preserve a property; we’ll do the woodland part and they’ll do the farmland.
The Land Conservancy receives both donated easements, meaning the landowner is just giving the easement to us without any compensation, but sometimes we also apply for grants that we get in order to compensate landowners for preserving their property. So, we work with a federal grant program called the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, which is through the USDA and through the Natural Resources Conservation Service. That’s one of our bigger funders. We also apply to the County for matching grants often through their grange based grant program.
We have partnered a fair amount with the American Battlefield Trust. They of course are focused on protecting more areas of the battlefield and the Land Conservancy also considers the historical landscape around Gettysburg to be one of our priority areas. We have protected a number of farms that aren’t in the boundary of the battlefield, but are privately owned and are in the historic district. The American Battlefield Trust has helped us with some of the projects as well because they recognize the value of protecting working lands and privately owned lands that retain that historic character around the battlefield.”
CWI: “Can you tell us a bit about some of the ongoing projects you are working on right now? If you have any? ”
Kipp: “We have a bunch! Typically we close on five to seven projects a year, so on average we preserve about 500 acres a year. This year is actually a little bit odd because we actually haven’t closed on any, but we will probably have a big December and finish a bunch of projects.
One of our bigger projects is in central and southeast Adams County; we’re working with Hanover Shoe Farm, which is a company that owns 2,000 acres of the county and I believe they are the largest Standardbred Horse breeder in the country. They breed horses for harness racing. So they are a big landowner and they have decided that they want to preserve all of their property and they are working with the Land Conservancy to protect about 750 acres. One of the properties is actually very large at 630 acres, which is much larger than the average farm size of Adams County at 130 acres, so it was a great opportunity for us to do one large parcel [of land] at once. Interestingly, we are doing it through a special category within the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, which is that federal program designed to protect grassland habitat. So we are protecting grasses of special significance with the intent of protecting habitat for grassland birds. The landowner in that case is actually going to change some of their management practices in order to improve habitat for grassland bird species. So that’s an interesting project that we are hopefully going to be finishing up this year.
We also have a handful of purchase easements we are trying to wrap up; we are actually working on one near the covered bridge which goes over Marsh Creek. The Land Conservancy has a bunch of preserved properties in that area; there is one missing piece in the middle but we are working on that property this year. We have a mix of properties, including some pasture, plus forestland and wetlands, so yeah, a bunch of things are ongoing.”
CWI: “For people who may not know, why is there a need to preserve the agricultural lands in Adams County?”
Kipp: “Agriculture is one of the bigger economic drivers of Adams County, apart from tourism of course around the [Gettysburg] battlefield, and we have a really unique agricultural landscape here. We have an interesting horse breeding part of southeastern Adams County, we have your standard livestock and crop operations in the central part of Adams County, and then on the western side, all of the Fruit Belt where we have 20,000 acres of consecutive orchards. Adams County is the biggest producer of apples in Pennsylvania.
So we have a really unique agricultural landscape, but we also feel that development pressure from a variety of places. We are close enough to Harrisburg to be a commuter to Harrisburg. We have pressure from people moving up from Maryland to avoid retirement taxes, so we get a lot of retirees moving up to this area. We are also a commuter [community] to those places like Frederick (Maryland), Washington D.C., Baltimore. Especially with COVID and more people working remotely, Adams County is one of the more desirable places to be because you are not too far from cities but you still get that rural, country experience. So we do get that gradual development pressure that happens. Pennsylvania also has a very strange municipal structure where Adams County has 35 municipalities which are all doing their own planning and zoning and not really coordinating regionally. That unfortunately means that we do not typically have very good planning for zoning that is in place to protect rural landscapes and keep our towns and boroughs compact.
Land preservation is really this way for us to protect open spaces when we don’t have good enough planning and zoning in place. We are trying to make sure that we protect our rural landscape and our quality of life here, while directing growth into appropriate areas when they already have infrastructure for those services like sewer, water, schools, etc.”
CWI: “What are some of the ways that people can get involved with the Land Conservancy?”
Kipp: “Ooh, there’s a ton of ways. We are very small, I’m the only full time staff, so we rely heavily on volunteer support. We have a volunteer board of directors and a bunch of committees that are all volunteer run to help us be the organization that we are. We have a conservation committee, which is all the people who are interested in the projects that we run. Every month they read reports of what the projects that we run are and what the status of them are. They are also the people involved with helping me with our annual inspections, so they actually get to go out to the properties every year and visit them.
We also have an events committee. We have a few major fundraising events every year so those are pretty much run by volunteers. We always need volunteers to help with organizing our events and helping on the event days. We are hoping to get more hands-on volunteer opportunities, so we are currently working on a hiking trail project in western Adams County where Boyer Nurseries is. So Boyer Nurseries and Hauser Hill Event Center and the Thirsty Farmer are all preserved properties and we are hoping to get a hiking trail that would connect them together. That would be a trail that would need to be maintained by volunteers for the most part, so when that’s up and running we will have even more need for people to get some outdoorsy, hands-on volunteer work.”
