Snowy dawn, East Cemetery Hill - Gettysburg

Snow coats the many monuments, including equestrian depictions of Union Generals Howard (left) and Hancock, at dawn on East Cemetery Hill. (Click image for larger view).

Grave blanket - Gettysburg

A coating of snow, sculpted by wind, hides graves in the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Lt. Frank Haskell wrote of the final resting place of the Gettysburg Union dead: "Another spring shall green these trampled slopes, and flowers, planted by unseen hands, shall bloom upon these graves; another autumn and the yellow harvest shall ripen there—all not in less, but in higher perfection for this poured out blood. In another decade of years, in another century, or age, we hope that the Union, by the same means, may repose in a securer peace and bloom in a higher civilization." (Click image for larger view).

Snow in the Cemetery - Gettysburg

The Soldiers National Cemetery rests under a blanket of snow at Gettysburg. The Soldiers National Monument stands as one of the few markers not covered by the light snow - the grave markers of those killed at Gettysburg are flush to the ground in a simple design, radiating in a half circle from the tall monument at its center. (Click image for larger view).

Long Remember

Wind-raked snow blankets grave markers in the Gettysburg National Cemetery. When Robert E. Lee's Confederate army began its retreat 145 years ago today - and the Union army soon followed - not all the soldiers left Gettysburg. Among the dead of both sides, 3512 Union soldiers were eventually buried in the newly created Soldiers National Cemetery. President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address Nov. 19, 1863 at the cemetery's dedication, with the reburials of the soldiers from hasty graves on the battlefield not yet complete. (Click image for larger view).

Lincoln Cemetery

The tombstone of USCT (United States Colored Troops) soldier Isaac Buckmaster stands in a frosty Lincoln Cemetery outside the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg. Buckmaster's grave is one of several for USCT troops at the segregated cemetery. His unit, the 8th USCT, did not fight at Gettysburg and was not raised until 1864 - no USCT troops fought at Gettysburg. Buckmaster was wounded at the Battle of Olustee in Florida and died in 1882. (Click on the image for a larger version).