1913 Gettysburg Reunion of Blue and Gray

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1913 Gettysburg Reunion of Blue and Gray

By Calvin E. Johnson Jr. (Bio and Archives) Friday, June 28, 2013

 

 

The Sesquicentennial “150th Anniversary” of the War Between the States continues in remembrance of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson who died in May 1863 and the men of Blue and Gray who fought at the Battle of Gettysburg. The Georgia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans commemorates the memory of the Confederate soldier.

 

Fifty years had passed since the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1st- 3rd, 1863, when the Veterans of the North and South braved again the summer heat to meet at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

 

One hundred years have passed since….

 

President Woodrow Wilson, a son of Virginia, summarized the spirit of this historic event with his July 4, 1913 Gettysburg Reunion Address by saying: quote: “We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten—except that we shall not forget the splendid valor.”

 

From June 29 to July 4, 1913, 53,407 Confederate and Union Veterans of the War Between the States came to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania for a Reunion and encampment. Veterans came from 47 of the 48 states of the Union and the Chief Surgeon said of the event, “Never before in the world’s history had so great a number of men advanced in years been assembled under field conditions.”

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/56206

 

about the author
A native of Georgia, Calvin Johnson, Chairman of the National and Georgia Division,
Sons of Confederate Veterans, Confederate History Month Committee—-Scv.org lives near the historic town of Kennesaw and he’s a member of the Chattahoochee Guards Camp, Sons of Confederate Veterans. He is the author of the book “When America Stood for God, Family and Country.” Calvin can be reached at: cjohnson1861@bellsouth.net

Edited June 30, 2013 by Draggingtree

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150 Years of Misunderstanding the Civil War

As the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg approaches, it's time for America to question the popular account of a war that tore apart the nation.

 

Tony Horwitz

 

Jun 19 2013, 2:10 PM ET

The Battle of Gettysburg, lithograph (Currier and Ives/Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

In early July, on the 150^th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, pilgrims will crowd Little Round Top and the High Water Mark of Pickett's Charge. But venture beyond these famous shrines to battlefield valor and you'll find quiet sites like Iverson's Pits, which recall the inglorious reality of Civil War combat.

 

On July 1^st, 1863, Alfred Iverson ordered his brigade of North Carolinians across an open field. The soldiers marched in tight formation until Union riflemen suddenly rose from behind a stone wall and opened fire. Five hundred rebels fell dead or wounded "on a line as straight as a dress parade," Iverson reported. "They nobly fought and died without a man running to the rear. No greater gallantry and heroism has been displayed during this war."

 

Soldiers told a different story: of being "sprayed by the brains" of men shot in front of them, or hugging the ground and waving white kerchiefs. One survivor informed the mother of a comrade that her son was "shot between the Eye and ear" while huddled in a muddy swale. Of others in their ruined unit he wrote: "left arm was cut off, I think he will die... his left thigh hit and it was cut off." An artilleryman described one row of 79 North Carolinians executed by a single volley, their dead feet perfectly aligned. "Great God!

 

Very few Northerners went to war seeking or anticipating the destruction of slavery.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/150-years-of-misunderstanding-the-civil-war/277022/

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The hero of Gettysburg

 

Hardly anyone knows his name, but 150 years ago, one of America’s greatest generals, George Meade, saved a nation

 

By RALPH PETERS

Last Updated: 3:37 AM, June 30, 2013

Posted: 12:39 AM, June 30, 2013

 

One hundred and fifty years ago tomorrow morning, two great armies slammed into each other outside a crossroads town in Pennsylvania. Neither army’s commander intended to fight at Gettysburg, but the battle took on a life of its own as reinforcements rushed to the sound of the guns. Soldiers in blue and gray would fight for three days, leaving almost 7,000 Americans dead and 30,000 wounded.

 

At the close of the battle on July 3, 1863, the Army of the Potomac, led by Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade — the most underrated soldier in our history — had won the Union’s first indisputable victory in the east. With Gettysburg’s strategic effect compounded by news of Grant’s capture of Vicksburg, Miss., on July 4, the Confederacy was left with no realistic chance of winning the war militarily (although the South’s valiant, stubborn troops would fight on for two more years). The secessionist government in Richmond could only hope to conjure a political settlement.