Pairing: Raftsman’s Journal, July 15, 1863, Image 2 (“The Victory at Gettysburg”) AND Union County Star and Lewisburg Chronicle, July 7, 1863, Image 1 (“Union Victory! The Gettysburg Battles”)
In the days, weeks, and months following the Battle of Gettysburg, journalists and newspaper editors feverishly attempted to recapture the full details, implications, and meaning of the massive fight that had transformed one small, formerly obscure, south-central Pennsylvania town into a household name. While some reporters struggled to ascertain the exact facts of the battle amidst the chaotic aftermath, others wrote with clear political agendas intended to sway the hearts and minds of their readership and, in turn, bolster their respective side’s support for the war effort. Still others searched for meaning in the aftermath through the prisms of religion, world history, and other lenses. In this mini-series, students will explore the myriad ways that 19th-century newspapers, throughout the North and South, “re-fought” the Battle of Gettysburg, its factual components, and its larger significance in print in the immediate aftermath of the fighting.
The Clearfield Raftsman’s Journal and Union County Star and Lewisburg Chronicle both published accounts of the battle of Gettysburg within two weeks of the fight’s conclusion. Published in two different, small, central-Pennsylvanian towns, Clearfield was comprised of fewer than one thousand people, while Lewisburg boasted just a slightly higher population than Gettysburg (2400) in 1860.[1] Unlike the larger papers rooted in urban hubs such as New York City, Philadelphia, or Richmond, small-town newspapers such as these likely experienced less pressure to include fanciful political propaganda about the war effort than did the major papers that both served as the political organs of those larger cities and sought to reach a national audience. Thus, while both articles from these small-town papers focus on celebrating the Union triumph at Gettysburg, they both do so through surprisingly up-front and level-headed reporting, despite varying in their overall area of focus and tone.
The Raftsman’s Journal’s “The Victory at Gettysburg” is the more exuberant of the two articles, with it boasting of the various ways that the Confederate army and citizens would be demoralized after the battle of Gettysburg. It begins with a broad overview of the battle, accounting for which side led after each day’s fighting, and then quickly shifts to a discussion of the battle’s various disheartening influences upon the Confederates that surely hung heavily upon them as they retreated south. Influenced not just by a sense of national, but also state-wide pride, the author of the article describes the “unsurpassed in the world” abundance the Confederates found when they invaded Pennsylvania, from the flourishing crops to the plentiful reserves of young men who had not yet enlisted.[2] The author claims that the Confederates would return South and tell their loved ones of the Northern bounty to the effect of “demoraliz[ing] public opinion in Rebeldom,” shattering the falsehoods that the Confederate government fed to them about the supposedly devastating impacts of the war on the Union.[3] On the contrary, the scenes greeting the rebel army were hardly the picture of a war-weary people, or of a land ravaged by war and on the desperate verge of surrender. Although the tone of the piece is somewhat boastful, the article is unique for its insightfulness not only on the impact of the battle itself on the now-weakened Confederate army, but also on the accurate depiction of how personal observances of the enemy’s heretofore unblighted landscape and untouched resources did indeed cause Confederate soldiers—as well as the communities to whom they wrote home—to rethink prior notions of whole-hearted northern desperation and physical weakness.
“Union Victory! The Gettysburg Battles,” published in the Union County Star and Lewisburg Chronicle, takes a more no-nonsense approach to reporting on the battle and spends most of the article describing how various generals fared in the fight. Rather than focusing on a defeated and demoralized Confederate army, the author informs the paper’s readers about the experiences and battle performances of several Union generals and lists those who were wounded or killed. Out of these generals, the most time is spent on General John Reynolds and the ramifications of his death on July 1st. It is clear that the author’s main task was merely reporting the news to the people of Lewisburg, a relatively small Pennsylvania town located northeast of Gettysburg, rather than projecting a sensationalized story to a national audience in competition with the political propaganda of other big-name papers. The difference in audience and reach thus likely allowed the author to focus more on a mere reporting of the facts (as they had heard them thus far, only a couple of days removed from the battle) to the paper’s readers. Like the Raftsman’s Journal article, the article conveys a sense of uniquely local pride as it mentions, in particular, the noble fighting of a few companies from the surrounding area while glorifying the fallen members of those companies for sacrificing themselves on behalf of “the Gigantic struggle of the Age between Liberty and Despotism”.[4]
While these two articles take different approaches to their descriptions of the battle of Gettysburg, their reports are far less sensationalized than many of the articles published in the major newspapers that followed the war. Free from the pressure of having to win over an audience from competing papers and divested of the responsibility to sway a nation’s heart and mind as to the promise and righteousness of the Union war effort, these rural, small-town papers dwelled more on delivering factual narratives and celebrating their “home-town” heroes. Of course, the papers still contain some bias (i.e, the claims to the utter demoralization of the Confederate nation, the emphasis on local hometown companies as the best-performing troops of all, and the claims to the state’s boundless war-time prosperity), but they also spend a significant amount of time trying to unpack the facts of battle and what their constituents could reliably take away as the major outcomes of the fight. Both articles use the term “victory” in their titles, yet they have vastly different tones, with the Clearfield article glowing triumphantly and the Lewisburg paper walking readers through the factual occurrences of the battle narrative. These articles demonstrate some of the more localized perspectives and agendas (or lack thereof!) of small-town Northern newspapers on the battle of Gettysburg and the war effort as a whole that often are overlooked in favor of the large-scale, sensationalized and hyper-politicized reports from the leading urban newspapers on each side. Nevertheless, like their larger counterparts, these papers, with their different angles and reporting tone, still remind us of the myriad of different ways that Civil War newspapers could interpret “victory”.
