Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1885-08-15
Ube Canfaster 1ntrlliacr,fer.
LANCASTER. AUGUST Is. 1855.
what Is Lacking at Gettysburg.

The battlefield of Gettysburg promises
10 be for all time the most famous of our
if not of all the world. The fur
ther we, as people, get away from the
passions and prejudices of the late war
and the more its events are studied from
the standpoint of military science, the
more interesting it becomes. That it was |
a civil war, waged between people of one |
nationality, now reunited, permanently |
and forever there is every reason to hope,
adds to its historical interest. That Get
tysburg was the greatest battle of the war,
in numbers engaged, in casualties and in
results, is not debated. 1t marked the
Northern advance of the Confederates and
was the only battle fought on the soil of
free commonwealth. The Southern armies
met their decisive and bloodiest repulse
when they became the invaders of
Northern state.
1t was happy thought that promptly
led to the location of national soldiers
cemetery there; and the spot is consecrated
not only by the graves of nearly four thous-
and of the Union dead of those three fate
full days, but BY the memorable Grafton of
Mr.. Lincoln delivered at the laying of the
cornerstone Of the monument, and which
has passed into the literature of eloquence
as one of its most notable contributions.
Besides the battle monument and the
splendid statue of General Reynolds.
the most illustrious victim of the Get
tysburg fight, the battlefield is being
IL ctn lao, tn
of the men who fought and of the
deeds they wrought there. The battle
field association, formed TO perpetuate
its memories while they We're fresh in
mems minds, has done wonderful work
in securing and protecting and making ac-
ceesible the ground which was fought over
and no spot of like interest anywhere is
so conveniently reached, aud SO easily ira
versed, as is Pennsylvania great battle
field even already.
But it Is not to be We've d with compo-
sure and complacencv ny acitizen of Penn
sylyania who has Just pride in the record
OF her soldiery, that the sister state of Mas
sacbusetts has far outd, ,.pe every other
AA.rorwcslsh III erecting at Gettysburg
her regiments had their stations in
the awful carnage of that decisive
battle. To the casual visitor passing
over the field now it might seem
that the men of the old Bay state had
mainly fought and won the day. This is
not because they have claimed more than
their share, but because they have fully as
serted their own; and their numerous
tasteful and enduring monuments of
granite to mark their part in the battle do
no less credit to those who erected them
than to those whose valor they commemo.
rate. Pennsylvania, which holds this field
within its own limits, whose great captains
and whose rank and file bore the most con-
spicuous place in the battle, and whose soil
was spared spoliation by the issue of it,
should be prompt to erect at every station
lasting memorial of each of her regi-
ments which took part As their ranks
are thinning year by year, before the vet
eran survivors all pass away, they should
see that their tablet isset up at Gettysburg.
Chief of all is il the duty of patriotic
Pennsylvanians to consider without longer
delay the fitness and justice of a proper
monument at Gettysburg to the hero of
that battle, the commander of the victo-
rious armies, Ponnsylvania's great soldier
General George G.. Meade.
Here, on the field of his highest achieve
ment, and on the soil of his native state,
there should be erected to the honor of his
soldierly qualities and to his spotless fame
such a memorial as posterity will look
upon as rejecting not only his own worth,
but the just estimate of his own grateful
and appreciative generation.