Learning late last year that Dr. Gabor Boritt had recently received a prominent national award, we interviewed him and his film maker son, Jake, at the Boritts’ home in Gettysburg. The visit gleaned so much information on Dr. Boritt’s life, his family’s achievements, and his wisdom on American history that the planned article soon grew into two. Here is the second part of a Gettysburg resident’s amazing life, his views on Gettysburg, and his opinion of Abraham Lincoln.

The memory of Abraham Lincoln has touched the lives of untold millions. For one Gettysburg resident and his son, the 16th President has become a lifetime of study – and they couldn’t be happier about it.

Dr. Gabor Boritt, a Hungarian native who fled his homeland after the Communist invasion of 1956, arrived in the United States as a nineteen-year-old youth with nothing but a dollar in his pocket. His mother had died, his father was still in Hungary. He spoke very little English and knew almost nothing about the new country that was to become his home.

“I followed the advice ‘go west, young man’ and went to South Dakota,” Dr. Boritt remembered. While there, he saw a pamphlet on Abraham Lincoln and decided to read it. “I was learning English and learning about Lincoln at the same time. To me, Lincoln was Mr. America.”

Resenting the forceful government that had pushed unfair stipulations on the masses, and killing those who refused to capitulate for what he called “their ideal”, Gabor and his sister, Judy, fled central Europe to find a better life. “Coming to America, I chose my own ideal. And that ideal was Abraham Lincoln. He was a hero who stood for the American ideal of democracy. By ending slavery he gave that to every American.” Dr. Boritt called slavery “taking away someone’s freedom and life for another – the non-worker eating the bread of the laborer.” He had left that behind when he fled Hungary, and he was impressed to see it abolished in the United States.

A half-century has passed. Dr. Boritt is a nationally acclaimed and world renowned Lincoln scholar. He is about to retire as a history professor from Gettysburg College. He will continue to work with the Civil War Institute, which he founded, and many other projects promoting the history of his adopted hometown – Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Boritt lives in a farm, built in 1799, just west of town with Liz, his beloved wife of forty years. The couple have three sons: Beowulf, a set designer for Broadway in New York City; Jake, a film maker who works in Harlem; and Dan, a biologist in Washington, D.C.

Gabor’s historical prowess was put to the test last September when he gave a personal tour of Gettysburg to then President George W. Bush, his wife Laura, and about 20 of their inner circle. The President was obviously deeply impressed, bestowing upon Dr. Boritt the National Award for the Humanities last November.

Dr. Boritt and his son, Jake, have spoken with President Bush many times. When asked, “Does he admire Abraham Lincoln?” the answer is a resounding yes!

“President Bush thinks Lincoln was the greatest [President],” Dr. Boritt said.

“Lincoln is the gold standard that all Presidents hope to attain,” Jake explained.

Gabor has also been in the company of America’s newest Commander-In-Chief, Barack Obama. He is pleased that President Obama used “A New Birth of Freedom” for his inaugural theme. It is right out of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Wondering how Abraham Lincoln must have felt when he arrived in Gettysburg to give his most famous oration is another point to ponder. “What happened here after the battle,” Gabor explained, “is the greatest man-made disaster in American history.” There were 10,000 dead on the fields and over 20,000 critically wounded left behind for the civilian population to care for. About 5,000 horses and mules were also dead on the field, left unburied for months as the people used their resources to nurse the wounded and bury the myriad slain. “And Lincoln had to come here and explain to the people why the war had to go on,” Dr. Boritt said. “And he did it.”

Gabor feels that The Gettysburg Address is a sacred document. “If the Civil War fails, America fails – and Democracy fails.”
Luckily, America survived the catastrophic war. “After the Gettysburg Address was a winter, and then came the new birth.” Dr. Boritt explained. He understands well the long winters of tribulation. He has lived through them.

Jake Boritt is proud of his father’s history. One of his films is a documentary of his father’s early life, entitled From Budapest to Gettysburg. One episode in the film relates the part that Gabor took in the Hungarian anti-Communist revolution in 1956. He helped to topple the immense Stalin statue that overlooked the city of Budapest. Stalin had died in 1953, leaving the Hungarians with hope that, with his passing, they would now be free. Thousands of people lined the streets and swarmed the statue, trying to pull it down. Gabor, then sixteen years old, went to get rope to facilitate the process. While he was on his errand, the masses succeeded in toppling the statue. “I missed the best moment,” Gabor remembered. He took a piece of the statue and put it in his pocket.