[1] “Clearfield, PA Population,” accessed November 4, 2022.
“Gettysburg, PA Population,” accessed November 4, 2022.
“Lewisburg, PA Population,” accessed November 4, 2022.
[2] “The Victory at Gettysburg,” Raftsman’s Journal, July 15, 1863, sec. Image 2.
“…none of the bounties of Providence when abused, are capable of producing greater evil to the human family [than opium].”
Moses Clarke White (Yale medical student), 1854
“Opium… bound me up with cords that God only knows how often I tried to break, and as many times failed.”
Albert W. Henley (Confederate Army surgeon), 1879
The United States’ opioid epidemic has cracked and destroyed communities across the nation, particularly in the Appalachian and Northeast regions. In 2019 alone, 70,630 people died from drug overdoses, while 1.6 million Americans were diagnosed with an opioid abuse disorder.[1] These numbers are unprecedented and have forced the federal government to declare a public health emergency. However, America’s battle against opioids and opioid addiction began 157 years ago with the conclusion of the Civil War.
The Civil War killed 750,000 young men and maimed approximately one million more. Soldiers returned home from the blood-soaked fields of Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Richmond, carrying both physical and emotional wounds. During the antebellum era and the war itself, opium, a substance derived from poppy seeds, was distributed to soldiers suffering from bullet wounds, amputations, or chronic diarrheal illnesses. Many women also relied on opium to help relieve cramping and, like Mary Todd Lincoln and famed South Carolina diarist Mary Chesnut, to combat anxiety, depression, or “general nervousness.”[2] It was often administered in a powder or pill form that was consumed orally by the patient.[3] However, as the opium-based drug, morphine became more common and hypodermic syringes were made available, physicians and army doctors began to administer the drug intravenously. This was the quickest and most reliable way to relieve the phantom pain of an amputated limb, the pounding of a bullet wound, or severe diarrhea or coughing.
For Civil War doctors, opium and other opiates were a miracle treatment. A Confederate medical handbook stated that “opium is the one indispensable drug on the battlefield—important to the surgeon, as gunpowder to the ordnance.”[4] After the war, an estimated 400,000 soldiers were addicted to opium.[5]
In the North, after the declaration of war in 1861, the US Army began to requisition enormous quantities of opium: Approximately 5.3 million pills and 2.8 million ounces of “opiate preparations.” Surgeons were encouraged to prescribe opium to soldiers for most illnesses and pain. In 1864, though the Confederate Army struggled to obtain medical supplies, physicians of the 2nd NC Military hospital included opium in 40% of their prescriptions.[6] Doctors and scientists were aware of drug dependency and addiction, at least in the most basic sense. It was understood that the more a patient is given a drug, the more resistant their body will become. However, opium was the best treatment solution for ghastly wounds and camp maladies. Because of the exorbitantly high rates of opiate prescriptions, post-war America had to grapple with a new, internal war. Some historians estimate that hundreds of thousands of Americans, both civilians and veterans alike, were addicted to opium by the 1890s.[7]
Union doctors administering opium to a wounded soldier
In 1876, an anonymous Union veteran published an autobiography of his opium addiction called Opium Eating: An Autobiographical Sketch. The soldier volunteered for the army in 1861 at the age of sixteen. He enlisted as a drummer because of this age, but his eagerness to fight caught the attention of an officer, who asked him to accompany the regiment to Stone’s River. The soldier later fought at Chickamauga on September 19, 1863, where he was captured with 5,000 other soldiers. After a three-week detainment in Richmond with little food, the soldier and his comrades were sent to the notorious Andersonville Prison in Georgia, where the prisoners were starved, abused, and executed. “ANDERSONVILLE! Dread word! Dread name for cruelty, and patriots’ graves, I stand paralyzed before thy horrid gates,”[8] the soldier recalled. The soldier was eventually transferred from Andersonville in September 1864 to Florence Prison in Charleston, South Carolina due to the military threat posed by General Sherman’s infamous “March to the Sea.”. In early 1865, he and his surviving prisoners were sent to Wilmington, North Carolina as part of a prisoner exchange with the Union Army. The soldier was free.
