Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (92 page)
We are met on a great battle field of that war
, which is a reminder that those very ordinary people whom the cultured despisers of democracy hold in such contempt have been willing to mount some very extraordinary efforts to preserve it. Especially,
we have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live
. Live, and be reminded that those who died here did so because they saw in democracy something more than opportunities for self-interest and self-aggrandizement, something that spoke to the fundamental nature of human beings itself, something which arched like a comet in the political sky.
This we may, in all propriety do
. (This was clumsy; he dropped it and replaced it with
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this
…)
On this hinge, he turned from what had been done to what was being done, and what yet remained to do.
In a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we
cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow, this ground
.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract
. For all the planning, foresight, and expenditure which had gone into the creation of the Gettysburg cemetery, the real focus of attention would always be, and deserved to be, on the soldiers who had fought and won the greatest battle, not so much of a war, but of the age-old struggle of commoners and kings.
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here
.
Any dedication to be done that day would have to be performed in the hearts of the people standing all around, by the 15,000 spectators who crammed into Gettysburg for the ceremonies, by the dignitaries and generals and politicians who would sit stiffly on the twelve-by-twenty-foot platform William Saunders had erected on the cemetery grounds, dedicating themselves in a peculiar form of baptism to the true loftiness of the democratic faith.
It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here, have, thus far, so nobly advanced
. Because dedication is not only an end, as it was for the soldiers who died at Gettysburg; it is also a beginning, the first step in pouring new wine into the old wineskins, of extolling the virtues of democracy and preaching its worth as the one true and natural system of human society.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us
, the great task of winning the war (
that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion
), but also the task of reaffirming and reappropriating the spirit of the founders.
If he was wrong about democracy, if the war went on in the resultless way the half heart generals had managed things, if the people took counsel of their weariness and grief and installed someone like McClellan in the presidency who would negotiate everything away—if these dead had
died in vain
—then he and every other American were surely of all men most miserable. What Gettysburg must become, then, was the occasion of something which bordered on a national revival, a new birth of freedom (and though he had not planned to do so, he would reinforce this point by inserting
under God
to reinforce the tent-meeting urgency of that renewal)—so that
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
…
Everett was almost finished:
… in the glorious annals of our common country there will be no brighter page than that which relates the battles of Gettysburg
. There was then a “Consecration Hymn
”
to be sung by the National Union Musical Association, five stanzas’ worth of “holy ground” and “widow’s tears.” Ward Hill Lamon was ready to make the next introduction, and as he did, the tall man leaned over and thanked Everett.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States,” announced Lamon. In the distance, South Mountain slumbered in a soft blue haze. The
platform faced westward, and from there, the cupola of the college, where Lee stood on the morning of Pickett’s Charge, and the smaller cupola of the Lutheran seminary which John Buford used to direct his early morning stand on July 1st, were plainly visible. The tall man stood up, unfolded his wire-rim spectacles, produced two or three sheets of paper from his inside pocket, and grasped, as was his habit, his left coat lapel.
He spoke slowly, and with that penetrating clarity which made him heard even at the far edges of the crowd. Altogether, he delivered his dedication address “in a firm free way, with more grace than is his wont,” wrote John Hay in his diary, and in little more than two and a half minutes.
Then he was done. A photographer on an elevated platform at the edge of the crowd cursed the brevity of the tall man’s speech because he could not get his sticky, wet glass plate ready in time to capture an image. There was a patter of applause from the crowd, unsure whether this was the end or merely the introduction to something longer, although it quickly swelled to full volume once it was clear that the tall man was indeed finished. “And the music wailed and we went home through crowded and cheering streets.” And, added Hay, “all the particulars are in the daily papers.”
The last invasion was finally over.
12
PROLOGUE
1.
Andrew Brown,
Geology and the Gettysburg Campaign
(1962; Harrisburg: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 2006), 8–10; Stephanie J. Perles et al.,
Vegetation Classification and Mapping at Gettysburg National Military Park and Eisenhower National Historic Site
(Philadelphia: National Park Service Northeast Region, 2006), 5–7; James T. Lemon,
The Best Poor Man’s County: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), 89–91, 108–9; Garry E. Adelman and Timothy H. Smith,
Devil’s Den: A History and Guide
(Gettysburg: Thomas Publications, 1997), 1–3; “First Settlers on the Manor of Maske,”
Historical Register: Notes and Queries, Biographical and Genealogical Relating to Interior Pennsylvania for the Year 1884
, ed. William Henry Egle (Harrisburg: Lane S. Hart, 1884), 2:153–55; “An Act to release all claims, on the part of the Commonwealth, to certain lands within the Manor, or reputed Manor, of Maske,” in
Laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
(Philadelphia: J. Bioren, 1803), 5:229–30.
2.
