The oil still bubbling up from the wreckage of the USS Arizona more than 70 years after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor is referred to as black tears, and visitors to the monument built over the wreckage where 1,177 crew members lost their lives and remain entombed can't help but feel their presence.
It is blood, not oil, that some say still seeps from the ground at Gettysburg, where more than 50,000 soldiers were left dead, wounded or missing following the battles that would later prove to be a turning point in America's Civil War.
Commemorations begin in earnest this coming week to mark the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Looking over displays, standing among the more than 1,400 monuments or gazing out over the fields where so many died, visitors can't help but feel the presence of the brave soldiers who fought and died for what they believed in.
That lingering presence hangs in the air. But it isn't overwhelming. Instead, it stays in the peripheral of your subconscious.
This is a place that commands respect and reverence, that presence whispers. It is a place where brother fought brother in mortal combat to determine the fate, and future, of our country.
Maryland in the Civil War was divided, and that division is highlighted this coming weekend in festivities at the Union Mills Homestead.
Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart's Cavalry, fresh off a skirmish with the Union's 1st Delaware Cavalry in Westminster, which has come to be known as Corbit's Charge, camped in the fields around the Homestead where Andrew Shriver, a Union loyalist, lived. Across the street lived his brother, William, who was a Confederate supporter. Stuart was a guest of William's that night, and the following morning the troops were treated to a pancake breakfast.
The homestead will host a pancake breakfast from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Saturday. From 10 a.m. Saturday until 5 p.m., and then again from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Sunday, the homestead will host "Citizen Meets Soldier: Living History and Civil War Encampment."
A Corbit's Charge Commemoration is planned Friday at 7 p.m. at the Battle Monument on Court Street in Westminster.
After their stay at the homestead, Stuart and his troops continued their march north. Corbit's Charge enthusiasts say that if Stuart's 5,400 cavalrymen hadn't been delayed by the 90-minute skirmish in Westminster, he might have arrived in Gettysburg in time to help Gen. Robert E. Lee defeat the Union army at Gettysburg.
That, however, seems unlikely.
Union troops outnumbered Confederate soldiers 93,921 to 71,699. And at the end of the three-day fight, the Confederate forces had seen 3,903 killed, another 18,735 wounded and 5,425 missing or captured, for total losses of 28,063.
Union forces, by contrast, had lost 23,049, including 3,155 killed, 14,529 wounded and 5,365 missing or captured.
The first day of fighting, which claimed 15,500 killed, wounded, captured or missing, ranks as the 12th bloodiest battle of the Civil War. The second day of fighting, in which 20,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, captured or missing, ranks as the 10th bloodiest battle.
The fighting those first two days was fierce and costly to both sides, but ultimately it was the failed attempt by 12,000 Confederate soldiers to break the Union line - Pickett's charge - which cost Lee's forces dearly and ultimately prompted his retreat.
From the attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C., in April 1861 to the ultimate surrender of Lee to Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox, the Civil War would be marked with many fierce battles, and many lives lost. Like Gettysburg, visitors to these sites can't help but feel the presence that remains 150 years later from the tens of thousands of troops on both sides who lost their lives in battle.
Whether it is the battlefields of Gettysburg, the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 memorial in New York City or elsewhere, standing on these grounds we can feel those who died still watching over us, filling us with pride at what we have accomplished through our more than 200 years of history, but also reminding us of the cost that comes with the freedoms we too often take for granted.