Andersonville Prison Survivor
“On getting home,” he wrote, “and taking inventory of myself, I found that I was but a skeleton.”[9] Sores broke out over his body, and he had difficulty consuming food. His most potent problem, however, was insomnia. He asked a doctor to prescribe him a sleeping draught, most likely laced with opium, to help him sleep. The doctor was reluctant, but eventually capitulated. “I felt that the sleep would, even with taking it, much more than counterbalance all evil effects that would likely arise from the medicine, and I determined to procure it if possible,” the soldier wrote.[10] The soldier was able to avoid addiction at this time, but he was soon wracked by stomach pains and excruciating migraines. With trepidation, he consulted his town’s physician, who insisted on treatment via hypodermic injection. The soldier said he did not want morphine, to which the physician claimed the medication was opiate-free. His health slowly improving, the soldier returned to the physician only to discover that he was being secretly dosed with a morphine mixture via injections. He recalled, “The doctor soon found he had an elephant on his hands,—saw that I was in the habit; became tired of my regular calls for hypodermical injections, and endeavored to shake me off. After giving him fully to understand his culpability in the matter, we parted.”[11] Now officially an addict, the soldier began to purchase his opiates from a drugstore. The soldier’s account of the desperate hold that the drug now contained over his body is heart-wrenching:
“I discovered that the power to fight and overcome great obstacles in this life, and which had always served me in my struggles theretofore, and which I relied upon then, was the very first thing destroyed by the enemy, namely, the will. Here I was, then, an opium eater. The outward effects and injurious properties of the drug soon made themselves manifest: what was I to do? Quit it, some may say; but no one well posted upon the opium habit would use those words, so hard and feelingless. A reply like this, I think, would betray more wisdom and humanity: “Your case is wellnigh hopeless; I can give you no encouragement whatever; do your utmost to release yourself from the unhappy predicament in which you have been placed; and may God help you, for I fear you will need other help beside your own.”[12]
“When bachelor dens cast over waking hours a loneliness so deep,” c. 1904. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
The unknown “opium eater” continues his sketch by documenting the psychological battle he waged against his addiction. He details the cycle of pain, craving, relief, and shame that define the addict’s existence. In the 19th century, opium addicts, particularly men, were believed to be unmanly, weak-willed, and cowardly. They had few avenues for recovery or support. Often, if a person wanted to quit opium, they would have to endure unsafe withdrawal or “cold turkey” recovery, leading to more health issues or even death. The United States soldiers, who had survived so much death and bloodshed, were now engaged in an all-encompassing internal fight to heal their minds and bodies. Their struggle reveals that the American population has never been truly free from drug abuse and addiction. From the aftermath of the Civil War to the crack-cocaine epidemic of the late 1980s to the current Opioid Crisis, the United States continues to battle against the dark and dismal road of addictive drugs. Only time will tell if politicians and experts learn from the 157-year-old crisis that started the deadly pursuit.
In the days, weeks, and months following the Battle of Gettysburg, journalists and newspaper editors feverishly attempted to recapture the full details, implications, and meaning of the massive fight that had transformed one small, formerly obscure, south-central Pennsylvania town into a household name. While some reporters struggled to ascertain the exact facts of the battle amidst the chaotic aftermath, others wrote with clear political agendas intended to sway the hearts and minds of their readership and, in turn, bolster their respective side’s support for the war effort. Still others searched for meaning in the aftermath through the prisms of religion, world history, and other lenses. In this mini-series, students will explore the myriad ways that 19th-century newspapers, throughout the North and South, “re-fought” the Battle of Gettysburg, its factual components, and its larger significance in print in the immediate aftermath of the fighting.
The Wilmington Journal published both “The Bane and Antidote” and “Latest from the North,” just a week apart from each other, shortly after the battle of Gettysburg. Both articles are aimed at reassuring the Confederate readers of the paper of a positive outcome for the South, yet they accomplish this goal very differently. One article presents the battle as a clear-cut Confederate victory, while the other is included in the Wilmington Journal to demonstrate the supposedly desperately low state of home front morale in the North that had manifested in brazenly false publications of war propaganda, as well as the possible dangers of that Union propaganda to the Confederate cause, should it not be called out and condemned before the Southern reading public.
The first article, “The Bane and Antidote,” which was published July 9, 1863, promotes the battle as a massive Confederate victory, comparing General Robert E. Lee to Napoleon Bonaparte, and repeatedly (though erroneously) stating that 40,000 Union troops surrendered to him. Unlike many other post-battle articles that dwell on specific details of the fighting and the number of deaths and woundings, this piece focuses on prisoners of war. Such an emphasis is important as the article goes on to suggest that those 40,000 soldiers surrendered because they were tired of fighting, simultaneously making Northern soldiers seem incapable of continuing much longer, while emphasizing the Confederate determination to keep fighting (as they reportedly did not surrender at all). The article refers to Lee’s army as “never-defeated veterans,” compared to Meade’s “tired” army. Such a statement is clearly Confederate propaganda to twenty-first-century eyes, but not so to many of the readers of this paper. Juxtaposed with General Joseph Johnston’s July 4 capitulation at Vicksburg (the title’s “bane”), this article is intended to lift Southern spirits with the positive news of the Gettysburg “antidote,” despite the piece’s authors not actually knowing the battle’s results for sure or even how many days of fighting had just taken place at Gettysburg!
The editors of the newspaper reprinted the “Latest from the North” from the July 6, 1863, evening edition of The Baltimore American in the July 16, 1863, edition of the Wilmington Journal. This article includes many more specific details from the battle and argues that the battle of Gettysburg was a major Union victory that sent Lee into a disorganized and hasty retreat. This marked change in reporting was not due to any new knowledge acquired by the Journal’s editors, however. Rather, the editors included the article clipped from The Baltimore American merely to demonstrate to their readers the type of war “propaganda” constantly being disseminated throughout the North, which starkly contrasted with the victorious tone and supposed “facts” in their own articles. Such propaganda was supposedly both illustrative of the North’s sagging support for the war effort, as it demonstrated a desperate need for such a “fanciful” morale booster, and a pernicious attempt not only to falsely raise the hopes of the Northern public but also strike a blow to Southern morale. In an introduction that the editors added to the clipped article, they state that they still do not know the specific details of the battle, but DO know about The Baltimore American, which they describe as, “the vilest Lincoln sheet in all the North, and has lied more on behalf of the Lincoln dynasty, than even the New York Times, or Forney’s Philadelphia Press”. The editors made the concession that they received the article from a generous “friend,” yet still went forth in insulting The Baltimore American because they distrusted it so much. Even the behind-the-scene connections of supposed “friendship” were not enough to prevent the Wilmington Journal editors from showing their disdain for the enemy paper and its reporting, as they portrayed it as pernicious “propaganda”.
