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"Four score and 7 years ago"--okay, more like "almost 3 months ago at the height of the Summer Tourist Season"--Team WestEnders attempted to visit Gettysburg National Battlefield and were utterly deterred by a horrendous weekend traffic snafu. So this time, I decided to wage a one-woman stealth campaign by sneaking up on...Pennsylvania...on a nondescript Friday morning in September. And what do you know, it worked! I crossed the Mason-Dixon Line with no difficulty whatsoever; those (slightly-more) Northerners never saw me coming!

The last time I toured Gettysburg was approximately 15 years ago (with then-Boyfriend, now-Husband), on a brightly-sunny, frigid Winter day, with about a foot-and-a-half of snow on the ground. I was greatly looking forward to viewing the park again during the commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War. My usual level of burning curiosity was further inflamed by a recent cinematic experience. (Recommended by my good friend M, to whom I remain grateful for accepting and encouraging my inner-geek-girl!) On M's advice, I watched The Conspirator, a recent film about Mary Surratt, the woman convicted and hung by a military tribunal--NOT a "jury of her peers"--for her alleged role in assisting John Wilkes Booth and his cohorts in the planning and/or carrying out of the assassination of President Lincoln. (Absolutely fascinating stuff, treated with enormous sympathy and respect by Director Robert Redford and actors Robin Wright as Suratt and James McAvoy as her lawyer, Frederick Aiken.) Of course, to satisfy my own quest for knowledge, before embarking on my Field Trip I sifted through a wide variety of  online information about Mary (the first woman ever executed in the United States) to try to separate Historical Fact from Hollywood Invention. What I found out was: no one really knows for sure what happened. Mary's son John seems to have been an associate of Booth's, and possibly party to his scheme, of which the original agenda was to kidnap Lincoln and ransom him for Confederate prisoners of war. (This was entirely news to me.) Since meetings between Booth and his cohorts took place at Mary Surratt's boarding house, it does seems likely to me that she knew about Booth's original plot. Whether she actively aided him? That critical fact remains murky, even a century-and-a-half after her trial. What seems clear is that in the absence of her son, who had immediately fled after Lincoln's death to avoid capture and punishment, Mary Surratt was used as a scapegoat to appease the grief-stricken, horrified, and panicked citizens who were looking for answers and vengeance after a devastating 4 years of bloody fighting and the inconceivable murder of their stalwart leader. Not a pretty episode in the American Story, of that there's no doubt.

So, anyway, off I headed toward Gettysburg, my head teeming with all this controversy, ready to storm the battlefield (albeit in a scholarly, peaceful way). After almost a solid month of rain (I swear, if you sit still too long, moss will grow on you in this humidity...and we're well past the point of the precipitation just "sinking in" to the over-saturated marsh...I mean "soil") today offered a dry, crisp 65 degrees, perfect for tromping around...that is: "lightly treading on hallowed ground". I concentrated on the Auto Loop, which threads you through mostly narrow, winding, tree-lined paths dotted with innumerable markers to commemorate the many groups of soldiers who fought there. Special Red Star signposts highlight spots of particular interest, where you can park your car, examine the monuments, and read the plaques about what strategic maneuvers occurred in that location. My overall impression of the park, after so many years had passed since my last visit, was to be overwhelmed by the sheer size of it. So much land, so many lives lost, it's almost incomprehensible to imagine such an event in our nation's history. Before I even arrived at the last stop on the map, the Soldier's Cemetery where Lincoln delivered his iconic Gettysburg Address, I realized the park had infused me with a solemn, hushed mood that persisted long after I pointed my car back to Maryland. I suddenly remembered that I had memorized (no it was not an assignment, I did it voluntarily....and yes, I've been this much of a  dork since...birth) part of Lincoln's speech, and the words still sound as timely and true today as they did in 1865, so I will step aside and conclude with his powerful words : "The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."