I’ve always been terrible with geography and in my mind the Civil War was fought in the deep South – Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and certainly many battles were fought there. What didn’t quite register was that Antietam (which had the deadliest single-day battle) is in Maryland and Gettysburg (the deadliest battle in US history even ahead of D-Day) is in Pennsylvania, both of which are really far north.
We’d visited the town of Corinth and the Shiloh Battlefield (post here), prior to Antietam MD, which we raced through quickly prior to our goal for the day, Gettysburg PA. All 3 Civil War battlefield sites are a drive through history with old cannons aimed to fire, monuments that commemorate the soldiers from each state that gave their lives in the fight, and rows and rows of headstones. The terrain that was covered by marching soldiers from both sides, the close combat conditions, the number killed in battle, those who died afterward due to lack of medical care, and the casualties overall, make any Civil War site visit, a sobering one.
Corinth and Shiloh both have great visitor centers, and both are free. Antietam’s center wasn’t nearly as informative, but in fairness, I think it was under a bit of construction. Gettysburg’s visitor center is huge and wonderfully done, but unlike the others, it is privately run so tickets are required for each exhibit and paid for separately. The one thing you can do in Gettysburg for free is drive through the battleground (with an on-line guide/map/app even though the visitor center offers all levels of guided tours as well).
At Gettysburg, we paid for the Museum (worth it) and the Cyclorama (also worth it to me). The cyclorama is a massive panoramic painting of the Battle of Gettysburg that’s displayed on the inside of a cylinder so the viewer who stands in the middle is surrounded by the painting with 360-degree views). Cycloramas were very popular before motion pictures in the late 19th century and often toured from city to city for viewing. Hundreds were produced but only 30 survive. I first heard of a cyclorama while reading “The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures: A True Tale of Obsession, Murder, and the Movies” by Paul Fischer, which is a wonderful read. The man he speaks of is Louis Le Prince, the man who invented motion pictures, despite Thomas Edison’s fame for doing so. In the story one of Louis’ jobs was to manage a cyclorama, but I digress.
Antietam 
Gettysburg Cyclorama 
Gettysburg Museum
There were so many interesting historical facts and figures far beyond who wanted to secede the Union like:
- A large army in the Revolutionary War was 10,000 men, but by 1862 the Union Army of the Potomac alone numbered over 120,000, which when moving together would have been larger than any single city in the US at the time and the wagon train supplying it stretched for 60 miles. Large scale mobilization and strategy was commanded by men who fought, survived, and learned on the job.
- For every man killed in combat, 2 more died of disease.
- Inflation from the war pushed many southern families into poverty. In 1861 flour was $4/barrel and coffee was $0.125/lb, but by 1865 flour was $425/barrel and coffee was $50/lb!
- Strangely, about 45 newspaper correspondents were on site reporting on the Battle of Gettysburg!
- A lot of the shallow grave soldier burials became the responsibility of returning property owners. It was much later, when the bodies were exhumed that they tried to identify some of them by items that were in in pockets and re-bury them into cemeteries.
I’m a nerd, so I could go on and on with interesting or odd Civil War facts, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that visiting Gettysburg drives home the hard and ugly truths about the Civil War. I’d also recommend Shiloh along with Corinth to see the impact on one small town. History – at its best and its worst!
Gettysburg Battlefield