 

Revisionist historians question Gettysburg’s decisiveness, given that the war continued. They fail to note the consequences, had General Robert E. Lee and his boys in gray won: In less than a week, Lee’s ferocious ragamuffins would have marched down Broad Street in Philadelphia; the North would have been pressured to sue for peace; and England and France would have found the excuse their social elites longed for to intervene on the South’s behalf.

 

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_hero_of_pWV5Jk81PHW48jHMYLYf7H

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Ten thousand people take part in re-enactment of Battle of Gettysburg

 

Re-enactors fire the opening volley, starting the commemoration of the Battle of Gettysburg, one of the most violent of the American Civil War.

1:43PM BST 29 Jun 2013

More than 160,000 men fought at Gettysburg from July 1-3, 1863. Around 8,000 Union and Confederacy soldiers lost their lives over the three days as they fought in and around the Pennsylvania town, with tens of thousands wounded.

 

The battle is often described as the turning point of the war, when the Union ended Confederate Gen Robert E Lee's invasion of the north.

 

Four months later, President Abraham Lincoln honoured the fallen at a cemetery in the town and delivered the Gettysburg Address, in which he redefined the purpose of the war.

While the Blue Gray Alliance re-enactment does not have the same number of soldiers involved as the original battle, everything else is being made as authentic as possible.

 

The Cooper family has been taking part in Civil War re-enactments for three years.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10150071/Ten-thousand-people-take-part-in-re-enactment-of-Battle-of-Gettysburg.html

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Jul 1, 1863:

The Battle of Gettysburg begins

The largest military conflict in North American history begins this day when Union and Confederate forces collide at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The epic battle lasted three days and resulted in a retreat to Virginia by Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

 

Two months prior to Gettysburg, Lee had dealt a stunning defeat to the Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville, Virginia. He then made plans for a Northern invasion in order to relieve pressure on war-weary Virginia and to seize the initiative from the Yankees. His army, numbering about 80,000, began moving on June 3. The Army of the Potomac, commanded by Joseph Hooker and numbering just under 100,000, began moving shortly thereafter, staying between Lee and Washington, D.C. But on June 28, frustrated by the Lincoln administration's restrictions on his autonomy as commander, Hooker resigned and was replaced by George G. Meade.

 

Meade took command of the Army of the Potomac as Lee's army moved into Pennsylvania. On the morning of July 1, advance units of the forces came into contact with one another just outside of Gettysburg. The sound of battle attracted other

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-battle-of-gettysburg-begins

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Jul 2, 1863:

 

Fighting continues at the Battle of Gettysburg

 

On this day in 1863, during the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia attacks General George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac at both Culp's Hill and Little Round Top, but fails to move the Yankees from their positions.

 

On the north end of the line, or the Union's right flank, Confederates from General Richard Ewell's corps struggled up Culp's Hill, which was steep and heavily wooded, before being turned back by heavy Union fire. But the most significant action was on the south end of the Union line. General James Longstreet's corps launched an attack against the Yankees, but only after a delay that allowed additional Union troops to arrive and position themselves along Cemetery Ridge. Many people later blamed Longstreet for the Confederates' eventual defeat. Still, the Confederates had a chance to destroy the Union left flank when General Daniel Sickles moved his corps, against Meade's orders, from their position on the ridge to open ground around the Peach Orchard. This move separated Sickles' force from the rest of the Union army, and Longstreet attacked. Although the Confederates were able to take the Peach Orchard, they were repulsed

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-second-day-of-battle-at-gettysburg

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Jul 3, 1863:

 

Pickett leads his infamous charge at Gettysburg

 

On this day in 1863, troops under Confederate General George Pickett begin a massive attack against the center of the Union lines on the climactic third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the largest engagement of the war. For the first two days of the battle, General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had battered George Meade's Army of the Potomac. The day before Pickett's Charge, the Confederates had hammered each flank of the Union line but could not break through.

