We have followed earlier controversies involving the development of Civil War battlefields and historic areas by Disney, Walmart, and other corporations — often with the help of local politicians bent on trading their heritage for short-term gains. We can now add Gettysburg where local politicians have been pushing for a Gettysburg Casino over the objections of preservationists.
The plan to convert Gettysburg’s Eisenhower Conference Center into a gambling casino has the surprising support of the Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association. However, the American Legion, historians, and a host of others are opposing the idea as a disgrace. The casino would be located only a half a mile from the park and on land that is part of the large battlefield area where 172,000 Union and Confederate troops fought and nearly 8,000 died.
You can now use the actual deployment maps to show developers surrounding and destroying this sacred area.
While proponents claim that the casino could increase visitors to the park, it seems doubtful that people will want to take a break from the one-armed bandits to run over and get some history. Indeed, while this was the sales pitch for a casino near Vicksburg, there has been no increase in visitation to that historic park.
I remain astonished over the willingness for people to dishonor such proud and noble heritage for cheap big box stores and casinos. Perhaps they can offer Pickett’s Charge Cards. Of course, they can claim that it was Union Col. William Gamble who introduced the idea.
Local politicians appear to have forgotten the words of Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the hero of Little Round Top: “In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear, but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls.”
This remains one of the most sacred and shared areas of history for our nation. It should be a source of pride for those people living in this area and bring an added sense of duty to protect this legacy. To dishonor this legacy with a cheap Casino that will commercialize this battle is a national outrage.
They have finally proven Abraham Lincoln wrong when he assured his fellow citizens that “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”
Just in case the local planning board would be interested in a slight distraction before degrading our shared heritage, they may want to read the following before their final vote:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Source: WTOP
Byron,
Am I going to have to get out the “Your Rights End Where Others Begin” stick?
Gyges:
Good one.
Byron:
“And liberty is whatever they desire to do, no matter how deviant or how badly some one’s rights are abused.”
I’ve never in my whole entire life heard anyone say that, including any libertarian I have met or read. The “deviant” part is standard but the second part is completely unique to you, as far as I can tell.
Have I been missing something all these years?
Government of the people, by the people, for the people ALREADY HAS perished from the face of the Earth. Our government rules the people, but it government by the rich, for the rich. It has been so since World War II ended. If you doubt it, then I doubt you have been paying much attention to the matter.
Moar,
Ask Orwell about the importance of having physical evidence of the history.
Gettysburg was almost 150 years ago. Ancient history. Everyone alive then is now dead.
It was a battle between soldiers and traitors.
I find the idea that we’re supposed to hold this piece of land sacred in perpetuity laughable; it’s just land. People died there once. People die everywhere, every day. If American deaths are what make land sacred, every hospital in this nation should be “hallowed ground”.
A laughable idea, no? We bulldoze hospitals and redevelop them all the time.
It’s surely not sacred just because a bunch of idiots decided to take up arms against their own government and got their guts shot out for it. No, it’s merely a big field that, at best, is a monument to stupidity, ignorance, and blind obedience. Who needs, or wants, that?
Pave it and move on.
LK,
I read that follow up piece this morning and I share your sense of outrage and appalling inappropriateness of not holding the school accountable for blatant invasions of privacy based on “lack of criminal intent”.
JT: “It is time for us the living to recover our heritage of freedom.”
I agree with the sentiment and the rationale put forth; it’s the wrong place for the wrong reasons but I don’t have much hope that will stop the development and can’t work up much outrage.
What has caused me to sit thinking about the relevance of Gettysburg for the last hour is the above phrase, the exhortation by the Professor “…our heritage of freedom.” for which Gettysburg is obviously a touchstone for him and as it shuld be for us all. I can think of only three wars that should be touchstones for the nation, The Revolutionary War, the Civil War and WWII. They speak directly to our national birth and soul. These are the good wars and they should instruct us but they don’t.
Why preserve the physical manifestations of ideas that no longer inform us or have relevance for the country we are? They seem to me to be artifacts which a guide might point out in a museum along with the Bill Of Rights and say “these are examples of our heritage of freedom, but of course, freedom has evolved and now carries a different, more nuanced meaning.”
I’m no longer persuaded we’re the home of the free. I see our freedom as dead, bled out by a thousand cuts. Every day brings another verification of that to my mind and I’m not having a bad day, this is just the way I see the country now and have for some good length of time. JT’s article is well written and poignant but all I can muster is ‘why bother?’ and I say that regretfully.
