Last month, I visited Gettysburg, PA, a beautiful and somber place. Like most people, I knew of it as the site of the Civil War’s pivotal battle, and, some months later, Abraham Lincoln’s historic “address.”
My traveling companions and I “studied up” beforehand:
We watched the film, Gettysburg, based on Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Killer Angels. Here’s the chilling preview.
We reviewed the Gettysburg episode of Ken Burn’s mesmerizing The Civil War.
During our car ride, we listened to the audible version of Bruce Catton’s nonfiction, The Battle of Gettysburg, another Pulitzer Prize winner.
Once in town, our amazing guide, John Zervas, delivered a spellbinding account of the three-day battle. He began with some fundamentals.
In July 1863:
The Union had lost a string of battles, and Lee’s troops had pushed into Pennsylvania.
The North was on the verge of losing the war.
Abraham Lincoln faced mounting pressure to “let the South go.”
There were fears Lee might take Washington.
The battle itself was a cliffhanger. Day one went to the South. Day two was a draw. On day three, the Union won its definitive victory.
Yet at many points in the battle, the South could have gained the upper hand.
During our visit, we walked across the rolling hills of Pickett’s Charge, Lee’s disastrous last-ditch attack. He ordered it even though the Union held higher ground, and key officers advised against it. After this bloodbath, the South retreated. We also visited the Soldiers’ National Cemetery where a bugler plays taps each evening at dusk.
The scale of death and suffering at Gettysburg is inconceivable. According to Britannica, Union casualties totaled about 23,000, with more than 3,100 killed. For the South, casualties numbered about 28,000, with some 3,900 killed.
Since coming home, I’ve found myself thinking about how words help us make sense of such carnage—and how they clarify the clash of beliefs that led to it.
Words give meaning.
The Battle of Gettysburg was a cauldron of desperation, courage, hubris, bravado, dismemberment, and death. Yet we remember it as an American milestone because Abraham Lincoln gave us the words to interpret it. In November 1863, he arrived in Gettysburg by train, stayed in a local inn, and rode his horse to the new military cemetery to speak at its dedication. His 272-word address crystallized our understanding of the battle’s appalling human sacrifice. His phases linger:
. . . a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal
. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom
. . . that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth
That day, Lincoln suggested that “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” Yet school children often learn his words by heart and remember them all their lives.
You can listen to superb readings of Lincoln’s words by two of my favorite actors: Sam Waterston and Gregory Peck.
“Just the facts” has limits.
Compared to many other historical events, we have good information about Gettysburg. Reporters covered it for The New York Times, Boston Journal, Cincinnati Gazette, and other newspapers in the North and South. Mathew Brady and others took photos. Allen C. Guelzo’s new book, Voices from Gettysburg, collects accounts from “a Union staff officer, a Confederate amputee, artilleryman, a sympathetic Northern woman, a Union prisoner-of-war, Union colonels and Confederate generals, a drummer boy, a fearful college student, those who orchestrated the Battle of Gettysburg, those who survived it, and those who would perish.” We have eyewitness testimony.
But fiction has a place. As writing teachers tell us, fiction “shows” rather than “tells.” A novel or movie script can create a comprehensible story from a multitude of far-flung facts. I’ve just begun dipping into Shaara’s The Killer Angels, starting with his chapter on Joshua Chamberlain. Colonel Chamberlain’s 20th Maine regiment repelled repeated confederate assaults on the Little Round Top. When Union soldiers ran low on ammunition, they switched to bayonets.
Here's how Shaara starts:
“[In the early morning] the regiment sat in an open field studded with boulders like half-sunken balls. Small fires burned under a steam-gray sky. Chamberlain wandered, watching, listening . . . He moved silently among them, hands clasped behind his back.” Reading these sentences, we see the location of the fighting—it’s the calm before the storm. Fiction gives us protagonists, dialogue, interior monologue, and images we can hold in our minds.
Not all great stories get told.
Chamberlain is a true hero. His regiment’s win helped turn the tide. Actor Jeff Daniels portrays his humanity and common decency in the film, Gettysburg. But Chamberlain was also a Bowdoin professor who later wrote a memoir which became a source for Civil War chroniclers. As our guide John pointed out, there were other heroes and other equally decisive turning points.
The Minneapolis StarTribune’s Ken Duchschere has asked why the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry’s “bold attack on an Alabama brigade nearly six times its size” isn’t better known. These fighters “bought the Union a precious few minutes to shore up its broken line. But it came at a huge cost . . . the highest casualty rate of any Union regiment in a single action during the war.” There are several YouTube videos describing the men’s courage, but few Americans will learn about it until a major Hollywood film or best-selling novel tells the story.
Some stories distort the truth.
It’s often said that “history is written by the victors” but that’s not entirely true for the Civil War. Stories of “the lost cause” abound. Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 Gone with the Wind is probably the most widely-read Civil War novel. David Selznick’s 1939 film based on it “enjoyed a more-than-30-year reign as the all-time Hollywood box office champion.” Neither focuses on Gettysburg, although in the film, Rhett Butler ominously predicts that the war will be decided in “some little town in Pennsylvania.” To me, it’s a stretch to believe Butler would have known about an ongoing battle hundreds of miles away, but I’m fine with a little dramatic license.
But Mitchell’s prettification of slavery and use of enslaved people as comic relief are less pardonable. My guess is that most people enjoy Gone with the Wind for its tortuous love triangle and bewitching heroine—and maybe Scarlett’s dresses as well. But its deceptions about slavery are hard to swallow today.
I might never have traveled to Gettysburg if my friends hadn’t suggested the trip—I’m not a Civil War or American history buff. Now, I urge everyone to visit. Thousands died so our country could begin its long road back from its reliance on slavery. My question now is whether our current generations are willing to make much smaller sacrifices to pursue the goals Lincoln set for us.
Gettysburg really is living history and this blog entry really helps you feel the magic that happens when you are there.
As always, beautifully written. And because of you, we watched Gettysburg the past two nights. Quite a film. We're tempted to revisit.