Battle Of Gettysburg Quotes

I've been a soldier all my life. I've fought from the ranks on up, you know my service. But sir, I must tell you now, I believe this attack will fail. No 15,000 men ever made could take that ridge. It's a distance of more than a mile, over open ground. When the men come out of the trees, they will be under fire from Yankee artillery from all over the field. And those are Hancock's boys! And now, they have the stone wall like we did at Fredericksburg. - Lieutenant General James Longstreet to General Robert E. Lee after the initial Confederate victories on day one of the Battle of Gettysburg.

There are plenty of bad people in the world,” he said. “Too many to count. But there are good people, too.

Same difference,” he said. “The South lost and the North won. Abraham Lincoln came and gave the Emancipation Proclamation.” “The Gettysburg Address,” Mrs. Anderson said. “The Emancipation Proclamation was delivered six months before the battle.” He gave an exaggerated sigh. “Who's giving the report here?” She waved her hand. “Proceed then.” “Like I said, the North won. The slaves were all freed. Hurrah, hurrah. The end.

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 18-something-or-nother. The year doesn‘t matter.They considered it the turning point of the war, and President Lincoln showed up to give his big speech. Who really cares what it was called? I don‘t. After it was all over and the North won, Congress passed the 13th amendment to free the slaves. It outlawed owning another person, yada, yada, yada, but it was a waste of time. All of it. Every bit. Completely pointless. All those people died and it didn't change anything, because it doesn't work if they don't enforce it. They just ignore it, turn their backs and say it‘s not their problem, but it is. It's everyone's problem. They can say slavery ended all they want, but that doesn't make it true. People lie. They'll tell you what they think you wanna hear, and you‘ll believe it. Whatever makes you feel better about your dismal little lives. So, whatever. Go on being naive. Believe what the history book tells you if you want. Believe what Mrs. Anderson wants me to tell you about it. Believe the land of the free, blah, blah, blah, star spangled banner bullshit. Believe there aren‘t any slaves anymore just because a tall guy in a big ass top hat and a bunch of politicians said so. But I won‘t believe it, because if I do too, we‘ll all fucking be wrong, and someone has to be right." -Carmine DeMarco

world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion …

Battles that involve oatmeal are just never going to end up being historic, you know?" Jake went on. "Gettysburg? No major oatmeal involvement. The Battle of Midway? Neither side used oatmeal. Desert Storm? No oatmeal.

The war had been a daily thought, a continual consciousness in her life for two years, but never a real presence. Battles were things that were fought somewhere else, won somehow, by someone, and lost by someone else. Now as she stood by her own door and listened to the cannons, it was with a chilling, dreadfully full and clear realization that men were out on the field beneath that gray cloud taking each other’s lives.

But a man lies to himself, and never more so than he does about a woman.

What did The Battle Hymn of the Republic and Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and all that have to do with our present enthusiasm for women’s rights? Not that much, really. Women just got lucky this time.

He was out in the open, waving his hat, pointing to a grove of trees. A moment later Buford looked that way and the horse was bare-backed. He did not believe it. He broke off and rode to see. Reynolds lay in the dirt road, the aides bending over him. When Buford got there the thick stain had already puddled the dirt beneath his head. His eyes were open, half asleep, his face pleasant and composed, a soft smile. Buford knelt. He was dead. An aide, a young sergeant, was crying. Buford backed away. They put a blanket over him. Off to the left there was massive firing. There was a moment of silence around them. Buford said, “Take him out of here.

The rain still drummed on the roof, like fine needles striking the shingles. The family sat silently around the table, each one wrapped in their own thoughts. It was Matthew’s voice that broke the silence, asking, “And what happened after that?” “After that,” said Paul, “came Gettysburg.

At the gatehouse of the town cemetery, a sign said, “All persons using firearms in these grounds will be prosecuted with the utmost rigor of the law.” This sign had been put up long before the war came to Gettysburg. The words were ignored by soldiers on both sides for the next three days.

I wish you to place your division across this road, and I wish you to get there,

After the war, Fitz Lee served as governor of Virginia and became one of several former Confederate commanders to return to duty in the U.S. Army for the Spanish-American War.

Fourteen years later, while visiting John Rummel, Miller found his saber hilt and a portion of the blade among the relics collected by Rummel after the battle.

