Another Gettysburg address.

One of the big concerns during the impeachment debacle was: "How is history going to judge us?" The answer will surely be "poorly." Our question in this editorial was: "How are we preserving history?" The answer was sadly similar.

This editorial, borrowing heavily from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, urged action be taken to safeguard the treasured artifacts at the battlefield. The battle continues to be fought.

Time for truce in Gettysburg

A York Daily Record editorial, February 17, 1999

At this time, our Park Service is attempting to bring forth upon Gettysburg a new visitor center, conceived with private investment from York developer Robert Kinsley and dedicated to the proposition that a new facility would enhance Gettysburg's important place in American history.

Now, we are engaged in a great preservation war, testing whether Gettysburg, or any historical site so conceived and so dedicated, can respect history or long endure without adequate funding to preserve crumbling treasured artifacts.

The Park Service and Gettysburg merchants are met on a great battlefield of that war. Those who support the Park Service plan say relocating the visitor center to less-sacred grounds would rededicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who gave their lives that this nation might live.

"Visitors can't get any appreciation of their ancestors' service if the place where their ancestor died is paved over," noted a descendant of the 136th New York Infantry Regiment favoring the move. Gettysburg merchants worry that relocating the visitor center away from battlefield lines and the nearby Steinwehr Avenue commercial district would create a final resting place for businesses that rely on park traffic. But the plans to improve Gettysburg National Park can only improve the business climate by attracting more visitors to the area.

It is altogether fitting and proper that the move be made. For, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground if petty arguments over trinkets and tourist dollars are allowed to take precedence over preserving this nation's treasured history.

The entrepreneurs, living and dead, who have struggled to make a living there, would find the suggested improvements would add to their bottom lines, not detract.

The world will little note nor long remember the current battle over Gettysburg tourism, but it can never forget what our foreparents, both Union and Confederate, did there.

It is for us, those who care about history, rather to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that the park commemorating the land where they died shall not perish from the earth.

The world will surely note and long remember what we do here and judge us harshly if we let this national treasure slip away.

NCEW member Linda Weiner Seligson is editorial page editor of the York Daily Record in Pennsylvania. Her e-mail address is [e-mail]