On Tour with Captain Long - Part 1

There is hardly anything I enjoy more than heading out to the Gettysburg battlefield with those who are eager to see the sites and learn about the battle. Over the years, I've lead many tours for friends and family. I've even developed my own binder of tour resources, including many maps and first-person accounts of the battle. When guiding new visitors, I often experiment with different tour routes and stops, always seeking to create the best battlefield experience that I can. To know the battlefield takes years of study. To successfully convey that knowledge to others takes a completely different set of skills. Luckily, Gettysburg has many individuals who have mastered the art of guiding visitors. The National Park Service offers a diverse array of excellent interpretive programs, while the Association of Licensed Battlefield Guides has specialized in expertly timed two and three hour tours that provide visitors with a broad understanding of how the battle unfolded.

Guiding in Gettysburg has a long history. The first guides could be found in the immediate aftermath of the battle. It didn't take Gettysburg residents long to understand the importance of preserving the fields where the armies had fought. Within weeks of the battle, they had taken step to preserve several important locations. By April of 1864, the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association (GBMA) had been chartered as the battlefield's caretaker.

In the immediate years after the Civil War, Gettysburg attracted few visitors. The wounds of the war were fresh, and many Americans wanted to move on with their lives rather than dwell in the bloody past. In the late 1870s that all began to change. The first tourist groups to take an interest in visiting the battlefield were veterans themselves. In 1878, the Grand Army of the Republic held its annual encampment at Gettysburg. This week-long visit energized veterans to begin the great task of turning Gettysburg into the memorial field that it is today. Within a few years, the Grand Army of the Republic had seized control of the GBMA, and veterans organizations throughout the North began to express an interest in placing monuments on the field. Throughout the 1880s the GBMA began to acquire more land holdings and erect avenues to allow access to the battle lines. Monuments also began to appear, and with those monuments came veteran organizations to attend dedication ceremonies and reunions. Suddenly, Gettysburg was a booming tourist destination, and the demand for battlefield guides began to grow.

The Harrisburg and Gettysburg Railroad was a sign of the growing tourist economy in Gettysburg. A railroad connection from Hanover, Pennsylvania had operated since 1858, arriving at a station on Carlisle Street. With the growing interest in visiting the battlefield, however, the Harrisburg & Gettysburg Railroad Company saw an opportunity to open another line. This new line approached town from the northwest, along Oak Ridge, and arrived at a depot on Washington Street. From here, a 2.5 mile branch line ran south, carrying tourists to battlefield station stops: Hancock Station along Cemetery Ridge, and Round Top Station, behind the Round Tops. Here the Railroad built Round Top Park, complete with a pavilion and a dance hall, and other amusements, to attract tourist groups.

This ad for Hotel Gettysburg, including a reference to Captain Long's guiding service, appeared in an
1896 edition of Long's Gettysburg: How the Battle was Fought.

With the opening of the new line, more excursion trains began to arrive in Gettysburg, filled with veterans and other tourists interested in seeing the sites. A thriving economy began to develop around the arrival of these visitors. A visitor arriving at the depot on Washington Street found the Eagle Hotel just down the street for easy accommodations, or the Gettysburg Hotel nearby. They also discovered a number of livery stables in the area that offered guided tours of the battlefield by carriage. These guide services were often affiliated with the hotels. A patron of the Gettysburg Hotel, for instance, would find that easy access to one of the most prominent guides in town, Captain James Thomas Long.

Captain James T. Long. Image Source: The Sixteenth
Decisive Battle of the World, Google Books

Born in Little Britain, Lancaster County in 1843, Long was just 18-years old when he enlisted in Company B of the 99th Pennsylvania in June of 1861. He rose to the rank of corporal, but in November of 1861, he was injured by falling timber, and then fell ill with Typhoid fever. Incapacitated by his illness, Long was ruled unfit for further service and discharged in April of 1862. Yet he recovered, and sought to return to military service. After several failed attempts to pass medical examinations, he finally succeeded in enlisting for six months' service in Company G of the 21st Pennsylvania Cavalry in June of 1863. Company G saw service around Harpers Ferry that fall. In winter, Long reenlisted for three-years' service. The regiment was sent to Washington in the spring of 1864, dismounted, and equipped as infantry. It joined the Army of the Potomac's 5th Corps in June, and served there through the end of the war. During this time, Long rose to the rank of Sergeant Major, and then was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant of Company A. His obituary in the Adams County News reports that he received a promotion to 1st lieutenant in the last campaign, and was brevetted a captain. After the war, Long married a woman from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and lived for a time in Montgomery, Alabama. The 1880 Census found Long living in Philadelphia. He found employment in the railroad business as a traveling passenger agent. It was in this capacity that Long arrived in Gettysburg in 1884, employed by the brand new Harrisburg & Gettysburg Railroad.

Whatever brought him to Gettysburg, Long soon found his calling there. He began to devote himself to learning the history of the battle, and by 1886 he was out of the Railroad business and studying the battle full time. Long joined with another guide, Allie Holtzworth, to operate a livery stable in rear of the Gettysburg Hotel. In 1890 he published his own guidebook, called by locals "Captain Long's Red Book." This book went through multiple printings and official titles. You can find it on Google Books today under the titles Gettysburg: How the Battle was Fought and The 16th Decisive Battle of the World.

So what was it like to tour the Gettysburg battlefield in the late 19th century? How would the visitor experience of one of Captain Long's patrons differ from the experience of a visitor today, perhaps one who has hired a Licensed Battlefield Guide? What was Captain Long's tour route? How did he interpret some of the major controversies of the battle? In my next post I will take a look at what some primary sources tell us about touring the field with Captain Long.
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A note on sources: For a great look at early guiding and the history of the Association of Licensed Battlefield Guides, see Frederick Hawthorne's A Peculiar Institution: The Gettysburg Licensed Battlefield Guides.

Hidden in Plain Sight - Part 2

Monument to the 4th Alabama at Gettysburg.
Photo by Jen Goellnitz. Creative Commons Licensing.

When William McKendree Robbins marched away from Gettysburg on the evening of July 4th, 1863, He little knew then that he would return some 30 years later, as an official appointee of the federal government.

Robbins served through the end of the war. He earned a promotion to major following the battle of Chickamauga, and on the morning of May 6th, 1864, he was wounded in fighting along the Plank Road during the battle of the Wilderness. After Appomattox, he returned to his native North Carolina, where he practiced law in Salisbury. In 1868, Robbins ran for State senate as a Democrat and won. He served in this position until he became a United States Congressman in 1873, representing the 7th District. In this capacity Robbins served in the 43rd, 44th, and 45th Congresses.

In the final ten years of his life, Major Robbins would find himself once again playing a prominent role on the Gettysburg battlefield. As a 35-year-old captain he led Company G of the 4th Alabama up the slopes of Little Round Top. In 1894, as a 66-year-old former congressman, Robbins would find himself a principle actor in the effort to preserve the history of that battle.

The Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association had first undertaken the task of preserving the battlefield in 1864. By the late 1880s though, many believed that the GBMA could not manage this task on its own. The organization needed monetary assistance for a number of tasks, including its desire to acquire and mark the ground occupied by Confederate forces during the battle. In addition, modern developments threatened the battlefield - principally the construction of an Electric Railway line over battlefield lands.

Seeing the struggles of the GBMA, several individuals labored in Washington to have the federal government assume control of the park. In 1893, congress appropriated $25,000 to the War Department "for the purpose of preserving the lines of battle at Gettysburg, PA., and for properly marking with tablets the positions occupied by the various commands of the Armies of the Potomac and of Northern Virgina on that field...." A three-man Gettysburg Battlefield Commission would oversee the expenditure of these funds. The following year, Congressman Dan Sickles introduced H.R. 8096, a bill "to establish a National Military Park in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.' The bill became law in 1895 and the U.S. War Department assumed jurisdiction over the battlefield.

Congressman Robbins, "Around the Capital" (detail),
engraving, Thomas Fleming, 1902, Collection of U.S.
House of Representatives. Accessed here.

The War Department named John B. Bachelder, Colonel John Page Nicholson, and Brigadier General W.H. Forney as its first appointees to the Gettysburg Battlefield Commission. Bachelder had already established his reputation as the first and leading historian of the battle, and had a long association with the GBMA. Nicholson had served at the battle in the 28th Pennsylvania, directed the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, and was a member of the Pennyslvania Monument Commission.

Forney had served with the 10th Alabama during the battle of Gettysburg. His inclusion marked an important change in the oversight of the battlefield. From 1864 to 1880, local citizens guided the GBMA. Then, from 1880 until it handed over control of the field, Union veterans controlled the organization. Now, as the federal government prepared to take over the park, for the first time a Southern voice would have a role in its decisions. Unfortunately for Forney - he would have little time to take advantage of his influence. Plagued with ill-health, he passed away in January of 1864. To succeed him - the War Department appointed Major William Mckendree Robbins. In his new position, Robbins would oversee the marking of Confederate positions for the next eleven years.

By 1894 Union veteran organizations and state monument commissions throughout the North had filled the battlefield with monuments. Meanwhile, only one monument stood on the field recognizing a Confederate unit - that of the 1st Maryland on Culp's Hill. The Maryland outfit had applied for and received permission to place their monument on the field in 1884, and dedicated it in November of 1886. The circumstances of its placement aroused some controversy - and the veterans had to designate their unit the "2nd Maryland" to avoid confusion with two federal units that also fought in the area: the 1st Maryland Potomac Home Guard and 1st Maryland Eastern Shore Regiment.

Monument dedicated to the 1st Maryland
(Confederate) on Culp's Hill. Photo by Michael Noirot.
Creative Commons Licensing.

The following year the GBMA created the "line of battle" rule, stating that all units must place their principle monument on the line of battle where they entered the fight, as opposed to the furthest point of advance. The GBMA believed this rule would create a structured process for placing monuments, avoid controversies, and help visitors make sense of the battlefield. For Confederate veterans, the rule meant that they would not have a chance to place their monuments where they fought along the Union line of battle. Prospects for Confederate monuments were further dampened by the fact that most of the ground that made up the Confederate line of battle remained in private hands.

By the late 1880s and early 1890s a spirit of reconciliation had taken hold. White northerners and southerners urged each other to bury their differences, reunite as one nation, and look toward a glorious future. Politicians across the country downplayed the causes of the war, and ignored the unfinished work that remained in extending basic civil rights to African-Americans. The nation began to glorify and honor veterans on both sides. The push to purchase and mark the Confederate positions at Gettysburg came during this rising chorus of reconciliation. And it was against this backdrop that Major Robbins - a strong supporter of reconciliation - returned to Gettysburg.

We can reconstruct the efforts of Robbins and his fellow compatriots on the Gettysburg Battlefield Commission through their yearly reports to the War Department. In 1893 and 1894, the Commission had the land along Seminary Ridge surveyed, and drew up plans for what would eventually become Confederate Avenue. They then set about purchasing the land - a process that would take several years to complete.

In 1895, the Commission reported:

The position and evolutions of the various commands of the Union Army were mostly determined and marked by the Memorial Association. But those of the Confederate army remained for the commission to ascertain and locate. Much attention has been given to this. Surviving Confederate officers and soldiers have been invited to visit the field; also the authorities of the Southern States have been requested to send commissioners representing Confederate commands to point out positions. The responses from the South to these invitations and requests have been very encouraging, and the commission have had the aid of many Confederate soldiers of intelligence, some of high rank, in fixing positions and movements of Confederate troops.

By 1896, the work on marking the Confederate positions had progressed. The Commission reported on their plans to erect "handsome tablets of iron" marking the location of each battery and each command of infantry and cavalry. The following year the Commission could report that a growing number of Confederate veterans had visited the battlefield. "We interpret this as a favorable indication," their report read, "of growing interest on the part of the Southern States and people in this field." Yet, delays continued to plague Robbins and the other Commissioners, and a two mile gap in the Confederate Avenue proposed in 1893 still existed. The 1898 yearly report concluded:

No part of this battlefield is more interesting than the part covered by that gap in the Confederate avenue. Not only did important movements of the second day's battle originate there, but it was there the Confederate column of the third day under Longstreet was formed and began its advance on that final charge led by Pickett, so sublime in its daring and so tragic in its fate. There is no part of this battlefield so inaccessible as this. Encumbered by bushes and briers and cross fences, with not even an open footpath over it, visitors here never see this ground because they can not reach it.

By 1898 the tablets marking Confederate positions - Robbins' primary work - began to appear on the battlefield. He had much bigger dreams though. To this point, Confederate veterans had shown little interest in erecting their own monuments on the Gettysburg battlefield. Robbins hoped to change all of this. One paragraph of the Commission's 1898 report - undoubtedly written by Robbins - stands out:

The commission are much gratified to notice an awakening of interest in influential quarters among the people of the Southern States concerning this battlefield and the importance of erecting monuments to commemorate the heroism of their soldiers here, as the people and States of the North have done, and it is hoped that Congress will recognize and foster this praiseworthy sentiment springing up in the South by liberal appropriations of the moneys needed to purchase and acquire title to the lands on which the Confederate troops operated and where their monuments must be placed.

The following year, Robbins attended a Confederate Veterans' reunion in Charleston, South Carolina, and tried to argue his cause. He offered the following resolutions:

Whereas, The government of the United States has undertaken and is pushing forward the work of permanently marking the lines and positions of the troops of both the contending armies on several great battlefields of the civil war, among them Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Shiloh, Vicksburg and others, with the design of making these battlefields permanent memorials of the prowess of American soldiers without respect to section.

Resolved, That we, as Confederate Veterans, sympathize with and commend this patriotic purpose of the government and will lend our influence and aid toward its full realization.

Resolved, That we trust the people of the Southern States will take early and effective steps to erect upon these battlefields suitable monuments in honor of our glorious heroes in gray who fought and died for what they believed right.

Resolved, That we rejoice with our brethren throughout the Union that the sectional discord of other days is ended and that we are a reunited people, with one country and one flag.

Though the veterans adopted these resolutions, Robbins never did realize his dream of memorializing Gettysburg in the same manner that Union veterans accomplished during the 1880s and 1890s. While Confederate Avenue finally came to completion in 1901, and the brigade and battery tablets continued to appear under his supervision, Robbins wanted more. The 1899 Commission report proposed placing tablets denoting the position of each Confederate regiment in the battle.

Apparently the War Department did not see fit to appropriate funds for regimental tablets, and the people of the Southern States, at least during Robbins' lifetime, never stepped forward to bring his dream to fruition. Today on the battlefield only one iron tablet dedicated to a Confederate regiment stands: that of the 4th Alabama on South Confederate Avenue. The tablet was constructed in 1904. By accessing the Park Service's historic structure report on the monument, we can learn that the funding for the tablet came privately from a member of the regiment - presumably Robbins. The same report lists the designer as "William Mckenzie Robbins" (presumably a typo in the middle name).

One year after the 4th Alabama's tablet appeared on the battlefield, Robbins passed away. In his 11 years with the Gettysburg Battlefield Commission he accomplished a great deal - aiding future historians by using a great deal of care in marking the positions of the Army of Northern Virginia. And yet he had hoped to accomplish much more. A small part of his grand scheme lives on, and you can see it every time you pass by the tablet on South Confederate Avenue that tells the deeds of the 4th Alabama at Gettysburg.

Twelve years after Robbins passed away, the period of Confederate monumentation on the field began with the dedication of the Virginia Memorial in June of 1917.

A Gettysburg Veteran of a Different Sort

Nicholas George Wilson

Not many Gettysburg enthusiasts will recognize the name Nicholas George Wilson. Yet Wilson, a Civil War veteran who did not fight in the battle, casts a huge shadow over our experience of visiting the Gettysburg battlefield to this day.

1858 Business Directory of Bendersville. Note Wilson's property
and blacksmith's shop at the bottom of the map.

Born on 6 October 1832 in Menallan Township in western Pennsylvania, as a young man Wilson took up the blacksmithing trade. Wilson first married in 1852, though his wife died three years later. In 1857 Wilson remarried Ellenora Walter. By 1858 the Wilsons were living in Bendersville, Pennsylvania, a little more than ten miles north of Gettysburg. In that year a map printed in the Bendersville business directory shows the location of Wilson's farm and blacksmith shop. In the 1860 Census Wilson was listed as a farmer. His household at the time included Ellenora and their two-year-old daughter, Susan.

By the beginning of the Civil War Wilson had become a teamster, and in July of that year he served as a first sergeant in a company of State Militia organized for border defense. In the summer of 1862 Wilson responded to President Lincoln's call for 300,000 troops by enlisting for three years of service in Company G of the 138th Pennsylvania.

