View source for Botanical Specimens


== Botanical Specimens ==

fl;1863.932;di

Left: Leaves of Black Oak (Quercus Velutina). In poor condition. Without acorns. n.d. 

Right: Frond of Cedar (Cedrus Libani). n.d., prob. early 20th century collection. 

Gettysburg, a borough in and the county-seat of Adams county, Pennsylvania, about 35 miles south-west of Harrisburg. The site is a valley about 1 1/2 miles wide. 
The battle of the 1st through the 3rd of July, 1863 is often  regarded as the turning point of the Civil War, yet it arose from a chance encounter. Scattered Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee had concentrated there, while Meade, the Federal commander, held the town with a cavalry division, supported by two weak army corps. When General A. P. Hill’s Confederate forces approached Gettysburg from the west they met with strenuous resistance from Federal cavalry division of General John Buford. 

At the close of the three-day battle the carnage shocked even seasoned veterans: the South had lost 30,000 soldiers and the North 23,000. The extensive area of the battle (or battles) had been transformed to a cemetery—yet a cemetery at first unable to attend to all of its dead. In the places of fiercest fighting, such as the Peach Orchard and Cemetery Ridge, the bodies lay  in ghastly heaps subject to midsummer heat.. Even the roads leading to this terrible battle are now imbued with a poignancy. “The road to Gettysburg”, was strewn for miles with soldiers fallen prostrate with heat stroke. In order to get as many troops as quickly as possibly into position, the commanders of the day gave orders to leave the stricken soldiers where they had fallen. 
Within a few months a formal national cemetery was created on the site of the Gettysburg battlefield. At its dedication Abraham Lincoln followed Massachusetts Senator Edward Everett’s two hour address of with his very brief, yet stunning dedicatory—now known simply as the “Gettysburg Address”. 

The Black Oak leaves are specimens from a grove nearby the “Peach Orchard.” The cedar is from a monumental, free-standing tree close to the site of Lincoln’s speech, and the graves of unknown soldiers, set out in a circular pattern. 

There is no date assigned to these specimens, local to Gettysburg. 

(Compare to: grasses from Cemetery Ridge, a memorial to Picket’s Charge, also in the Museum Collection)