Selective demolition of modern additions at historic Gettysburg NMP Warfield house

News Release Date: November 21, 2019
Contact: Jason Martz, 717-338-4423

Gettysburg, PA - Selective demolition work will begin on Monday, December 2 at the historic Warfield house near the intersection of Millerstown Road and West Confederate Avenue. 

Contractors plan to be on site for about three weeks to complete the first stage of demolition that will include removing the modern 2nd and 3rd floors and the breezeway between the house and garage. A temporary exclusion fence will be erected while work is underway in order to secure the area. Additional demolition work will be completed in the spring. No road closures are expected on Millerstown Road but there may be unexpected intermittent delays.

During the Battle of Gettysburg in July, 1863 the small 1 ½ story tall, two-room stone farmhouse belonged to James Warfield, his wife Eliza, and their family. Purchased within a year of the battle, Warfield operated a successful blacksmith shop in Adams County. The Warfields were members of Gettysburg’s African American community. As the Confederate Army approached, they fled, fearful of capture. Confederate troops occupied the Warfield property on the afternoon of July 2, 1863, and launched attacks against Union troops occupying the nearby Sherfy Peach orchard. The Warfield family returned to find their property damaged and their belongings taken by the two armies—James Warfield calculated his losses at $516.

National Park Service preservationists are at work restoring the James Warfield home. Subsequent owners of the house made changes and additions to its size and footprint. Luckily, physical evidence of the many modifications to the house are visible to trained Park Service staff, and will allow preservation experts to stabilize and restore the home to its 1863 appearance. Restoration work will include re-establishing the original roofline and roof height; stabilizing and reconstructing sections of masonry walls; and recreating missing window and door components.

Remembrance Day Live In Gettysburg on Nov 23 - In person OR Online

Join the American Battlefield Trust in Gettysburg on November 23rd – either in person, or live on your smartphones, tablets or desktops.
This Saturday, we will be joined by special guests to cover Gettysburg's Remembrance Day Parade and associated events. The parade features Confederate and Union reenactors and living historians to commemorate the creation of the Soldiers National Cemetery, where President Abraham Lincoln famously delivered his Gettysburg Address. The parade route matches part of the route of the procession from Gettysburg to the Cemetery, where burials of Gettysburg dead was still in process.

And it’s not just a day for a parade; we have other surprises planned throughout the day that we’ll present live to your device! Tune in to the American Battlefield Trust Facebook Page and YouTube channel for this exclusive Battlefield Live event on this Saturday, November 23, 2019. Make sure you check both as connectivity may vary. We will start around 10:00 a.m. EST, and broadcast intermittently on one channel, the other, or both, throughout the day. Our live coverage of the parade will begin just before 1:00 p.m. EST.

Then, at 4 p.m., join Licensed Battlefield Guide Doug Douds and me in person for Key Moments on Cemetery Ridge—a "battlewalk" conducted in partnership with the Gettysburg National Military Park. This event is free and open to the public. You can find more information about the "battlewalk" here.

See you (virtually) that morning and through the parade or in person on the field at 4 p.m.!

Garry Adelman
Chief Historian
American Battlefield Trust

Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum Lectures on Nov 23 & 30

Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum (432 W Walnut St Allentown) (click here for website)
will sponsor two lectures in November related to the Civil War. See below for details:

Saturday, November 23, 1:00 p.m.: “James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War” 
Lecture and Book Signing Presented by Dr. Michael Birkner 
James Buchanan entered the White House in 1857 with sectional disharmony already intensifying.  By the end of his term, southern state secession commenced.  This talk, based in part on the recently published book The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens,will be presented by Dr. Michael Birkner of Gettysburg College.  FREE to members; non-members $8 adults, $3 children. 

Saturday, November 30, 1:00 p.m.: "Grant’s Last Battle: The Story Behind the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant" 
Lecture & Book Signing Presented by Dr. Chris Mackowski
Facing financial ruin and struggling against terminal throat cancer, Ulysses S. Grant fought his last battle to preserve the meaning of the American Civil War.  His war of words, “The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant,” cemented his place as one of America’s greatest heroes and most sublime literary voices.  FREE to members; non-members $8 adults, $3 children.

