Monuments Everywhere!

At Gettysburg, there are monuments everywhere - in fact, there are over 1300 on the Gettysburg battlefield! One of the interesting things we learned about was how the Civil War armies were organized. The Civil War army consisted of many small parts that were joined together in stair-step fashion to make larger units. The smallest unit in the Civil War was the company which had about 100 soldiers. A regiment contained a number of companies. A brigade contained an average of four regiments. A division contained three to five brigades. A corps had an average of three divisions. And an army comprised one to eight corps. In the beginning of the war, most of the soldiers were volunteers and formed regiments from specific regions of an area. Each of these brigades and corps had specific symbols and flags that helped differentiate them from the other brigades and corps. This enabled the soldiers within these smaller groups to develop an identity and a sense of pride. 

When the war ended, veterans from the individual regiments and brigades, particularly from the Union States, went home and raised money to create monuments to place on the specific parts of the battlefield where their group was involved. Each of these monuments was uniquely designed for that regiment or brigade and often cites how their group demonstrated bravery or a specific key action in the battle. 

Monuments put up for the Confederate soldiers didn’t happen right away. This was due to the fact that the South was impoverished after the war and certainly didn’t want to initially raise money for monuments for a war in which they were defeated. Over time, however, families of the Confederate veterans wanted to honor their soldiers, too, so there are a smaller percentage of monuments that were added later to honor the Confederate regiments and brigades. The monument above is for a regiment from Louisiana that participated in Pickett’s Charge, an ill-fated assault that involved nine brigades of Confederate soldiers and resulted in over 6,000 Confederate casualties. Pickett’s Charge marked the end of the battle of Gettysburg as well as General Robert E. Lee’s last invasion of the North. 



Because monuments are often placed where the regiment was actively engaged, you see them everywhere including in the woods. 

The Eternal Light Peace Memorial was dedicated on July 3, 1938 commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. The natural gas flame is visible from 20 miles away. Attendance at the dedication was about 250,000 and President Franklin Roosevelt addressed the audience. The event was the last large gathering of approximately 1800 veterans from the Civil War. 

Seeing all the monuments that have been erected to honor soldiers on both sides of the conflict has given us a chance to think about the “monument debates” that are taking place today.