In September 1863, David Wills and David McConaughy were featured side-by-side on the front page of the Adams County Sentinel. In the left column was David Wills magnanimously creating the National Cemetery, and in the right column was David McConaughy generously buying up battlefield land in order to create the Gettysburg National Battlefield Park. Unseen in the articles was the discord and rivalry between the two Republican politicos in town—a rivalry that came to a head with the creation of the National Cemetery.

Early Life and Background of David McConaughy

David McConaughy was born on July 13, 1823, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, into a family of early Scotch-Irish settlers of Adams County. His father died when David was only four, and he was subsequently raised by foster parents. Despite this setback, McConaughy received a strong education. He enrolled at Pennsylvania College in Gettysburg at a young age and later transferred to Washington College (where his uncle was president), graduating in 1840. After college, he spent two years as a school principal in Maryland before pursuing a legal career. McConaughy studied law under the prominent abolitionist attorney Thaddeus Stevens and was admitted to the Adams County bar in the mid-1840s.

By the 1850s, McConaughy had become a leading civic figure in Gettysburg. He helped organize the local YMCA, often hosting lectures and events in “McConaughy’s Hall” to benefit the community. In 1853, he was elected president of the newly formed Evergreen Cemetery Association, overseeing the design and construction of its landmark brick gatehouse on Cemetery Hill. Politically, McConaughy was active as a Whig and later a founding member of the Republican Party. He even served as a delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convention and was an outspoken supporter of Abraham Lincoln. McConaughy married and started a family in Gettysburg (his first wife died young, and he remarried Leanna Matthews, with whom he had several children), further cementing his roots in the community.

Early Life and Background of David Wills

David Wills was born on February 3, 1831, in Menallen Township, Adams County, Pennsylvania. He was the son of James Wills, a prosperous farmer, and spent his early youth working on his father’s farm. At age 13, Wills left the farm to attend Pennsylvania College (now Gettysburg College) in 1846. He graduated with high honors in 1851. Wills briefly ventured south to become principal of an academy in Cahaba, Alabama, but returned to Pennsylvania after a year of teaching. In 1853, like McConaughy, he entered the study of law under Thaddeus Stevens (in Stevens’ Lancaster law office) and was admitted to the bar in 1854.

Settling in Gettysburg in the mid-1850s, Wills quickly rose to prominence in civic affairs. He opened a law practice in town and was elected Burgess (mayor) of Gettysburg in the 1850s. He also became the first County Superintendent of Schools for Adams County, charged with organizing the county’s public school system. Wills served as a director of the Bank of Gettysburg (1854–1860) and sat on the boards of educational institutions like Wilson College and Dickinson Law School. In 1856, he married Catherine Jane “Jennie” Smyser; by the summer of 1863 the couple had three young children (and they would eventually have a total of seven). By the outbreak of the Civil War, David Wills was regarded as one of Gettysburg’s most prominent lawyers and community leaders, known for his energy and organizational talent.

The Civil War and Gettysburg: Paths Converge

When the Civil War reached Gettysburg in 1863, both McConaughy and Wills were poised to play important roles. McConaughy, then 40 years old, helped organize a volunteer company of scouts known as the “Adams Rifles” to monitor Confederate movements in the area. In late June 1863, as Lee’s army advanced, McConaughy’s network of civilian spies gathered intelligence on Confederate troop movements, information he relayed to Union authorities. He remained in Gettysburg through the battle, even during the Confederate occupation of the town, and was later officially commended by Union General George G. Meade’s staff for his valuable intelligence work.

Wills, for his part, experienced the battle from his home in the center of town. During the Confederate occupation on July 1, he famously offered shelter to neighbors in his cellar and witnessed Confederate soldiers ransacking a tenant’s store on his property. After the battle, Wills’s spacious home on the town square became a hub of relief efforts – filled with wounded soldiers, medical volunteers, and representatives of the U.S. Sanitary Commission. In the immediate aftermath, Gettysburg’s civic leaders (including Wills) met in Wills’s office to plan how to cope with the thousands of dead Union soldiers who lay in hastily dug graves around the battlefield. It was clear that a more dignified, permanent solution was needed to honor the fallen and spare the town further public health issues.