Israel Daniel Rupp,
The History and Topography of Dauphin, Cumberland, Franklin, Bedford, Adams, and Perry Counties
(Lancaster: Gilbert Hills, 1846), 526–47, 541; John T. Riley,
History and Directory of the Boroughs of Gettysburg, Oxford, Littlestown, York Springs, Berwick, and East Berlin
(Gettysburg: J. E. Wible, 1880), 12–13; John Badger Bachelder,
Bachelder’s Illustrated Tourist’s Guide of the United States
(Boston: Lee, Shephard & Dillingham, 1873), 7; George Sheldon,
When the Smoke Cleared at Gettysburg: The Tragic Aftermath of the Bloodiest Battle of the Civil War
(Nashville: Cumberland House, 2003), 22–23.
People who will not give in
1.
Howard,
Autobiography
(New York: Baker & Taylor, 1907), 1:440.
2.
Theodore Ropp,
War in the Modern World
(New York: Collier, 1962, 175, 178–79; Robert Cole, in R. E. L. Krick, “ ‘The Great Tycoon’ Forges a Staff System,” in
Audacity Personified: The Generalship of Robert E. Lee
, ed. Peter Carmichael (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 98; Richard Taylor,
Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War in the United States
(Edinburgh: Wm. Blackwood & Sons, 1879), 38.
3.
Abraham Oakley Hall,
Horace Greeley Decently Dissected: In a Letter on Horace Greeley Addressed to A. Oakley Hall by Joseph Hoxie, Esq.
(New York: Ross & Tousey, 1862), 32.
4.
The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge for the Year 1859
(Boston: Crosby, Nichols, 1859), 114, 151–54; Halleck,
Elements of Military Art and Science; or, Course of Instruction in Strategy, Fortification, and the Tactics of Battles
(New York: D. Appleton, 1846), 145–46; Carol Reardon,
With a Sword in One Hand and Jomini in the Other: The Problem of Military Thought in the Civil War North
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 55; Alexander McKay,
The Western World; or, Travels in the United States in 1846–47
(London: Richard Bentley, 1850), 3:210–13.
5.
Paul R. Van Riper and Keith A. Sutherland, “The Northern Civil Service: 1861–1865,”
Civil War History
11 (December 1965), 351; Edward McPherson, ed.,
The Political History of the United States During the Great Rebellion
(Washington: Philp & Solomons, 1864), 115; Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh,
West Pointers and the Civil War: The Old Army in War and Peace
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 75–76; Phillip Howes,
The Catalytic Wars: A Study of the Development of Warfare, 1860–1870
(London: Minerva Press, 1998), 177.
6.
John S. Robson,
How a One-Legged Rebel Lives: Reminiscences of the Civil War
(Durham, NC: The Educator Co., 1898), 8; Carlton McCarthy,
Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861–1865
(Richmond: Carleton McCarthy, 1882), 29–30, 39, 115; Benjamin H. Trask,
9th Virginia Infantry
(Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1984), 45, 47–48; Ervin L. Jordan and Herbert A. Thomas,
19th Virginia Infantry
(Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1987), 2–3, 39–41; James I. Robertson,
Soldiers Blue and Gray
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988), 25; Earl J. Hess,
The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997), 134; Randall C. Jimerson,
The Private Civil War: Popular Thought During the Sectional Conflict
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 201; “An Army: Its Organization and Movements,”
Continental Monthly
6 (September 1864), 332.
7.
William Henry Morgan,
Personal Reminiscences of the War of 1861–5; In camp—in bivouac—on the march—on picket—on the skirmish line—on the battlefield—and in prison
(Lynchburg, VA: J. P. Bell, 1911), 24–25; Mosby,
The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby
(1917; Nashville: J. S. Sanders & Co., 1995), 102; Mark H. Dunkelman,
Brothers One and All: Esprit de Corps in a Civil War Regiment
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004), 189, 211, 217; Hsieh,
West Pointers and the Civil War
, 144; Hyde,
Following the Greek Cross; or, Memories of the Sixth Army Corps
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1894), 16, 37; Robertson,
Soldiers Blue and Gray
, 127.
8.
Christian B. Keller, “Flying Dutchmen and Drunken Irishmen: The Myths and Realties of Ethnic Civil War Soldiers,”
Journal of Military History
73 (January 2009), 120–22, 126–27; Martin Oefele, “German-Americans and the War up to Gettysburg,” in David L. Valuska and Christian B. Keller, eds.,
Damn Dutch: Pennsylvania Germans at Gettysburg
(Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2004), 18, 20, 21, 25; Christian B. Keller,
Chancellorsville and the Germans: Nativism, Ethnicity, and Civil War Memory
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 10, 31–32; Michael Bacarella,
Lincoln’s Foreign Legion: The 39th New York Infantry, the Garibaldi Guard
(Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Press, 1996), 117, 121, 129; Robert B. Edgerton,
Death or Glory: The Legacy of the Crimean War
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 49, 87; C. V. Tevis and D. R. Marquis,
The History of the Fighting Fourteenth, Published in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the muster of the regiment into the United States service, May 23, 1861
(Brooklyn: Eagle Press, 1911), 213; Trevor Royle,
Crimea: The Great Crimean War, 1854–1856
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 107; George Norton Galloway,
The Ninety-fifth Pennsylvania Volunteers (Gosline’s Pennsylvania Zouaves) in the Sixth Corps
(Philadelphia: Collins, 1884), 6, 8.