Our nation found its soul of honor on these fields of Gettysburg one hundred years ago. We must not lose that soul in dishonor now on the fields of hate.

Like the fabled Charge of the Light Brigade, Farnsworth’s Charge was brave, memorable, and fruitless.

They had fought to keep the country together as George Washington and the Founding Fathers meant it to be.

Lee was tough as hickory, but the tree was old.

War was a sorrier business than storybooks told.

Buford didn’t dress for respect, he earned it. He didn’t try to get his name in the newspapers, instead he led with deeds that caused his men to follow his guidon with confidence and the full expectation of success.

Had Kilpatrick shown some initiative and sent a larger force in pursuit, he might have bagged the entire command while the exhausted column was strung out across the Pennsylvania country side. Stuart was fortunate his adversary was not determined to fight a decisive battle with him.

Don’t go thinking I was one of these hellfire-and-brimstone fellers. No, sir. I put more stock in Jesus than Jeremiah. And I never tried to tell a man Jesus really turned that wine into water, not the other way around. Just tried to persuade him that getting hog-drunk and killing his own brother wasn’t Christian.

There is nothing particularly glorious about sweaty fellows, laden with killing tools, going along to fight. And yet-such a column represents a great deal more than 28,000 individuals mustered into a division. All that is behind those men is in that column too: the old battles, long forgotten, that secured our nation -- Brandywine and Trenton and Yorktown, San Jacinto and Chapultepec, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Antietam, El Caney; scores of skirmishes, far off, such as the Marines have nearly every year in which a man can be killed as dead as ever a chap in the Argonne; traditions of things endured and things accomplished, such as regiments hand down forever; and the faith of men and the love of women; and that abstract thing called patriotism, which I never heard combat soldiers mention -- all this passes into the forward zone, to the point of contact, where war is grit with horrors. Common men endure these horrors and overcome them, along with the insistent yearnings of the belly and the reasonable promptings of fear; and in this, I think, is glory.

firing weapon had a devastating effect on the Southerners.18 The 5th Michigan’s Pvt. William H. Rockwell wrote to his wife a few weeks after the battle about the weapon’s effect. “We are put in all of the worst places on account of [the] seven shooters,” he boasted. “The rebs call us the seven devils for they say we can load in the morning and fight all day. If they find the 5th [Michigan] is after them they skedaddle.

Our approach and method of presentation is also radically different from traditional fare. For example, the complex series of decisions, movements, and fighting on July 2 are always—always—broken apart and tendered to readers in separate chunks. The fighting around Devil’s Den and Little Round Top is usually handled in one chapter, the Peach Orchard salient in another section, Cemetery Ridge in yet another chapter, and so on. The consequence of this customary method of presentation compartmentalizes these phases of the engagement into mini-battles comprising separate actions. And that is how most students of Gettysburg have come to view them. But they were not unrelated sequestered endeavors. Rather, they were part of one overall interlocking strategy of attack that came much closer to breaking apart and decisively defeating Meade’s army than anyone heretofore has fully explained. Thus, Chapter 7—all 137 pages of it—is presented as a single fluid event so that readers may fully comprehend what Lee intended to accomplish with his echelon attack, how the attack was progressing, where it broke down, and who was responsible—and just how close Lee came to realizing his bid for victory on Northern soil.

H-22: Father Corby Monument 39º48.205’N, 77º14.063’W This monument honors the hundreds of chaplains present on the field in 1863. As chaplain of the Eighty-eighth New York Infantry of the famed Irish Brigade, Father William Corby, twenty-nine years old, has become as famous as many of those who actually bore arms those three fateful days. As the Irish Brigade formed up to enter the fight, Father Corby stepped onto a boulder—some historians believe the very boulder on which the monument stands—and raised his hand. Three hundred soldiers drew silent, many of them dropping to their knees, as the battle raged around them. The priest blessed them, prayed for their safety, and granted a general absolution, after which the troops marched into the fight. Corby’s admonition that the church would refuse a Christian burial for any man who failed to do his duty that day rang in their ears as they headed off. Following the war, Father Corby became president of the University of Notre Dame. A replica of this monument stands on the university’s campus, marking his grave. Years after the war, veterans of the Irish Brigade petitioned to have the Medal of Honor awarded to Corby, a request that was ultimately denied.

