“The Summer of ’63: Gettysburg” by Chris Mackowski and Dan Welch

My historical novel Brookhaven is set during the Civil War’s final two years and immediately after, and then in 1915, 50 years later. The moment that sets the story into motion happens in late April of 1863 – Grierson’s Raid, in which a troop of some 1700 Union cavalry made their way through Mississippi from the Tennessee border to (eventually) Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The soldiers came to Brookhaven, most notably burning the train station and tearing up railroad track.  

The raid had a specific point: divert attention from Gen. Grant’s army preparing to cross the river from Louisiana and end the siege of Vicksburg, the last Confederate position on the river. The fall of Vicksburg would been the Union controlled the entire length of the river and would split the Confederacy in two. 

 

The Vicksburg campaign was covered in a collection of articles edited by Chris Mackowski and Dan Welch, part of a series called “Summer of ’63.” Their Vicksburg & Tullahoma covered the events and milestones of that campaign, including a raid on Mississippi’s capital of Jackson, which eventually led to a Union victory.

 

Now Mackowski and Welch have done it again, this time turning to another major Union victory in 1863 – the Battle of Gettysburg.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Bud on the Tracks – Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

America 250 and the Civil War – David Hamon at Emerging Civil War.

Mercy Scollay’s Quest for Custody of Joseph Warren’s Children – Janet Uhlar at Journal of the American Revolution.

Blood Eagle – Myth or Fact? – Annie Whitehead at Casting Light upon the Shadow.

Francisco de Saavedra de Sagronis: A Spainard’s Pivotal Role in the Yorktown Triumph – Richard Werther at Journal of the American Revolution.

Our First Revolution – Michael Barone at Coolidge Review.

“The Gettysburg Reunion of 1913” by John Hopkins

In July 1913, some 53,000 Civil War veterans gathered in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the famous battle. Almost every veteran was, by this time, an old man, with most in the 70s. The youngest was 61; he’d been an 11-year-old drummer boy in 1863. The oldest was 110; he’d fought when he was 60. 

The anniversary event didn’t happen by itself; planning had gone on for years, at least in theory. The commemoration almost didn’t happen because of what was falling through the cracks as the date got closer. But competent people intervened, and the commemoration happened.

 

In The World Will Never See the Like: The Gettysburg Reunion of 1913, author John Hopkins tells the story in all of its chaos, splendor, and glory. Veterans, mostly Union because those states provided at least some transportation costs, came from all over the country to find old friends and sometimes old enemies, remember, and celebrate a unified country. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Sweet Talk Walk – Becky Ramsey.

 

Civil War Books and Authors Names “Book of the Year.”

 

How to balance writing for the market and writing for yourself – Nathan Bransford.

A History Lesson About Gettysburg, and More

I’ve been reading some of the books in the battle series published by Emerging Civil War. So far, I’ve read about Shiloh (1862), Gettysburg (1863), and the Battle of the Wilderness (1864). It was while reading this third one that the author mentioned something as almost an offhand comment that threw me – and upended something I believed for 50 years. 

The book was Hell Itself: The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-7, 1864 by Chris Mackowski, but the comment was about Gettysburg. At the time of the battle in 1863, he said, “No one recognized Gettysburg as anything other than a setback, and certainly no one looked at it as the ‘High Water Mark of the Confederacy.’”

 

How it gained that reputation was due to a marketing-savvy photographer, lithographer, and Gettysburg historian named John Badger Bachelder, who was a tireless promoter of the Gettysburg Battlefield and worked to promote the site as a tourist destination.

 

In other words, the whole idea of Gettysburg as the turning point in the Civil War came from a promoter for the battlefield, decades after the battle was fought.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Painting: Battle of Gettysburg by Thure de Thulstrap.

“The Last Road North” by Robert Orrison and Dan Welch

The Battle of Gettysburg occurred from July 1 to July 3, 1863. The forces under Confederate General Robert e. Lee had carried the Civil War into the North, crossing the border state of Maryland and then invading southern Pennsylvania. The outcome was important – a Union defeat would have put Baltimore and Washington, D.C. in imminent peril and perhaps convinced the Northern public that it was time to let the South go. 

