July 2, 1863

When the sun rose over the Gettysburg countryside on July 2, 1863, it brought the familiar sticky heat from the previous days, as well as something unexpected: quiet. But, with the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in such close proximity, veteran soldiers on both sides knew the quiet would not last. When the calm was finally broken by Confederate General James Longstreet's attack on the Union left flank near the Devil's Den and the Round Tops around 4 o'clock in the afternoon, it broke like a thunderstorm.

Museums use objects to tell different aspects of history. Some convey personal stories, some are relics of key events, and others are mementos of people who were there. One of the things that even those of us who have spent our entire lives studying and reading about events such as Gettysburg find hard to conceive of is the shear chaotic violence of a battle such as the one which erupted on that hot July afternoon.

Relics such as the one pictured above provide us with a stunning frame of reference. It is a battle log. Specifically, it was cut from a tree on the western slope of Big Round Top. The 10 lb. rifle shell lodged in the log was fired by Reilly's North Carolina Battery against the men of Col. Strong Vincent's brigade as the desperately struggled to hold the Union flank. The log itself came from a tree that fell in a storm on Sept. 30, 1906, and was given to the Museum by John P. Nicholson, one of the leading figures in creating Gettysburg as a National Military Park.

But aside from what it is, its significance is what it represents. There were thousands of these shells flying through the air that afternoon. This one was a dud and failed to detonate, but most where not. It is visual, tactile evidence of the enormous amount of iron and lead that was tearing through trees, splitting rocks, digging up earth, and cutting flesh. Through it, we hear the deafening sound, smell the acrid smoke, and better understand that while to us the battlefield is a vast sweeping space, to the soldiers in the fight it was a very tiny, deadly place.

Battle logs were somewhat common souvenirs after the war, and were often cut by the veterans themselves and contained debris from the part of the battlefield on which their unit fought. Some, like this one, have been lacquered in order to prevent decay or insect damage. Our museum is fortunate to have about a dozen of these relics in our collection.