Eisenhower NHS Commemorates the 75th Anniv. of the Battle of the Bulge on Dec. 16

Eisenhower National Historic Site Commemorates the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge

Join park rangers from Eisenhower National Historic Site in person in the Gettysburg National Cemetery, or online via Facebook Live, on December 16 as they commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.

Eisenhower wrote that the German offensive in the Ardennes was a time when, “the grand strategy and the high hopes of high command became a soldiers’ war, sheer courage, and the instinct for survival.” From Malmedy to Bastogne, American soldiers fought bravely and rose, “to new heights of courage, of resolution and of effort.” The Battle of the Bulge was the costliest battle for American forces in all of World War II. Nearly one in every ten American combat casualties during the war fell between December 1944 and January 1945. The fighting in the Battle of the Bulge exemplified the perseverance of the American soldier, causing British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to remark it as "undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war...."

On the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Axis assault, join park rangers to remember some of the American soldiers who gave the last full measure of devotion while repulsing the last great German war offensive. The hour-long program begins at 2 pm on December 16 just inside the Taneytown Road entrance to the Gettysburg National Cemetery. If you cannot make it in person, join us virtually online at https://www.facebook.com/EisenhowerNPS/ for a live-stream version of the tour.

Eisenhower National Historic Site preserves and interprets the home and farms of the Eisenhower family as a fitting and enduring memorial to the life, work, and times of General Dwight David Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States, and to the events of far-reaching importance that occurred on the property. Learn more at www.nps.gov/eise

Steven Sims is the New Superintendent of Gettysburg NMP and Eisenhower NHS

National Park Service (NPS) Region 1 Regional Director Gay Vietzke has named Steven Sims as the new superintendent of Gettysburg National Military Park and Eisenhower National Historic Site in Pennsylvania.

Sims is currently serving as superintendent of Valley Forge National Historical Park, Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site and the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail. He will begin his new assignment in late January. 

“Steve brings a broad set of skills that will be very beneficial to both park units. He is experienced at bringing partners together to work towards a common goal and values the importance of community engagement,” said Vietzke. “His background as a West Point graduate and military officer will provide the valuable leadership that is needed to define and carry out the mission of the parks. In his current assignment, Steve has made significant strides in reducing the park’s maintenance backlog and preserving park resources. In addition to millions of dollars in completed projects Steve has led Valley Forge National Historical Park through a $14M visitor center renovation and the production of five new park orientation films which are scheduled for completion in summer of 2020.”

“I am honored to have been selected to serve as the superintendent of Gettysburg National Military Park and Eisenhower National Historic Site,” said Sims. “As a former Army Officer, I feel a deep responsibility to care for the hallowed grounds of Gettysburg, moreover, honoring the legacy of one of the most notable military generals and presidents of our nation is a privilege. I look forward to serving these parks and our neighbors in this new role.”

During his 22-year federal career, Sims has also served as the chief facility manager for the Northeast Region, facility manager for Independence National Historical Park and civil engineer/facility manager for the National Mall and Memorial Parks in Washington, DC. Prior to working for the NPS he served as a consultant engineer and as an officer in the US Army. Sims is a graduate of West Point, where he earned a bachelors in science in civil engineering and was commissioned as an officer in the engineer branch. He also holds a masters in science in engineering management from the University of Missouri and an MBA from Norwich University.

Sims is originally from Tehachapi, California. He is married and has two children. His hobbies include hiking, fly fishing, beekeeping and riding his motorcycle.

"More of the Story" on Monuments

"More of the Story" on Monuments

by Waite Rawls – November 5, 2019

Paul Harvey made thousands of radio recordings in which he would tell a story and then add, “the rest of the story.” For those of us in the history field, we know there is no such thing as “the rest of the story,” because there is always “more of the story.” With that in mind, this article gives “more of the story” of the Confederate monuments in Richmond and elsewhere.