Rival Plans for a Gettysburg Soldiers’ Cemetery

In the weeks after the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1863), David McConaughy and David Wills emerged with competing plans for establishing a cemetery for Union war dead. McConaughy had actually envisioned a soldiers’ burial ground before the battle – he had proposed adding a soldiers’ section to Evergreen Cemetery in 1862 (when Gettysburg had only a couple of war fatalities), but the idea failed to gain support at that time. Now, with over 7,000 bodies to reinter, McConaughy seized the moment. Within days of the battle’s end, as corpses still littered the fields, McConaughy directed Evergreen Cemetery’s caretaker (Elizabeth Thorn) to begin burying Union dead in Evergreen’s grounds as an emergency measure. He then quickly initiated efforts to create a formal “Soldiers’ Cemetery” on Cemetery Hill. Drawing on his position as Evergreen Cemetery Association president, McConaughy negotiated with neighboring landowners and secured options to purchase 17 acres immediately north of Evergreen Cemetery – the very ground he thought ideal for a burial ground. By mid-August 1863, McConaughy had started buying lots on Cemetery Hill with his own money and soliciting contributions from veterans, effectively staking claim to the proposed cemetery site. His intent was to preserve this land for a national soldiers’ cemetery, ideally under local auspices or possibly to be donated to the Federal government (U.S. War Department) rather than controlled by the state.

Meanwhile, David Wills independently conceived a different plan. Immediately after the battle, Wills wrote to Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin and proposed that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania establish a state-funded National Cemetery for the Union dead. Governor Curtin agreed and appointed Wills as his agent to coordinate the project on behalf of Pennsylvania and the other Union states with soldiers killed at Gettysburg. Wills initially identified a site on the eastern slope of Cemetery Hill (adjacent to Evergreen Cemetery) as suitable. Unaware of McConaughy’s actions at first, Wills began arranging to purchase land for the cemetery using state funds.

This set the stage for conflict: two ambitious Gettysburg attorneys, each named David, each acting on what they saw as the best approach to honor the fallen, were now effectively rivals for control of the cemetery project. McConaughy’s swift land purchases foiled David Wills’s plans to have the state directly buy that property for the cemetery. McConaughy offered “his” land (the plots he controlled next to Evergreen) for the cemetery, envisioning that it would be managed by the Evergreen Cemetery Association (which he led) or otherwise remain under local control. Wills, however, opposed folding the soldiers’ burials into Evergreen Cemetery, insisting that the Union dead should rest in a distinct national cemetery, not intermixed with the town cemetery’s plots. As Wills saw it, the soldiers’ cemetery needed to be separate – both out of respect and to ensure public ownership by the states rather than a private association. This fundamental disagreement – local/private control versus a new, public national cemetery – became a source of professional, political, and personal friction between the two men.

“Peculiar Relations”: The Nature of the McConaughy–Wills Rivalry

Contemporary accounts make clear that the rivalry between McConaughy and Wills was contentious, not a friendly competition. A letter written on August 14, 1863, by two Gettysburg men (D. H. Buehler and Edward G. Fahnestock) to Governor Curtin described mediation efforts to resolve the cemetery dispute. They reported that “the main difficulty lay in the peculiar relations subsisting between” McConaughy and Wills. In other words, personal animosity was a significant obstacle. Both men were influential lawyers of opposite temperament: McConaughy was a “hard-line Republican” and aggressive civic activist, whereas Wills, though also a Republican, was a more formal public official and organizer. Each likely felt the honor of Gettysburg was at stake and that he should direct the cemetery project.

Their rivalry had professional dimensions (each vying to lead a major civic project), political overtones (maneuvering for credit with Governor Curtin and other state officials), and certainly a personal side. Wills later noted diplomatically that McConaughy’s earlier land purchases were made with the “intention of preserving [the battlefield] for the Federal government” rather than for Pennsylvania – implying a clash in vision rather than outright ill intent. But less diplomatic sources indicate Wills and McConaughy were longtime rivals who clashed repeatedly during the process of establishing memorials at Gettysburg. For McConaughy’s part, he must have resented losing control of the soldiers’ cemetery he helped conceive; Wills, on the other hand, bristled at McConaughy’s attempt to upstage the official plan.

