Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1903-11-14
The Battlefield Monuments.

The following letter, IN reply y d
criticism that the field of Gettysburg
was oversupplied with monuments
was published recently in the New
York Sun:
The article on the "Over-elaboration
of Our Battlefields" will attract the
attention of many survivors OF both
Gettysburg and Antietam- l am in
clined to think that your correspond
ent must be one of these, but If So. l
am utterly at loss to conceive what
prompts his hypercritical treatment
of the great work accomplished at
Gettysburg by the government COM
missions, the state authorities and the
! individual organizations which partici-
pated in this famous engagement
1 1 cannot believe that one in hun
| bred of us, who were there then,
have ever entertained the thought of
: such sweeping condemnation. or of
any general criticism; nor can l think
that the thousands of others who have
visited the field have else but I'M
stinted praise for all that has been
accomplished there.
i From the inception of the work by
the late Col. John B. Bachelor, who
4 made surveys of the field Immediately
after the battle, and who devoted his
/ life to the accurate location of every
organization in both armies, to the
/ completion of the work now being
done by the government commissions
in building and extending roads and
otherwise protecting the ground from
the ravages of the elements and man,
there has been little to criticise and
much to praise.
There is to be sure, something to
judge as to merit, in the way of monu-
mental architecture, much of which is
crude and not calculated to impress
one seeking artistic display, but when
we realize that many of these E1onu-
ments or markers were executed at,
and brought from rural localities, hun
dreds of miles distant, and in the
main paid for by the odd dollars of the
noble fellows who survived. few are
disposed to measure and weigh in the
spirit of your correspondent. On the
other hand, there are at Gettysburg.
some of the most complete and appro-
pirate memorials erected on the con-
tinent, nor are they too elaborate or
elegant.
The roads by which visitors have
access to the field have been construct
ed under supervision of government
commissions with great painstaking
and care, and are, with the masonry
culverts and bridges, as fine as can be
found anywhere. 1t is a mistake to
say that these are useless, and utterly
unreasonable to say that by all this
work the field has been obscured and
made grotesque."
1 am entitled to differ so far from
your correspondent as to assert that
the field of Gettysburg is by far the
most appropriately and admirably
identified of any battlefield in the
world, and to risk my opinion with
the judgment of survivors or others
My own regiment was among the
first to purchase ground and erect on
it simple marker at Antietam, and
1 trust there may yet be more suitable
and appropriate elaboration of that
battlefield.
Lest we forget" may scarcely ap-
ply to this generation, but there may
come a time when such memorials.
simple and elaborate, will convey a
lesson and enforce a fact which God
grant we may never forgt-Theron
E. Parsons, New York, Sept. 80.