In today’s public narrative on Confederate monuments, we commonly are told that the great majority of the monuments were erected between 1885 and 1925. Many say that this time period corresponds with the “Jim Crow Era” or the “Lost Cause Era,” either of which identify them as products of the white supremacy and black suppression of that time. As a result, the monuments have become testaments to racism and their subject matter is racist and is to be rejected by a modern, enlightened, and appropriately sensitive population. While those causes cannot be dismissed or discounted, they are not the whole story.

Historians of the era would also call it the “Memorial Period” because of all the statues, monuments, and memorials that were being erected all across the country—North and South, East and West, urban and rural. As Dr. Caroline Janney points out in her book, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation, the great tidal wave of monuments began shortly after the war with Union veterans going to the various battlefields and erecting markers—many small and some monumental in size—to their participation and valor in battle. And America’s Civil War battlefields are covered with these markers. Gettysburg alone now has 1,328 of them. By the 1880s, the effort to remember the valor and sacrifice of the soldiers had spread to the hometowns from which those soldiers came. Again, this phenomenon began in the North; but it quickly spread to the South, with southerners often noting their jealousy of the North or a sense of competition with the North.

Dedicated 1899

The efforts of women across the country quickly caught up and surpassed the efforts of the veterans themselves, with the women of the North again taking the lead. The Daughters of Union Veterans was created in 1885, and the National Society of the Daughters of the Union began in 1912. The southern counterpart, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, started in 1894, but numbered only about half the participants of northern women’s groups. Again, there was a sense of rivalry.

The “Memorial Period” became almost a frenzy of activity, with thousands of statues being erected. At the court house or town square of small towns across the country, monuments went up, usually with inscriptions that sounded like “In Honor of the Men of (your town here) Who Served in the Great Civil War” or something similar. The statues on the top of the pedestals were often ordered from catalog companies, where you could specify the type of hat, whether bearded or clean shaven, carrying a musket or a sword, and looking up and alert or down in silent memorial. In the larger cities, the monuments were larger and more elaborate. Many of the statues were custom made by sculptors who would do a Yankee one month and a Rebel the next. And many of them were monumental in size, much larger than anything in Richmond. The largest in the country is in downtown Indianapolis, erected in 1902 and 285 feet high, more than three times as large as Richmond’s biggest, the 90-foot-high Confederate pyramid in Hollywood Cemetery. The 60-foot-high monument in Richmond of Robert E. Lee, dedicated in 1890, was dwarfed a year later in Chicago with a 100-foot-tall monument to Grant and the 165-foot-tall Grant’s Tomb in New York in 1897. And all were much smaller than the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., which was done in the same period—begun in 1914 and completed in 1922.

Despite the competition, the South could never keep up, as there are more than twice as many markers, monuments, and statues in the North today than there are in the South. Counting monuments is a little tricky, because statues are clearly in the count, but how about other markers? The Southern Poverty Law Center has tried to count those in the South; but they include statues, schools, buildings, streets, license plates, dams, even a fire department that are all named after Confederates. Their count of Confederate markers comes to 1,728 in the entire country, with 223 in Virginia, only 95 of which are recorded as monuments. In contrast, counting only monuments and statues, websites for New York State claim 280 Civil War statues and monuments and Ohio sites claim 269.

“More of the story” would seem to indicate that most of the Confederate monuments fit into history better as part of a national narrative called the “Memorial Period,” during which the entire nation mourned the death of the 750,000 men who died and memorialized the sacrifices of the three million who served for causes which most of them believed were just. To single out the Confederate statues and attribute them wholly and only to the Jim Crow or Lost Cause era seems to me to tell only part of the complicated story of American history. As we contemplate the monuments to Confederates, we deserve to know more of the story.

This Civil War Dispatch has been brought to you by the Blue and Gray Education Society, a non-profit 501-3C educational organization. Please visit us at www.blueandgrayeducation.org.

