With a longtime contributor to cwi, jen murray. Jen murray is currently an assistant teaching assistant professor in the department of history at Oklahoma State university. She is as you know an expert in the civil war and also a specialist in military history in general. She has i would say a full publication resume. Her most important book and most recent is entitled on a great battlefield the making, management, and memory of get Gettysburg National park. Published in 2013 by the university of tennessee press. She is currently working on a i biography of George Gordon meade which will hopefully be publi published in the civil war america series. She is a veteran faculty member here. Many of you have been on her battlefield tours which are outstanding. Its largely because she cut her teeth as a young historian seasonal here at gettysburg for nine years . For nine years. So it is my pleasure to welcome jen murray who will be speaking about her book on the creation of the Gettysburg National park. Jen murray. Thank you, pete. Thank you, pete, for that very kind introduction. Good morning, everybody. Can you all hear me okay . Youre more excited than my 8 00 a. M. Western civ class. So happy fathers day. Happy fathers day. I hope my dad is watching this in maryland. Im super excited to be with you all here this morning and to talk to you about my book. As pete mentioned, its a history of the Gettysburg National history park. Traditionally when i do this talk its round tables or other venu venues. I ask how many people have been to gettysburg. I dont need to ask that this morning. How many of you have been to gettysburg, right . There we are. You are veterans of this field and conference which is terrific. So i want to spend some time with you this morning talking to you about the history of the gettysburg battlefield. And i always like to preface this twauk a comment about how i got interested in this topic. I always think thats fascinating to see how people come to the topics, the books, the projects theyre working on. I grew up in western maryland pretty close to gettysburg and the antietam battlefields. I got the opportunity in 2002 as an undergraduate to do an internship here at Gettysburg National military park. That summer i spent 12 weeks on the battlefield giving tours to thousands of people from around the country and ultimately around the world. I was interested in history at that time, but i didnt know that i wanted to be a civil war historian. And that internship turned into eight more summers of working for the National Park service at gettysburg and ultimately defined my professional career. So any undergraduates or High School Students in the audience or listening to this, do an internship. There is no experience like it. So it was interesting at gettysburg. I got my ph. D. From auburn and i was talking with my dissertation director ken noe about a topic about what i wanted to write on. You know, after you complete all your course work, your dissertation is to be this culminating project of something original. And i was sitting in his Office One Day and i said, dr. Noe, i have an idea for my dissertation. Im going to do something on the battle of gettysburg. Hes like, great, jen. Like thats never been done before. I said no, i got something different. I dont want to talk and write about the battle. I dont want to talk about the 72 hours of fighting. I want to talk about the battlefield and the history of the landscape. You guys are gettysburg experts. Think of all the books that you own on gettysburg. Just books. Not articles, not magazines, but just monographs. How many books do you think have been written on this threeday battle . Not enough. Hey. That keeps me in business. It keeps all this colleagues in business. Thank you for buying our books. So just monographs, there are at least 6,000 books written on 72 hours of American History. 6,000. You can think of them. Campaign studies, books on the first day, third day, leaders, geography, horses, flowers. You get the idea right . Books on geography. I wrote book 6,001. And my book is a exploration of the history of the battlefield. The National Park service owns 70 sites, manages 70 sites civil war related. And there divers the battlefield to places like fred laerick dougla douglass. And none of these sites are as special or poignant as gettysburg. We can all agree on this. Dr. Gallagher and pete talked about this two nights ago on the power of place. How this place resonates so deeply in america. The mystic chords of memory. National park service here at gettysburg records over a million visitors each year. It is the most popular civil war site in the entire nation. And for many people, this threeday battle and this landscape defines the American Civil War. So what i was interested in is not the battle but how the battlefield has been preserved over time. Or how it has been managed. The questions that i asked in my dissertation and ultimately my book were, if you could visit gettysburg in the 1930s, what would that battlefield look like . If you could visit gettysburg in the 1940s during the Second World War, what kind of interpretive experience would you get . How did the National Park service commemorate gettysburg in the 1960s . What did tourism look like here at this battlefield in the 1950s . How has preservation philosophies changed over time . How is the nexus of interpretation of fiction and myth, how have they blended together . What does that look like . So what i want to do with you all