9.
Scott, in Jason Mann Frawley, “Marching Through Pennsylvania: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians During the Gettysburg Campaign,” Ph.D. dissertation, Texas Christian University (2008), 45; Spencer Glasgow Welch to Cordelia Strother Welch (August 18, 1862), in
A Confederate Surgeon’s Letters to His Wife
(New York: Neale Publishing, 1911), 20.
10.
Elizabeth Brown Pryor,
Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters
(New York: Viking, 2007), 540; J. Boone Bartholomees,
Buff Facings and Gilt Buttons: Staff and Headquarters Operations in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861–1865
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 27, 34, 35–36, 39, 105, 107, 108, 144–45, 202–3, 277–78; Edward Hagerman, “Field Transportation and Strategic Mobility in the Union Armies,”
Civil War History
34 (June 1988), 143, 144–45, 147–48, and
The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare: Ideas, Organization, and Field Command
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 62, 66; Arden Bucholz,
Moltke and the German Wars, 1864–1871
(Houndsmills, U.K.: Palgrave, 2001), 20, 21, 32–34; Taylor,
Destruction and Reconstuction
, 106–8; Frederick G. Burnaby, “The Practical Instruction of Staff Officers in Foreign Armies,”
Journal of the Royal United Services Institution
16 (January 1872), 638; C. W. Tolles, “An Army: Its Organization and Movements,”
Continental Monthly
6 (June 1864), 713; Scott Bowden and Bill Ward,
Last Chance for Victory: Robert E. Lee and the Gettysburg Campaign
(Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001), 24; R. L. DiNardo, “Longstreet and Jackson Compared: Corps Staff and the Exercise of Command in the Army of Northern Virginia,” in
James Longstreet: The Man, the Soldier, the Controversy
, eds. R. L. DiNardo and Albert A. Nofi (Conshohocken, PA: Combined Books, 1998), 167, 170–71; Joseph Orton Kirby, “A Boy Spy in Dixie,”
National Tribune
(July 5, 1888); “The Union Cavalry Service” (July 15, 1863), in
Rebellion Record
(1864), 7:185.
11.
Morgan,
Personal Reminiscences
, 24–25; E. J. Allen,
Under the Maltese Cross, Antietam to Appomattox: The Loyal Uprising in Western Pennsylvania, 1861–1865
(Pittsburgh: Werner Co., 1910), 184; Augustus Horstmann (June 16, 1862), in Walter D. Kamphoefner and Wolfgang Johannes Helbich, eds.,
Germans in the Civil War: The Letters They Wrote Home
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 122; Andrew Elmer Ford,
The Story of the Fifteenth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War, 1861–1864
(Clinton, MA: J. Coulter, 1898), 278; Alfred Seelye Roe,
The Tenth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1861–1864: A Western Massachusetts Regiment
(Springfield, MA: 10th Regiment Veterans Assoc., 1909), 56–58; Theodore B. Gates, diary entry for January 9, 1863,
in The Civil War Diaries of Col. Theodore B. Gates, 20th New York State Militia
(Hightstown, NJ: Longstreet House, 1991), 60.
12.
John Hamilton SeCheverell,
Journal History of the Twenty-Ninth Ohio Veteran Volunteers, 1861–1865: Its Victories and Its Reverses
(Cleveland, OH: n.p., 1883), 73–74; Hyde,
Following the Greek Cross
, 136; Torrance to Sarah Torrance (September 9, 1861), in “The Road to Gettysburg: The Diary and Letters of Leonidas Torrance of the Gaston Guards,”
North Carolina Historical Review
36 (October 1959), 483.
13.
“An English View of our Civil War,”
National Intelligencer
(May 28, 1863); Varina Davis Brown,
A Colonel at Gettysburg and Spotsylvania: The Life of Colonel Joseph Newton Brown and the Battles of Gettysburg and Spotsylvania
(Columbia, SC: State Co., 1931), 12; Handerson,
Yankee in Gray: The Civil War Memoirs of Henry E. Handerson
, ed. C. L. Cummer (Cleveland: Western Reserve University Press, 1962), 28; Ruth Hairstone Early,
Lieutenant General Jubal Anderson Early, C.S.A.: Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative of the War Between the States
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1912), ix–x; Joseph T. Glatthaar,
General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse
(New York: Free Press, 2008), 18–22; Elisabeth Lauterbach Laskin, “Good Old Rebels: Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1862–1865,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University (2003), 4–5, 22–27, 117, 421–30; Kent Masterson Brown,
Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign
(Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 31, 49–50; Richard Rollins, “Black Confederates at Gettysburg—1863,”
Gettysburg Magazine
6 (January 1992), 94–97; Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America
, ed. Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 360.
14.
Gary W. Gallagher,
The Confederate War
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 140; Gallagher, “ ‘Our Hearts Are Full of Hope’: The Army of Northern Virginia in the Spring of 1864,” in
The Wilderness Campaign
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 49–50; J. B. Turney, “The First Tennessee at Gettysburg,”
Confederate Veteran
(December 1900), 537.