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July
3, 2003
Stan
Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a Former
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Lindorff
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Jackson
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W. Gavin
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28 / 29, 2003
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Vest
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July
2, 2003
Race, Homeland Security
and Lincoln
The Meaning
of Gettysburg
By PATRICK W. GAVIN
Last week, the issue of race resurfaced through
the Supreme Court's decision on affirmative action. And the past
year and a half has made us all aware of terrorism and homeland
security. But if you think that things are tense now, you should
have been around in 1863.
Seven score ago (that's 140 years) this
week, the United States found itself with a "severe"
homeland security problem. Terrorism was a daily reality. Race
relations were on edge.
The occasion was the Civil War, the central
act in this nation's drama, and from July 1-3, 1863, Union and
Confederate armies found themselves slugging it out in a small
town in western Pennsylvania. Before the war, the town was a
simple pastoral town; after three days of battle-the deadliest
of the war-the town would be forever be associated with the horrific
battle that was waged there-the Battle of Gettysburg. It was
the most bloody battle of the war (51,000 casualties) and it
would deal the Confederacy (and its cause) its most fatal blow.
Coming off a string of successes down
South, a confident Robert E. Lee decided to bring the war up
North for the second time (his first attempt at Antietam had
resulted largely in a draw). Although he was winning battles
with legendary maneuvering and bravery, each clash came at a
great cost, as they consistently lost a greater proportion of
their troops than the North. Second, there was a Presidential
election coming up in a year, and if Lee could prove to wavering
Northerners just how bloody and unbearable this war was (and
would continue to be-- without a quick resolution), perhaps they'd
kick that bum Lincoln out of office, elect a peace candidate,
and end the shenanigans for once and for all. An offensive victory
might also secure European support for the Confederate cause,
or at least prevent them from siding with the Yanks. Lastly,
Ulysses S. Grant was applying great force out West on the Confederate
stronghold at Vicksburg. If Vicksburg fell, so, too, would control
of the Mississippi River fall into Union hands, and, subsequently,
the landscape of the war would be forever altered in the North's
favor. An invasion into the North might take some of the pressure
off Vicksburg.
So, in June of 1863, Robert E. Lee left
his wife and kids and led 75,000 Confederate troops (his largest
force since the beginning of the war) above the Mason-Dixon line
and into Northern territory, hoping to deliver a final blow to
the Federals.
The stakes couldn't have been higher.
Lee knew that he was risking everything by invading the North
with such a large force. His last venture into Union territory
gave him little reason to think that he would have any success
this time around, and yet he realized that all of the South's
hopes hinged on this battle. One Confederate soldier remarked:
"The army will never do such fighting as it will now."
For the North, the fall of Gettysburg could have quite possibly
given the South easy access to DC and perhaps brought about the
war's conclusion and a Confederate victory. Additionally, Lincoln
had just issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January of that
year, forever altering the war's cause; a major loss on his home
turf would make Northerner's question the worth of this conflict.
Besides his wife and kids, however, Lee
also seemed to have left his luck in Virginia. Immediately things
did not go well for Lee. He had no clue of the Union army's location
or size, since the man sent out to find out this information-Confederate
Cavalry Officer Jeb Stuart-was unable to get around the advancing
Union army fast enough in order to return to his boss with what
would be very bad news (the Union army was 90,000 strong and
advancing). When the Union and Confederate armies finally bumped
into each other on July 1st, the Confederates performed remarkably
well, forcing the Federals to retreat through the town of Gettysburg.
By winning the day, however, the South had sealed its fate for
the entire battle, since their successful aggression on Day One
pushed the Union up onto the advantageous heights at Cemetery
Ridge. Sometimes, the best things happen to those who wait.
Proving that even 19th century men had
problems listening, the Confederacy was having a difficult time
heeding each other's advice. At the end of Day One, Lee asked
Lieutenant General Richard Ewell to grab the vacant Cemetery
Hill in order to prevent the north from strengthening their position
on the hills. Because Lee was a cordial, gentile man, he ended
his declarative sentence with the polite remark "if practicable,"
which was simply a General's nice way of saying "do it now."