In the end, Governor Curtin’s intervention and local mediation produced a compromise. Wills agreed to use the land adjacent to Evergreen Cemetery – the very plots McConaughy had secured – provided the Evergreen Cemetery Association would sell that land to the state of Pennsylvania at cost, giving the state full, “unconditional” title. The Evergreen Association (of which McConaughy was president) acceded, offering the originally selected tracts with the stipulation that a fence or open railing would separate the new Soldiers’ National Cemetery from the old Evergreen grounds. This settlement allowed Wills’s vision to go forward: the Union dead would indeed be reburied adjacent to Evergreen Cemetery but in a distinct, state-owned National Cemetery, not under McConaughy’s private control. In effect, Wills’s plan “won out” in defining how the cemetery would be organized – separate from the town cemetery, under a public commission. McConaughy was essentially forced out of any official role in the National Cemetery project due to these “differences” with Wills.

The tone of their rivalry appears to have been bitter and openly oppositional rather than collegial. Wills mounted “strong resistance” to McConaughy’s proposal to merge with Evergreen, and McConaughy in turn maneuvered to block Wills until overruled by higher authorities. This was not merely a case of two men spurring each other to greater accomplishment in friendly rivalry; it was a genuine feud over credit, control, and philosophy. That said, the outcome of their conflict ultimately benefited Gettysburg: it ensured the creation of a dedicated Soldiers’ National Cemetery (a precedent-setting endeavor in American history) while also prompting separate battlefield preservation efforts.

Dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery (November 1863)

With McConaughy out of the picture regarding the cemetery’s management, David Wills proceeded to carry out the creation of the Gettysburg Soldiers’ National Cemetery in the fall of 1863. He supervised the purchase of roughly 17 acres on Cemetery Hill (north and west of Evergreen Cemetery) on behalf of the cemetery’s organizing committee (comprised of several Union states). Reburial of Union soldiers began in late October 1863 under Wills’s direction. Wills hired local laborers (including a team of African American workers) and contracted an experienced ex-photographer, Samuel Weaver, to oversee the exhumation of bodies from shallow battlefield graves and their reinterment in the new cemetery. Each body was placed in a wooden coffin and any personal effects were catalogued to help identify the dead. The new cemetery was carefully laid out by landscape architect William Saunders, whom Wills had selected. Saunders designed a semicircular arrangement of graves by state, arrayed around a central Soldiers’ Monument, to give equal honor to each state’s fallen. (Interestingly, Wills himself had initially favored burying soldiers without regard to state affiliation – a more “national” vision – but he had to compromise on that point to satisfy the various state representatives.)

Wills’s crowning moment came with the dedication ceremony for the Soldiers’ National Cemetery on November 19, 1863. Wills orchestrated the event, inviting one of the era’s foremost orators, Edward Everett, to deliver the main address. Crucially, Wills also extended a special invitation to President Abraham Lincoln to attend and offer “a few appropriate remarks” to formally dedicate the cemetery. In his letter to Lincoln on November 2, 1863, Wills asked the President to “formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks”, making clear that Lincoln’s presence would consecrate the cemetery. President Lincoln accepted Wills’s invitation, arrived in Gettysburg the evening before the ceremony, and stayed as an honored guest in David Wills’s own home on the town square. On the day of dedication, after Everett’s two-hour oration, President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address – a speech of just two minutes that would pass into history as perhaps the most famous speech in American memory. The success of the dedication (and the immortal words spoken there) ensured that David Wills would forever be remembered for his role in this “great task” accomplished at Gettysburg. Meanwhile, David McConaughy watched these proceedings from the sidelines, his earlier contributions to the cemetery largely unacknowledged in the day’s events.

