Today is the 150th anniversary of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg, when Confederate forces under A.P. Hill, reportedly in need of shoes, foraged toward the town looking for a factory where they were made.
Instead of shoes, they found a Union Cavalry Brigade.
The resulting battle over these three days has been called 'The high-water mark of the Confederacy' since it is the farthest the any large southern force has penetrated into Union territory.
It has also been called the beginning of the end, since never again would the Confederacy be able to match the union in manpower, materiel, etc.
The names of the battlefields, Devil's Den, The Peach Orchard, The Wheatfield, The Sunken Road, Cemetary Ridge, Big and Little Roundtop, all hold tales of courage and destruction.
Pickett's charge on July 3rd will always be the quintessential example of doomed bravery.
By the end of the third day, more than 51,000 casualties, including 6,000 known dead lie on the fields around this small Pensylvania town.
In November of 1863, Abraham Lincoln gave a short speech at Gettyburg, famously written on the back of an envelope while he was en route, that was called by the newspapers of the time, an embarrassment.
But I do not think so.
Lincoln spoke after a famous orator of the time, Edward Everett. Everett's speech lasted more than an hour was considered the epitome of oration.
ReplyDeleteToday hardly anyone know his name, much less what he said that day.
I've always viewed the Civil War as an enormous mistake that damn near destroyed our nation. It should never have happened.
ReplyDeleteThe cost of brothers taking up arms against one another is brutal; half a million men sacrificed, a vast amount amount of national wealth destroyed, a huge swath of countryside annihilated, and the creation of a schism between countrymen that continues to this day.
I blame James Buchanan. Or Bush! It could very well be Bush's fault.