NATIONAL PARK SERVICE THAT THE PAST SHALL LIVE... the history program of the National Park Service

FOR nearly 50 years then the story of America was largely a story of lusty growth and expansion—of thrusting frontiers ever further into the new and unknown land of promise in the West. In a dozen or more historical units of the National Park System this romantic story of American expansion from the Appalachians to the Pacific is faithfully recorded. Scotts Bluff, Fort Laramie, and Whitman Mission depict the great migration of venturesome pioneers over the Oregon Trail. Pausing briefly at these sites it is not difficult to experience again the hopes and aspirations of the passing, varied host—the Mormons seeking a new Zion in the promised land of Utah—the Forty-Niners hoping to find their "El Dorado" in California the huddled families in their wagons searching only for a more fertile and more plentiful land.

Other phases of the westward movement are commemorated by the Natchez Trace Parkway, being constructed to follow as nearly as possible the route of the famous old road between Natchez, Mississippi, and Nashville, Tennessee, along which passed many of the traders, merchants, and pioneers of the Old Southwest. Meriwether Lewis National Monument near Hohenwald, Tennessee, contains the remains of part of the Natchez Trace, the grave of Meriwether Lewis, leader of the famed Lewis and Clark Expedition, and the site of Grinder's Inn, a frontier tavern, where Lewis met his death.

The almost incredible courage of the pioneer confronted by seemingly insurmountable hardships is vividly recalled by Death Valley National Monument, in California and Nevada. The name has come down from the wagon train of half-starved emigrants, pushing westward on a supposed shortcut to the newly discovered gold fields, who were the first to penetrate that stretch of desolation in the winter of 1849. When they entered they were already lost, hungry, and exhausted. But, somehow, they survived weeks of indescribable hardship and came through alive. Leaving, they looked back across the valley—the tremendous barrier that had caused so much privation and suffering—and cried, "Goodby, Death Valley!"

They lived, and so did many thousands of others, and the nation they helped to build stretched from coast to coast.

Then, after nearly half a century of progress and expansion, America, in the 1860's, was all but ripped asunder.

The first shot had been fired at Fort Sumter and the Civil War was on.

Virtually all of the famous battlefields of that great conflict—from Manassas to Appomattox—are embraced in whole or in part in the historical units of the National Park System. In administering them, Federals and Confederates are equally honored. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, U. S. Grant and W. T. Sherman all take their rightful places as military heroes of the nation. The valor of Americans—whether in Blue or in Gray—who took up arms for causes which they believed worth fighting for, is the underlying theme in all these areas.

But in our brief journey through this nation's history we shall visit but one—the most important, because here the Union was saved forever from destruction.

We are at quiet Gettysburg. The guns are stilled. We stand before the rostrum where a thin, tall, somber man stands to speak. We can actually see his face, because it is there today, in bronze, as a part of a memorial to his immortal words . . . "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty . . ." On this hallowed ground America was tested. It emerged one nation, indivisible. For a little time, being here, we have seemed very close to that great and solemn moment—and to Lincoln, symbol of the Union saved . . .