The next day, it was still raining when Lee issued his final order to his troops, known simply as General Orders Number 9. After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to the result from no distrust of them. But feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that would compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen. By the terms of the agreement officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will extended to you His blessing and protection. With an increasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous considerations for myself, I bid you all an affectionate farewell. For generations, General Orders Number 9 would be recited in the South with the same pride as the Gettysburg Address was learned in the North. It is marked less by its soaring prose—the language is in fact rather prosaic—but by what it does say, bringing his men affectionate words of closure, and, just as importantly, what it doesn’t say. Nowhere does it exhort his men to continue the struggle; nowhere does it challenge the legitimacy of the Union government that had forced their surrender; nowhere does it fan the flames of discontent. In fact, Lee pointedly struck out a draft paragraph that could have been construed to do just that.

Corby’s admonition that the church would refuse a Christian burial for any man who failed to do his duty that day rang in their ears as they headed off.

Gettysburg is still considered the most famous battle of the war. Why? At Gettysburg, the tide turned. Up until then, the South had been winning. After Gettysburg, the Confederates were no longer sure their army was unbeatable. And after two years of losing battles, the Northern forces gained pride and confidence. They believed the war was theirs to win. And they were right. Gettysburg was a prosperous market town of 2,400 people. A network of ten roads extended out from town like the spokes of a wheel. Until July 1863, Gettysburg was not well known like other cities in Pennsylvania such as Philadelphia or Harrisburg.

innkeeper accused him of setting fire to

What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has it invented any telephones, and telegraphs? Has it built any steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there any chance in Cæsar’s crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with Napoleon’s career, with Wellington’s, or Grant’s…? Every battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylæ, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our failures to destiny.

This was the classic covering force battle: deceiving the enemy as to force type, size, disposition, intent and location; forcing the enemy to buy every foot of ground at the highest cost possible in men and equipment; gaining as much time as possible in exchange for the space relinquished; and forcing the enemy to deploy his forces, identifying his type, size, disposition, intent and location, and thereby disrupting his plan.

Reynolds knew Buford thoroughly, and knowing him and the value of cavalry under such a leader, sent them through the mountain passes beyond Gettysburg to find and feel the enemy. The old rule would have been to keep them back near the infantry, but Reynolds sent Buford on, and Buford went on, knowing that wherever Reynolds sent him, he was sure to be supported, followed, and secure.. . .Buford and Reynolds were soldiers of the same order, and in each found in the other just the qualities that were most needed to perfect and complete the task entrusted to them. The brilliant achievement of Buford, with his small body of cavalry, up to that time hardly appreciated as to the right use to be made of them, is but too little considered in the history of the battle of Gettysburg. It was his foresight and energy, his pluck and self reliance, in thrusting forward his forces and pushing the enemy, and thus inviting, almost compelling their return, that brought on the engagement of the first of July.

And the regulatory agencies are not stingy with their words either. Consider this: The Lord’s Prayer contains 56 words; the Gettysburg Address, 266; the Ten Commandments, 297; the Declaration of Independence, 300; and a recent U.S. government order setting the price of cabbage, 26,911.

Both realized the political consequences of allowing the resignation of the first general to beat Robert E. Lee on the battlefield.

While President Jefferson Davis in Richmond and his own soldiers continued to support him with unwavering trust, Gen. Lee wrestled with his own demons, including his ill-fated invasion of Pennsylvania, which had been successful through the first day of fighting at Gettysburg. Other more tangible challenges included his ongoing concern about the well-being of his men due to a lack of adequate supplies, and by his own lingering health problems. His “violent back pains” were probably the result of the chronic heart problems that would kill him in 1870.10

he methodically distinguishes two types of success—whether in the arts, in battle, or in politics. The first success, he argues, belongs to the man “who has in him the natural power to do what no one else can do, and what no amount of training, no perseverance or will power, will enable an ordinary man to do.” He cites the poet who could write the “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the president who could “deliver the Gettysburg Address,” and Lord Nelson at Trafalgar as manifestations of genius, examples of men assigned extraordinary gifts at birth. The second and more common type of success, he maintains, is not dependent on such unique inborn attributes, but on a man’s ability to develop ordinary qualities to an extraordinary degree through ambition and the application of hard, sustained work. Unlike genius, which can inspire, but not educate, self-made success is democratic, “open to the average man of sound body and fair mind, who has no remarkable mental or physical attributes,” but who enlarges each of those attributes to the maximum degree. He suggests that it is “more useful to study this second type,” for with determination, anyone “can, if he chooses, find out how to win a similar success himself.” It is clear from the start of Roosevelt’s story of his leadership journey that he unequivocally aligns himself with this second type of success.

