‘In the field with CWLR’

    

“This is what the research lodge is about: getting into the battlefields, seeing the monuments; and getting together with old friends, and making new ones.”

W. Bennett Hart, Secretary

Civil War Lodge of Research 1865

With those words, Bro. Bennett dismissed the muster today as we stood in the Gettysburg battlefield, specifically the earth where Gregg’s Union cavalry and Stuart’s Confederate cavalry slaughtered each other July 3, 1863.

Civil War Lodge of Research 1865 does not produce a mass of scholarly material. Our mandate, if I understand, is to complete one research paper per annum.

Our? Yeah, I enlisted today, so now I’m active in three research lodges. I’ll try to find an idea for a paper to submit. Not right away, but now it’s on the to-do list.

And I’m not sure how many CWLR meetings I can attend. Chartered by the Grand Lodge of Virginia, it meets in the Old Dominion mostly, with occasional reconnaissance in Maryland and other states significant to the U.S. Civil War. New York City is not insignificant in that historical context. The draft riots, Lincoln at Cooper Union (and McSorley’s), Grant’s Tomb, and other sites are things to ponder. In fact, the last time I attended a meeting was when Worshipful Master Phil Brown brought the lodge to Manhattan for a tour in 2010. Now that I’m a member, I’ll work at improving my attendance. There are no Civil War battlegrounds in New York, thank God, so I’ll probably write about the wartime economics or politics vis-a-vis Freemasonry.

More Gettysburg coverage to come. Right now I’m drinking hard cider and eating this burger at the Blue and Gray Bar & Grill:

     

The General Jubal Anderson Early Burger: quarter-pound of beef, with a fried egg, cheddar cheese, and maple syrup(!), on a ciabatta roll. Yeah, I had a heart attack later. So what?