rest day in gettysburg

It was the 4th of August. I finally mailed my visa application today. My flight to England leaves on the 10th of August. My fingers and toes are crossed.

Gettysburg is a cute little town, but very touristy. I cycled through the battlefields, but, as usual, I think Daria describes the history of the town so well in her blog, that I won't attempt my own rendition. :o)

I spent the day with my sister BJ and her daughters exploring Gettysburg, which is steeped in the history of the Civil War. The famous Battle of Gettysburg was fought from July 1 - 3, 1863. It was the turning point in the Civil War and also the battle with the largest number of casualties.

The two armies suffered between 46,000 and 51,000 casualties. Union casualties have been estimated to be 23,055 (3,155 killed, 14,531 wounded, 5,369 captured or missing). Confederate casualties have been more difficult to estimate, but the most definitive work puts the number at 23,231 (4,708 killed, 12,693 wounded, 5,830 captured or missing). Nearly a third of Lee's army was killed, wounded, or captured.

The Gettysburg Address was delivered by Lincoln on November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg. Although it is one of the best-known speeches in United States history, scholars have long disputed the exact wording. The Bliss version below is viewed by many as the standard text:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”