Memorial Day

Here are some pictures from a trip to Gettysburg a few years ago.

This is right outside town, looking south, over what became the battlefield. The first day the Confederates chased the Federal troops through town, and the latter took up positions in the hills, leaving the low country to the southerners.

Contrast. A battlefield — right outside an American town.

Devil’s Den, a rocky, boulder-strewn hill on the south end of a prominent ridge. The battle was brutal and chaotic, with heavy casualties on both sides. The Confederates captured it, forcing Union troops to retreat, but at a terrible cost. Meanwhile, Union forces managed to hold Little Round Top, preventing the Confederates from breaking their main defensive line. Devil’s Den was a pyrrhic victory.

You can see Little Round Top above the parking lot. It’s right there. You can walk it.

From Little Round Top. On July 2, 1863, Alabamians attacked fiercely, but the Army of the Potomac turned them back. This was where the 20th Maine fought with bayonets.

General Warren surveying Little Round Top. There’s a statue of him at the Grand Army Plaza — in Brooklyn.

The open field where Pickett’s charge took place. Very sobering to look into that distance and think men marched into unending fusillades of artillery and musket fire. Relentless firepower rained down upon them; the few who made it to Union lines were met with fierce hand-to-hand combat.

Years after the war, Pickett was reportedly asked why the charge had failed. He responded, “I always thought the Yankees had something to do with it.”

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St. Francis Xavier Church. It was a hospital during the battle.

Anti-Catholicism was rabid in the United States in the 1850s, as described in America Aflame.¹

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Burying the dead was a monumental task, described here.

The final reunion of Gettysburg veterans was in 1938.

American flag, 1938:

1. Some prominent Abolitionists were fanatic anti-Catholics. Lyman Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s father, wrote a sermon in 1834 on the supposed dangers of Catholic immigrants. It incited a Protestant mob to burn down a convent in Massachusetts.