Gettysburg Part of America's Soul by Salena Zito, Real Clear Politics.
... Americans are tethered to Gettysburg by an ancestor who fought on the battlefield, a hometown regiment that fought here, or a historical appreciation for a place that reshaped the war and, ultimately, everyone in this country, according to Michael Krauss, curator at Pittsburgh's Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum.
They visit from across the country. In every season of the year, license plates from Alaska, South Dakota and New Mexico mingle with those from nearby Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. Folks walk along Baltimore Street in full regimental regalia — seven modern-day Confederates silently nodding to three men in Union blue passing on the brick sidewalk...
Comments
I visited Gettysburg a few years ago and was very impressed that it was largely intact and so well visited. The array of regimental monuments along the Union-held ridge at first looked odd and then made sense. On the few battlefields I've visited, mainly in Europe, I have seen nothing similar.
The battlefields of The Somme (1916) appear to have become a similar place of respect or reverence for the British Commonwealth, with a steady flow of visitors and very few re-enactors. A flow that has increased in the past ten years plus, as WW1 studies appeared on school's curriculum.