Gettysburg National Cemetery

The centerpiece of Gettysburg National Cemetery is Soldiers' National Monument (1869), a 60-foot-tall (18 m) granite monument designed by sculptor Randolph Rogers and architect George Keller. It is surrounded by concentric semicircles of graves, divided into 18 sections for Union states (1 each), a section for United States Regulars, and three sections for unknown soldiers. Battlefield monuments within Gettysburg National Cemetery include those of the 1st United States Artillery Battery H, the 2nd Maine Battery, the 1st Massachusetts Battery (Cook's Battery), the 1st Minnesota Infantry, the 1st New Hampshire Light Battery, the 5th New York Independent Light Artillery, the 136th New York Volunteer Infantry, the 1st Ohio Battery H, the 55th Ohio Infantry, the 73rd Ohio Infantry, and the 75th Pennsylvania Infantry; and markers for the 1st Ohio Battery I and the 3rd Volunteer Brigade Artillery Reserve (Huntington's Brigade). Other monuments include the New York State Monument (1893), the Kentucky State Monument (1975), the Lincoln Address Monument (1912), the Friend to Friend Masonic Memorial (1994), the Major-General John F. Reynolds Statue (1872), and the Major-General Charles Collis Memorial (1906). ==History==

In 1863, William Saunders was selected by a committee of Union governors to design the Soldiers National Cemetery. Saunders' radial plan of "simple grandeur," grouped the Union dead by states and focused on a central monument. The graves were marked with simple, unadorned, rectangular slabs of gray granite inscribed with the name, rank, company, and regiment of each soldier. Saunders noted in his description of the design that this repetition of "objects in themselves simple and common place" was meant to evoke a sense of "solemnity" which "is an attribute of the sublime." Officers and enlisted men were buried alongside one another to symbolize the egalitarian nature of the Union Army, which consisted mostly of volunteer citizen soldiers. Reinterments Union remains were transferred from the Gettysburg Battlefield burial plots, local church cemeteries, field hospital burial sites, including Camp Letterman, Rock Creek-White Run Union Hospital Complex, USA General Hospital, and the "Valley of Death" below Little Round Top, where unburied soldiers decomposed in place. Samuel Weaver, as "Superintendent of the exhuming of the bodies", personally observed the contractor's workers opening graves, placing remains in coffins, and burying them in the cemetery, and at least one reinterment from neighboring Evergreen Cemetery. Consecration (seated, left of center) at the cemetery's consecration on November 19, 1863, several hours before he delivered his famed Gettysburg Address File:Unknown into the abyss.jpg|Granite bands mark the graves of unknown soldiers. File:Gettysburg rostrum.jpg|National Cemetery rostrum (1879) File:1st MN Infantry Urn.jpg|1st Minnesota Infantry Memorial Urn (1867), first battlefield monument installed in the national cemetery File:JFReynolds GB3.jpg|Major-General John F. Reynolds (1872) by John Quincy Adams Ward File:NY State Monument Highsmith.jpg|New York State Monument (1893) File:LincolnAddressMemorial.jpg|Lincoln Address Memorial (1912) File:KY State Monument Gettysburg.jpg|Kentucky State Monument (1975) File:Gettysburg5.JPG|The cemetery's south end contains graves of soldiers from more recent wars. The back of the Lincoln Address Memorial is at upper left. Chronology ==References==