Four battlefield touring buses parked along drive in front of VA Monument with drivers and one Licensed Battlefield Guide circa late 1920s-1930s.
NPS Photo
Thank you for your interest in becoming a Licensed Battlefield Guide (LBG) at Gettysburg National Military Park (GNMP). The following information provides details about the multi-tiered LBG Licensing Process.
The objective of the multi-tiered LBG Licensing Process is to license the most qualified, knowledgeable, skilled, and professional individuals as Licensed Battlefield Guides at GNMP. Each guide is expected and required to uphold more than a centuries-old tradition of mastering relevant core knowledge about the Battle of Gettysburg within the context of causes and consequences of the American Civil War to interpret and communicate that knowledge to the visiting public in an engaging manner.
Under the leadership of the Supervisory Park Ranger a diverse committee of five veteran LBGs continually review, revise, and implement best practices based on feedback from GNMP staff, veteran LBGs, the visiting public, and past successful and unsuccessful examinees. The resulting product is a multi-tiered examination process approved by the GNMP Superintendent that is transparent, open, comprehensive, thorough, focused, dynamic, and challenging.
It is important to state that Licensed Battlefield Guides are not employees of Gettysburg National Military Park and they do not receive benefits. They are licensees and understand that guiding seasons can be variable, public visitation can be variable, and requests for LBG tours can be variable. Thus, guiding should not be considered a stable and/or predictable revenue generator. Interested individuals must be prepared to navigate the ebb and flow of a tourist-driven economy as well as their individual schedules.
If you wish to earn the Gettysburg LBG license (permission to enter GNMP and provide a personalized tour for compensation)—a privilege, not an inherent right—you are required to successfully complete each tier of the multi-tiered process in sequence within one examination cycle, which includes:
Tier 1 - Written Examination: December 7, 2024.
Tier 2 - Panel Interview: February-March 2025.
Tier 3 - Field Practicum: Early Spring to late summer 2025.
Tier 4 - Oral Battlefield Examination: June to November 2025.
Tier 5 - Post-Licensing Orientation: Spring 2026.
Each tier of the process will be scored according to a specific rubric developed and approved by Gettysburg National Military Park and the testing committee. You must successfully complete the requirements of each tier in the process to advance to the next tier to earn the license to serve as an LBG at Gettysburg. Failure to successfully complete any of the tiers means a failure of the entire examination process. In the event this occurs, however, you may attempt to earn your license the next time GNMP offers the full examination process to prospective LBGs.
The Licensed Battlefield Guides serve as a vital cornerstone of the visitors’ experience and will continue to play a key role in the Park’s mission.
Please continue to check this webpage for supplemental documents and information.
SUGGESTED READING LIST FOR THE LICENSED BATTLEFIELD GUIDE LICENSING PROCESS
Generally speaking, there are three major histories of the campaign and battle of Gettysburg. Each author evaluates the major events, and sometimes controversies, surrounding the battle of Gettysburg and advances their specific arguments grounded in accepted contemporary academic scholarship with which you may not agree. Thus, in addition to the vast amount of information each of these books presents, you should also become familiar with the ways in which these authors agree or disagree with each other on such key issues as: the Lee-Longstreet relationship, the Meade-Sickles controversy, Lee’s generalship, Meade’s generalship, the absence of Stuart’s cavalry, the allocation of credit or blame for various events such Ewell’s inaction against Culp’s Hill on July 1 or the holding of Little Round Top, and many others. Remember, even if two authors seem to agree on some matter of controversy, they may not base their arguments on the exact same evidence; be alert to how authors who reach the same conclusion may follow different paths to get there.
E.B. Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command
Stephen Sears, Gettysburg
Noah Andre Trudeau, Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage
Many visitors will express special interests and will request to spend their entire time with a Licensed Battlefield Guide concentrating on a specific day, a single tactical action, or one military specialty rather than tour the entire battlefield. While the comprehensive histories in Section 1 will provide a close reader with a breadth of understanding of the campaign and battle, the works cited below will enhance that reader’s depth of knowledge about specific parts of the bigger picture. Be on the alert for ways in which these specialized studies agree with, reject, or modify arguments made in the broader comprehensive studies in Category 1.
Thomas J. Ryan, Spies, Scouts, and Secrets in the Gettysburg Campaign: How the Critical Role of Intelligence Impacted the Outcome of Lee’s Invasion of the North
Harry Pfanz, Gettysburg—The First Day
Eric Wittenberg, “The Devil’s to Pay”: John Buford at Gettysburg
Harry Pfanz, Gettysburg—The Second Day
James Hessler and Britt Isenberg, Gettysburg’s Peach Orchard: Longstreet, Sickles, and the Bloody Fight for the “Commanding Ground” Along the Emmitsburg Road
Susannah J. Ural, Hood’s Texas Brigade: The Soldiers and Families of the Confederacy’s Most Celebrated Unit
Thomas Desjardins, Stand Firm Ye Boys from Maine: The 20th Maine and the Gettysburg Campaign
Harry Pfanz, Gettysburg: Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill
Earl J. Hess, Pickett’s Charge—The Last Attack at Gettysburg
Wayne Motts and James Hessler, Pickett’s Charge: A Guide to the Most Famous Attack in American History
Kent Masterson Brown, Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign
Kent Masterson Brown, Meade at Gettysburg: A Study in Command
Allen Thompson, Shadow of the Roundtops: Longstreet’s Countermarch, Johnston’s Reconnaissance, and the Enduring Battles for Memory of July 2, 1863
George Newton, Silent Sentinels: A Reference Guide to the Artillery of Gettysburg
Eric Wittenberg, Gettysburg’s Forgotten Cavalry Actions: Farnsworth’s Charge, South Cavalry Field, and the Battle of Fairfield, July 3, 1863
Gettysburg essays in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Volume 3.
