On a Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1933–2013 by Jennifer M. Murray (review)

While much has been written about the Battle of Gettysburg, Jennifer Murray contends, “scholars have paid only minimal attention to the battlefield itself ” (3). She seeks to remedy that problem in this book on the battlefield under the National Park Service’s (NPS) administration. She asserts, “This eight-decade period highlights the complicated nexus between preservation, tourism, popular culture, interpretation, and memory” (3).

From 1863 to 1933, “veterans created a landscape that embodied sectional reconciliation,” Murray argues (2). By the time the NPS took over the battlefield, Gettysburg encompassed 2,530 acres, 1,728 monuments and markers, and 24 miles of roads. Inaugural NPS superintendent James McConaghie identified four objectives: restoration, preservation, accessibility, and usability. He also emphasized educational services, recognizing that most visitors no longer had personal knowledge of the battle and believing that such programs would foster patriotism. The era was a critical one: “McConaghie’s vision and the infusion of New Deal funds . . . established the foundation for a modern, accessible tourist landscape” (42).

Murray identifies two trends of the Second World War: increasing invocations of the Gettysburg Address, and an interpretive focus on the notion of Gettysburg as the “High Water Mark” of the Confederacy. In 1942 the NPS took over the Pickett’s Charge cyclorama, thereby endorsing “a decidedly Confederate interpretation of the battle” (47). On a practical level, accessibility issues remained prominent, with the first auto tour route established in 1938.

During the first decade of the Cold War, visitation to Gettysburg exploded as “Americans searched for ways to strengthen their connection and loyalty to the nation” (62). The first interpretive markers were added in 1947, while bus tours began two years later. MISSION 66, a project to promote recreational tourism, injected $1 million into Gettysburg, highlighting the ongoing tension between “preservation and visitor enjoyment” (85).

That tension ratcheted up during the Civil War Centennial commemorations. Over those four years, Gettysburg received 2 million visitors annually, while nearby Antietam saw just a hundred thousand. Murray posits that the Gettysburg Address ensures Gettysburg’s exceptionality. In 1963 a number of states held commemorative ceremonies at Gettysburg, and despite ongoing conflict over the civil rights movement, “Centennial speeches delivered on Seminary Ridge mirrored those by orators along Cemetery Ridge” (105).

The early 1970s saw a growth in environmental programs that suggested a transition from “a military park into a national park,” highlighting that “superintendents’ background, whether as landscape architects, government bureaucrats, or historians, consistently shaped their vision for the battlefield” (119, 5). Simultaneously the commercialization that had epitomized the centennial continued, highlighted by the construction of a massive observation tower.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the movies Glory and Gettysburg and Ken Burns’s documentary reignited interest in the war and Gettysburg. Simultaneously, in the name of returning the battlefield to its 1863 appearance, new superintendent John Latschar inaugurated the greatest changes to the battlefield since the 1930s, including cutting hundreds of acres of trees, demolishing the observation tower, and removing the museum and visitor center from Cemetery Hill.

The NPS also entered into a partnership agreement with the Gettysburg Foundation to build and run a new museum and visitor center. At the new facility, the interpretation evolved from the “High Water Mark” of the Confederacy to “A New Birth of Freedom.” Murray notes the controversy over the foundation’s decision to charge admission to the museum, something it had previously promised to forgo, and the abrupt reassignment of John Latschar in 2009. Ultimately, Murray concludes, “the management of the Gettysburg battlefield between 1933 and 2013 proved to be as controversial as the battle itself, and possibly even more so” (202).

While earlier books by Jim Weeks and Thomas Desjardin go into greater depth on certain topics, Murray’s breadth is commendable. Because Murray tells the story through the...