...the Battle did NOT happen. Lee did not meet Meade, Chamberlain did not order a desperate bayonet charge to save Little Round Top for the Union, and Pickett did not dress his lines on the west slope of Cemetery Ridge to gather for the final doomed lunge at the Union center.
Not June 29, 1913.
...the Address did NOT happen. The White House party did not spend the night at Mr. Willis' house, orator Edward Everett did not deliver a two hour speech to the assembled thousands, and Abraham Lincoln did not utter 271 words of immortality.
Not June 29, 1913.
Southern veterans' train to Gettysburg, 1913
A Reunion opened.
THE Reunion.
THE largest ever Reunion of Civil War veterans ever held began June 29, 1913. Not just veterans of Gettysburg but all the men who had served in the military, on either side, and were honorably discharged, were asked to come.
Well, not quite all. The planning began in 1911, with meetings between the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) and the UCV (United Confederate Veterans), the respective national veterans' organizations. The GAR was more than a social club for old and then older guys recounting their wartime heroics. It was a powerful political force (in the early 1890s over 30% of the ENTIRE federal budget was spent on Union veteran pensions), a prestigious, influential society....and it was INTEGRATED, utterly stunning for the time. The rule was "If you wore the Blue you were in." (Membership was open only to the veterans themselves. Because of this rule (same in the UCV) the organization eventually died out (although not until 1949.) So when the planning began in 1911 the GAR men assumed all of their members would be welcome at Gettysburg.
Veterans and civilians by the thousands arriving in Gettysburg
They Wrangled
"Not so fast," said the UCV. The Southerners, although not as numerous or influential at the national level (at least formally; Jim Crow and the "Lost Cause" mythology of Southern writers made up for this), objected to members of the USCI and USCT attending. (United States Colored Infantry and United States Colored Troops; technically, infantry were the foot soldiers and troopers were the cavalrymen, but 'troops' and 'trooping' (marching) were used so widely that USCT is actually the more common usage, right down to markings on tombstones.)
After a fair bit of argument between the sides, the intervention of the US Army, and an understandable desire to have the 50th anniversary of the War be a demonstration of reconciliation, the GAR relented. The 1913 Reunion would be a white affair and speak to the reconciliation between the sections (North and South)...but the chance for a greater national healing between the races was missed.
But the partial healing was still impressive.
Col. Lewis Beitler of the Quartermaster Corps and a squad of men were assigned to Gettysburg in 1911 so they could spend the next 2 years getting ready for the week in July 1913. While the state of Pennsylvania issued the invitations and appropriated money, it soon became evident they could not do it alone. Congress stepped in with money. Railroads offered reduced fares for traveling vets. Other states picked up the train fare for their own veterans.
A few of the 7000 tents the US Army set up for the veterans
The Army dug latrines (one featuring 120 doors!) and set up water fountains ("bubblers") whose piping was encased in chests of ice. They laid out 42 miles of streets and called in regular Infantry (they would be the doughboys in a few more years) and the 5th Cavalry for police duties. The Signal Corps strung up hundreds of miles of telephone lines so the vets could make a free call home. (Or at least to a neighbor or business near where they lived that had a telephone; for many of the men it was the first phone call (either local or long-distance) of their lives.) In June the Army set up 7000 tents (built for 10 but housing only 8 for the event) each over wood floors, and stocked them with cots, lanterns and wash basins. They built 173 field kitchens, sited hundreds of picnic tables and established 14 aid stations and 2 field hospitals for the American Red Cross.
They Came
The Army planned for a Reunion of 30,000 strong, despite some civilians grumbling this was extravagant. By January of 1913 the estimate was raised to 35,000; In April to 40,000. The Army scrambled into overdrive and efforts were made to discourage attendance by the veterans. (The civilians were on their own, 100,000 of them each day for a week descending on a town of 4000.)
When the dust settled and all the noses had been counted, over 54,000 veterans came. They came from both North and South, Union and Confederate, and from 47 of the 48 states (New Mexico). Governors and Lieutenant Governors came along. Men coming from San Diego and Seattle spent 5 days and nights on the trains ONE WAY for a 7 day event. (Think this Reunion meant a lot to them?)
The lines at Gettysburg
They Ate
The vets lined up, and up......and up for three squares a day. 2500 Army cooks and helpers served up over 660,000 meals in 8 days: roast beef, potatoes, vegetables, and one day, chicken. (A special treat. In 1913 chicken usually cost three times the price of beef or pork.) Even more impressive when you remember all the meat was on the hoof during the event and except for the ice cream it was all preserved and prepared without benefit of electricity, natural gas, or refrigeration!
Vets chowing down at 1 of the hundreds of shaded picnic tables
36 ice-water "bubblers" dotted across 280 acres and 9000 gallons of ice cream helped fend off temperatures that averaged 94 degrees each day. By night 500 electrical lights (Can you imagine? 500 electrical lights in one place? "It was absolutely dazzling!" according to all who saw it. A different age....) that were the pride of the camp lit the way for vets and civilians walking around or heading into or back from town.
