VETS UNITE | Gettysburg Reunion, 1938

The Gettysburg 1938 Reunion and Dedication of the Eternal Light Memorial.

For Veterans Day, I am reading about the 1938 Gettysburg reunion and commemoration by veterans of both sides of the Civil War, 75 years later.

The event attracted nearly 1,850 veterans of the Civil War, three-fourths of them from the Union side. Of them, 25 were veterans of the battle – their average age was 94.

The event brought some 400,000   onlookers. FDR came and spoke to them on July 3, dedicating the Eternal Light Memorial.

Gray and Blue Reconciled Veterans.

Initially there was opposition ton the reunion from both sides. For example, questions about whether the Confederate veterans could bring their flags were asked by both sides. Veterans in the south did not see the point of going back to Gettysburg to be subjected to the condescension of "damn Yankees". On the northern side, the veterans did not want to have to look again at the symbols of the confederacy.

There were different feelings about Gettysburg

• Pride in having fought there,  a defining moment of soldiers' lives.
• Victory barely won and lost.
• Horror at the loss.
• Loyalty, disloyalty, sacrifice, freedom.
• When together as Union (Army of the Potomac) veterans, they celebrated the end of slavery..

Gettysburg was the geographic center of the memory of the war. The 1938ncommemoration was a big success because it was 

• A Reunion.
• Memory of Reconstruction, coming back to a different society.
• Reconciliation - among people who spent four years trying to kill one another.

In 1869 Gettysburg was dedicated as a soldiers' cemetery.  Initially, it was a cemetery for Union soldiers. But a Union general, George G. Meade, spoke on this occasion and acknowledged that Confederate soldiers should be left to their Maker to be judged – they should be remembered here as well as Union soldiers. By 1895 the Gettysburg monument covered 500 acres and some Confederate soldiers were reburied there.

Here is a well-presented history of the Gettysburg memorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ayaLqWfZgM

US ARMY | Sept. 17–The Deadliest Day

Antietam Battlefield - Worst Day's Casualties in U.S. Military History.

Historical Note by John Tepper Marlin

Today in 1862, after 12 hours of combat, with 22,717 dead, wounded, and missing on both sides combined, the Battle of Antietam ended the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia's first invasion into the North.

The Army of the Potomac, under the command of George McClellan, mounted a series of powerful assaults against Robert E. Lee’s forces near Sharpsburg, Maryland, that day.

The morning assault and strong Confederate counterattacks swept back and forth through Miller’s Cornfield and the West Woods. Later, towards the center of the battlefield, Union assaults against the Sunken Road pierced the Confederate center after a terrible struggle.

Late in the day, the third and final major assault by the Union army pushed over a bullet-strewn stone bridge at Antietam Creek. Just as the Federal forces began to collapse the Confederate right, the arrival of A.P. Hill’s division from Harpers Ferry helped to drive the Army of the Potomac back once more. The day was essentially a standoff, a draw.

The fact that the Confederate army retreated first, however, provided an outcome with the aura of “victory” that President Lincoln needed before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. It was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Union soil. It still remains the bloodiest single-day battle in American history.