The Bliss Farm

There is nothing here now, and that is the point. William Bliss's farm stood in the open ground between Seminary Ridge and Cemetery Ridge, which put it squarely in the space between two armies. His barn was a large brick one, and a brick barn in no man's land is a fortress: Confederate marksmen worked from its windows and loopholes on 2 July 1863 and made the Union line on Cemetery Ridge expensive to hold. The buildings changed hands repeatedly over two days, taken and lost by regiments sent out for the purpose. On the morning of 3 July the Union command decided the problem was the building itself. Alexander Hays sent the order out to the barn by a sergeant of the 111th New York, and the 14th Connecticut carried it out. The wounded were brought out, fires were set in the house and the barn, and by about a quarter past eleven both were fully alight and coming down. Pickett's Charge crossed this ground a few hours later. The Bliss family had already fled, and they came back to a farm that had ceased to exist. Getting paid for it took the rest of William Bliss's life and beyond: Pennsylvania awarded him 3,216 dollars in November 1871, eight years after the fact, and the claim was still being passed between state and federal committees into the 1880s. The field was never rebuilt on. Standing here between the two ridges is the clearest way to understand why the barn had to go.