Today in history the battle of Gettysburg began
by digby
The culmination of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s second invasion of the northern United States, over 160,000 Union and Confederate soldiers met on the field at Gettysburg in a massive battle which changed the course of the war. General George Meade’s Army of the Potomac repulsed the Confederate invasion, shattering the invincible reputation of Lee’s army while inflicting higher casualties, forcing a retreat back in to Virginia, and dashing Southern hopes that European powers might provide military aid.
In his Gettysburg Address, a November 1863 speech to dedicate the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, President Lincoln recast the Civil War as a second American revolution, a rebirth of freedom. While the states did reunite in 1865, the Battle of Gettysburg remained a scar on the national psyche. The battlefields of Gettysburg became a site for reflection and remembrance, where veterans built monuments to their fallen comrades and Americans came, as they still do today, to try to make sense of the human toll of the Civil War.
If you’ve never been to the Gettysburg memorial it’s really worth seeing. Amidst incredibly beautiful Pennsylvania countryside the picture of this horror will be indelible on your memory.
I went there last year and posted some pictures. It’s been nearly 150 years but it isn’t entirely over yet:
