Gettysburg

One of the crucial battles of the American Civil War occurred just a few miles north of the Maryland border -- the legendary Mason-Dixon line that delineated North from South -- in the little town of Gettysburg. And yet 130 years after that historic battle, ,, Maryland remains the only one of the 29 states with soldiers on the field that has not erected a memorial honoring its citizens.Thirty-five hundred Marylanders participated in the three-day battle at Gettysburg, which marked Gen. Robert E. Lee's northernmost drive of the war. For the Marylanders involved in that battle, the war was a true civil war -- brother fighting brother, boyhood friends trying desperately to kill each other, neighbors on different sides of a bloody confrontation.

Here is an excerpt of an editorial from the Philadelphia Inquirer, which was published Tuesday.IN THE rolling hills around Gettysburg, there's once again talk of wholesale casualties -- this time, if the National Park Service charges ahead with its creative plan for a makeover of the battlefield's visitor center.No bloodshed, of course. The feared victims are the merchants who serve the tourist trade around the hallowed territory of Pickett's Charge.Because the Park Service would build its new visitor center and museum about a half-mile from the present site atop Cemetery Hill, merchants nearby worry that their livelihoods would retreat along with the footsteps of Gettysburg's 1.7 million annual visitors.

Touring the Gettysburg battlefield can be a solemn and moving experience. But not if your eyes are transfixed on the 307-foot steel tower that looms over the battlefield. It is a wretched excess, an intrusion of rank commercialism that mars this historic landmark.The tower should be blown to bits, the sooner, the better. It sits on private property overlooking the battlefield. Fortunately, the owners have expressed an interest in selling this atrocity. The asking price? In the vicinity of $6.6 million.

You can search the entire Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, Pa., just north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and find not a single monument to the 3,500 men and boys from Maryland who fought in that storied three-day struggle. Now, 130 years after the battle, there is momentum to give these Marylanders a proper memorial.Citizens for a Maryland Monument at Gettysburg has commissioned a nine-foot-high bronze statue of two wounded Marylanders from opposing sides helping one another off the bloody battlefield.

ON Nov. 19, 1863, with the Civil War only half over and the worst yet to come, Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech now universally regarded as both the most important oration in U.S. history and the best explanation -- "government of the people, by the people, for the people" -- of why this nation exists.We would expect the history of an event so monumental as the Gettysburg Address to be well-established. The truth is just the opposite. The only thing scholars agree on is that the speech is short -- only 10 sentences -- and that it took Lincoln less than five minutes to stand up, deliver it and sit back down.

McDaniel College jumped out to an 8-2 halftime advantage before holding on to topple No. 13 Gettysburg, 12-10, in Centennial Conference (CC) men's lacrosse action on Saturday, April 21. Skippy Clary (Baltimore/Catonsville) scored three goals to lead the Green Terror (8-6, 4-3 CC), who handed the Bullets (10-4, 6-1 CC) their first conference loss of the season. JS Duke (Fort Washington/Upper Dublin) added two goals and three assists in the team's first win over Gettysburg since 1997, snapping a 17-game losing streak in the series.

McDaniel ended years of frustration and heartbreak with Saturday's 12-10 decision against Centennial Conference foe Gettysburg. The win was the Green Terror's first against the Bullets since 1997. “When you play in this conference, you get to play against teams like Gettysburg every year, and Gettysburg has been one that we've been chasing since I've been here, which is going on nine years now,” coach Matt Hatton said Tuesday morning. “They're a class act, they're well-coached and very talented.

Granted the program's first ranking in the latest United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Association poll, Washington will test that No. 15 ranking this Saturday when No. 17 Gettysburg visits Roy Kirby Jr. Field in Chestertown. The Shoremen (8-2 overall and 5-0 in the Centennial Conference) own a half-game lead over the Bullets (7-3, 4-0), who have captured the league championship 13 times. But Washington, winners of eight straight, is riding its own wave of confidence. “It's one of those things where that can absolutely work in our favor,” coach Jeff Shirk said Monday.

To understand how a quiet, obscure Pennsylvania town with no industry, no military significance at all in July of 1863, became the fiercely contested ground in the bloodiest three days of fighting in the Civil War -- now the subject of the new Turner Pictures epic "Gettysburg" -- one has only to consult a map of the countryside.Ten different roads led into Gettysburg in those days from the surrounding Pennsylvania and Maryland countryside, making it the natural rallying point for a scattered army trying to quickly piece itself together.