While the two articles approach the battle differently (and were each originally written for newspapers supporting different sides of the war), they were both written to reassure their constituencies that their respective armies were winning the war, and it was only a matter of time before the conflict would end. However, most interestingly, despite their vastly contrasting arguments, both articles also became key propaganda tools for the South: The Wilmington Journal brought both its own factually unfounded and wildly exaggerated reporting (pitched as truthful journalism) as well as The Baltimore American’s (actually impressively factual) article to the table as “proof positive” that the Confederacy had achieved not only a significant military victory at Gettysburg, but had sent partisan Northern newspapers into a flurry of panic and manipulative false reporting in an attempt to compensate for such a “disastrous defeat.” The Journal’s clever ability to weaponize both its own journalism and that of the enemy into morale-boosting tools to rally the fighting spirit of its Southern readers in the wake of two great battles— the outcome of one of which the editors truly did not even know—showcases the enormous power, influence, and cunning of Civil War-era journalism.
In the days, weeks, and months following the Battle of Gettysburg, journalists and newspaper editors feverishly attempted to recapture the full details, implications, and meaning of the massive fight that had transformed one small, formerly obscure, south-central Pennsylvania town into a household name. While some reporters struggled to ascertain the exact facts of the battle amidst the chaotic aftermath, others wrote with clear political agendas intended to sway the hearts and minds of their readership and, in turn, bolster their respective side’s support for the war effort. Still others searched for meaning in the aftermath through the prisms of religion, world history, and other lenses. In this mini-series, students will explore the myriad ways that 19th-century newspapers, throughout the North and South, “re-fought” the Battle of Gettysburg, its factual components, and its larger significance in print in the immediate aftermath of the fighting.
Although originating from the same victorious North—and originally, the same exact newspaper—two accounts of the Battle of Gettysburg from the New York Times and the Delaware Gazette demonstrate remarkably different narrative tones, in addition to dramatic differences in factual reporting. Variances in publication date, unfolding access to battle facts, the evolving political agendas of each article, and the different types of correspondents who contributed to each article likely are responsible for these differences.
Printed on July 6, 1863, the New York Times “The Great Battles” portrays the Union victory in overwhelmingly glowing terms, with fiercely proud (though false) claims that the Union army had taken the lives of several key Confederate generals and soundly beaten the enemy at every turn, though at great loss to the Army of the Potomac as well. Because correspondence networks and telegraph lines were still in their infancy, more prominent news outlets such as the Times had greater access to recent, if sometimes inaccurate, information than local papers and were all too eager to print it if it boosted their political agenda. As such, the July 6thTimes article zealously declared “the death[s] of [James] Longstreet and [A.P.] Hill” while also proclaiming that every rebel “charge was repulsed with great slaughter.” The New York Times most likely printed this incorrect announcement for two reasons. First, they wanted to be the first paper to report this potentially war-altering information to the country. Such a laurel would give the paper fame and clout. Second, the deaths of Generals Longstreet and Hill would have not only crippled the Confederate high command and southern morale but also would significantly bolster the sagging spirits of the Northern home front far more than merely trumpeting a general victory over a faceless enemy.
The July 6 Times article tries to assert its claims of truthful reporting of the facts by utilizing the actual dispatches of Union General Meade to Secretary of War Henry Halleck and a message from President Lincoln to the nation’s citizens. Because Lincoln urged Americans to revere the battle-worn troops and the Union victory, the succeeding reports would have wanted to echo this message throughout their chronology. At a time when Northern support for the war effort had been waning, emphasis on the glorified heroics of the Federals during a three-day slaughter was of paramount political importance.
The Times’s actual battle accounts are written by “special correspondents” present during the fight. One such reporter, Samuel Wilkinson (known at the time for his unusually authentic and trustworthy journalism), wrote on July 3, “At the headquarters at which I write, sixteen of the horses of General Meade were killed by a shell. The house was completely riddled…… While I write the ground about me is covered thick with rebel dead, mingled with our own.” This eyewitness report has a more somber tone than the initial headlines and subheadings of the front-page articles. Fitting within the overarching tone of the article, Wilkinson does applaud the heroics of the Union soldiers. However, he also includes stories of woundings and deaths, along with descriptions of the corpses. His more sobering perspective could be attributed to his position as a news reporter versus a member of the high command delivering an official military report or correspondence: Unlike Meade or Lincoln, politics did not demand that he hide the graphic nature of the battle’s human destruction, thus allowing him to report in a more holistic “view from the trenches” style.
Wilkinson’s section of this article likely also differs even from those of other fellow field correspondents due to his witnessing his own son’s graphic wounding and death during the battle. Wilkinson was not only a first-hand witness to the great battle but a personal victim of its tragic perils. Certainly, when comparing Wilkinson’s account with that of any non-eyewitness journalist’s reporting, Wilkinson’s writing stands out for its unique ability to accurately capture the full physical and emotional scope of the soldier’s experience under fire than could that of any journalist writing from the safely of their offices in New York. Nevertheless, Wilkinson’s section of the article is but one within an overall glorious retelling of the resoundingly victorious Union army.
