Gettysburg National Cemetery -The Last Full Measure of Devotion

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. It will become all one thing or all the other." - Abraham Lincoln

Graves of WWI soldiers buried at Gettysburg.

WWI graves.

The Civil War graves.Immediately after the battle the people of Gettysburg were faced with death and devastation. Nearly 10,000 dead lay on the battlefield - four times the town's population.

Local men were hired to remove Union dead from the battlefield and bury them in the new National Cemetery. Much of the work was done by free blacks who returned to Gettysburg following the Rebel retreat. The slaves began rebuilding their lives by burying soldiers who died fighting what Abraham Lincoln called "a new birth of freedom."

Many graves are marked unknown. Jill sent me an authentic Civil War brass button found on the battlefield. Tommy laughed at this gift.

This old tree was there at the time of the battle.

The trunk of the Civil War tree.

The defeat of Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg is considered a turning point in the war. Unfortunately there was still two more years of fighting.

73 Union soldiers from Wisconsin are buried are buried here.

Pennsylvania lost 534 soldiers.

The graves are a semicircle around the site of Lincoln's famous speech.

Along with the dead soldiers, the townspeople had to remove thousands of dead animals.

At the time of the Civil War there were few trees on this land.

This is the place where Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address. 150 years later this November Barak Obama did not take the time to recognize this historic event so important to black people.

A Civil Was cannon which played an important part of this great battle.