The men of Company G came from the towns of Bendersville and Heidlersburg in Adams County. Wilson's company commander was James H. Walter - not an immediate family member of Ellenora's but likely related. The rest of the 138th came from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania with the exception of Company B, which was recruited in Gettysburg and commanded by John F. McCreary. Almost immediately Wilson was elected to serve as 1st Sergeant of the company, a position he occupied for the rest of the war. According to his obituary published in 1907, Wilson turned down the offer of a commission in order to serve with the enlisted men.

The 138th spent the fall of 1862 and the spring of 1863 guarding the B&O Railroad in Maryland. In response to Lee's invasion of the north in the summer of 1863, the 138th moved to Harper's Ferry, where it was organized into Elliot's Brigade. When Harper's Ferry was abandoned the regiment moved to Washington and then by rail to Frederick Maryland, where on July 7th the unit was added to the 3rd corps and became part of the Army of the Potomac for the first time.

Over the final two years of the war Wilson and the 138th would make up for their lack of action prior to Gettysburg. Wilson received the scare of his life in one of the regiment's first engagements at the battle of Locust Grove in the midst of the Mine Run Campaign. During the engagement a rebel bullet ripped through his knapsack - in which he had stored 40 rounds of ammunition. The bullet ignited those rounds, and his knapsack was blown right off his back. Wilson was otherwise unhurt, and lived to record the tale in a book of personal wartime sketches individually recorded by members of the Corporal Skelly G.A.R. Post 9, today preserved at the Adams County Historical Society.

In the spring of 1864 the regiment was reorganized into the 6th corps of the Army of the Potomac, and took part in Grant's Overland Campaign. Fighting on the extreme right of the army during the battle of the Wilderness, the 138th took part in a frontal assault on Confederate earthworks on the morning of May 6th. Moving forward through a nearly impenetrable underbrush and under a destructive fire from both front and flank, men were cut down left and right. One member of Company G, Cyrus Cook, recalled later that at one point in the engagement he looked around and noted that all the men around him for nearly 100 yards had been killed, wounded, or had fallen back excepting Sergeant Wilson and Corporal William Reed. Retiring to where the regiment had set up a second line, Cook noted that the impenetrable underbrush that had obstructed their advance had been completely shot off. The regiment suffered 153 casualties in the engagement. Later on the evening of the 6th, the regiment was caught up in a panicked retreat when Confederates under John B. Gordon launched a night assault against the 6th Corps's flank.

The regiment saw further action at Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, and served through the end of the war. In the summer of 1864 Wilson was wounded in the right hand at the battle of Monocacy, losing his second and third fingers and disabling his index and little fingers.

Wilson's Discharge from Service - dated 15 May 1865.

At the close of the war Wilson returned to his business as a teamster. His connection with the Gettysburg
Battlefield began in 1873, when he was elected to serve as the first superintendent of grounds for the Soldiers National Cemetery. He held this position for about fifteen years, overseeing the beautification of the grounds. In 1880 Wilson received election as a director on the board of the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association. In this capacity he played a significant role in the development of the battlefield, particularly the laying out of avenues. Indeed, his obituary relates: "For years the real work of the association on the field was the work of Sergeant Wilson, and he did much to bring the field to the development reached when turned over to the Government, having built a number of the avenues which have since been converted into Telford roads."

In the early 1880s the GBMA opened an avenue along Cemetery Ridge (today's Hancock, Sedwick, and Sykes Avenue) and constructed another across Culp's Hill, which makes up much of the modern Slocum and Colgrove Avenues today. More avenues followed - including what later became Sickles, Howard and Reynolds avenues. By 1887, Wilson had resigned his post with the National Cemetery and accepted a position as superintendent of grounds with the GBMA, earning $1,000 a year.

By the time the GBMA board agreed to transfer its holdings to the federal government in 1894, it had already constructed about seventeen miles of avenues giving access to about 320 monuments. Today, that avenue system - altered and updated over the years - continues to serve as the main interpretive system for the NPS, with the vast majority of visitors to the park experiencing the battlefield through 2-3 hour car and bus tours. This avenue system structures the order in which nearly every visitor experiences the battlefield, and determines which areas of the battle are most easily accessible. In the process, the avenue system naturally heightens the importance of some areas of the battlefield over others, simply by making some areas more accessible.

So next time you are traversing one of the park roads at Gettysburg - give a thought to N.G. Wilson and imagine how different (for good and bad) your battlefield experience today would be without his efforts.