>> Gettysburg is the pivotal battle
of the Civil War.
It's the longest single battle of the Civil War;
three days, July 1st, 2nd and 3rd, 1863.
Half of the units that fought here
suffered over 50 percent casualties.
When the battle was over, every single building here
in Gettysburg was a hospital.
The five thousand people
who lived in Gettysburg were outnumbered
by the thirty thousand casualties.
This was the pivotal battle.
The soldiers who fought here from Pennsylvania,
they knew they'd been beaten before many times in Virginia,
but they were not going to be beaten here
on their home soil, in Pennsylvania.
My name is John Griffiths.
I'm a U.S. Customs and Border Protection employee.
I work in the Newark, New Jersey
C-TPAT office,
Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism.
I got started in Civil War reenacting
when my father took me here
to Gettysburg about 50 years ago.
He put a little bullet on the side of the road
and I picked it up,
and thought that I had found a bullet.
And my passion for the Civil War translates
into my day-to-day work,
is that I'm always looking for something new;
that I'm not content to just be there
to occupy a place in the workforce.
That I'm looking for new ideas,
that I'm always trying to come up with something better.
I worked at headquarters for a while in a program in CSI,
the Container Security Initiative,
where we put people overseas.
And we had to come up with new ways of doing things.
And I think doing the Civil War reenacting,
it just keeps my mind sharp,
and it keeps me wanting to learn more and do the best I can.
And it also gives me a sense
of what it feels like to be out on the line.
I like doing what I'm doing here, because it gives --
I connect with American History.
We're here to give people an idea
of what was happening here 200, 150 years ago.
We love to talk to people, so the bigger the group,
the happier we are.
If I can get one person,
one child interested in the Civil War,
the history doesn't die.
It stays alive.