July 2, 1863.. a battle-torn nation weary of constant Civil War began to see a turning point in the East.

 

The 157th anniversary.

The Union soldiers had already been winning solid victories in Western territory, but did not find the same luck in Eastern battles..

Until the Battle of Gettysburg, which lasted three grueling days in the heat of the midsummer in Pennsylvania from July 1 through the 3rd of that year.

 

Confederal General Robert E. Lee was hoping for a knockout to the Union troops.

Historians report that President Abraham Lincoln was kept updated of all developments by frequent telegrams from the scene during the fateful days of the battle.

As fate would have it, July 2–the second day of the battle–would feature the turning point in the town, and the war itself:

Andrew Glass wrote this in 2016:

Gen. Robert E. Lee ordered Gen. James Longstreet to immediately attack the Union’s southern flank along the hills at the southernmost end of Cemetery Ridge. These hills, known as the Little Round Top and Big Round Top, had been left unoccupied and would have afforded the Confederates a vantage point from which to rake the Union lines.

Longstreet disregarded Lee’s orders in hopes that the cavalry under the command of Gen. J. E. B. Stuart would soon join in the attack, was slow to advance on the hills. Although Longstreet’s soldiers broke through to the base of Little Round Top, Union Gen. G. K. Warren perceived the Confederate plan in time to rouse his men to take the strategic hill, fending off the thrust.

By the third day of the battle of Gettysburg, General Lee tried using day 2’s plan all over again, but after hours of battle and the Union army being ready, the line was holding.

At around 1 p.m. July 3, 150 to 170 Confederate guns began an artillery bombardment that was probably the largest of the war.. By 3pm, “Pickett’s Charge” was taking place as Southern Confederates thought they had an in.. but more Union troops rushed in and stopped the bombardment.  After hand to hand combat, nearly a half of the Confederates did not make it through ..

By the time the three days of battle ended, the Union was bloodied but declared a victory–and a turning point in the Civil War began. The move into Union territory of Pennsylvania was stopped in Gettysburg..

That victory however was blood soaked—historians feel that upwards of 51,000 soldiers on both sides lost their lives. One of the deadliest of the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln would appear on the blood stained battlefield months later. On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln gave his famed Gettysburg address. He started with “Four Score and Seven years ago,” continued with “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” and ended with

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.

 

These moments are documented by newspapers of the day.

The PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER reported this on Friday July 3, 1863:

Western PA reported this on July 11 in the Pittsburgh GAZETTE:

 

 

The final phase of the struggle is recounted in a poem by Stephen Vincent Benet:

The crest is three times taken and then retaken

In fierce wolf-flurries of combat, in gasping Iliads

Too rapid to note or remember, too obscure to freeze in a song.

But at last, when the round sun drops …

The Union still holds the Round Tops and the two hard keys of war.

Night falls. The blood drips in the rocks of the Devil’s Den.

The murmur begins to rise from the thirsty ground

Where the twenty thousand dead and wounded lie.

Such was Longstreet’s war, and such the Union defense,

The deaths and the woundings, the victory and defeat

At the end of the fish-hook shank.

 

The ghosts of Gettysburg

Chances are.. you have ‘hunted ghosts’ in the alleyways and fields of Gettysburg at some point in your life.

But where did the ‘ghosts’ begin?

The tours of the 1990s!? yes..

But before that, it dates back to the battle of Gettysburg itself!

From the Baltimore SUN in 1994, on the 131rd anniversary of the battle:

Perhaps the earliest Civil War ghost story dates to the battle itself, when reports circulated among the Union troops that General Washington — deceased since 1799 — had been seen leading the men to victory.

“I think something special happened here at Gettysburg,” Mr. Nesbitt says. “Gettysburg was what I consider the climax of a truly mythological war. There was an unprecedented amount of death and woundings. . . . and emotional energy expended between countrymen as they fought in what was the turning point of the war.

“The ghost stories might be scary, but the reality of the battle of Gettysburg was even more frightening.”

 

---

THE REAL NATIONAL ANTHEM

The Battle Hymn of the Republic is almost synonymous with the Battle of Gettysburg. But the origin of the hymn dates back to 1861..

That year, the Committee for a New National Hymn became one of the first efforts to enact an official United States national anthem.

There were 1,200 submissions, but the committee was not satisfied. Those citizens against the committee held up “John Brown’s Body” as an example of what a national anthem should be. This popular Civil War song would go through many changes before it became what we know today as “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Call it the ALMOST national anthem.. (and maybe a better version of an anthem that should have been?)

The song as a whole represents the second coming of Christ, and by extension Union troops carrying out Christ’s mission.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

In this biblical metaphor, the grapes are sinners, but in the Civil War context the grapes become Confederates to be wrathfully defeated upon by Union soldiers.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my contemners (sic), so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.”

Christ was represented in the camps watching over Union soldiers..

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgement-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on

“As he died to make men holy let us die to make men free” was a direct reference to the Union cause…

Another moment in more modern history when the Battle Hymn was used to give hope to a nation and get it ready for war came on September 14, 2001 at the National Cathedral as the nation dealt with the impact and aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks.

x  x  x

SOME BELIEVE THAT LAST BATTLE HYMN BROADCAST ACROSS THE WORLD IN 2001 WAS THE FINAL TIME AMERICA PEAKED.. The final moment with we were unified in a grand cause..

The years since have proven that theory to be somewhat right.

The years to come? ….maybe another Battle Hymn will once again sound through the plains and mountains of the United States…

Some historians argue that by the 1880s, the memory of the Civil War became less about abolition and more about the celebration of war dead.

Francis Scott Key’s STAR SPANGLED BANNER has come under some modern focus..

Jamie Stiehm wrote this in 2018:

Whatever side you’re on, we all need to know the roots of “The Star-Spangled Banner” run deep in slavery’s soil. How deep is seldom told.

Lawyer-poet Key, born to massive slaveholding wealth in Maryland, was one of the richest men in America. He liked it that way.

As he grew older and darker, Key sought to buttress slavery, known as our own “peculiar institution.” He did just that, past his last breath. The U.S. Supreme Court, which he helped shape, stood strongly for slavery. So beside the anthem, his political legacy as a critical political player in upholding slavery is devastating.

In his 50s, Key became an adviser to President Andrew Jackson, who was also a wealthy self-made Southern slaveholder.

At the same time, Key was named by Jackson as the U.S. district attorney for the nation’s capital, where he prosecuted race and slavery laws to the fullest extent, even to the death penalty. He also aggressively prosecuted early abolitionists, who had founded the anti-slavery movement in 1833.

….perhaps the best national anthem for 2020 exists in the Sacha Baron Cohen joke in Olympia Washington:

×