Wednesday, July 03, 2013

150 Years Ago Today

Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg.

History question:  why did so many of our major battles happen in National Parks?  :-)

2 comments:

EdD said...

That is a coincidence! It's like when Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig's
disease, I mean, what are the chances!

Steve USMA '85 said...

It was a conspiracy between the Founding Father's to boost tourism in the nascent United States by having many of the Revolutionary War battles fought in national parks. Yorktown, Bunker Hill, etc. The War of 1812 was mainly fought to again boost tourism in the National Parks because attendance was way down in places like Baltimore and New Orleans.

When the founding fathers were pretty much out of the picture, they conspired to create the Department of Interior to carry on their support of the National Parks. When attendance again dropped in the late 1850's, Interior got with the War Department and asked for some large battles fought at places such as Gettysburg, Antietam, Petersburg, Vicksburg, and others. In return, Interior allowed the military to continue honing their skills against the western Indians at parks like Little Big Horn after the main eastern war was over.

I could go on about San Juan Hill, Pearl Harbor, etc., but you took the same history classes as I did at West Point so I would be pointing out the obvious.