Last Battle of Gettysburg Reunion Photo, Photos of Confederate Union Battle of Gettysburg
Veterans Soldiers in 1938, Pickett’s Charge, Division, The Bloody Angle Cemetery Ridge, Seminary Ridge Picture
Handshake over the stone wall, July 3, 1938.
Pennsylvania
Historical and Museum Commission
In 1938, at the last great reunion of the Blue and the Gray at Gettysburg, a small group of veterans from Virginia and Pennsylvania met near the "Angle". As cameras rolled and clicked, the old gentlemen shook hands over the stone
wall where General Hays' Division stood on July 3, 1863. Though it is unknown whether any of these veterans were actually
present during the fighting at the Angle, this particular photograph was used to publicize the event and illustrate the last
meeting of the two associations that had met at the Angle up to 1913. By 1938, there were barely a handful of veterans surviving
from either army, who had actually been at Gettysburg seventy five years before.
Credit: Gettysburg National Military Park
Recommended
Reading: Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America
(Simon & Schuster Lincoln Library). Description: The power of words has rarely been given a more compelling demonstration than in the Gettysburg Address.
Lincoln was asked to memorialize the gruesome battle. Instead
he gave the whole nation "a new birth of freedom" in the space of a mere 272 words. His entire life and previous training
and his deep political experience went into this, his revolutionary masterpiece. Continued below...
By examining
both the address and Lincoln in their historical moment and cultural frame, Wills breathes new life into words
we thought we knew, and reveals much about a president so mythologized but often misunderstood. Wills shows how Lincoln desired to change the world and…how his words had to and did complete the work of the guns,
and how Lincoln wove a spell that has not yet been broken.
Recommended
Reading: Pickett's Charge,
by George Stewart. Description: The author has written an eminently readable, thoroughly enjoyable,
and well-researched book on the third day of the Gettysburg
battle, July 3, 1863. An especially rewarding read if one has toured, or plans to visit, the battlefield site. The author's
unpretentious, conversational style of writing succeeds in putting the reader on the ground occupied by both the Confederate
and Union forces before, during and after Pickett's and Pettigrew's famous assault on Meade's
Second Corps. Continued below...
Interspersed
with humor and down-to-earth observations concerning battlefield conditions, the author conscientiously describes all aspects
of the battle, from massing of the assault columns and pre-assault artillery barrage to the last shots and the flight of the
surviving rebels back to the safety of their lines… Having visited Gettysburg several years ago, this superb volume makes me
want to go again.
Recommended Reading: Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage. Description: America's Civil War raged for more than four years, but it is the three days of fighting in the
Pennsylvania countryside in July 1863 that continues to
fascinate, appall, and inspire new generations with its unparalleled saga of sacrifice and courage. From Chancellorsville,
where General Robert E. Lee launched his high-risk campaign into the North, to the Confederates' last daring and ultimately-doomed
act, forever known as Pickett's Charge, the battle of Gettysburg gave the Union army a victory that turned back the boldest
and perhaps greatest chance for a Southern nation. Continued below...
Now, acclaimed
historian Noah Andre Trudeau brings the most up-to-date research available to a brilliant, sweeping, and comprehensive history
of the battle of Gettysburg that sheds fresh light on virtually every aspect of it. Deftly balancing his own
narrative style with revealing firsthand accounts, Trudeau brings this engrossing human tale to life as never before.
Recommended
Reading: Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg,
by James M. Mcpherson (Crown Journeys) (Hardcover). Review From Publishers Weekly: The country's most distinguished Civil War historian, a Pulitzer Prize winner (for Battle Cry of Freedom)
and professor at Princeton, offers this compact and incisive study of the Battle of Gettysburg.
In narrating "the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere," McPherson walks
readers over its presently hallowed ground, with monuments numbering into the hundreds, many of which work to structure the
narrative. Continued below...
They range
from the equestrian monument to Union general John Reynolds to Amos Humiston, a New Yorker identified several months after
the battle when family daguerreotypes found on his body were recognized by his widow. Indeed, while McPherson does the expected
fine job of narrating the battle, in a manner suitable for the almost complete tyro in military history, he also skillfully
hands out kudos and criticism each time he comes to a memorial. He praises Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine, but also the 140th
New York and its colonel, who died leading his regiment
on the other Union flank in an equally desperate action. The cover is effective and moving: the quiet clean battlefield park
above, the strewn bodies below. The author's knack for knocking myths on the head without jargon or insult is on display throughout:
he gently points out that North Carolinians think that their General Pettigrew ought to share credit for Pickett's charge;
that General Lee's possible illness is no excuse for the butchery that charge led to; that African-Americans were left out
of the veterans' reunions; and that the kidnapping of African-Americans by the Confederates has been excised from most history
books.
NEW!
Recommended Reading: The Gettysburg
Companion: A Guide to the Most Famous Battle of the Civil
War (Hardcover). Description: There have been many books about Gettysburg, but never one to rival this in scale or authority. Based on extensive research,
The Gettysburg Companion describes the battle in detail, drawing on firsthand accounts of participants on all sides in order
to give the reader a vivid sense of what it was like to experience the carnage at Gettysburg
in early July 1863. The many full-color maps--all specially commissioned for the book--and the numerous photographs, charts,
and diagrams make this book a feast for the eyes and a collector's dream. Includes
a massive library of 500 color illustrations.
Recommended
Reading: Last Chance For Victory: Robert
E. Lee And The Gettysburg Campaign. Description: Long after nearly fifty thousand soldiers shed their blood there, serious misunderstandings persist about
Robert E. Lee's generalship at Gettysburg. What were Lee's
choices before, during, and after the battle? What did he know that caused him to act as he did? Last Chance for Victory addresses
these issues by studying Lee's decisions and the military intelligence he possessed when each was made.
Packed with
new information and original research, Last Chance for Victory draws alarming conclusions to complex issues with precision
and clarity. Readers will never look at Robert E. Lee and Gettysburg the same way again.
|