today is take you on the greatest hits of my book, if you will. Thats what my students like. They like the greatest hits. So were going to start in july 1863 and were going to move through 150 years of history and look at how this battlefield has changed. Its not static. The landscape is not static. Our memories of the battlefield and the battle are not static. This landscape evolves over time significantly. So if youre looking to the photograph on the top right, thats an aerial view of the area of the peach orchard. One of the most commercialized areas in the 1940s and 50s. The image on the left should be one thats familiar to many of you. Perhaps you even had the opportunity to go up in the old National Tower put up in the 1970s. How the battlefield has been commercialized and how it has changed over time. So one of the questions that i reconcile with or try to reconcile is what makes gettysburg different . This battle, this battlefield particularly is different than antietam. Its different than perryville. Its different than shiloh. This battle producing 51,000 casualties in three days is the bloodiest conflict in American History. The man in the slide is a soldier here from the fifth mass who was wounded, his name is john chase. He was wounded by exploding shrapnel. He loses his arm and eye in the process. 51,000 casualties making the battle of gettysburg the bloodiest of the American Civil War. And for many men in the army of the potomac, gettysburg becomes the defining point in the civil war. This is the battle that defines their experiences. And you see that play out in the years after the civil war during the commemorative era. Unprecedented carnage, this should be a familiar photo. This is the trossel farm. The impact on the civilians. Over 10,000 horses and mules die here in this battlefield. The men union and confederate soldiers are buried where they fell. Shallow trench graves. Something like this. And finally after the fight is over, when the guns and the artillery fall quiet, northern newspapers start to record, reflect on the battle of gettysburg and the headline of the Philadelphia Inquirer just days after the fight says waterloo eclipsed. Weve seen this headline more than once, im sure. And this is so important to think about these comparisons that americans, northerners are making in 1863. Theyre comparing the battle of gettysburg to waterloo. A fight in 1815 that completely changed the landscape of western europe. A fight that brought permanent consequences. This puts a lot of expectations on George Gordon meade and the army to destroy lee as hes pursuing him down the potomac river. But the northern public just days after the fight at gettysburg think that this is a battle unlike anything else they had ever seen. So about 7,000 men union and confederate combined are killed during the threeday fight. About 3,000 die later of their wounds. Theyre left out on the battlefield as i mentioned in graves like this where theyre laid to rest. The northern pennsylvania governor comes to gettysburg near the end of the month and he takes a carriage ride touring, if you will. I hate to use that word, but thats what he does. He rides around the battlefielded. And he governor of pennsylvania is so appalled that the union dead, the men who sacrificed their lives, gave the last full measure devotion are buried in such primitive ways. So the governor of pennsylvania initiates the idea for a permanent Burial Ground for the union dead. And you know the next step in this story when the state of pennsylvania purchases ground on Cemetery Hill to set aside as a final resting place for those who gave their lives that nation might live. Months after the battle, in november, a very cold fall pennsylvania day, about 20,000 spectators come for the dedication of the Soldiers National cemetery. Abraham lincoln comes up from washington, d. C. , to deliver as you know, a few appropriate remarks, and con ssecrate this battlefield in a way none others had been. He attaches it the gettysburg address, a meaning to this landscape different than any of the other civil war battlefields. Local gettysburg residents immediately realize that the fight in their farm fields is worth preserving. So the history of the gettysburg battlefield follows three very clear phases. Three different preservation entities have held responsibility stewardship for this battlefield. You guys know this. The first is the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association which takes hold in 1864 and manages the gettysburg battlefield until 1895. In 1895 the u. S. War Department Steps in, gives federal money, federal backing to the gettysburg battlefield and manages it until 1933 when president fdr, franklin that trp from the War Department to the National Park service. So what i want to do this morning is walk you through the War Department in a few slides. Really, and this is the focus of my book, is spend time looking at the gettysburg battlefield in the 20th century so you get a sense, a flavor or a taste of what this landscape looked like in the 20th century, what it looked like over the last 150 years. One of the locals is a man named David Mcconaughy who is talking about preserving the battlefield. There could be no more fitting memorial of our valor than the battlefield itself. So he gets together with some project innoce prominent locals and they establish the gettysburg association. This is monumental. This is the nations first Civil War Preservation organization. Think of how revolutionary