Another piece for the 1st
Minnesota newsletter – my last. I used to enjoy walking around Gettysburg with
Frassanito’s book, finding photographic spots. - Jonah
Miscellaneous Ramblings – October 1985
Going
"off the beaten path" has a special meaning at Gettysburg. In order to
really know the battlefield you have to get away from the familiar auto tour
paths and muck around on the forest trails; that's where you can get away from
the tour busses and the passenger cars blasting the dramatized cassettes out
the window.
A few months
ago I was fortunate enough to find myself with some time to explore around the
most major (and most heavily commercialized) Civil War battlefield site. I took
my copy of Frassanito's Gettysburg - A Journey in Time and was
determined to discover the precise locations of some of the more interesting
old photographs. I started in the place that doesn't appear in any old
photograph of the period but is nonetheless important to us: the forested area
where the 1st Minnesota made its famous charge.
It's directly
in battle front of the big 1st Minnesota monument and you have to get to it by
jumping a fence, which may be an iffy proposition. Somehow I kept getting
images of shotgun-wielding farmers threatening to blow me off the face of the
earth if I didn't get off their land. Of course, I could argue that the
sacrifices that American soldiers made there sanctifies it (far above our poor
power to add or detract) and somehow puts it above private ownership, but this
probably wouldn't wash too well.
It's a neat place to go, anyway. On a warm still day all you can hear
are the insects buzzing about and the occasional sound of a woodpecker. The
small creek that was fought over is still there, and flows with a quietness
that belies the violence that occurred there 122 years ago.
There is one
lone and forgotten monument in those woods, and it marks the spot where Colonel
George L. Willard, the commander of the 125th New York, was mortally wounded.
You can see his picture on page 154 of the new book on Gettysburg by the
Time-Life people.
I should like
to also mention that on pages 110 and 111 of this book is a painting of the
very conflict that took place in and near these woods. It presently hangs in
the Minnesota state capitol building and shows a bareheaded Colonel Colville
waving on the assault of his regiment. The really interesting thing about the
painting, however, is that it depicts most of the soldiers wearing slouch hats
of several varieties. If this picture is indeed an authentic rendering (actual
photographs of the soldiers of the 1st Minnesota do not exist or are very rare)
we need to rethink our policy on the wearing of non-regulation headgear.
