#gettysburg

Judgmental Dark-eyed Junco Gettysburg, Pa. 3/3/25

Union and Confederate veterans shake hands during the 50th anniversary reunion at Gettysburg, 113 years ago in July of 1913.

Fifty years after the Battle of Gettysburg, thousands of aging Civil War veterans returned to the Pennsylvania battlefield where they had once fought as young soldiers. The 1913 Gettysburg Reunion commemorated the battle’s semicentennial and became one of the largest gatherings of Civil War veterans ever held. Men who had once faced one another across stone walls, ridges, and open fields reunited as survivors of the conflict that had transformed the United States.

Veterans were housed in a sprawling temporary camp near the battlefield, and many were now in their seventies or eighties. They revisited landmarks such as Cemetery Ridge, Little Round Top, and the site of Pickett’s Charge, where some of the war’s fiercest fighting had taken place in July 1863.

“Lions of Little Round Top, July 2nd 1863″

Late in the afternoon of July 2, 1863, on a boulder-strewn hillside in southern Pennsylvania, Union Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain dashed headlong into history, leading his 20th Maine Regiment in perhaps the most famous counterattack of the Civil War.

The regiment’s sudden, desperate bayonet charge blunted the Confederate assault on Little Round Top and has been credited with saving Major General George Gordon Meade’s Army of the Potomac, winning the Battle of Gettysburg and setting the South on a long, irreversible path to defeat.

Actually I think we got home around 4pm but I then had to clean up after the cats - indoor and outdoor - and get them back to normal. Normal dishes instead of auto feeder, vacuumed up all the hair. So much hair. Cleaned up the vomit (Finny!) and I left one of my suitcases I wasn’t using on the guest room floor and SOMEBODY (Loki!) peed in it.

Put clean dishes away. Cleaned up travel dishes. Put remaining travel snacks away. Started a wash.

Put the porch back together (had taken in anything that might blow away) and put the container garden back together on the stairs (had put them in the car port so they wouldn’t dry up and die.)

I did everything except unpack my own suitcase and maybe I’ll do that tomorrow. Right now I’m on the couch with an ice cold lemonade and vodka and questioning my life choices.

Confederate and Union soldiers shaking hands at a Battle of Gettysburg reunion 1913.

COL. JOSHUA LAWRENCE CHAMBERLAIN & LT. THOMAS CHAMBERLAIN

played by JEFF DANIELS and C. THOMAS HOWELL in Gettysbrug (1993) and Gods & Generals (2003)

During the Battle of Gettysburg, the 20th Maine regiment (a volunteer regiment with the two Chamberlain brothers) was stationed on Little Round Top hill at the extreme left of the Union line. After about 3–4 hours of defending the position, the 20th Maine completely ran out of ammunition. At the sight of Rebels forming again for another push, Lawrence ordered to respond by charging downhill with only fixed bayonets. The heroic charge surprised and scattered the Confederates, ending the attack and the attempt to flank its position. Had the 20th Maine retreated from the hill, the entire Union line would have been flanked, endangering other regiments in the vicinity and the outcome of the whole Battle.

Lawrence was wounded in the foot by a bullet. Thomas was unhurt. As a result of their valiant defense of the hill, the Chamberlain brothers, Lawrence especially, and the 20th Maine gained a great reputation and are the subject of many publications & stories.

original caption

Battlefield Tour

President Kennedy, right, and his wife Jacqueline, are escorted by Jacob M. Sheads, a battlefield guide as they tour the Gettysburg battlefield. In background is the North Carolina monument. Kennedy flew by helicopter from Camp David to Gettysburg to view the battlefield.