The din of artillery and musketry was deafening at this time, and I did not hear the words that passed between the two generals. But my eyes were upon Hancock’s striking figure - I thought him the most striking man I ever saw on horseback, and magnificent in the flush and excitement of battle - when he uttered an exclamation and I saw that he was reeling in the saddle. 2

In two days, Lincoln wrote two completely different letters to the commanders who had won victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. The letters reflected his quite different views of the two generals. Meade had fought well in a defensive posture in a battle he had not sought, but had failed to follow up that victory.

Resentment over the Civil War still lingered, in both the North and South. That conflict had concluded only fifty-three years earlier—Edison was a teenager when the first shots were fired, and Ford was born a few weeks after the Battle of Gettysburg.

When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure 'that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,' he was not merely being aspirational; at the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant 'government of the people' but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term 'people' to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. Thus America's problem is not its betrayal of 'government of the people,' but the means by which 'the people' acquired their names.

What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has it invented any telephones, any telegraphs? Has it built any steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there any chance in Cæsar's crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with Napoleon's career, with Wellington's, or Grant's, or Von Moltke's? Every battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylæ, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our failures to destiny.

When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” he was not merely being aspirational; at the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant “government of the people” but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term “people” to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. Thus America’s problem is not its betrayal of “government of the people,” but the means by which “the people” acquired their names. This

I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.

Indeed, wargame hobbyists will often amass collections of hundreds or even thousands of titles, sometimes a dozen or more on a popular topic like Gettysburg or D-Day or the Battle of the Bulge. For the more critically minded among them, the goal is not to find the single, definitive simulation—indeed, one that merely mechanically replicated the historical outcome at each playing would be deemed a failure—but rather to compare and contrast the techniques and interpretations across the different designs, much as a historian reads multiple accounts and sources to arrive at her own synthesis of events.

William E. Miller previously a captain in the 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry, where in combat at Gettysburg he had won the Medal of Honor. During the action east of town on July 3, 1863, he engaged a Confederate horse soldier in a personal hand-to-hand duel, and in the melee his sabre blade had been broken off near the hilt. Fourteen years later in 1877, on the same ground where the engagement took place, Miller found, in a pile of useless battle junk collected by the farmer from the surrounding fields, his very own sword hilt which had been thrown away on that hot July afternoon so long before.

an ex-Confederate colorbearer, Andrew Wall, took a ten-mile walking tour of the historic ground in 1913, at the age of 72. On July 2 of that reunion year, Wall came to a place where he believed he had been standing in 1863, when the point end of the regimental flag staff he was carrying was shot off by Yankee fire. Searching through the thick accumulation of leaves and dirt, Wall was amazed to discover the metal flag pole tip that had been blown away 50 years before.

Finally, one would question the absurd idea that anyone would be proud to belong to a race that could create a hellish nightmare like “Gettysburg.

With Christianity, it seems, there is always the double-edged sword.

Quotes like these make one wonder as to the Commission’s real purpose for being at Gettysburg, and brings to mind the words used by an overworked surgeon when he exclaimed, “I’d give 100 DD’s [doctors of divinity] for one extra M.D. right now!

This particular brand of religious myth had not yet really taken hold of society.

only approximately 25 percent of the citizens of the United States and Confederate States were actual professed Christians. This particular brand of religious myth had not yet really taken hold of society.

A soldier in the Eleventh Corps hospital watched for a while as a preacher there was attempting to obtain food and other needed items for the large number of wounded men. This private was Reuben Ruch of the 153rd Pennsylvania and he commented that this was the only time in his life, “when I thought a preacher was any benefit to his fellow man.

It is simply a fact, however, and must be stated, that millions of people in those days did not need religion, and got along happily without it, contrary to what many might otherwise choose to admit.

