Gettysburg monuments

After we left the Museum, our guide met us for a private 2 hour driving tour.  In addition to describing the battles themselves, the characters and politics can become a tangle of names and dates. Fortunately, I had done enough reading ahead of time to appreciate some of the finer points of history that he was explaining.

 

I never understood until we wound our way through the roads and hills of the battlefield and  the town itself  what an extensive area Lee circumscribed and the Union had to defend.  Notable too are the monuments- over 1300 of them-dedicated to the regiments, the states, individual generals and officers. The largest by far were the monuments to Pennsylvania and New York, who lost the most men.

Also had short conversations with other visitors who clearly came from the south.  Many what ifs… “What if we (the confederacy) had made some different choices or won this battle?” Hard for us to imagine the possibility that the Union might not have won.