In comparison, the Delaware Gazette’s July 17, 1863 article, “The Gettysburg Battle” adopts a much more somber tone, depicting the battle, and particularly Pickett’s Charge, as anything but an inevitable Union victory, but rather a desperate and closely contested action in which both sides lost dearly. The two articles do share some similarities: The latter article does indeed make sure to glorify as enshrined “in the imperishable annals of the brilliant in history” for both the enormous destruction it inflicted on the enemy and the bravery of Union troops under extreme fire, and of course, the former article indeed includes first-hand, sobering accounts of battlefield woundings and deaths. However, the latter article in the Delaware Gazette delves much more deeply into the moments of uncertainty that the northern troops faced, the ebb and flow of battle, and the battle’s unparalleled destruction than does the earlier, more celebratory piece.
The Delaware Gazette begins its report by stating that the Battle of Gettysburg was “the most hotly contested and destructive engagement of the great rebellion.” Later in the account, the reporter recognizes the significant struggles of the Union Army. He does not hide that the soldiers had to fight mightily to defeat the Confederates. He describes the Federals’ reaction to Pickett’s Charge: “Our men looking with astonishment while fighting with great vigor; their line was dangerously weak; the defenses were not formidable. A few men gave way; our advance, in some instances slightly faltered.” Although the writer is still promoting the heroism of the Union men, he does not deny their setbacks during the Confederate attack and the very real moments of peril, panic, and doubt that many Union defenders felt when a wave of Confederates temporarily broke through their line at the Angle.
What is interesting is that, although re-published in the Delaware Gazette, this latter account was originally pulled from none other than the New York Times. This was a common practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as small newspapers often took their facts and reporting cues from national news outlets. Given that both articles stemmed originally from the Times, it makes a comparative analysis of the tone and content all that more interesting. These two Northern newspaper sources demonstrate the complexities and difficulties of reporting news in the 19th century, specifically on noteworthy news of the ongoing war. Often, biases or agendas, incomplete information, and unpredictable acquisition of new facts muddied the waters for reporters seeking to inform the public, and invariably, the unique perspective of each and every contributor to each article shaped the tone and content of individual pieces in significant ways. These two competing narratives of the facts and human impact of the Battle of Gettysburg provide just one example of the murky contours of journalism during the Civil War.
“The Gettysburg Battle,” Delaware Gazette, Delaware, OH, July 17, 1863.
“The Great Battles,” New York Times, New York, NY, July 6, 1863
In the days, weeks, and months following the Battle of Gettysburg, journalists and newspaper editors feverishly attempted to recapture the full details, implications, and meaning of the massive fight that had transformed one small, formerly obscure, south-central Pennsylvania town into a household name. While some reporters struggled to ascertain the exact facts of the battle amidst the chaotic aftermath, others wrote with clear political agendas intended to sway the hearts and minds of their readership and, in turn, bolster their respective side’s support for the war effort. Still others searched for meaning in the aftermath through the prisms of religion, world history, and other lenses. In this mini-series, students will explore the myriad ways that 19th-century newspapers, throughout the North and South, “re-fought” the Battle of Gettysburg, its factual components, and its larger significance in print in the immediate aftermath of the fighting.
Post-battle newspaper accounts of the fighting at Gettysburg are rife with “factual” reporting, proclamations as to the larger significance of the battle to the war effort, and vivid descriptions of key portions of the battle. However, many newspapers immediately embraced political reasoning to explain not only how the battle unfolded and why, but also how particular generals performed on the battlefield and in what light the American public should hold them. Two mid-summer, 1863 articles in the Boston Daily Advertiser and New York Herald embody this sort of opinionative reporting.
Granted, these two articles voice two very different opinions. One is very much interested in a surface-level understanding of the key players who took part in the battle. It is the very definition of popular reporting, valuing the men at the head of the Army of the Potomac based upon their celebrity, and more specifically, on their political affiliations. The Boston Daily Advertiser,run by Nathan Hale until his death in early 1863, was a Republican paper before the war. Its Republican biases undergird key portions of this article, such as when the author censures Chief of Artillery, General Henry Hunt for “a lingering fondness of slavery.” Interestingly, despite its own, transparent political biases, the paper disapproves of political sectionalism within the army. Given the constant rotation in command of the Army of the Potomac in the months before Gettysburg, the author predicts that, lamentably, it will be only a matter of time until General Meade is replaced due to politically motivated gripings about his military performance. While the paper presents many possibilities for his replacement, and has much good to say about a certain General Winfield S. Hancock, it is also critical of Hancock’s political aspirations, stating that since his ascension in the army, he “has since ever been ready to acquiesce in the policy of the Government.” It is worth noting that Hancock was a Democrat, which might explain some of the Advertiser’s skepticism.