 

Now, on July 3, Lee decided to attack the Union center, stationed on Cemetery Ridge, after making another unsuccessful attempt on the Union right flank at Culp's Hill in the morning. The majority of the force consisted of Pickett's division, but there were other units represented among the 15,000 attackers.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pickett-leads-his-infamous-charge-at-gettysburg

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The Civil War in 1863: Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Chattanooga

 

By: Christopher J. Olsen | July1, 2013

In the middle of 1863, Republican fortunes looked bleak as the Democratic-led peace movement gained strength.

 

The primary reason was the Union’s apparent lack of military progress in subduing the Confederacy. Unsuccessful or stalled offensives in Virginia, Tennessee, and Mississippi discouraged Northerners and called Lincoln’s leadership into question, and he knew that only battlefield victories could turn public opinion around.

 

Confederate leaders also watched Union politics closely. As the war dragged on, many believed their best hope to be the Northern peace movement, which might unseat the Republicans or force Lincoln to negotiate a settlement. Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and the rest of the Confederate military and political leadership weighed their options, with Southern independence hanging on where and how they committed their dwindling resources; http://www.commandposts.com/2013/07/the-civil-war-in-1863-gettysburg-vicksburg-and-chattanooga/

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Gettysburg in Pictures

 

By: Callie OettingerDate:June30 , 2011

 

Headquarters of the Army of the Potomac during the Battle of Gettysburg, 1863.
Credit: National Archives.

http://www.commandposts.com/2011/06/gettysburg-in-pictures/

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Why They Fought

 

By DAVID BROOKS

 

Published: July 1, 2013

 

Tuesday is the 150th anniversary of the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. In his eloquent new account, “Gettysburg: the Last Invasion,” the historian Allen Guelzo describes the psychology of the fighters on that day.

 

A battlefield is “the lonesomest place which men share together,” a soldier once observed. At Gettysburg, the men were sometimes isolated within the rolling clouds of gun smoke and unnerved by what Guelzo calls “the weird harmonic ring of bullets striking fixed bayonets.” They were often terrified, of course, sometimes losing bladder and bowel control. (Aristophanes once called battle “the terrible one, the tough one, the one upon the legs.”)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/opinion/brooks-why-they-fought.html

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Images of the Day: Telegram to the New York Times, Gettysburg, July 3, 1863
By: Callie OettingerDate:July3 , 2012

Telegram from Reporter to the New York Times Regarding the Battle of Gettysburg, 07/03/1863. Image and caption credit: National Archives.

Telegram from Reporter to the New York Times Regarding the Battle of Gettysburg, 07/03/1863. Image and caption credit: National Archives.

 

Telegram from Reporter to the New York Times Regarding the Battle of Gettysburg, 07/03/1863. Image and caption credit: National Archives.http://www.commandposts.com/2012/07/images-of-the-day-telegram-to-the-new-york-times-gettysburg-july-3-1863

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Robert E. Lee Facts & information about Robert E. Lee, a confederate Civil War General during the American Civil War

 

Robert E. Lee summary: Confederate general Robert E. Lee is perhaps the most iconic and most widely respected of all Civil War commanders. Though he opposed secession, he resigned from the U.S. Army to join the forces of his native state, rose to command the largest Confederate army and ultimately was named general-in-chief of all Confederate land forces. He repeatedly defeated larger Federal armies in Virginia, but his two invasions of Northern soil were unsuccessful. In Ulysses S. Grant, he found an opponent who would not withdraw regardless of setbacks and casualties, and Lee’s outnumbered forces were gradually reduced in number and forced into defensive positions that did not allow him room to maneuver. When he surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, it meant the war was virtually over.

 

http://www.realclearhistory.com/

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Pickett's Charge

 

Isaac R. Pennypacker

 

 

