Ever seen the movie Gettysburg? Or read The Killer Angels? Today was the last day of the Battle, the day of Pickett's Charge, as bloody a mess as ever happened.
Between 46,000 and 51,000 Americans were casualties of the three-day battle. Union casualties list 23,055 (3,155 killed, 14,531 wounded, 5,369 captured or missing), while Confederate casualties are estimated 23,231 (4,708 killed, 12,693 wounded, 5,830 captured or missing).
It's sunny and hot there today; unlike 1863 it's supposed to be the same tomorrow. Then, they were gathering dead and wounded in the rain.
I can't really think of anything profound to say. I guess the word at Ace is the proper one: Remember.
1 comment:
"Gettysburg was an act of fate; a three-day explosion of storm and flame and terror, unplanned and uncontrollable, coming inevitably (as the war itself had come) out of the things that hard-pressed men had done in the light of imperfect knowledge, the end result of actions that moved with an inexorable logic toward a fundamental and astonishing goal. It would come to symbolize all the war, as if the blunders and the heroism, the hopes and the delusions, the combativeness and the incomprehensible devotion of all Americans had been summed up once and for all in one monstrous act of violence." -- from THIS HALLOWED GROUND, by Bruce Catton, the best Civil War historian as ever lived or ever will.
Post a Comment