A Union soldier recalled the Confederate dead along Cemetery Ridge: No words can depict the ghastly picture…the men lay in heaps, the wounded wriggling and groaning under the weight of the dead among whom they were entangled….I could not long endure the gory, ghastly spectacle. I found my head reeling, the tears flowing and my stomach sick at the sight. For months the specter haunted my dreams…

According to the evidence available, the military did not keep a single ledger listing and locating all Confederate and Union graves on and around the Gettysburg battlefield.

If one thing is accomplished in this story of the aftermath of Gettysburg, it is the hope that we can dispel some of the pure nonsense and myth that has grown up surrounding the Civil War, and which is perpetuated even now by movies, novels, and battle reenactments around the country.

story of Private Stephen Kelly of Co. E, 91st Pennsylvania. He joined that unit in August 1861, and was mustered out three years later in Philadelphia. Several years after the war Kelly had occasion to visit the battlefield park and was surprised to find his own grave, (#A-88) nicely defined in the Pennsylvania section of the National Cemetery. It is there today, but Kelly was not in it. He took the whole matter in stride and in good humor, and was once heard to say: “[E]ach Decoration Day I go up there and strew some flowers on the tomb of the man who is substituting for me.

A wounded New Hampshire soldier named Drake had the unpleasant sensation of watching as a hog tore the flesh from the bones of his recently amputated leg. It was eaten up before his eyes. He recalled that he could feel a sharp pain very clearly as it happened

How would he protect her, as weak and wounded as he was? If the two armies were about to shell the town again, he had to find a safe place for her to be. And if the Confederates gained Gettysburg itself, they would probably take him as a prisoner. He needed to make sure that Arabella had a place of safety...

July 3; Lee rose by starlight, as he had done the previous morning, with equally fervent hopes of bringing this bloodiest of all his battles to a victorious conclusion before sunset. Two months ago today, Chancellorsville had thundered to its climax, fulfilling just such hopes against longer odds, and one month ago today, hard on the heels of a top-to-bottom reorganization occasioned by the death of Stonewall Jackson, the Army of Northern Virginia had begun its movement from the Rappahannock, northward to where an even greater triumph had seemed to be within its reach throughout the past 40-odd hours of savage fighting. Today would settle the outcome, he believed, not only of the battle — that went without saying; flesh and blood, bone and sinew and nerve could only stand so much — but also, perhaps, of the war; which, after all, was why he had come up here to Pennsylvania in the first place. (p. 525).

Yet this third-rate and mediocre action is counted, with Waterloo and Gettysburg, among the decisive battles of history; and Goethe was not the only man there who knew that the scene before him was the beginning of a new epoch for mankind. With 36,000 men and 40 guns the French had arrested the advance of Europe, not by skilful tactics or the touch of steel, but by the moral effect of their solidity when they met the best of existing armies. The nation discovered that the Continent was at its mercy, and the war begun for the salvation of monarchy became a war for the expansion of the Republic. It was founded at Paris, and consolidated at Valmy. Yet no military event was less decisive. The French stood their ground because nobody attacked them, and they were not attacked because they stood their ground. The Prussians suffered a strategic, though not a tactical defeat. By retiring to their encampment they renounced the purposes for which they went to war, the province they occupied, and the prestige of Frederic.

First, he did not intend to give battle in Pennsylvania if he could avoid it.

York City, as bloodthirsty mobs of enraged working-class Whites roamed Midtown Manhattan “armed with clubs, pitchforks, iron bars, swords, and many with guns and pistols,” looking for any African Americans they could find.1 Marching through the streets, those with weapons fired toward anyone in their way, even at New York City policemen. On the corner of Twenty-Ninth Street, “a crowd who had been engaged all day in hunting down and stoning to death every negro they could spy” lingered in plain view of the Twenty-First Precinct police station. It was undermanned because thousands of New York State Militia troops who would have served as backup had been sent to the Battle of Gettysburg.2 Nothing was spared. The Colored Orphan Asylum at Forty-Fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, home to more than two hundred disadvantaged Black children, had been burned to the ground. Horses pulling streetcars had been shot to death and the cars smashed to pieces. The homes of prominent abolitionists were being looted and destroyed. Railroad tracks had been torn up and telegraph wires cut. Dozens of public buildings, including churches, were ransacked and torched. Even the house of the New York City mayor, George Opdyke, was raided and set on fire. It was mayhem. Ever since President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, the city’s poorest Whites feared that freed slaves would migrate to Manhattan and steal their jobs. Then in March, Congress passed the Enrollment Act, which made all able-bodied adult males immediately eligible to be drafted into the Union Army. This reality sank in when the names of New York City draftees were published leading up to “Draft Week.” Making matters worse was that under the Enrollment Act, any wealthy man could escape the draft by paying a $300 fee (the equivalent of more than $6,500 today).3 He would be replaced by some poor fellow who simply couldn’t afford to pay that.