Volume 27, Parts 1, 2, and 3 of The War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, which contain the post-battle reports written by Union and Confederate officers on the, corps, division, brigade, regimental and artillery brigade, battalion and battery level, is the ultimate primary source for microhistory. This source is readily accessible online at https://collections.library.cornell.edu/moa_new/waro.html.
A Licensed Battlefield Guide simply must master the ability to use the battlefield’s terrain to show visitors where specific actions occurred, how they relate to other portions of the field, the distance advancing or retreating troops covered, and the direction they took. While intensive reading is necessary to obtain one’s license, a prospective Licensed Battlefield Guide must also devote significant time on the battlefield itself to understand the physical environment in which the armies operated. The following books should help you master the spatial relations critical to giving an informative tour.
Bradley Gottfried, The Maps of Gettysburg: An Atlas of the Gettysburg Campaign, June 3-July 13, 1863
Carol Reardon and Tom Vossler, A Field Guide to Gettysburg: Experiencing the Battlefield through Its History, Places, and People
Inevitably, visitors will ask questions about issues not directly related to the actions of brigades or the decisions of generals. Thus, to get and then keep a visitor’s interest engaged, a Licensed Battlefield Guide often must dig into other integral elements of the broader Gettysburg narrative through human interest stories about local civilians before, during, and after the battle, as well as the political, religious, and social history of the town of Gettysburg. Other visitors may show a greater interest in the care of the wounded, the burial of the dead, the establishment of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery and the National Military Park, and, of course, President Lincoln and his Gettysburg Address.
Greg Coco, A Strange and Blighted Land: Gettysburg, The Aftermath of a Battle
Greg Coco, A Vast Sea of Misery: A History and Guide to the Union and Confederate Field Hospitals at Gettysburg, July 1-November 20, 1863
William Frassanito, Gettysburg: A Journey in Time
William Frassanito, Early Photography at Gettysburg
Chris Brenneman, The Gettysburg Cyclorama: The Turning Point of the Civil War on Canvas
Timothy H. Smith, Farms of Gettysburg: The Fields of Battle
Carol Reardon, Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory
Gabor Boritt, ed., The Gettysburg Nobody Knows
Margaret Creighton, Colors of Courage, Gettysburg’s Forgotten History: Immigrants, Women, and African Americans in the Civil War’s Defining Battle
Gerald R. Bennett, Days of Uncertainty and Dread: The Ordeal Endured by the Citizens at Gettysburg.
Eileen Conklin, Women at Gettysburg
Ronald Kirkwood, Too Much for Human Endurance: The George Spangler Farm Hospitals the Battle of Gettysburg
Jennifer Murray, On a Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1933-2013
Jim Weeks, Gettysburg: Memory, Market, and an American Shrine
Fred Hawthorne, Gettysburg: Stories of Men and Monuments as Told by Battlefield Guides.
Roy Frampton, Lincoln and the Human Interest Stories of the Gettysburg National Cemetery
Martin P. Johnson, Writing the Gettysburg Address
Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America
Gary Gallagher, The First Day at Gettysburg: Essays on Confederate and Union Leadership
Gary Gallagher, The Second Day at Gettysburg: Essays on Confederate and Union Leadership
Gary Gallagher, The Third Day at Gettysburg and Beyond
A Licensed Battlefield Guide frequently fields very basic questions about the Civil War that require an understanding of the conflict well beyond Gettysburg. Typical questions generally touch on the causes of the war, the fundamentals of military science in the nineteenth century, and the consequences of the war that the nation still struggles to resolve. These works provide a foundation for giving useful historically-sound answers to questions that still stir controversy today.
James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War
Earl J. Hess, Civil War Infantry Tactics: Training, Combat, and Small-Unit Effectiveness
David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
Caroline Janney, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation
Jill Ogline Titus, Gettysburg 1963: Civil Rights, Cold War Politics, and Historical Memory in America’s Most Famous Small Town
John Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem
Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
Charles Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
Robert Cook, Civil War Memories: Contesting the Past in the United States since 1865
Many times, a visitor’s only reference point to either the American Civil War or the battle of Gettysburg comes from media and popular culture. From movies to historical novels, it is important for a Licensed Battlefield Guide to understand the accuracies, and inaccuracies, these mediums have.
Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels
D. Scott Hartwig, A Killer Angels Companion
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
Ken Burns, The Civil War (PBS Documentary)
Edward Zwick, Glory
The schedule of rates approved for Licensed Battlefield Guides, effective January, 2024 is as follows:
Rate Paid to Licensed Battlefield Guide for 2 hour tour.
Guides must be paid using the current Schedule of Approved Rates prescribed for a two-hour tour by the director of the National Park Service. Guides shall be paid a pro-rated fee, based on the Schedule of Rates, for tours lasting longer than two hours. Guides will not demand more than the authorized fees established by the schedule of of Approved Rates. They may, at their own discretion, charge less.