The other article depicts the exact reverse interpretation of politics in the army. In fact, its explicit impartiality and calls for politically unbiased evaluations of army commanders makes it stand out in a period where political sectionalism in newspapers was all the rage. In a comparison of decisions made respectively by Generals McClellan and Meade after the Battles of Antietam and Gettysburg that reads as if it could have been written today for its keen application of hindsight, comprehensive analysis of battle facts and situation-specific contextualization of military decision-making in and after each fight, and reporting from a bird’s eye view, the writer for the New York Herald points out much of the hypocrisy behind popular opinions of army commanders. As the article notes, both Meade and McClellan failed to pursue the Confederate Army into Virginia during their respective retreats from Gettysburg and Antietam, yet Meade was often applauded and McClellan was chastised. Instead of taking a political standing like the Boston Daily Advertiser, this author decides to take an unbiased view of things. “If, then,” the author writes, “there is little cause to find fault with Meade for not immediately following up the fruits of his victory, there is assuredly less for censuring McClellan for acting on the same prudential considerations.” It would be easy, as many had done before, to look at McClellan’s political aspirations and use them to explain his failings as a military commander, or to hint at the efficacy of having only generals representing one of the political parties at the helm; employing such partisan rhetoric and politically motivated arguments to the assessment of generals’ military performance would be much more in line with what the Advertiser does. However, such is not the point of this publication. As the author himself states in the article’s final sentence, “Its [the article’s] object is simply to have the same even handed measure of justice dealt out to all, whatever may be their supposed political tendencies.”
Civil War was a time rife with extreme political bias that dramatically shaped how battles and leaders were discussed by the press and evaluated, both in print and by government officials in charge of promotions and replacements. Articles such as these played a critical role in shaping the debates about the role of politics in military assessment, occasionally urging fairness and politically unbiased analysis in popular evaluations of battlefield performance, and yet often unable to free themselves from the highly political lenses through which they represented the war and its leaders to the American public.
“Gossip About Generals,” Boston Daily Advertiser (Boston, MA) August 14, 1863
“A Military Parallel—Antietam and Gettysburg,” New York Herald (New York City, NY) July 23, 1863
In the days, weeks, and months following the Battle of Gettysburg, journalists and newspaper editors feverishly attempted to recapture the full details, implications, and meaning of the massive fight that had transformed one small, formerly obscure, south-central Pennsylvania town into a household name. While some reporters struggled to ascertain the exact facts of the battle amidst the chaotic aftermath, others wrote with clear political agendas intended to sway the hearts and minds of their readership and, in turn, bolster their respective side’s support for the war effort. Still others searched for meaning in the aftermath through the prisms of religion, world history, and other lenses. In this mini-series, students will explore the myriad ways that 19th-century newspapers, throughout the North and South, “re-fought” the Battle of Gettysburg, its factual components, and its larger significance in print in the immediate aftermath of the fighting.
Pictured above is a display of four different cigars offered by the Great Gettysburg Tobacco Company. This display sits in a place one might not expect: The Mr. G’s Ice Cream gift shop. Entering the store, one is met with seasonally appropriate “Life is Good” apparel, Gettysburg sweatshirts, and candles that have been designed to smell like favorite Mr. G’s ice cream flavors, such as salted caramel and black raspberry. These cigars, as well as the other Civil War memorabilia available in the store–which includes everything from watercolor prints of scenes on the battlefield to Gettysburg, PA shot glasses–are tucked away in the back of the store.
The Great Gettysburg Tobacco Company cigars come in four different “custom blends”– the General, Guardian, Quartermaster, and President, allowing buyers to select the cigar that best suits their personality and fits their desired takeaway memory of their time in Gettysburg. The “Guardian,” described as having a “stronger flavor,” might appeal to someone who sees themselves as a strong protector of their family. The “President,” which is clearly Abraham Lincoln, targets both Abraham Lincoln aficionados and those seeking a general connection to the past through historical face recognition alone, as well as those who might identify as leadership figures. Abraham Lincoln’s historic importance as President during the Civil War, and his site-specific relevance to Gettysburg where he delivered his iconic address, generate an appeal to this cigar. The “General” presumably targets those who pride themselves on their bravery and leadership, and this particular cigar’s description noting its make from the “finest pipe tobacco” lends a refined and distinguished air to it. While there is no description of the flavor profile of the “Quartermaster,” one could assume that this cigar appeals to the casual, self-informed military historian, ones who might think of oneself as a “quartermaster” of their own household.
The company also appeals to the possibility of experiencing history first-hand through these cigars and the sensory experience of smoking them. The company makes sure to note in the product description that a “Union General purchased cigars for his command as they were approaching the Gettysburg battlefield,” implying that those who purchase one of these cigars will be able to, in part, relive the experience that these Union soldiers had: By smoking one of these cigars, you will feel like the soldiers riding into battle. Additionally, these “original Gettysburg cigar[s]” are wrapped in Pennsylvania shade leaf, which further reinforces the unique, place-based emphasis of the Great Gettysburg Tobacco Company, rooting the purchaser–and the very experience of smoking one of these locally sourced cigars–in the historic location that America’s most iconic battle occurred.
The dichotomy between the sale of Civil War memorabilia alongside lighthearted items like ice cream and “Life is Good” apparel truly plays to the complexity of the consumer culture of Gettysburg. In a town that sees millions of visitors every year, the ability to draw people into local businesses is important; stop by for ice cream and stay to peruse the gift shop, a one-stop shop for all things Gettysburg! In the same trip, visitors can enjoy a scoop of one of Mr. G’s handcrafted ice cream flavors, drinking in the sweet scent of fresh waffle cones and sprinkles, and purchase a “historic” cigar or two through which to remember their visit to town and battlefield some days, weeks, or months after their departure. In so doing, the visitor can “immerse” oneself in those famed first few days of July of 1863 experienced by the hard-fighting soldiers who, too, enjoyed similar cigars on their march into history.