this is. 1864, the fighting in virginia and the overland campaign. Hard bloody fighting is yet to come but people think this battlefield in gettysburg is worth preserving. So they organize and they preserve 522 acres. This is a historic photograph of the fields at pickets charge. West toward Seminary Ridge you can see the farm in the top left of the photo. The gbma is going to purchase over 500 acres of land. Most of the land they preserve is lines on the union army, Cemetery Ridge where meads army held. They dont do well preserving confederate battle lines. The gbma will oversee the erection of the first monuments and memorials on the battlefield. You can recognize the monument, right . That is the Soldiers National monument in the National Cemetery. If you look in the background, you can see some of the early configurations of the Soldiers National cemetery. So the gbma oversees the early monument placements. They oversee the early road, rudimentary road construction, about 20 miles of park road will be laid during their tenure. And they do a good job 18641895, but theyre hampered, they have constraints. The biggest constraint is fiscal. They dont have a lot of money to preserve land. In the latter decades of the 19th century the gbma appeals to the u. S. War department and the War Department happily stieps i and assumes control of Gettysburg National military park. The timing here is opportune. If you think about whats going on in the United States in the latter part of the 19th century, the failures, problems of reconstruction, unfilled promises in reconstruction, social, political issues, discord, racial issues, the entrenchment of jim crow. The war Department Steps in and preserves five civil war battlefields, chick monoga in 1 1 1890. Gettysburg becomes preserved on february 11th, 1895. And battlefields like gettysburg are tangible, tangible manifestations of reconciliation. So the War Department preserves these battlefields first and foremost as a memorial to the men who fought there. And the battlefields, gettysburg particularly, the iconic Union Victory becomes a place where Union Veterans and confederate veterans can meet. Youve seen some of these historic photographs before. You know some of these stories. This is a photograph on east Cemetery Hill of union and confederate veterans. This is april 29th, 1893. General James Longstreet standing prominently in the center. To his right is e. P. Alexander. Governor of pennsylvania, william mahone, the famous confederate general. Theyre coming to gettysburg to reconcile, to bind the nations wounds, as lincoln says in his second inaugural. Theyre not talking about reconstruction. Theyre not talking about jim crow. Theyre not talking about the failure of inequality for africanamericans, newly freed men. Thats important. You know that, but it becomes important through the 20 th century. Battlefields as tangible, tangible landscapes, the power of place, manifestations of reconciliation permeates our National Discourse through the 20th century. In 1913 one of the grand reunions of the civil war occurs here in gettysburg, 50 years later. Tens of thousands Union Confederate veterans will camp out on the fields of the battle and they will talk and share stories and reminisce. The president of the United States, woodrow wilson, the First Southern born president since the American Civil War is born in stanton, virginia, comes to gettysburg. They call this a peace jubilee. All across the battlefield are echoes of stories of valor, of heroism, of courage of the union and confederate soldiers. One of which ill give you an example, this is the governor of virginia. Hes here 50 years later. William hodges mann. He gives a very typical reconciliation as to dress. Were not here to talk at the origins of the war, he tells listeners. Were here to talk about the battle, man to man. And youve seen these images before, and you can imagine what these union and confederate veterans would be saying to each other, the hands across the wall, probably the most iconic image of civil war memory, that clasping hands across the area where they fought in pickets charge 50 years ago is a reconciliation of the civil war. That War Department era, that david blight reconciliation, devoid of causes, devoid of consequences, permeates americas interpretation of the civil war. It permeates americas consciousness of what the civil war, the battle of gettysburg is about, what it was fought over. That stands the test of time to today. This stands the test of time through the 21st century. So the 1920s, let me just show you a few other photographs. Into the early part of the 20th century, the War Department uses the battlefield first and foremost as a landscape to commemorate the men who fought there. But the War Department also uses the battlefield in utilitarian ways. And one of the greatest examples of this is using the battlefield for military explorations. And this is a cool photograph. This is west point class of 1902 at the high watermark. You can see they lay their caps out on the o 2 in front of the high watermark, all of the west point cadets here. If you look to the top left, the men wearing civilian clothes are some of the Park Commissioners. Gettysburg in the War Department era is preserved and managed by three Park Commissioners. Two are Union Veterans and one are confederate veterans and theyre photographed here. Later you could look at photographs of west point cadets and see Dwight David Eisenhower visiting gettysburg. So the War Department<