There are former Confederates who sought to redeem themselves—one thinks of James Longstreet, wrongly blamed by Lost Causers for Lee’s disastrous defeat at Gettysburg, who went from fighting the Union army to leading New Orleans’s integrated police force in battle against white-supremacist paramilitaries. But there are no statues of Longstreet in New Orleans. Lee was devoted to defending the principle of white supremacy; Longstreet was not. This, perhaps, is why Lee was placed atop the largest Confederate monument at Gettysburg in 1917, but the 6-foot-2-inch Longstreet had to wait until 1998 to receive a smaller-scale statue hidden in the woods that makes him look like a hobbit riding a donkey. It’s why Lee is remembered as a hero, and Longstreet is remembered as a disgrace.

beggars

July

Well," the sister said. "Be very sorry for your sins." "Oh," he said. "I have cried over them all the night, and also for my obstinacy toward your kindness. Will you forgive me?"" Tears filled his eyes as the nun baptized him. Then he slipped away.

And they were heading right for it.

Brigadier General John Buford commanded the 1st Cavalry Division, Army of the Potomac, prior to and during the battle of Gettysburg. This much is accepted by all historians and written accounts of the battle. On most other facts, disagreement begins and on specific facts, varies greatly. The purpose of this paper is to examine the facts as presented in different accounts, discover the differences, and try to determine what is important in terms of the lessons to be learned from the battle. In most accounts, General Buford receives, at least, a great deal of credit for determining the importance of the terrain just south of Gettysburg, for determining that the meeting of the two great armies will take place there, and for deciding that the ground was important enough to hold until the Army of the Potomac can move forward and occupy it: “The significant contribution which Buford’s cavalry made to the final checkmate of the Confederates at Gettysburg has never received adequate recognition.. .. .. with not over 4,000 cavalrymen he delayed the advance of Hill’s corps from Cashtown and Ewell’s corps from Heidlersburg, causing the leading divisions of both to effect premature deployments.. .. . .. . It is not too much to say that Buford’s cavalry was the major instrument that caused the battle to be fought at Gettysburg rather than elsewhere.. .

A dying old soldier rebuffed a nun every time she showed any kindness toward him. Finally, as he weakened, her perseverance caused him to show some civility. Realizing he was in danger of dying, the sister spoke to him of baptism. The old soldier was immediately displeased and told her he was too old to be plagued in that manner. During the next two weeks, at every possible occasion, the nun mentioned baptism. Each time he rejected her. On the last evening of his life, the sister was ready to leave him. With her rosary in hand, she removed the medal of Mary she wore and slipped it quietly under his pillow without the old soldier seeing her. As she left him, she prayed, "I can do no more for this man; I leave him to you." The next morning the nun returned, and he asked her for a drink. Then he said, "Sister, I want no breakfast today, but I wish to be baptized.

is a pretty well established fact that many a brutal officer fell in battle, from being shot other than by the enemy. Shortly

The struggle between human bondage and universal freedom, the desire to destroy this government and dishonor her flag, the cruel hatred of Americans toward each other, no more blurs our fair land.

immortal words of Lincoln nurtured and guarded by a grateful people, this spot for all time to come cannot be other than the nation’s shrine of American virtue, valor and freedom. Here will posterity receive the same inspiration that prompted their ancestors to dare, to do and to die, for the perpetuity of the inestimable blessings that shall have come down to them.

Many a Union soldier would have gone to “Libby” or “Andersonville” had it not been for the loyalty and bravery of some of the citizens in thus secreting them.