In the days, weeks, and months following the Battle of Gettysburg, journalists and newspaper editors feverishly attempted to recapture the full details, implications, and meaning of the massive fight that had transformed one small, formerly obscure, south-central Pennsylvania town into a household name. While some reporters struggled to ascertain the exact facts of the battle amidst the chaotic aftermath, others wrote with clear political agendas intended to sway the hearts and minds of their readership and, in turn, bolster their respective side’s support for the war effort. Still others searched for meaning in the aftermath through the prisms of religion, world history, and other lenses. In this mini-series, students will explore the myriad ways that 19th-century newspapers, throughout the North and South, “re-fought” the Battle of Gettysburg, its factual components, and its larger significance in print in the immediate aftermath of the fighting.
Pictured above is an advertisement for four different tours offered by “Gravedigger Tours,” which is posted in an alleyway adjacent to the “Great T-Shirt Company,” along the commercial district of Steinwehr Avenue. Through Gravedigger Tours, visitors can explore Gettysburg’s Civil War history in a less traditional way via the focused lenses of four specialized tours.
Three of the four “Historical Walking Tours” offer something different from your run-of-the-mill ghost tour, concentrating squarely on the specific historical content outlined in their descriptions, rather than on ghost stories and lore. Visually, however, the poster places a disproportionate emphasis on the strictly paranormal “Soldier’s Tour.” Additionally, the macabre name of the company itself projects an overarching focus on the grisly and the ghostly, as well as on emotive history, rather than on history that is strictly factual or filled with nuanced complexities. In an attempt to evoke a certain haunting emotion, this tour description emphasizes the ghastly and grim, and makes sure to especially highlight that Gettysburg was the war’s “bloodiest battle.”
All four tours’ siloed approach to history and the company’s clear interest in appeals to emotion, death, destruction, and the paranormal distinguish this tourist attraction from the many other competing ghost tours and historical walking tours offered in town. The “Aftermath Tour” touts an exploration of the battle from the perspective of the townspeople of Gettysburg, how they were impacted by the battle, and how they ultimately rebuilt. At the same time, the description notes that those on the tour will see “Civil War medical technology” in addition to amputation demonstrations. This tour comes across as alluring largely due to the somewhat voyeuristic window it provides into the graphic nature of the battle’s destruction, playing more so on morbid curiosity rather than purely historic interest; however, it still seeks to appeal to the emotions of those who are more historically-minded, claiming to “bring back the historical past.”
The “Women Tour” and “Irish Tour” also distinguish themselves from traditional, comprehensive historical tours, as they play heavily on identity politics to draw people in. Women are portrayed as universally brave and brazen, protecting their families, going into battle, and saving lives. Such a description portrays the battle for Gettysburg’s women as a largely monolithic experience and one that generalizes the roles of women during the war; while there were undoubtedly many courageous women, only telling their stories overlooks the women who struggled to survive and rebuild in the wake of the battle. This tour seemingly targets a very specific demographic of Gettysburg tourists: The empowered female who perhaps laments the absence of women’s stories within the traditional battle narratives and is looking to help celebrate the reclaiming of women’s historical agency through such grandiose tales.
The “Irish Tour” also appeals to hearts and emotions with its fairly one-dimensional descriptions of the famed Northern Irish Brigade and the Southern Louisiana Tigers, emphasizing their seemingly universal “fearless fighting, sacrifice, and courage.” While members of both Irish units undoubtedly exhibited such qualities, one doubts that this tour will dive deep into the variance within these units, the backgrounds of the men themselves and the challenges they faced due to their ethnicity, their complex political motivations behind taking up arms, etc. This tour would certainly attract the proud descendants of Irish Civil War soldiers from both the Union and the Confederacy; however, in singling out a highly romanticized pair of units and subset of the soldier demographic as particularly glorious and heroic, it is also seeking to appeal to those who have either heard of these famed units before or those in search of an iconic and “uniquely dramatic” tale of two particularly colorful units. A short walk through Gettysburg’s commercial district reveals that the area plays up “selling the Irish” quite a bit. In addition to “The Irish” walking tour, visitors can eat at one of two Irish pubs, and shop in an Irish-them store that sells imported Irish products. The walking tour presumably plays to much of the same demographic as the shops and eateries, and the tour company knows that such a sentimental and popular-history approach to the battle will surely appeal to a core group of Gettysburg tourists.
These narrowly focused, largely identity-based tours provide intriguing, though siloed, windows into particular slices of the battle and its aftermath. The variation between the types of tours means that there is something for everyone; though they target paranormal enthusiasts with their “Soldier’s Tour,” Gravedigger Tours also offers a dose of “real history” with their other three tours. Indeed, although these hyper-specific tours carve off specific slices of history and appeal to a largely emotive, monolithic connection with the past at the expense of a more comprehensive or more intellectually nuanced narrative, they do allow visitors to identify with particular “players” in the battle, and in doing so, facilitate a deeper dive into one subset of the historical past. Such an approach creates an immersive and memorable experience for a core group of tourists whose imaginations and curiosity about the past just may receive the necessary provocation to continue exploring the history of Gettysburg through additional means.
