Hagerstown's hopes are clouded but there may still be a silver lining for Maryland if plans announced this week by the U.S. Park Service for a Civil War museum on the site of the Gettysburg battlefield come to fruition. Hagerstown launched a similar project last spring but the project has been unsuccessful so far in securing financial backing or widespread support. Now the Park Service's plan appears to doom Hagerstown's effort.
But as an arena for several important Civil War battles, Maryland could still benefit from increased tourism and interest in the Civil War generated by a new federal museum at Gettysburg. Carroll County, for example, already plans a major tourist campaign based around the theme of "The Roads to Gettysburg" over which the opposing armies passed on their way to the greatest battle ever fought on American soil. Important Civil War sites at Frederick, South Mountain and Antietam could also get a boost from the interest sparked by the Gettysburg project. Even Baltimore City played its role in the epic conflict between blue and gray.
More than a century and a quarter after the battle, Gettysburg remains the most powerful symbol of a war that threatened the infant democracy that was the young United States and tested, in President Lincoln's words, "whether any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure."
Like the war itself, Gettysburg was an inferno both sides stumbled into, blindly at first, then with increasing tenacity and ferocity. The battle, fought over three days, July 1 to July 3, 1863, engaged 200,000 men and caused 50,000 casualties. When it was over the fate of the Confederacy was sealed and the cause of freedom had been tempered in fire and blood.
The names of that titanic conflagration yet echo across the years: Robert E. Lee, George C. Meade, Oliver O. Howard, George E. Pickett, J.E.B. Stuart. So do the places: Little Round Top, Cemetery Hill, The Peach Orchard, Seminary Ridge, Culp's Hill. And so, finally, does the epitaph in which Lincoln pronounced the meaning of it all for his countrymen: "That government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
The Park Service wants its new museum to illuminate every aspect of the war, not just the Gettysburg battle. That will make it a boon for Maryland, given the state's rich historical legacy and geographical location. We empathize with Hagerstown's disappointment. But the state still has much to gain from this important project.