Legendary Civil War historian James I. ‘Bud’ Robertson Jr. Died Nov 2nd

In memoriam

Legendary Civil War historian James I. ‘Bud’ Robertson Jr.

“History is the greatest teacher you will ever have,” James I. “Bud” Robertson Jr. often told his students. If history is the greatest teacher, many of them might have argued, then he was the second greatest.

Robertson, Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Virginia Tech, died on Nov. 2 after a long illness. He was 89 years old.

Read Virginia Tech news obituary here.

Visit our tribute page for Dr. Bud to read remembrances of him and to contribute your own stories.

From Virginia Center for Civil War Studies

Eisenhower NHS ~ call for applications to intern for the summer of 2020.

Thanks in part to the generous sponsorship of the Dwight David Eisenhower Society, Eisenhower National Historic Site is pleased to announce its annual call for applications to intern for the summer of 2020.

Four 12-week interpretation and visitor services internships are available for the 2020 summer season, running from May 26 through August 15, 2020. One 12-week curatorial internship is also available; the dates are negotiable and may differ from the interpretation internship.

Interpretation interns give house tours of the Eisenhower home, staff the information desk in the site’s reception center, and present other interpretive programming they have researched and prepared. Interns also have the opportunity to work on special projects involving social media and 21st century public history interpretation. Eisenhower National Historic site’s interpretive operation focuses on audience-centered interpretation and we are always looking for how we can best use our historic resources and stories to be part of conversations that are happening today about our society and world.

The curatorial intern assists the museum curator in the operation of the site’s museum management program. Job duties may include cataloging and proper storage of museum objects and archival documents, data entry, transcriptions, photography, conducting inventories, museum housekeeping, integrated pest management, and social media. There will also be an opportunity to create a small temporary exhibit. Eisenhower National Historic Site’s museum collection encompasses over 49,000 objects with the majority relating to the life and work of Dwight David Eisenhower.

Summer Interns work a 40-hour week with formal and informal on-the-job training provided. The internships are not paid, but dormitory-style housing and a living stipend of ($1750) are provided.

Students who have completed at least one year of college and are working toward degrees in history, political science, museum studies, park management, education, graphic design or related fields are welcome to apply. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. To be considered for a summer position, it is best to have your resume and cover letter submitted by the first week of December. Summer internship positions are often committed by late January.

Questions and applications should be sent to Jacob Dinkelaker (e-mail us). To apply, e-mail your resume with two professional references and a cover letter explaining your interest. Please put “2020 Summer Internship” in the subject field of your email and clearly state your preferred position, curatorial or interpretation.

Web Version
Jason Martz
Visual Information SpecialistPublic Information Officer (acting)Gettysburg National Military ParkEisenhower National Historic SiteOffice: 717-338-4423Cell: 571-358-0516

Storm Leads To Closure Of Shiloh National Military Park

Storm Leads To Closure Of Shiloh National Military Park

By NPT Staff on October 28th, 2019
National Parks Traveler

A storm that roared through Shiloh National Military Park in Tennessee downed trees across the park and forced its closure until crews could remove them.

"All roadways and facilities at Shiloh National Military Park are closed due to storm damage. We are clearing trees and debris and hope to reopen tomorrow," the park noted Monday in a social media post. "Check back for updates."

link to story on National Parks Traveler

Lincoln Lyceum Lecture on Monday, November 11 at Gettysburg College

Gettysburg College’s annual Lincoln Lyceum Lecture is set for Monday, November 11th.  This year’s lecturer is David Blight.  The lecture will be held in Gettysburg College’s Masters Hall 110 Mara Auditorium at 7:00. The event is free and open to the public.

Campus Map- click here

A link to David Blight’s bio can be found at http://www.davidwblight.com/david-w-blight-biography

The Lincoln Lyceum Lecture is an annual lecture at Gettysburg College that features the recent winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.

For more information on Civil War Era Studies and the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize
https://www.gettysburg.edu/academic-programs/civil-war-era-studies/
https://www.gettysburg.edu/lincoln-prize/index.dot