Shand Stringham's Blog
April 3, 2011
Gettysburg Revisited
Writing a novel is hard work! I have been working on Gettysburg Revisited for the past 18 years since arriving at the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks way back in 1993. Ernest Hemingway once said something like "The first draft of anything is crap." Looking back on my first drafts and all the subsequent rewrites and revisions, I realize how right he was. I needed the 18 years to learn enough to make the novel work and hopefully get the narrative right.
My idea for the novel came to me quite early in my assignment as a professor of national security and strategy at the War College. During the academic year, we took the War College students and their families on staff rides to Gettysburg to supplement our lessons on strategic leadership and to help them understand the importance of that great conflict in the history of our country.
Carlisle Barracks and Gettysburg are separated by just 30 miles of beautiful Pennsylvania farm country and share many elements of historical connectivity. As I came to realize just how closely connected they are, the idea came to me for a novel story line, based on time travel, that would tie together all of the historical vignettes about the two places that I was discovering. I overlaid the storyline on my own personal experience of working on the War College faculty and the exciting time my family and I had while living there on Carlisle Barracks between 1993 and 1998.
And so, the novel is based on an historical reality but the time travel story line is entirely fictional. It explores a bunch of historical what-ifs and I've tried to throw in a plot twist or two to keep the reader guessing. At the heart of the novel is my profound respect for those brave soldiers dressed in blue and grey who came to the battlefield in that hot July summer of 1863 and shed their blood for what they believed in. I truly believe that perhaps the greatest public discourse that America has ever heard was Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. His poignant words at the end of that great speech affect me deeply—
" 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. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
We live in a remarkable time in our Nation's history when the values upon which it was established are being challenged on every front. The lessons of Gettysburg can help us through that. Like Lincoln, I believe that we still have a great task before us—an increased devotion to the cause for which they died, that we might indeed have government of the people, by the people, and for the people—and that we might do what's necessary to pass that legacy on to our own children. I hope that, in part, Gettysburg Revisited reminds us of that mandate.