Below isn’t even the most disturbing article I’ve read today, just the one most on point regarding individual freedom; JT’s article and the follow-up posted today on Huffpo:
http://jonathanturley.org/2010/02/20/pennsylvania-school-accused-of-equipping-computer-with-surveillance-devices-and-spying-on-students-at-home/
Follow up: Feds find no criminal behavior, no charges to be brought.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/17/pa-school-laptop-spying-c_n_684934.html
Coming soon: The Truman Memorial Whorehouse
I get what you are saying Byron and I agree, but what do you suggest be done to turn this tide?
Byron,
“And liberty is whatever they desire to do, no matter how deviant or how badly some one’s rights are abused.”
I don’t quite get what you’re saying there. Right now it reads like you’re saying that only anarchy is freedom, which seems incredibly out of character.
VT:
“It is time for us the living to recover our heritage of freedom.”
Good words but the entire history of America during the last 110 years has been about a slow march toward slavery and despotism. Starting with TR and Woodrow Wilson. I don’t think most Americans are even aware of what freedom and liberty are anymore.
Most think freedom is freedom from want, hunger and having to pay a mortgage or freedom from having to take your loses like a man (Wall St.). They don’t understand that government subsidies come with chains. And liberty is whatever they desire to do, no matter how deviant or how badly some one’s rights are abused.
A casino on or near the Gettysburg Battlefield is par for the course most Americans have taken.
I agree that this is a dumb idea, but my mind keeps comparing your words to the objections to Cordoba House (aka the Ground Zero Mosque) and saying “at least this is a full half-mile away.”
Allow me to imitate whip out the one Latin phrase I know readily:
O tempora o mores!
kay sieverding, you are 1 smart cookie! Yes, I believe there are a lot of things going on that Government sanctions by deliberately being less that transparent, less than timely these days…those big boys are a jonesing and they will get what they want no matter who or what gets run over in the process. It is an abyss for citizens who are not corrupted or willing to be bought off…
Put me in the outraged pile. This isn’t a casino that just happens to be going in near Gettysburg, it’s a casino going in to capitalize on the fact that people visit Gettysburg. They should be ashamed.
The Indians are having the last laugh….for a few trinkets…and a few jewels…you to can have an island….then, try and eliminate them…pass a national law against gambling…..Well, you do need them after all….unless it is a state referendum….or a willing Tribe….you can’t have gambling…..
This is an unfortunate situation. History should be preserved, but at all cost? What about the Historic Building in Cleveland being bulldozed as it is cheaper than paying unrequited taxes….
How about getting the Dukes to buy it, if people want it saved?
Since I have a degree in city planning, I am usually pretty fast at finding official land use records.
I think the casino would require a variance from existing regulation. Or, it might be proposed as a PUD — Planning Unit Development.
I found the location of the proposed casino in a map. It is in Cumberland Township, PA. The township website doesn’t have a search function.
http://www.cumberlandtownship.com/
I couldn’t find the records on the Adams County, PA web site either.
http://www.adamscounty.us/
Adams County PA asks users to “log-in”. That’s a feature I don’t remember seeing on other government websites. Again, the government website has no search function. The County website contains news stories that someone selected and claims to be “powered by Google News” and it has a box for “sports” including the NASCAR update. Any web designer sophisticated enough to add those features to a county website would definitely know how to add a search function so it seems deliberate resistance to transparency.
If the process is transparent, then you should be able to trace the regulations back to state enabling statutes.
This is a truly eloquent plea by Professor Turley to preserve and honor a living memorial to human freedom.
The urge to pave over our heritage never dies. There were in fact proposals to convert the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal into a highway until Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas came to its rescue by hiking the entire length. The C+O is now a national treasure.
It looks like this latest scheme would have the added, collateral effect of demeaning the name of General and President Dwight Eisenhower, who retired to Gettysburg in 1961 when he left the White House.
We have to remember that the Battle of Gettysburg was no mere skirmish between squabbling factions. Freedom was in the balance and nearly perished.
At Gettysburg, one side fought to end human slavery in America, and the other fought to preserve it. According to James McPherson, in Battle Cry of Freedom, Lee’s troops “seized scores of black people in Pennsylvania and sent them south into slavery.” Page 649.
It is time for us the living to recover our heritage of freedom.
make that “yield” sans “s.”
Noble sentiments indeed, Professor Turley, but if modernity has proven only one thing, it’s that history and beauty always yields to the urge to make money — lots of money. Were it economically feasible the Chesapeake Bay, a national treasure, would be paved over or converted into a witch’s brew of poison run off, and chemical waste. Those First Century folks did understand a lot about human nature: “For the love of money ….”