It's akin to a parent telling their child to take out the trash,
"if you wouldn't mind." You got the hint and, no, you
didn't mind. Ewell, however, took the advice too literally and
decided that, in fact, seizing the hills that evening was not
"practicable," and, as a result, the Northern army
spent the night fortifying their stronghold on the hills.
Ewell wasn't the only one failing to
heed good advice. Lee, himself, failed to listen to the wise
counsel coming from his "right arm," General James
Longstreet. On July 2nd, Longstreet warned against Lee's plan
to attack the Union flanks, noting that the Confederacy would
be fighting uphill and against what appeared to be great numbers
(Stuart still hadn't returned from his intelligence mission so
they were still operating in the dark). Longstreet pleaded: "There
never was a body of fifteen thousand men who could make that
attack successfully." Proving that he had lost the creativity
that had served him so well down South, Lee responded: "The
enemy is there General Longstreet, and I am going to strike him."
So much for imagination.
On Little Round Top-the extreme left
flank of the Union army-the Union's strategic position was almost
single-handedly preserved by 300 troops from Maine who were short
on ammo, experienced, and time. They were lead by an English
professor from Bowdoin College-Joshua Chamberlain-who had no
professional military experience. With only ten minutes to prepare,
the 20th Maine fought off countless Confederate assaults. Shortly
before what would be the final Confederate assault, the Union
army quickly realized that they were out of ammo, and Chamberlain
ordered what can only be described as a desperate suicide mission:
a bayonet charge down the hill. Miraculously, it worked and the
Union line held and Chamberlain received a Congressional Medal
of Honor for his bravery. I've taught English before, and were
I to face a charging force of screaming Rebs, I would have ditched
my bayonet, grabbed my Whitman, and booked it out of there.
The Battle of Gettysburg may be most
infamously known for the events of Day 3, when Lee (going against
the advice of his generals once more), launched the bulk of his
army on an enormous frontal assault on the Union center which
he thought had been weakened by the previous day's flank assaults.
He was wrong. Perhaps Lee's poor judgments were caused by the
dysentery he was rumored to have had. If only his decisions were
as loose and flexible as his, well, you get the picture. Pickett's
Charge, as it would come to be called, was largely a death march
and it resulted in devastating losses for the South. When it
was all over, the traditionally stalwart and proud Lee broke
down, profusely apologizing to his troops and generals, saying
"It was all my fault" and even dramatically offering
his resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis in the
weeks ahead. The next day, July 4th, a disgraced, depressed,
and defeated Lee packed up his things and went down south. On
the same day, out west, Vicksburg fell to the Union army and
the war would never be the same. It's hard to imagine a better
July
Although the war raged on for almost
two more years after the battle of Gettysburg, the Confederacy
would never be able to fight with the same power and spirit that
they had on those hot summer days in Pennsylvania. The North's
size, industry, and diplomatic advantages would prove to be too
much for the South to handle in the long run. Indeed, Gettysburg
proved to be a microcosm of the war itself: unparalleled fearlessness,
initial success, and ultimate failure.
One can't escape the thought, however,
that Gettysburg ranks high in the folklore of history not entirely
because of those three bloody days, but rather because the President
of the United States found the occasion significant that he made
a personal visit to the battlefield four months later to "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." Why hasn't Bush visited Tikrit yet with
similar intentions? Or Tora Bora? With a brief, but beautiful,
eulogy, Lincoln proved that, with Presidential addresses, it's
quality, not quantity, a lesson that has yet to be learned by
Lincoln's successors.
Near the conclusion of his speech, Lincoln
remarked, "The world will little note nor long remember
what we say here." Who was he kidding? 140 years later,
it's almost impossible to forget.
Patrick W. Gavin
is a history professor. He can be reached at: pgavin@pds.org.
Weekend Edition
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