According to the National Park Service, The Gettysburg National Military Park (GNMP) is the home to 1,328 monuments that mark historical moments that occurred at one of the largest turning points in the history of the United States.
Tourists from around the world visit the park and these monuments to learn about the battle, the Civil War, and to reflect on what Abraham Lincoln said during his famous Gettysburg Address.
However, while the regular stream of visitors continues to walk through our historical centers, summer 2020 has been a different story.
When a group of armed state militia members arrived at Gettysburg National Cemetery on July 4th weekend, responding to unsubstantiated social media rumors of a flag burning, the borough became the center of local and national attention.
In response to the incident, Adams County Commissioner Marty Qually took to social media calling for the Confederate monuments to be taken down. Qually wrote that residents cannot allow the county to become a place for “hate, racism, and false patriotism.”
“If this becomes a permanent state of affairs, then what lessons are we really teaching our children?” Qually asked. “That all it takes is a few racists with guns to destroy our union?”
The fate of the confederate monuments in the park is part of an ongoing discussion in the United States regarding the presence of monuments commemorating confederate figures. The debate concerns asking what they truly represent and the legacy they create for the country. In a place like Gettysburg, where the monuments are built on a Civil War battlefield, the argument can become even more complex.
Forty of the monuments built at Gettysburg are classified as Confederate monuments, according to the National Park Service.
Confederate monuments were not built immediately after 1865, according to the History.com writer Becky Little. Instead, commemorative markers were placed as memorials for soldiers who had died in battle. The present-day Confederate monuments first began to appear with the onset of Jim Crow segregation, beginning in 1890. At Gettysburg, the first Confederate monument, dedicated to the 1st Maryland Battalion, was built in 1884.
The monuments, built in public squares, official buildings, and parks, were meant to honor leaders of the Confederacy like General Robert E. Lee, former President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis and General “Thomas Stonewall” Jackson.
Mark Elliot, a history professor at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, said that groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy, founded in the 1890s, funded the efforts to build monuments. Elliot also said that although memorials began at cemeteries and battlefields, these monuments included a “glorification of the cause of the Civil War.”
Scott Hancock, Associate Professor for Africana Studies at Gettysburg College, makes a similar point when describing monuments like the Virginia Monument in the GNMP. The monument features a statue of Robert E. Lee on his horse Traveller. In a video clip from the documentary “Postcards from Babylon,” some visitors can be seen placing small confederate flags underneath.
“The battlefield, and especially the monument, send supporters of the confederate flag two messages,” Hancock said. “One message covers up injustice that was done to African Americans in the name of country and often in the name of God. And the other message is that truth doesn’t really matter much. Facts are what you make of them.”
Context is important when evaluating monuments, according to Hancock. During a segment on CNN, Hancock also discussed what the monuments were meant to communicate when they were built, as well as the importance of developing a full understanding of historical events and preventing a “one-way message” about the civil war and white supremacy. While Hancock says that the GNMP Museum and Visitor’s Center “does a great job” at educating visitors, the battlefield struggles with relaying the same message.
“In the battlefield, there’s no references to slavery, there’s only a couple references to black presence in the battlefield, and there’s no reference that the army kidnapped free black people when they retreated from here,” Hancock said. “If you never went to the visitor’s center and you spent three days on the battlefield, you’d have no idea that the reason there’s a battle here in the first place is because of slavery, and enslaved black men and women.”
For some citizens, it can be difficult to contend with the darker realities of American history, particularly for those who feel pride in being a citizen. For others, it is a necessary step in helping the country’s growth.
Leaders like Main Street Gettysburg CEO Deb Adamik discussed the need to talk about the recent crises that have affected the town at the Borough Council Meeting on July 14.
“We need to take a bold stand, and we need to define our values,” Adamik said. “The conservations are starting, and I think the future of Gettysburg has some opportunities to grow.”
My name is Katherine, and I am a graduate student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. I graduated from Fordham University at Lincoln Center in 2018 with a degree in history, and I was one of the news editors for the Observer, the college's student-run newspaper. I love to learn about and cover different communities, and I am very excited to be interning for the Gettysburg Connection this summer and getting to know about all the work being done by the residents in the area.