Today was the last day of the 2024 Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College Summer Conference. This was another day of battlefield tours. I was on the “America’s Ways of War and Leadership: Cambridge to Cemetery Ridge” tour with Dr. Ethan Rafuse of the US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It began with a classroom discussion about how western nations and how the United States in particular waged war from the American Revolution onward.
After lunch we boarded the bus for our field activity. Our first stop was Union Mills, Maryland.
Union Mills is located on Big Pipe Creek and is part of the Pipe Creek Line laid out by Henry Hunt and Gouverneur Warren at George Meade’s direction. It’s called Union Mills because it brought together two mills, as well as two brothers, Andrew and David Shriver. Their descendents operated the mills at the time of the Civil War, with one family being Unionists and the other family being secessionists.
After a stop at the Thompson House, also known as Lee’s Headquarters, we went to the Peach Orchard and discussed Daniel Sickles’ erroneous movement.
Our final stop was Warfield Tower, previously known as Longstreet Tower, but our focus wasn’t on Longstreet but looking in the opposite direction, at the Eisenhower Farm. In the 1920s, Dwight D. Eisenhower commanded the tank training facility Camp Colt, which was on the field of the Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble Charge. This was a really good tour. Ethan did a terrific job.
So ended this year’s Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College Summer Conference. It was another home run. This is the best five days of a Civil War student’s year from the standpoint of Civil War studies. I’m already looking forward to next year’s conference.
Student of the American Civil War 