Of all the places I visited this past year, I think my favorite was Gettysburg. There's a lot of competition for this, including some of my favorite places — like Birmingham, Lexington, and Athens, even Marion, Alabama.
I just happened to stop there on a trip from Philly down to Lexington last summer. It led to a nice monument trivia question and also some monument law talk. I think my favorite photograph — one I haven't used before — was of a monument at the Gettysburg cemetery. I like it because it has the name of the company that made the monument — Smith Granite Company of Westerly, Rhode Island.
Here's to a productive 2012 for all of us. I hope it's filled for all of you with books, libraries, book stores, scholarship, and teaching. And I'm hoping that this year will see the completion of University, Court, and Slave and some work on public constitutional ideas in pre-Civil War oratory….
Beautiful reminder of the boom in granite monuments that followed the Civil War and the rise of "park like" memorials. Here's a link to the family, the granite ledge from which this Gettysburg monument was likely taken, and remarkable Smith Family of Westerly, Rhode Island, all in one:
http://www.babcock-smithhouse.com/BabcockSmithHouse/MuseumHistory/index.htm