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Taking Students to Gettysburg
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By Phil Hamilton, March 30, 2010 in Pedagogy and Teaching, Outside the Classroom

A few weeks ago, I took a dozen students from my university on a spring break field trip to the Gettysburg National Military Park.  We spent 3 days touring the field of action.  Although we endured blustery temperatures and tramped through some deep snow drifts (rather than dealing with heat and humidity as in July 1863), I found the experience highly rewarding and satisfying.  (By the way, the new NPS museum, which opened in 2008, is especially worth seeing).

Several years ago, when I was the faculty advisor to the history club at my university, I used to lead more trips to historical sites within a day’s drive of tidewater Virginia.  Although I’ve pulled back a bit due to other responsibilities, I continue to lead this trip to Gettysburg every year (this is our fourth time up to Pennsylvania in the last five years).   

I find the more often I visit Gettysburg, the less I discuss strategies and tactics and the more I relate vignettes about particular officers and soldiers.  Many of these stories convey what I think are the most important and interesting questions about the battle (and about the entire war)—why did these ordinary men join the ranks and why did they fight and die in such extraordinary numbers?  While historians continue to debate the war’s causes and the ideological motivations of ordinary soldiers (I used James McPherson’s For Cause and Comrades in my Civil War course), as I looked out over the field where Pickett’s men charged on July 3, 1863, I cannot help but be impressed by the dedication of these soldiers to the causes they believed in.

I lead students on these trips in part because I always enjoy visiting this field myself.  But I also want the students themselves to gain some sense of the incredible commitment and sacrifice of Civil War soldiers (most of whom were about the same age as these students).  And I believe that visiting this historic site is one of the ways they will gain a deeper appreciation of our nation and its values as well as a greater understanding about our shared past. 

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2 Comments
Lee Trepanier on Mar 31, 2010 at 7:47 am

I'm curious about the students' reactions to the trip. I assume they find it worthwhile, but what reasons do they give?

Phil Hamilton on Apr 1, 2010 at 10:16 am

Students certainly enjoy the trip and their reactions are varied. Most of them enjoy learning about the battle as a military operation -- hence I receive many questions are about the strategy and tactics employed by both sides. While I also enjoy discussing military operations, I realized after the first trip there that we weren’t sufficiently exploring the ideological and personal reasons why soldiers fought at Gettysburg. And this is really why I've started including more anecdotal information about individual soldiers with regard to their reasons for enlisting and their experiences/sacrifices.

My hope is that students leave the battlefield not only with a fuller understanding of what happened at Gettysburg, but that they also possess a deeper appreciation about why Americans fought one another with such ferocity during the Civil War era.

about the author

Phil Hamilton
Phil Hamilton

I teach U.S. history at Christopher Newport University, located in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. My courses include those on the American Revolution, Early Republic, slavery in America, and the Civil War era. I am a social historian and my research focuses on the changing nature of family life and public service in the late-18th and early 19th centuries.