Meade in front of Prettyman

Stumbling along near the Mall recently, I noticed this sculpture of General  George Meade in front of the District of Columbia district court house, the Prettyman building.  Such sculptures and their locations often give me an excuse to delve into history and local development, an exercise that the Internet has made very easy and that allows me to tank up my personal knowledge database.  Apparently, Meade was an American Civil War Union general who commanded the Army of the Potomac and defeated Confederate General Robert Lee at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, the largest land war in the western world. I was less aware of who E. Barrett Prettyman was but it turns out he was a longtime Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which meets in that building. Prettyman was also a tax expert teaching at Georgetown University and acted as the District of Columbia's tax attorney at one time.  This Prettyman building is the site of many historic legal arguments in cases such as involving the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate trials, the Francis Gary Powers U-2 spy plane and thousands more cases heard in the US District court. In fact, you can see news media camped out on the forecourt of the building -- "on the beach" -- their vans bristling with antennas and made-up news announcers staring into cameras during these major proceedings. Who knew that such a plain looking building and figurative sculpture would give me such keys into American history? Amazing!