BY STEVE JANOSKI
As a child, my fascination with American history, and the Civil War in particular, could not be sated.
I had watched all of the movies and read all of the books, and did my best to tear the words off the pages and form lucid pictures in my head of what the scenes in America’s epic wars must have looked like.
Nothing, however, was comparable to the extraordinary experience of visiting a battlefield itself.
Though it may seem a dreary and boring chore to some, I loved walking along the ground I had read about so often, and tried hard to imagine the sights and sounds of war, though they were difficult to conjure against the often picturesque landscapes that exist so many years later.
Of all the places I visited, however, none held the same allure as Gettysburg.
The small hamlet has an aura about it that cannot be explained; it’s as if history rises up through the ground and floods the streets, enveloping every crack, every facet of its residents’ lives.
Bullet holes still festoon the buildings’ brick walls, and the hotel in which Lincoln composed his immortal Gettysburg Address still stands.
The gently sloping hills and slender ridges around the town where the battle was fought are quiet now, in stark contrast to the broiling hell that consumed them over three brutally hot days in July of 1863.
From July 1 to July 3, the South’s Army of Northern Virginia and the North’s Army of the Potomac clashed in a battle that was so indescribably horrifying, so sadistically violent, that by the end of the fighting, 51,000 Americans were considered casualties.
8,000 of these were killed outright in the fighting, and left their corpses to bake and rot under Pennsylvania’s summer sun.
These were men—American men—with families, with children, who gave up their inauspicious lives in Maine and Minnesota, in Alabama and Virginia, to fight for what they thought was right, and paid that ultimate sacrifice.
If there is any holy ground in this country, any land that should remain untouched as long as America stands, it’s the acres of dirt that once soaked up the blood of these hardened American warriors.
But, as a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer points out, not everyone holds this view.
In this case, the proposal calls for a $75 million, 600-slot casino to be built just a half-mile from the southern edge of the 6,000-acre Gettysburg National Park on a section of the battlefield that saw action, but isn’t owned by the National Park Service.
It’s being proposed by former Conrail chief executive David LeVan, who had a similar request for an even more massive casino shot down by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in 2006 due to heavy opposition.
LeVan seems to have a special interest in building this monstrosity next to the battlefield— not surprising considering the weight that the Gettysburg name carries in relation to tourism.
The typical developer claims have been made: the casino won’t be visible from the battlefield, it will bring jobs to the economically depressed area, etc.
But, if there’s one thing we’ve all learned living in North Jersey, it’s that developers will say whatever they have to in order to get approval to build something, but when that something is complete, it rarely works like the developer said it would.
There are many who are far more intelligent than I that feel the same way, as nearly 300 historians, including more than one Pulitzer-prize winner, have signed a letter protesting the development to the Gaming Control Board, saying that its construction would be an "insult to the men who died there."
They are exactly right.
Can you imagine the outcry if LeVan wished to put a casino right on top of Ground Zero in New York?
Or maybe, a strip club inside of Independence Hall?
Should it be approved, the casino would be the prime example of capitalism run amok, destroying that which should be sacred to a people in the name of jobs, money, and profits.
Perhaps LeVan would be otherwise convinced if he read the words Lincoln spoke when commemorating the Gettysburg National Cemetery in November of 1863, for no one could say it better.
"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."
Do not forget what they did, Mr. LeVan.
Find somewhere else for your casino.
As a child, my fascination with American history, and the Civil War in particular, could not be sated.
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