“In Hungary, my dad was part of pulling down a statue,” Jake said. “In Gettysburg, he helped put one up.”

That statue stands in front of the David Wills home in Lincoln Square. It is an impressive life-sized portrait statue of Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln is not on a pedestal – Dr. Boritt felt that the Great Emancipator wouldn’t want to be portrayed like that. Instead, he speaks to a modern tourist, also cast in bronze, which stands beside him. Visitors to Gettysburg, then, can have a photo-op with the 16th President. “I wanted something people could approach and touch, something contemporary,” Dr. Boritt explained. He has accomplished it.

Raising three sons in Gettysburg has been a wonderful experience for Gabor and Liz Boritt. Dr. Boritt spends a great deal of his time on the battlefield, one of his favorite places on earth.

When each was asked what his favorite place on the battlefield was, Jake Boritt answered that, as a boy, his favorite locale was Devil’s Den. On their first visit to Little Round Top, the three Boritt boys enjoyed climbing on the rocks around the summit. Suddenly Jake’s older brother said, “Hey, I know a place with even bigger rocks than this!” and pointed to Devil’s Den. It was truly Nirvana for any five-year-old, which was Jake’s age at the time.

Dr. Boritt replied, as he sat in his office on his Gettysburg farm, “My favorite battlefield place is right here.”

The Boritts moved into the John Crawford farm in the early 1980s, when Dr. Boritt first came to teach at Gettysburg College. The property, which has been lovingly restored by the Boritts, has a rich history in its own right. John Crawford’s daughter married the Gettysburg statesman and historian Edward McPherson, and during the Civil War the McPhersons lived in a house on Carlisle Street while Edward was away in Washington. The farm at that time was rented to Basil Biggs, a man of African descent, who used much of his time helping slaves to escape via the Underground Railroad. The Crawford Farm was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

The farm has a lot of battle history as well.

“The buildings were used as a hospital for Barksdale’s and Semme’s brigades after the battle,” Dr. Boritt explained. “About 40 or 50 Confederates were buried here. They were reinterred later in Hollywood Cemetery [in Richmond].”

Liz Boritt, who grew up on a Massachusetts farm, has little interest in the Civil War, unlike her husband and her middle son. To illustrate this fact, Dr. Boritt took an old bayonet from a shelf in his office. Recalling how it was found, both Gabor and Jake explained that Liz was working in the garden one spring several years ago, and pulled the bayonet out of the earth. Not knowing, or caring, what it was, she stuck the point of the bayonet into the ground and went back to work. A few hours later, Jake walked by and saw the bayonet. Excited, he took it to his father. They explained the find to Mrs. Boritt, who remained unimpressed.

Besides the bayonet, the Boritts have discovered a plethora of artifacts on their property, including personal items from soldiers, numerous minié balls and other projectiles, and ancient Native American arrowheads – for many oral histories relate another epic battle was fought in the area long before the men in blue and gray struggled at Gettysburg.

The Boritt property is named “Farm at the Ford” because it rests near the banks of a ford over the historic Marsh Creek – a waterway that figured heavily in the battle in 1863, especially on the first day. The cool waters of the creek were also necessary on the third day of the battle to bring relief to the wounded and dying of Pickett’s Division after their epic charge.
“It is an established fact,” Dr. Boritt said, “that General Longstreet crossed Marsh Creek here, at the ford.”

There is little about their home that the Boritts don’t know.

It seems that Dr. Boritt, forced from the place of his youth, has found home again at Gettysburg. To him, Gettysburg may have been that contest of utter destruction, but out of it came a future. “Hope comes out of the entire Civil War,” he explained. “That all men are created equal, that America believes in a government of the people.”
Lincoln couldn’t have said it better.

Jake Boritt’s documentary on Dr. Boritt’s amazing early life and journey to America is entitled “From Budapest to Gettysburg” and is available at many local places of business in the Gettysburg area, including the American Wax Museum and Gift Center and the Gettysburg College Bookstore. The film is suitable for family and is visually stunning, educational and highly interesting. The film can also be purchased by visiting the website: www.boritt.com.

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