War, Memory, and the 1913 Gettysburg Reunion
War, Memory, and the 1913 Gettysburg Reunion

Author: Thomas R. Flagel

Publisher: Kent State University

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781606353714

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Union and Confederate veterans meet at Gettysburg on the 50th anniversary of the battle This June 29-July 4 reunion drew over 55,000 official attendees plus thousands more who descended upon a town of 4,000 during the scorching summer of 1913, with the promise of little more than a cot and two blankets, military fare, and the presence of countless adversaries from a horrific war. Most were revisiting a time and place in their personal history that involved acute physical and emotional trauma. Contrary to popular belief, veterans were not motivated to attend by a desire for reconciliation, nor did the Great Reunion produce a general sense of a reunified country. The reconciliation premise, advanced by several major speeches at the anniversary, lived in rhetoric more than fact. Recent scholarship effectively dismantles this "Reconciliation of 1913" mythos, finding instead that sectionalism and lingering hostilities largely prevailed among veterans and civilians. Flagel examines how individual veterans viewed the reunion, what motivated them to attend, how they acted and reacted once they arrived, and whether these survivors found what they were personally seeking. While politicians and the press characterized the veterans as relics of a national crusade, Flagel focuses on four men who come to the reunion for different and very individual reasons. Flagel's book adds significantly to Gettysburg literature and to Civil War historiography.

Race and Reunion
Race and Reunion

Author: David W. BLIGHT

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 525

ISBN-13: 0674022092

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No historical event has left as deep an imprint on America's collective memory as the Civil War. In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's national reunion.

Confederate General William "Extra Billy" Smith
Confederate General William

Author: Scott L. Mingus

Publisher: Grub Street Publishers

Published: 2013-04-19

Total Pages: 599

ISBN-13: 1611211301

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An award-winning biography of one of the Confederacy’s most colorful and controversial generals. Winner of the 2013 Nathan Bedford Forrest History Book Award for Southern History Nominated for the 2014 Virginia Book Award for Nonfiction Despite a life full of drama, politics, and adventure, little has been written about William “Extra Billy” Smith—aside from a rather biased account by his brother-in-law back in the nineteenth century. As the oldest and one of the most controversial Confederate generals on the field at Gettysburg, Smith was also one of the most charismatic characters of the Civil War and the antebellum Old South. Known nationally as “Extra Billy” because of his prewar penchant for finding loopholes in government postal contracts to gain extra money for his stagecoach lines, Smith served as Virginia’s governor during both the war with Mexico and the Civil War; served five terms in the US Congress; and was one of Virginia’s leading spokesmen for slavery and states’ rights. Extra Billy’s extra-long speeches and wry sense of humor were legendary among his peers. A lawyer during the heady Gold Rush days, he made a fortune in California—and, as with his income earned from stagecoaches, quickly lost it. Despite his advanced age, Smith took to the field and fought well at First Manassas, was wounded at Seven Pines and again at Sharpsburg, and marched with Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania. There, on the first day at Gettysburg, Smith’s frantic messages about a possible Union flanking attack remain a matter of controversy to this day. Did his aging eyes see distant fence-lines that he interpreted as approaching enemy soldiers—mere phantoms of his imagination? Or did his prompt action stave off a looming Confederate disaster? This biography draws upon a wide array of newspapers, diaries, letters, and other firsthand accounts to paint a portrait of one of the South’s most interesting leaders, complete with original maps and photos.

Last of the Blue and Gray
Last of the Blue and Gray

Author: Richard A. Serrano

Publisher: Smithsonian Institution

Published: 2013-10-08

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1588343952

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Richard Serrano, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Los Angeles Times, pens a story of two veterans. In the late 1950s, as America prepared for the Civil War centennial, two very old men lay dying. Albert Woolson, 109 years old, slipped in and out of a coma at a Duluth, Minnesota, hospital, his memories as a Yankee drummer boy slowly dimming. Walter Williams, at 117 blind and deaf and bedridden in his daughter's home in Houston, Texas, no longer could tell of his time as a Confederate forage master. The last of the Blue and the Gray were drifting away; an era was ending. Unknown to the public, centennial officials, and the White House too, one of these men was indeed a veteran of that horrible conflict and one according to the best evidence nothing but a fraud. One was a soldier. The other had been living a great, big lie.

Texans at Gettysburg
Texans at Gettysburg

Author: Joseph L Owen

Publisher: Fonthill Media

Published: 2017-04-20

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13:

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The Texans from Hood's Texas Brigade and other regiments who fought at Gettysburg on 1-3 July 1863 described their experiences of the battle in personal diaries, interviews, newspaper articles, letters and speeches. Their reminiscences provide a fascinating and harrowing account of the battle as they fought the Army of the Potomac. Speeches were given in the decades after the battle during the annual reunions of Hood's Brigade Association and the dedication of the Hood's Brigade Monument that took place on 26-27 October 1910 at the state capital in Austin, Texas. These accounts describe their actions at Devil's Den, Little Round Top and other areas during the battle. For the first time ever, their experiences are compiled in Texans at Gettysburg: Blood and Glory with Hood's Texas Brigade.