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Appendix 2 Preserving the Field Fortifications at Gettysburg The fieldworks at Gettysburg are probably the most famous of any campaign in the East from 1861 through early 1864. The Twelfth Corps fortifications on Culp’s Hill garner the lion’s share of the attention. This is a curious circumstance, considering that Chancellorsville saw much greater use of fieldworks and all the fortifications at Gettysburg are very simple, modest constructions. The earthworks used in the Peninsula campaign also were more extensive and complex than those at Gettysburg . But the reason for this disparity of attention is not difficult to ascertain: the public’s view of Gettysburg as the preeminent engagement of the Civil War. If something was done at this battle, it automatically gained more attention regardless of its intrinsic value, or lack of it, in the general course of the war. In addition, Gettysburg was fought in the midst of a relatively wealthy population that could afford to expend the resources to preserve relics of the battle. Local residents initiated efforts to preserve the field fortifications soon after Lee left their town. ‘‘These works, for the most part, yet remain as they were at the close of the battle,’’ wrote Professor Michael Jacobs of Gettysburg College in February 1864. He ‘‘hoped that they may continue untouched, as a memento of the battle, and as objects of grateful wonder, until time itself shall cause them to decay.’’ More than a year later, journalist John T. Trowbridge found at Culp’s Hill a ‘‘rude embankment of stakes and logs and stones, covered with earth.’’ He also discovered ‘‘little private breastworks consisting of rocks heaped by a tree or beside a larger rock, or across a cleft in the rocks, where some sharpshooter exercised his skill at his ease.’’ The Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association was created in 1864 to oversee the preservation of the battlefield. It existed until the federal government took over in 1893. The association engaged in what would be questionable work by modern standards, rebuilding artillery lunettes and rock breastworks without strict regard to accuracy. It reconstructed the gun emplacements on Cemetery Hill, adding some in places where veterans of the battle did not remember works at all. It built others up so that they ‘‘seemed to me larger and more elaborate than my recollection would make them at the time of the battle,’’ thought Capt. R. Bruce Ricketts. Local civic leader David Wills wrote to Governor Andrew Curtin in March 1864 that the artillery emplacements on Cemetery Hill ‘‘have already been very much defaced. They were made, first by piling up rails and then throwing up earth on top. The 332 Appendix 2 farmers have in most instances dug out their rails and the effects of the rains have settled the earth very much.’’ The association worked hard to rebuild them as low, uniform parapets that look very different from the works depicted in photographs taken right after the battle. Today’s visitor to Gettysburg sees the remnants of these association fieldworks, not the remains of the works used by the men who fought the battle. The breastworks on the Round Tops received attention from the association as well. The small earthwork that protected McGilvery’s artillery line was entirely reconstructed, having disappeared over the years due to agricultural activity. But the association rebuilt it straighter and aligned it to a postwar road constructed for touring vehicles. The War Department took charge of the battlefield and created the Gettysburg National Park Commission, which administered the battlefield from 1893 to 1922. It infused a greater degree of scholarship and accuracy into the process of preserving the fieldworks, hiring Col. Emmor B. Cope as its engineer and mapmaker. Cope rebuilt 30,000 feet of stone fencing from 1898 through 1906. He rebuilt the artillery lunettes on the Confederate line and placed some guns along Seminary Ridge to mark positions. Relatively little restoration work was done after the commission was replaced by the Gettysburg National Military Park, until the New Deal stepped in. The Civilian Conservation Corps repaired and rebuilt stone fences at various points on the battlefield between 1936 and 1939, even though the general strategy of the Park Service has been to stabilize, not rebuild, historic resources. The visitor must always wonder, given the early postwar history of the battlefield, how much of the fortification remnants are authentic artifacts of the Civil War and how much are monuments to...

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