The men toured the battlefield, talked over the War, fraternized generally. There were still some testy moments: one Rebel, recognizing a long-ago foe, snarled, "I should have shot you Yankee son-of-a-bitch 50 years ago when I had the chance." The regular Army troops had to break up a disturbance in a Gettysburg tavern that featured tableware being brandished and seventy-five year-olds brawling, saloon style. One vet in Gray had remarked Lincoln had been a long-armed gorilla, and a Union vet had answered Jeff Davis was a chicken-thieving traitor and the knuckles flew.
Two vets, 1 bragging, 1 not quite buying it!
But mostly they chatted, joked, bragged, caught up on life, met "the boys" from the other side. They visited saloons, recounted their deeds, compared photos of the folks back home, joshed about old commanders from both sides. They visited, rode the trolley across the battlefield, tried their luck at the local casino (that stood for only 1913, but someone made a few bucks), serenaded each other, pulled the center tent pole out on each other when the MPs weren't looking. They heard speeches (including President Wilson and endless governors), listened to music from bands and choirs and corner entertainers, visited the amusement parks by the Round Tops at the south end of the battlefield, and danced in the halls and ballrooms.
Union and Confederate veteran rest on steps in midtown
The men averaged 72 years old; the youngest was 62. The oldest was Miciyah Weiss of New York, who was 112 (!). (I have not been able to track down Weiss' birthday, only the year, but consider: if he was born in January or February, or even up to March 4th, here would have been a man who was born at the end of the John Adams administration (!!), fought in and survived the Civil War, and came to this Reunion, in the presence of X-rays, telephones, flying machines and early radio. What a life!)
The American Red Cross treated over 9000 veterans in 8 days, mostly for heat stroke and heat exhaustion. (They also treated over 15,000 civilians, mostly for the same.) The actuaries from life insurance companies who figure these things predicted there would be about 30 deaths during the week among the old gents, but only 9 of them actually died during the event.
200 reporters covered the event, forcing the Western Union office in town to make an unprecedented decision: to stay open 24 hours a day to transmit news. The
London Times and
The Evening Telegraph received trans-Atlantic cables twice a day from their men on the scene, and they passed on the stories to the rest of the British Empire. 100,000 civilians came
each day by 47 daily trains, by wagon, by motorcar, to see if the old gents would make peace between North and South.
They Met...to Shake Hands
On Friday afternoon, July 3, spectators and veterans gathered on the slope of Cemetery Ridge, the site of Pickett's Charge. Old Confederates lined up on the Emmitsburg Road, a quarter mile from, and about 75 feet below, the crest of the Ridge. Union men waited there, holding their old position behind stone walls.
On a given signal at 3:00 at command was given and the old Johnny Rebs gave off a Rebel Yell. Bands played, drums throbbed and thousands of spectators cheered on a reenactment of Pickett’s charge.
Union Irish Brigade vets, Cemetery Ridge, await the Rebel vets
The plan was for the Confederate veterans to come up the slope to here where the Union men waited. Then both sides would reach across the wall for a mass handshake to symbolize the reconciliation of the sections, North and South.
That was the plan.
But as historian Bruce Catton noted from a diary from that day written by a Mr. Myers, something else happened first, before the handshake.
Some of the Rebels re-enacting Pickett's Charge, 1913-style
“We could see, not rifles and bayonets, but canes and crutches. We soon could distinguish the more agile ones aiding those less able to maintain their places in the ranks.”
Nearer they came, until finally they raised that frightening falsetto scream. “As the Rebel yell broke out after a half century of silence, a moan, a gigantic sigh, a gasp of unbelief, rose from the onlookers.”
So “Pickett’s men” came on, getting close at last, throwing that defiant yell up at the stone wall and the clump of trees and the ghosts of the past.
“It was then,” wrote Mr. Myers, “that the Yankees, unable to restrain themselves longer, burst from behind the stone wall, and flung themselves upon their former enemies. The emotion of the moment was so contagious that there was scarcely a dry eye in the huge throng. Now they fell upon each other—not in mortal combat, but re-united in brotherly love and affection.”
The men embraced to the cheers and sobbing of thousands, an event Catton called "The Day the Civil War Ended"….and THEN the vets posed for the formal picture you may have seen before. (It was considered undignified for photographers to take pictures of men weeping, so they waited a decent interval so the men could compose themselves.)
So that's what started, 100 years ago TODAY. The Reunion has been a pet subject of mine for the last 10 years and I have become an unintentional expert on the event. I hope you enjoyed the diary and the old-time photos.
From yust southeast of Lake Wobegon,
Shalom.
PS. Oh, and remember how this was an all-white event? Well, not completely. I recently came across this photo a couple old gents from Philadelphia who put on their old Union medals and GAR ribbons and campaign hats and made sure the United States Colored Troops, the "Sable Arm" of the nation, was also present in Gettysburg in July, 1913.... Jim Crow be damned!
Despite segregation, black Union veterans at 1913 Reunion
For a "what-if" novel of historical fiction about the 1913 Reunion ("What if the black veterans had shown up in force?") see my novel, "Encampment."
here or at amazon.com (paperback or Kindle.)
Carl Eeman is the author of "Generations of Faith" (Alban Press), and "Recounting Minnesota": The Al Franken/Daily Kos/ WINEREV Recount Diaries (Melange Press), as well as the novel "Encampment". He is a co-developer of the iApp "AffirMe" and currently editing a second novel (a "Pre-quel" to "Encampment") and drafting a e-book on modern fascism. He currently resides in Minnesota.