Sponsored Content




Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!



Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups

NoVaMoMe 2024: 06/08/2024
Arlington, VA
Details to follow


Texas MoMe 2024: 10/18/2024-10/19/2024 Corsicana,TX
Contact Ben Had for info





















« Overnight Open Thread - Party Edition | Main | Financial Briefing: Weekly Wrap-Up »
July 03, 2010

The Battle of Gettysburg

On this date in 1863, the biggest battle in the American Civil War ended, having raged over the two previous days. It would be the most sanguinary battle of the most sanguinary war in America's history: there were approximately 51,000 casualties on both sides. Nearly 8 thousand of those soldiers in blue and gray were killed. It would prove the turning of the tide; though the war would grind on its bloody way for two more years, the fate of the Confederacy was sealed by their defeat over those three hot July days in southern Pennsylvania.

Robert E. Lee, the great Confederate general, lost 1/3 of his army on that terrible day. When the South began their retreat through Maryland, the train of hospital wagons stretched for 17 miles along the miserable, rutted roads. During the famous "Pickett's charge" up Cemetery Ridge, 6,555 southern soldiers were killed or wounded. Pickett lost three of his brigade commanders, and all thirteen of his regimental commanders in that single engagement.

On the Union side, entire formations were wiped out nearly to a man: the legendary 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry regiment took an astounding 83% casualty rate -- still the highest casualty rate during a single engagement of any military unit in American history.

The time and place were driven by the fact that footsore Southern soldiers needed shoes. The Southern army approached the Gettysburg crossroads from the north; the Northern army approached from the south.

The lone Gettysburg civilian casualty was a Miss Jennie Wade, who was killed by a stray bullet while she was baking bread.

In Michael Shaara's superb novel The Killer Angels, he writes of the Union General Buford, who on July 1 is the only Union general available to fix the Confederate army in place before they take position in the hills surrounding Gettysburg:

The moods were getting out of hand. He was no man for war councils, or teaching either, and no sense in brooding to junior officers -- but he saw it all with such metal brilliance: Meade will come in slowly, cautiously, new to command, wary of reputation. But they'll be on his back from Washington, wires hot with messages: attack, attack. So he will set up a ring around the hills and when Lee's all nicely dug in behind fat rocks Meade will finally attack, if he can coordinate the army, straight up the hillside, out in the open in that gorgeous field of fire, and we will attack valiantly and be butchered valiantly, and afterward men will thump their chests and say what a brave charge it was.

Later that fall, after the dead had been buried and the fields around Gettysburg lay rubbled and bare, waiting for snow to cover the scars of war, our greatest President would deliver his most famous speech. It was a speech few liked at the time; indeed, President Abraham Lincoln himself felt it was a failure.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- 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 -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Remember.


digg this
posted by Monty at 07:39 AM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
[/i][/b]andycanuck (2yu8s)[/s][/u]: "750-pound alligator seized from home near Buffalo, ..."

Ben Had: "Only 30 more years of these moronic statements ft ..."

2008 is calling: "Mahalia Jackson>>>>>>>>>>>Affimative Action Jackso ..."

BillyD: "[i]158 Mind you, a Moron claimed the car would sti ..."

Diogenes: "DEI in action, and that's a good thing! Posted by ..."

Piper: "Have we discussed KBJ and her gripe the 1sr amendm ..."

Commissar Hrothgar (hOUT3) ~ This year in Corsicana - [b]again[/b]! ~ [/i][/b][/u][/s]: "[i]257 Watching another Boeing United Airlines iss ..."

Loose Emergency Door Plug: "Return to Newark? I'd rather ditch. Posted by: D ..."

J. Random UA Flight: "[i]Return to Newark? I'd rather ditch. Posted by ..."

Diogenes: "Watching another Boeing United Airlines issue in r ..."

Truthbomb : "Watching another Boeing United Airlines issue in r ..."

Ciampino - on time: "About 43 minutes [b]SpaceX - Falcon 9 - Starlin ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64