What I did on my vacation

The classic English assignment for returning students in the fall used to be “What I Did on My Vacation.” Kathy and I just returned from a 13-day road trip eastward. I’ll share some random observations from the trip.

The venues: We visited Gettysburg, Penn.; my cousin and her husband in Washington, D.C.; the barrier island Outer Banks of North Carolina; and son Matt in Raleigh, N.C.

We therefore traveled through three states, in addition to Iowa, that are rated toss-ups in this year’s presidential election: Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

In addition to their narrow poll margins in the race for the presidency, they all happen to have competitive contests for U.S. Senate seats.

We watched plenty of presidential campaign commercials in the evenings and mornings before our daily activity schedules. They were mostly the same ones we are seeing in Iowa.

But I have to say, with a modicum of pride, that Iowa’s TV commercials for our Senate race between Chuck Grassley and Patty Judge are far less insulting, both to the candidates and the voters, than those in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

Maybe if our Senate race were closer in the polls it would be the same story here. But the kinds of personal attacks and ridiculous charges dredged up in PA and NC by both parties are offensive, and there’s precious little discussion in the ads of actual issue stances.

Some recent scholarly studies suggest that political TV ads, despite the millions upon millions of dollars spent on them, do very little to change the election needle. I suspect that that conclusion is causing some panic among the political consultants and TV moguls whose lifestyles are made plushier by the advertising largess that flows every election year.

Donald Trump has made much more use of social media, with less reliance on paid TV, than any presidential candidate in recent years.

Unfortunately for the aforesaid scholarly thesis, Trump’s campaign is so unusual and controversial that it’s not a good test case regarding TV ads’ ineffectiveness.

The other thing we couldn’t miss concerning the election: rural southern and western Pennsylvania, after we left the interstate at Breezewood, Penn., and headed east on two-lane Highway 30 to Gettysburg, appear to be solidly for Trump.

In small town after small town, where middle-class homes line the highway, at least half the yards sport Trump signs, some of them pretty large.

We looked for even one Clinton sign. Not to be found.

We thought we had one, on a display board of a commercial establishment that at first appeared to read “Trump/Pence: Not Here.” But it turned out to be “Trump/Pence: Not Her.”

Most of the Pennsylvania polls, though, show Clinton with a slight lead at present. That’s because the cities and their suburbs, particularly in and around Philadelphia, appear strong for Clinton. The same is true, to a lesser extent, with Pittsburgh.

The situation is essentially the same in North Carolina.

We did some driving off the interstate there as well, and along the byways, to paraphrase “Star Wars,” The Force is strong with Trump if yard sign numbers are to be believed.

It isn’t unusual to see a Trump sign and a Confederate flag in close proximity.

But certainly in Raleigh, and apparently in other urban North Carolina centers, Clinton is comfortably ahead. Consequently, most polls give her a slight lead overall in the state.

Enough about politics.

Gettysburg is a sobering experience. The small southern Pennsylvania village was the 1863 site of the farthest northern advance of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

Lee had enjoyed a long series of impressive victories over Northern forces throughout Virginia and Maryland. His strategy was to circle around northward, threatening to move on Washington from the north, and thereby scare the Lincoln administration into letting the South secede in peace.

Lincoln appointed George Meade, a junior officer, to the rank of general and placed him in charge of the Army of the Potomac, the North’s military, on June 28, 1863. All the freshman commander had to do was immediately lead the army northward and defeat the vaunted Gen. Lee. No problem, right?

Meade did so.

He had hoped to meet Lee at Pike Creek in northern Maryland, a few miles south of Gettysburg, where the terrain would have been more favorable to his troops. But his subordinates were unable to draw Lee back to Maryland, so Meade set up battle lines on the high ground just south of Gettysburg, and awaited Lee’s attack.

And attack Lee did, starting July 1. For three days the armies clashed, Lee trying to dislodge Meade’s troops from their defenses.

On July 1 and 2, the Southern fighters gained ground, but were unable to overrun Meade’s positions. On July 3, against the advice of some of his top generals, Lee ordered a massive charge eastward across wide open fields. His troops stretched a mile from south to north.

The attack, including the famous Pickett’s Charge, cost Lee some 6,500 casualties, including 1,100 killed. By late afternoon the attack had failed, and Lee led his depleted troops southward back into Virginia. It was a key turning point of the Civil War.

Casualties of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg totaled some 57,000 killed, wounded or taken prisoner. They included the deaths of 3,100 Northern and 4,700 Southern men. It was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.

In 1863, the North was not yet fighting to free the slaves as a primary goal. Its stated purpose was to preserve the Union.

But for the South it was a different story.

The Southern states’ white leaders feared that Lincoln’s election in 1860 was the first step toward the abolition of slavery. Leaders of the first states to secede wrote to their neighboring Southern states to urge them to join the secession movement. Those letters make it clear that the threat to the institution of slavery was their primary argument for leaving the Union.

Lincoln was steadily moving toward abolition as a goal, and by the time of Lee’s surrender in April 1865, it was clear that the reunited United States would henceforth be finally free of slavery after 358 years.