Showing posts with label Gettysburg National Military Park. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gettysburg National Military Park. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

#Gettysburg -150 years ago today, Gen. George Meade saved the Union at the Battle of Gettysburg, repulsing Pickett's Charge, and preventing Gen. Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia from sweeping south into Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Meade prevented a defeat that would have given the British and French an excuse to declare an impasse, with President Lincoln and the U.S. Congress on the run; Dr. Allen C. Guelzo, brilliant Lincoln scholar, shares his knowledge about that momentous day; Doris Kearns Goodwin picks a bad time to show a lack of humility and class


Ken Burns YouTube Channel video: The Civil War: Gettysburg. On July 3, 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the Union lured the Confederate troops out into the open field. Pickett charged and the tide of the war changed in the Union's favor. Uploaded August 2, 2012. http://youtu.be/jsszvmuZBR4
#Gettysburg -150 years ago today, Gen. George Meade saved the Union at the Battle of Gettysburg, repulsing Pickett's Charge, and preventing Gen. Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia from sweeping south into Baltimore and Washington, D.C.  Meade prevented a defeat that would have given the British and French an excuse to declare an impasse, with President Lincoln and the U.S. Congress on the run; Dr. Allen C. Guelzo, brilliant Lincoln scholar, shares his knowledge about that momentous day; 
Doris Kearns Goodwin picks a bad time to show a lack of humility and class

New York Post
The hero of Gettysburg
Hardly anyone knows his name, but 150 years ago, one of America’s greatest generals, George Meade, saved a nation
By Ralph Peters
Last Updated: 3:37 AM, June 30, 2013
Posted: 12:39 AM, June 30, 2013
One hundred and fifty years ago tomorrow morning, two great armies slammed into each other outside a crossroads town in Pennsylvania. Neither army’s commander intended to fight at Gettysburg, but the battle took on a life of its own as reinforcements rushed to the sound of the guns. Soldiers in blue and gray would fight for three days, leaving almost 7,000 Americans dead and 30,000 wounded.
At the close of the battle on July 3, 1863, the Army of the Potomac, led by Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade — the most underrated soldier in our history — had won the Union’s first indisputable victory in the east. With Gettysburg’s strategic effect compounded by news of Grant’s capture of Vicksburg, Miss., on July 4, the Confederacy was left with no realistic chance of winning the war militarily (although the South’s valiant, stubborn troops would fight on for two more years). The secessionist government in Richmond could only hope to conjure a political settlement.
Read the rest of the column at
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_hero_of_pWV5Jk81PHW48jHMYLYf7H






And while some people like Rob Lowe get it, some don't.
People whom you don't expect to be so uncouth, partisan and self-possessing of a moment.
Did you hear about this?




DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN AT GETTYSBURG: A FEW INAPPROPRIATE REMARKS
by TONY LEE  
1 Jul 2013
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/07/01/Doris-Kearns-Goodwin-A-Few-Inappropriate-Remarks-At-Gettysburg



GettysburgCollege YouTube Channel video: Allen Guelzo on July 3, 1863.
http://youtu.be/bjfqYdAksxo


New York Times 
Opinionator blog
What Gettysburg Proved
By Allen C. Guelzo
July 1, 2013
It took no more than a few days after the Battle of Gettysburg for the men who had fought there to realize how important it had been. “The Battle of Gettysburg, like Waterloo, must stand conspicuous in the history of all ages,” wrote a staff officer, Frank Aretas Haskell, who himself would die less than a year later in a much less conspicuous battle at a place called Cold Harbor. And even by the most remote measure, Haskell was right.
Read the rest of Professor Guelzo's essay at
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/what-gettysburg-proved/

Dr. Guelzo is one of the world's foremost Lincoln scholars, an amazing writer and before he was at Gettysburg College, he used to be on the Planning & Zoning Advisory Board in the Pennsylvania town he lived in over ten years ago, which is how I first met him, at one of their meetings.

Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg by tour guide Gary Kross

If you missed it over the weekend, see my post about Gettysburg, with some really great and informative videos featuring something you've probably never seen before, but which I'm 100% sure you'll enjoy:
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/gettysburg-place-where-you-really-feel.html

Some of my pre-Ohio Territory paternal ancestors grew-up not far from Gettysburg and are buried nearby. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Meade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gettysburg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickett's_Charge

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Gettysburg, a place where you really feel the full weight of history all around you: the history we've experienced and the very different one we could've had instead; On the 150th anniversary of the battle, the continuing wonder that is MGM's Oscar-nominated 1955 documentary two-reel short, 'Battle of Gettysburg,' narrated by Leslie Nielsen; History Channel's 2011 documentary "Gettysburg" narrated by Sam Rockwell

If you've never been to Gettysburg yourself, much less, like me, visited after spending LOTS of time brushing-up on the various aspects of the 1863 three-day battle that you once knew pretty well, but which has since gotten a bit hazy, it's hard to fully comprehend what took place there. 
Even more so then when as a kid without much knowledge or context, I visited Shiloh around 1967, and actually met someone whose grandfather had fought there.

How so many different aspects of our everyday life -as Americans- we now take for granted that could've been completely different if this battle had turned out differently.

In some ways, the more you actually know in detail about what happened there before visiting, the even harder it is to imagine, since when you are walking around there on a very warm day, all the details just seem like... well, an unbearable weight.

Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg by tour guide Gary Kross

Little Round Top at Gettysburg by tour guide Gary Kross

Five minutes from disaster!

As far as I'm concerned, nobody should ever contemplate running for president of this country who hasn't spent some quality time there absorbing the atmosphere and the might-have-beens.
And talking about it publicly.

It's a genuine eye-opener in ways that you can't really imagine until you actually see it yourself, away from the tours, standing in the middle of an immense field.

The other thing that immediately is noticed by many first-time visitors are the large number of foreign visitors you meet there at the battleground, reminding you all over again -as if you needed reminding- that many other people far from this small Pennsylvania town realize its monumental importance, too.


Gettysburg - Pickett's Charge: The Plan

Video History Today video: Picketts Charge, Gettysburg, PA
-Gives present-day orientation of what took place and how it looks now.

Civil War historian Edwin Bearss - Receding Tide (National Geographic)


Gettysburg National Military Park homepage

See other present day video of Gettysburg and other historical events at

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Repeal1913 YouTube Channel video - MGM's 1955 documentary short: 'Battle of Gettysburg,' narrated by Leslie Nielsen. Filmed entirely on location at Gettysburg National Military Park, Pennsylvania. 
Director: Herman Hoffman, Producer/Screenwriter: Dore Schary, with Music Adapted and Conducted by Adolph Deutsch, Orchestrated by Alexander Courage.
1 of 3. Uploaded August 16, 2008. http://youtu.be/byG8wb1Pwzo



AcmeFilmCorporation YouTube Channel video: Gettysburg (2011).
History Channel Civil War documentary depicts the battle thru the eyes of eight men. Uploaded March 20, 2013. Director: Adrian Moat, Narrated by Sam Rockwell.
http://youtu.be/WEZrAmFSCEA