I love history. My parents helped it come alive for me. In my home were pictures of my ancestors & I knew some of the marvelous stories behind them. I thought since the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War was yesterday, I would copy & paste something my dad wrote recently as a tribute. He mentions the next time he goes to Gettysburg... our entire family is planning on going for the 150th anniversary of that battle in July of 2013. Quoting my dad (who was born & raised in PA):
Inexplicable Feelings at the Site of Pickett’s Charge
The Civil War began in April 1861. By the summer of 1863 the armies had suffered
about a quarter of a million casualties, nearly all of them in battles in the South. In early June of
that year General Lee began moving his Army of Northern Virginia toward Pennsylvania,
intending to take the war to the enemy. He hoped a victory there would strengthen the growing
peace movement in the North and hasten the end of the war, with the Confederate States of
America becoming independent from the United States of America.
The Confederate and Union armies met at Gettysburg on July 1st, just a few miles across
the Pennsylvania line. In three days of fighting there, the armies suffered about 6,000 battle
deaths plus about 40,000 other men wounded, captured, or missing. The size and impact of that
disaster are hard for modern Americans to understand. In proportion to our population, a
comparable number of deaths today would be almost 60,000 people; more people than were
killed in all of the Viet Nam War and twenty times the number killed in the 9/11 attacks.
At Gettysburg the Union held the high ground. Repeated vigorous, sustained, massive
attacks by General Lee’s finest men did not take any of the Union positions. On the third day,
Lee ordered an attack on the Union center. Between 12,000 and 15,000 Confederate
infantrymen assembled in a mile-wide tree line opposite the equally wide ridge they were to
attack. The men sheltered among the trees for two hours while 150 of their field guns dueled
with a similar number of Union artillery pieces. It probably was the heaviest bombardment of
the war. After the barrage ended the Confederate soldiers formed their units into tight lines
abreast and began walking toward the Union line. They walked half a mile over an open field,
uphill, into a stone wall that protected the Union soldiers, all the while under heavy fire from
enemy artillery.
Probably fewer than a quarter of the men made it to the wall. When they got to the wall
the Union artillery chief, “ordered five guns to fire double canister simultaneously. The entire
Confederate line to his front disappeared.” (To understand what canister is, imagine a large
cluster of grapes made of lead. Shove that down the barrel of a cannon and fire it into close-
packed lines of infantry. It’s like point-blank firing a shotgun with a barrel nearly as wide as a
man’s head. These guns fired double canister.) Very few men got across the wall, and they
were soon pushed back. Realizing that the attack had failed decisively, the Confederate
infantrymen began to retreat slowly. They walked backward so they could not be shot in the
back and accused of cowardice. Because the attack was led by General Pickett’s division, it
became known as Pickett’s Charge. The point where they got over the wall is known as “the
High Water Mark of the Confederacy”. The charge was a bloodbath for the Confederate army,
which lost half of its men. General Pickett’s division lost all 3 of its generals and all 13 of its
colonels. The Army of Northern Virginia withdrew from the battlefield and returned to the
South as quickly as possible. The Confederate armies never again tried to invade the North.
When I was a child I often stood at the High Water Mark, on the Union side of the wall,
with my hand on a field gun. I stared across the field, seeing the tree line clearly and trying to
imagine the Confederate troops moving toward me. I moved all along the Union position but
never would step onto the Confederate side; it seemed disrespectful. This was odd and
inexplicable because I was being raised as a good Northern boy and taught thoroughly who “the
good guys” and “the bad guys” were. Still, my feelings kept me off the Confederate ground.
During the last two years I’ve discovered that I had relatives in that charge. Peyton
Leftwich Terry, Henry Shaver Trout, George Washington Troutt, and Henry Shelton Troutt were
in the 28th Virginia Infantry. That unit was at the center of the front rank of the charge, and lost
81 of its 89 men. Their survivors were among the men who got over the wall. They fought on
the very piece of grass that I had refused to walk on as a child. The next time I go to Gettysburg
I’m going into that tree line, across that field, up that hill, and into that stone wall. When I turn
around and look back at that horrible place my feelings will be different and much stronger than
they were so many years ago, and as I stare across the field my view of the tree line will be
blurred by tears.
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