It was at one o'clock that two Confederate signal guns were fired, and at once there opened such an artillery combat as the armies had never before seen. As a spectacle, the fire from the two miles of Confederate batteries, stretching from the town of Gettysburg southward, was appalling; but practically the Confederate fire was too high, and most of the damage was done behind the ridge on which the Army of the Potomac was posted, although the damage along the ridge was also great. The little house just over the crest where Meade had his headquarters, and to which he had gone from Gibbon's luncheon, was torn with shot and shell. The army commander stood in the open doorway as a cannon shot, almost grazing his legs, buried itself in a box standing on the portico by the door. There were two small rooms on the ground floor of the house, and in the room where Meade had met his corps commanders the night before were a bed in the corner, a small pine table in the center, upon it a wooden pail of water, a tin drinking cup, and the remains of a melted tallow candle held upright by its own grease, that had served to light the proceedings of last night's council of war. One Confederate shell bust in the yard among the horses tied to the fence; nearly a score of dead horses lay along this fence, close to the house. One shell tore up the steps of the house; one carried away the supports of the portico; one went through the door, and another through the garret. It was impossible for aids to report or for orders to be given from the center of so much noise and confusion, and the little house was abandoned as a headquarters, to be turned, after the firing was over, into a hospital.

http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/gettysburg/gettysburg-history-articles/picketts-charge.html

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July 2, 2013, 11:39 am

 

General Ewell’s Dilemma

 

By TERRY L. JONES

 

Gen. Richard S. Ewell of the Confederate Army was frustrated and angry on the afternoon of July 1, 1863, the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. The cause of his grief was Robert E. Lee, who had just issued a confusing order that forced Ewell to reconsider whether he should carry out an important attack. What he did next may have arguably decided the battle, and certainly became one of the most controversial series of events of the entire war.

 

Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had unexpectedly encountered George Meade’s Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg that morning, and a battle no one expected sucked in reinforcements from both sides. Ewell’s corps, which consisted of two divisions under Robert Rodes and Jubal Early (a third was on its way), had rushed in from the north, smashing the Union’s right flank and sending the enemy fleeing back through Gettysburg. At approximately 3:30 p.m., the Union survivors took refuge south of town on Cemetery Hill, where Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock boldly decided to make a stand. What happened next became one of the Civil War’s most enduring controversies. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/general-ewells-dilemma/

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Jul 3, 1863:

 

Battle of Gettysburg ends

 

On the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee's last attempt at breaking the Union line ends in disastrous failure, bringing the most decisive battle of the American Civil War to an end.

 

In June 1863, following his masterful victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville, General Lee launched his second invasion of the Union in less than a year. He led his 75,000-man Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River, through Maryland, and into Pennsylvania, seeking to win a major battle on Northern soil that would further dispirit the Union war effort and induce Britain or France to intervene on the Confederacy's behalf. The 90,000-strong Army of the Potomac pursued the Confederates into Maryland, but its commander, General Joseph Hooker, was still stinging from his defeat at Chancellorsville and seemed reluctant to chase Lee further. Meanwhile, the Confederates divided their forces and investigated various targets, such as Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania capital.

 

On June 28, President Abraham Lincoln replaced Hooker with General George Meade, and Lee learned of the presence of the Army of the Potomac in Maryland. Lee ordered his army to concentrate in the vicinity of the crossroads town of Gettysburg and prepare to meet the Federal army. At the same time, Meade sent ahead part of his force into Pennsylvania but intended to make a stand at Pipe Creek in Maryland.

 

On July 1, a Confederate division under General Henry Heth marched into Gettysburg hoping to seize supplies but finding instead three brigades of Union cavalry

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/battle-of-gettysburg-ends

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[NCTexan]

Very interesting history that is often misunderstood or overlooked

 

Thanks @Draggingtree

[Draggingtree]

Very interesting history that is often misunderstood or overlooked

 

Thanks @Draggingtree

How about this, I was housed at Robert E. Lee Barracks, Mainz-Gonsenheim, Germany. 8th I.D. U.S.A.rmy

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You all come back now, you here! Waiting for the Robert E. Lee

By Calvin E. Johnson Jr. (Bio and Archives) Saturday, July 27, 2013

 

Winston Churchill once said, “The most beautiful voice in the world is that of an educated Southern woman.”

 

The Sons of Confederate Veterans, hosted their 118th National Reunion during the month of July, 2013 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Christine Barr, an award-winning professor of English and resident of Katy, Texas, wrote a beautiful article about the SCV Convention and Southern Heritage.

 

Do you remember the movie and the actor who said, “I give you our homeland, glorious in defeat, gallant in victory and brave in her hour of grief…Gentlemen, I give you the South and confusion to all her enemies?” See the answer at end of article

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/56822