Aftermath: Post-War Careers and the Fate of the Rivalry

Following the establishment of the National Cemetery, McConaughy and Wills each moved on to new endeavors in the post-war years. With the Soldiers’ Cemetery now under firm state control, McConaughy turned his energies toward battlefield preservation and memorialization – essentially channeling his disappointment into another patriotic project. As early as November 1863, McConaughy had written publicly about preserving the Gettysburg battlefield. By 1864 he succeeded in organizing the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association (GBMA), a private association dedicated to purchasing significant portions of the battlefield for posterity. McConaughy served as the GBMA’s first president and spent the next decade acquiring key terrain: he targeted sites that had dramatic or emotional impact, such as parts of Little Round Top and Culp’s Hill (with their breastworks and bullet-riddled trees). His aim was to create a lasting outdoor memorial to the Union Army’s valor. McConaughy even leveraged his brief tenure as a Pennsylvania state senator (he served in the state senate from 1867 to 1868) to secure state funds in support of battlefield preservation. Under his leadership, the GBMA laid out some early “memorial avenues,” erected wooden historical tablets and cannon displays, and hosted veterans’ reunions to garner support. McConaughy’s zealous efforts were not without controversy – when he helped develop a commercial “Springs Hotel” on part of the battlefield (aiming to attract tourists, including aging veterans to healing mineral springs), some accused him of profiteering from a sacred site. By 1880, internal conflicts and financial issues led to McConaughy’s ouster from the GBMA’s leadership (control passed to new management backed by the Grand Army of the Republic). Nevertheless, much of the land that McConaughy helped preserve eventually became part of today’s Gettysburg National Military Park. McConaughy remained a respected local elder; he organized a major reunion of Gettysburg veterans in 1869 and commissioned artist Peter Rothermel’s famous painting of Pickett’s Charge. David McConaughy died in 1902 at the age of 78, and was buried – fittingly – in Evergreen Cemetery, the very ground he had tended for so long.

David Wills continued to serve Gettysburg and Pennsylvania with distinction after the war. He remained on the board of trustees of Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College for decades and stayed active in civic affairs. In 1872 Wills was appointed president of the Gettysburg Borough Council, and in 1874 he attained one of the county’s highest offices when he became President Judge of the 42nd Judicial District, which comprised Adams and neighboring Fulton County. Judge Wills served on the bench for many years, earning a reputation for fairness and integrity in the legal community. He also involved himself in various business and infrastructure initiatives – for example, serving on the board of the Gettysburg Railroad Company to help improve the region’s transportation. Throughout the post-war period, Wills was esteemed as the man who brought Lincoln to Gettysburg; his home on the square (the Wills House) became a cherished historic site, eventually restored and opened as a museum. Wills remained in Gettysburg for the rest of his life, passing away on October 27, 1894, at the age of 63.

As for the rivalry between McConaughy and Wills, it largely subsided after 1863. Once the Soldiers’ National Cemetery was established, the two men pursued separate paths: McConaughy in battlefield preservation and politics, Wills in law and public service. There is little evidence of any further direct confrontation between them after the cemetery episode. In essence, each man carved out his own legacy. Their relationship, described in 1863 as “peculiar” and strained, did not transform into a close friendship – they were never known to publicly reconcile their differences. But neither did their rivalry continue to actively harm Gettysburg’s interests. In fact, one might say that the dueling ambitions of these two leaders ended up benefiting Gettysburg in complementary ways. Wills’s determination and political savvy gave the nation a model Soldiers’ National Cemetery, appropriately organized and ceremonially dedicated by a President. McConaughy’s passion and vision ensured that significant battlefield lands were preserved when it might have been easier to let them revert to farmland or be developed. The two Davids, through their rivalry, spurred one another to act quickly and decisively in 1863, each trying to do what he thought best for the memory of the Union dead. While their approaches clashed, the end result was a more thorough commemoration of Gettysburg than either alone might have achieved.

Conclusion

David McConaughy and David Wills were both indispensable to Gettysburg’s post-battle history – one as the initiator of battlefield preservation, the other as the architect of the National Cemetery and the Gettysburg Address event. Biographically, they shared much in common: Pennsylvania College alumni, proteges of Thaddeus Stevens, and prominent Republican attorneys devoted to public service. Yet their personalities and priorities diverged, leading to a professional, political, and personal rivalry centered on who would lead the effort to honor the fallen of Gettysburg. That rivalry, by all accounts heated and at times bitter, culminated in a compromise that gave the country a Soldiers’ National Cemetery on Cemetery Hill. Wills took the spotlight by hosting President Lincoln and overseeing the cemetery’s dedication, while McConaughy stepped back only to refocus his energies on preserving the battlefield itself. After 1863, each man continued to contribute to society in his own arena, and the direct rivalry faded into history. In retrospect, Gettysburg benefited from both men: Wills provided the nation with a sacred resting place for Union heroes, and McConaughy ensured that the battlefield would be remembered and “held in trust” for future generations. Together and even in opposition, they helped transform Gettysburg from a scene of devastating loss into a landscape of national remembrance.