chaste artistic structures

Tom Desjardin’s book, “These Honored Dead,” has some interesting information about the memorializing of the Gettysburg battlefield. Some of the stuff I gleaned from this book is pertinent to my monument study as it pertains to the memorialization of the battlefield. Here, I’ll share some interesting info I learned from the book.

Gettysburg has been called the world’s largest collection of outdoor sculpture. There are around 1,300 monuments at Gettysburg With memorials ranging from the simple to the sublime, from the simple to the artistic to the downright bizarre, the field’s monuments of bronze, granite, iron, and other materials sometimes are almost as interesting as the battle itself. They range in age to just after the battle to just a few years ago.

Monuments at Gettysburg mainly were placed during the reign of a group called the GBMA. The Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association was “in charge” of the battlefield during the most heavy period of heavy monument placing — roughly the period between 1880 and the early 1910s. The GBMA came up with a rule for the placement of monuments called the “Line of Battle” Rule. This rule essentially said that a regimental monument had to be placed on the spot where the particular regiment “entered the fighting.” This rule in part explains the lack of Confederate regimental monuments at Gettysburg. While the Union regiments could quite easily place their monuments where they did the bulk of their fighting (as Gettysburg was a defensive action for the Army of the Potomac), Confederate monuments would for the most part have to be placed on Seminary Ridge — half a mile away from where they did the bulk of their fighting.

The rule sounds relatively simple, but court battles were literally fought over the placement of certain monuments. The 72nd Pennsylvania’s famous monument at the stonewall at the “Angle” — oft photographed at sunset because it is a striking silhouette — was placed only after a fight that went all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court (but that’s a story for another time). As mentioned in my 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry post, the “line of battle” rule also posed problems for units that weren’t at Gettysburg per se, but who participated in the Campaign and still wanted to put a monument on the field.

And that wasn’t the only problem the GMBA placed. Taste was also a problem. The GBMA wanted monuments to have “artistic character” of a “high order.” The First Minnesota tried their patience. This distingushed regiment wanted an odd monument to, admittedly, attract attention. It came up with the idea of a staute of a Union soldier bayonetting a giant snake to death. Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel … An appalled GBMA said no. The First Minnesota therefore instead erected a memorial of a soldier running out to meet the enemy — and put it on a huge pedestel.

Then there was a problem of there just being too many markers — prominent early historian John Bachelder worried that too many monuments, placed haphazardly, would confuse rather than instruct.

And if that wasn’t enough to worry about, the GBMA also had to worry about the materials that monuments were constructed from. Some regiments turned to materials like sandstone or “white bronze.” (Unforunately, Ohio regiments were particularly bad about this.) The GBMA was forced to issue an edict declaring all monuments had to be made of REAL bronze or granite.

The moral (or I guess point) of this story is, when you visit Gettysburg and view the many different monuments, know that they also often have an interesting story and history all their own.

Tags: Gettysburg, Monument Project