Battlefield Tour

Standing at the Copse of Trees is the nearest thing to an historical epiphany this continent has to offer. There is nothing nondescript about that spot of ground, nothing as grimly prosaic as, for instance, the window of a school-book depository. When I was there last summer, touring Civil War battlefields with my father, it seemed a divinely appointed spot, set aside for the unfurling of a great event, haunted by ghosts and the antique glories of war. Such, we were to discover, is the lure of blood-soaked ground.

I was ten years old when my father first deployed for me the Battle of Gettysburg’s famous “fish hook” line across the kitchen table, one evening after supper. A salt shaker anchored the Union left flank at a heavily wooded knoll called Big Round Top, looking down on the rocky ascent of Little Round Top and a pile of boulders known as Devil’s Den—positions held by heels of French bread. From there, forks and spoons marked the Yankee positions along Cemetery Ridge, curving northward across the tablecloth, then east and south again, to form a distinctive hook at the high ground of Cemetery and Culp’s Hills— panoramic views surmounted by a pepper shaker and a milk glass. Knives thrusting eastward marked three separate Confederate assaults, one for each day of the battle. If crumbs were to symbolize dead Rebels and Yanks, however, we would have had to cast our bread with profligate abandon. Gettysburg’s 43,000 casualties, evenly distributed over the field of battle, would have crowded 1,600 bodies in each of 25 square miles.

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Davin Seay

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Standing at the Copse of Trees is the nearest thing to an historical epiphany this continent has to offer. There is nothing nondescript about that spot of ground, nothing as grimly prosaic as, for instance, the window of a school-book depository. When I was there last summer, touring Civil War battlefields with my father, it seemed a divinely appointed spot, set aside for the unfurling of a great event, haunted by ghosts and the antique glories of war. Such, we were to discover, is the lure of blood-soaked ground.

I was ten years old when my father first deployed for me the Battle of Gettysburg’s famous “fish hook” line across the kitchen table, one evening after supper. A salt shaker anchored the Union left flank at a heavily wooded knoll called Big Round Top, looking down on the rocky ascent of Little Round Top and a pile of boulders known as Devil’s Den—positions held by heels of French bread. From there, forks and spoons marked the Yankee positions along Cemetery Ridge, curving northward across the tablecloth, then east and south again, to form a distinctive hook at the high ground of Cemetery and Culp’s Hills— panoramic views surmounted by a pepper shaker and a milk glass. Knives thrusting eastward marked three separate Confederate assaults, one for each day of the battle. If crumbs were to symbolize dead Rebels and Yanks, however, we would have had to cast our bread with profligate abandon. Gettysburg’s 43,000 casualties, evenly distributed over the field of battle, would have crowded 1,600 bodies in each of 25 square miles.