History buffs gather as Gettysburg prepares for Civil War anniversary

Simon Mann
June 25, 2011 – 12:14AM

Nor, for that matter, a shrine to John F. Kennedy that includes a cane rocking chair, made to order for a commander-in-chief with a crook back.

But there they are on display in the little Museum of History on Baltimore Street, along with thousands of Civil War artefacts – weapons, shrapnel, bullets, uniforms and manuscripts, even Abraham Lincoln’s wallet – that provide a reassuring geographical reference.

The eclectic hoard evolved from proprietor Erik Dorr’s early fascination with history.

At age eight, he saved $50 during a summer mowing lawns and, instead of buying baseball cards like his peers, he acquired a trunkload of mementoes taken from captured German soldiers in World War II by his school’s cleaner.

”My parents thought I was off my rocker,” he says, sheepishly.

But Dorr’s destiny was marked: he became a collector and then dealer, finally managing to lay his hands on some of the trove famously looted by US soldiers from Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s lair in the Bavarian Alps.

In the heart of this Civil War precinct, the 43-year-old’s collection – displayed in the home that once belonged to his great-grandparents – might seem incongruous, especially as America commemorates the sesquicentenary of those bloodied and brutal 19th-century hostilities.

But history is the currency of Gettysburg, where the business of collecting and commemoration comes in various guises, from the intriguing to the classy and the kitsch, and where Lincoln’s face features on everything from plaques to baseballs, to packs of candy.

Yet for the town that is the most synonymous with the war, Gettysburg’s big moment is still two years away as events marking the 150th anniversary unfold to the timetable of the war, plotting a course from the first engagement of the war at Fort Sumter to the final battle at Appomattox.

Gettysburg’s turn comes in 2013, although those fateful first three days of July fall this year on a weekend, adding a buzz to the 148th anniversary re-enactments.

Preparations are apparent: footpaths are being relaid in the main street and workers tend the battlefield surrounds in the muggy early summer as tour groups navigate the 1300 monuments and memorials in buses, on horseback, bikes and Segways.

”It’s just starting to build,” says a bartender of the annual influx, a sepia-toned battlefield photograph displayed behind her that is actually the door to a wide fridge. ”It’s been busy but it’s gonna get a helluva lot busier,” she adds.

At the nearby American History Store, where generals Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee are kings on a Civil War chess board, a sales assistant has detected an upswing, too. ”I’ve noticed a lot more people already this year, so 2013 is going to be crazy.”

Just how ”crazy” is difficult to fathom, because already at the new Visitor Centre and Museum, busloads of tourists swarm the gift shop like locusts, stripping it of Gettysburg key-rings, Gettysburg cups, Gettysburg playing cards, Gettysburg teddies and T-shirts … pens, peanuts, prints and paraphernalia, as the Battle Hymn of the Republic is piped through the sound system.

The town centre, meanwhile, seems more suited to genuine history buffs, where relics are stocked by various dealerships, including one on Steinwehr Avenue where the vendor is retelling with gusto the moment when a Russian tourist slapped roubles on the counter and tried to make off with a $3000 revolver.

Here a rusty cannon ball, still in one piece, is selling for $US475, bayonets for $US750 and an 1861 Enfield rifle for $US5500.

The good burghers of Gettysburg have harvested tonnes of munitions from the battlefield in the decades since the two armies collided there, putting the Pennsylvania town forever on the map.

The combatants fired more than 600 tonnes of metal over the three days, as they soaked the battlefield with the blood of 10,000 dead and another 30,000 wounded.

Some had died instantly, wrote a Union soldier from Wisconsin. ”Others had struggled fiercely with death, tearing the earth with their hands, dying at last with expressions of the most horrible agony lingering on their distorted features.”

Months later, America’s first National Cemetery would be consecrated on six hectares of land in the middle of Gettysburg.

The president attended but was not billed as the main speaker. Instead, Lincoln was invited to make ”a few appropriate remarks”. Which he did, for just two minutes.

And the rest is history.

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/world/history-buffs-gather-as-gettysburg-prepares-for-civil-war-anniversary-20110624-1gjl4.html