The campaign, which followed the remarkable Confederate victory at Chancellorsville (April 30-May 6, 1863), began on June 9, 1863 at the Battle of Brandy Station. Gradually, confederate forces made their way north, with the major confrontation near the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

 

Robert Orrison

As part of the Emerging Civil War Series of combined historical accounts and motor tour guides of Civil War Battlefields, in 2016 Robert Orrison and Dan Welch published The Last Road North: A Guide to the Gettysburg Campaign, 1863. The book is a concise discussion of the campaign from both the Confederate and Union perspectives. It carefully explains why Lee made the decision to go to the North (and how he had to convince Jefferson Davis and his cabinet), how the Confederates advanced, how the Union armies responded to the advance, how Jeb Stuart brought his forces to the campaign (something of a near thing), the battle itself, and the Confederate retreat from Gettysburg.

 

Dan Welch

The campaign was complex, requiring a number of river crossings. The Union generals understood from almost the beginning that the Confederates were up to something, but it took time to determine exactly what that something was. In the meantime, as Confederate forces moved north and the Union forces parried and probed, a number of engagements or minor battles developed, usually involving cavalry. 

 

The book includes very specific instructions on how to drive (or come close to driving) the campaign routes on both sides, as well as for the three-day battle itself. Instructions are so specific that they’ll note the need for caution in trying to cross busy roads and highways. The book is small enough to be portable and carried with you as you do the tour.

 

Profusely illustrated with photographs and maps, The Last Road North is an excellent guide to one of the most significant military engagements of the Civil War.

 

Related:

 

Attack at Daylight and Whip Them: The Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862 by Gregory Mertz.

“At Gettysburg” by Matilda Pierce Alleman

You’re 15 years old. You live with your family in a small town, known for its college. Your brother is a soldier, and he’s currently away on duty. Your days are focused on household chores, looking after your younger siblings, and attending a girls’ school in town. There’s a war on, and occasionally you hear rumors of soldiers and action. But life is quiet, and it’s always good when the family receives a letter from the brother.

And then you’re in school one day, and enemy soldiers come running and riding through the streets. You hear gunfire. You see looting as you make your way home. This time, the rumors have turned out to be true.

From July 1 to July 3 of 1863, the life of Matilda Pierce Alleman (1848-1914), called Tillie by her family, was turned upside down. In 1889, more than 25 years after the battle, she published an account of those three days, At Gettysburg, or What a Girl Saw and Heard of the Battle: A True Narrative.

As the clash got underway, Tillie’s parents sent her with a neighbor and the neighbor’s children to a farm outside of the town of Gettysburg. They had to make their way through the cemetery, hearing gunfire the entire time, before reaching a safe road to the farm. What no one knew at the time was how the battle terrain would be constantly shifting. And the farm was located near an area Tillie knew from picnics – what locals called “Round Top.” 

Matilda Pierce Alleman at 15

The farm became a base for the Union army and especially for its field hospital. Over the next three days, Tillie became a witness to horrific scenes of battlefield casualties, makeshift surgical operations, and wounded and dying men. She would help army doctors, bring food and water to the wounded, and occasionally sit with and offer comfort to the dying. The girl who had been sitting in a classroom two days before became the girl who saw the pile of amputated limbs next to the barn.

Civil War memoirs became and remained extremely popular in the 1880s and 1890s. Ranging from Ulysses Grant’s Personal Memoirs to accounts by privates and officers on both sides of the conflict, these books also included accounts like Tillie’s. The story of a young girl caught in a conflict, hers is especially moving as she responds with courage a spirit of service. She doesn’t downplay the personal fear, either; at one point she and the other civilians in the farmhouse have to leave because the area is being blasted by shells. 

At Gettysburg is a novella-length memoir, made the more impactful by offering an often-poignant glimpse of what many civilians experienced and endured during the four years of war.

Top illustration: Gettysburg in 1863 by Alfred Guernsey (1824-1902) and Henry M. Alden (1836-1919), Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Chicago: Puritan Press, 1894), Wikimedia Commons.