Soon the town was filled with infantry, and then the searching and ransacking began in earnest.

the Federal left, were undertaken by

council of war

Lon had lost another West Point friend and comrade-in-arms. The war seemed far from resolution, and the humiliations of the most recent battle made the deaths of the noble Dimick and Kirby difficult to accept.

Major General

Sedgwick’s death came in dramatic fashion in May 1864 near Spotsylvania. As he positioned his troops, Confederate sharpshooters began finding their range. When his men dodged the bullets, Sedgwick chided them, saying, “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” Shortly afterward, a sharpshooter proved Sedgwick wrong as his bullet found its mark, striking the general just under his left eye and killing him instantly. H-21: George Weikert Farm 39º48.127’N, 77º14.072’W On July 2, Brigadier General John C.

Mrs. Pig and Pugsworth bounced around reenacting what was either the Battle of Gettysburg or an episode of the Kardashians.

In the East the opposing forces stood in substantially the same relations towards each other as three years before, or when the war began; they were both between the Federal and Confederate capitals. It is true, footholds had been secured by us on the sea-coast, in Virginia and North Carolina, but, beyond that, no substantial advantage had been gained by either side. Battles had been fought of as great severity as had ever been known in war, over ground from the James River and Chickahominy, near Richmond, to Gettysburg and Chambersburg, in Pennsylvania, with indecisive results, sometimes favorable to the National army, sometimes to the Confederate army; but in every instance, I believe, claimed as victories for the South by the Southern press if not by the Southern generals. The Northern press, as a whole, did not discourage these claims; a portion of it always magnified rebel success and belittled ours, while another portion, most sincerely earnest in their desire for the preservation of the Union and the overwhelming success of the Federal armies, would nevertheless generally express dissatisfaction with whatever victories were gained because they were not more complete.

To the veterans returning to Ohio after the battle, Lincoln made some brief remarks as they prepared to go west. No one knew when the war would end; no one knew if Lincoln, who was facing reelection in November, would even be president in a matter of months. He spoke not with the poetry of Gettysburg, but his words on that August day said much about why the salvation of the Union would repay any price in blood and toil and treasure. The tall, tired president, his face heavily lined, his burdens unimaginable, was straightforward. “It is,” he said, “in order that each one of you may have, through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field, and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise, and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life with all its desirable human aspirations—it is for this that the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthrights—not only for one, but for two or three years, if necessary.” And, finally: “The nation is worth fighting for, to secure such an inestimable jewel.” For all of our darker impulses, for all of our shortcomings, and for all of the dreams denied and deferred, the experiment begun so long ago, carried out so imperfectly, is worth the fight. There is, in fact, no struggle more important, and none nobler, than the one we wage in the service of those better angels who, however besieged, are always ready for battle.

The country’s fate, Johnson said, was intertwined with the country’s sense of fairness. “Unless we are willing to yield up our destiny of greatness among civilizations of history, Americans—white and Negro together—must be about the business of resolving the challenge that confronts us now,” he said. “Our nation found its soul of honor on these fields of Gettysburg one hundred years ago. We must not lose that soul in dishonor now on the fields of hate.

Blue and Gray veterans led the way in focusing public attention on the minute details of each battle, a move that tended to distract attention from larger questions of meaning. Few if any other wars have created among the public such a strange fascination with the concrete details of military tactics and strategy, and thus pride in knowing where and when General Daniel Sickles lost his leg at Gettysburg, but not in knowing when slaves were freed in the District of Columbia.

But then Clem was taken, and those pictures went dark. Just thinking about Clem gave Thomas a searing pain, even worse than the lash of Mr. Knox’s whip.

And like that little snake, Thomas and Birdie disappeared into the shadowy forest.

But then Mr. Knox caught him. He noticed that Clem wasn’t in the fields when he was supposed to be, and he found him up at the house, his ear close to the window. He saw all the words written in the dirt.” “What did he do?” Thomas glanced at Henry. He hadn’t meant to tell this part. He tried never to think about it. “He whipped him.” Thomas closed his eyes, trying to stop the flood of memories — the thwack of Mr. Knox’s whip, Clem’s shouts of pain, the sight of Clem’s blood-soaked shirt. “Clem couldn’t walk for two weeks.” “For learning to read?” Henry said, his eyes blazing with anger and shock. “Yes, sir,” Thomas said.