THE VETERANS WHO HEALED A NATION
Written by Dr. David Geary, Ph.D.
Union and Confederate veterans shaking hands at reunion to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg | Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs | Library of Congress
When news reached Washington, D.C., that the Civil War had ended, a crowd gathered at the White House. President Abraham Lincoln made a few remarks, then asked a band to play his favorite song, Dixie.
The healing had begun. But six days later, Lincoln was dead. The healing stopped. The conflict went on, only in a different way. Northerners bragged victory. Southerners suffered years of military occupation.
When the Civil War ended, 750,000 veterans were dead. Two million four hundred thousand survived. The war was so horrific that these veterans went home and tried to forget it. But there was a bond among them that they could not forget. No one but them knew the fellowships that came from marching and fighting over and over again, in the terrible conditions of weather, horrible injuries, disease and death.
Civil War veterans William H. Calvert of Co. C, 77th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, with ladder badge and crutches, and William G. DeLashmutt of Co. D, 1st Maryland Cavalry Battalion, with United Confederate Veterans medal shaking hands at the 1913 Gettysburg reunion
And so groups of veterans began to meet. They had but few goals but they existed well into the next century: to honor those who had died in the war, to take care of the widows and orphans of fellow veterans, and to take care of each other.
Union Veterans began Decoration Day, now Memorial Day, in part from an event in Charleston, S.C., only weeks after the end of the war. Rich whites had abandoned the city; blacks freed from slavery had the city. They had but one focus, a nearby Confederate prison where 257 Union soldiers had been hastily buried. They reburied them in the middle of a racetrack that had been built by rich white Southerners to show off their horses.
The ceremony at the new graves began with 3,000 black school children carrying armloads of roses. Men and women marching in cadence and Union infantry followed, some 10,000 in all. The children sang "The Battle Cry of Freedom" and "The Star Spangled Banner."
Union veterans formed one large organization, the Grand Army of the Republic. Confederates formed United Confederate Veterans and began their own Decoration Day.
As the years went by, meetings of Union and Confederate veterans were separate. Hard feelings remained for decades.
With the 50th anniversary of the war approaching, Pennsylvania’s governor proposed hosting a reunion of Union and Confederate veterans on the Gettysburg battlefield where nearly 166,000 had fought with more than 51,000 casualties. Responses were enthusiastically positive.
President William Howard Taft and Congress and every state and territory pledged support.
The head of t h e U n i t e d C o n f e d e r a t e Veterans told his members, “May our gray heads rest in peace in those graves which will soon claim us, with the satisfaction that we have c o n t r i b u t e d to bringing to our country the blessings of peace and good will.”
The head of the Grand Army of the Republic told him, “Let us assemble there, where so many comrades of the Blue and Gray found common sepulcher on that historic field. There, in that sacred presence, mutually pledge to each other our constant fealty to a reunited and indissoluble American Republic.”
Interest spread even more across the nation. The long-awaited invitations were sent. The process was simple. Fill out a short form, prove veteran status, and mail. For the first time, veterans caught a glimpse of what they’d experience.
Once at Gettysburg, it was all free. They would live much as they had done 50 years earlier — in more than 6,500 tents, grouped by states on the old battlefield. Families could attend, but were told Gettysburg was small and they couldn’t use the veterans’ camp. Most veterans came alone.
Many veterans couldn’t afford to get there and back. Railroads offered low fares. Some states paid the way for their veterans. Vermont gave its veterans cash, and said if any was left over to share it. Private donations poured in. Ladies in Virginia gave their veterans new Confederate uniforms.
One aged veteran in ill health prepared to attend the “Great Reunion,” as it was called, against his family’s wishes. He was asked why he was determined to go. “It’s the last duty I have,” he said, “to show the younger folks there aren’t any hard feelings. It’s a duty we owe the country, about the last we can fill, most of us, and I figured we ought to do it.” Nine veterans died during the reunion, surrounded by their comrades.
On June 30, 1913, the day before the 50th anniversary of the Gettysburg battle, the greatest single movement of people by train in American history began. Planners had expected 40,000 veterans to attend, but that quickly swelled to 56,000. Former privates to generals would pour into acres of tents. The U.S. Army and another army of volunteers — nurses, doctors, scouts, Red Cross, companies, construction workers and others had surged forward to help.
Under Blue & Gray, the Gettysburg Reunion (the Great Reunion) of July 1913, commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. | George Grantham Bain Collection | Library of Congress
As hundreds of special trains full of veterans carrying old battle flags, drums, and other keepsakes arrived, a brightly shining sun lifted temperatures above 100 degrees.
The instant small city had its own post office, telegraph station, 32 bubbling ice water fountains (before refrigeration), 50 miles of streets, 155 street lights, 122 telephones, eight huge wash houses and latrines, a fully-equipped hospital, mess tents and a massive tent seating 13,000 for ceremonies. More than 2,000 Army cooks in 173 kitchens served three-quarters of a million pounds of food in 688,000 meals.
More than a hundred reporters and photographers arrived to send stories across the nation and around the world. It would be captivating front page news every day for four days.
A new president, Woodrow Wilson, was there, along with the vice president, senators, congressmen, Supreme Court justices, and state and territorial governors.
State and unit reunions, ceremonies, dedications, concerts, parades, speeches, walking the monument-laden battlefield, and visiting the spot where President Lincoln gave his famous address filled the veterans’ days. Army bands were on-call day and night, and accompanied groups of states as they “attacked” each other in great fun after dinner. The veterans usually ended up singing Yankee Doodle Dandy and Dixie together into the night.
Emotions would soon be at their highest. Exactly 50 years before, on July 3, 1863, a large group of Confederates at Gettysburg hurled themselves across an open field against Union forces behind a stone wall. The 12,500 Confederates had no protection. Half of them died. The assault, Pickett’s Charge, became one of the most known in American history and the beginning of the end of the war.
On July 3, 1913, to the minute, 50 years later, nine old, tottering Confederate survivors of that charge entered the open field. A slow walk became a slow run. To rousing cheers from thousands of onlookers, they hollered the Rebel Yell, and waived hats, canes and umbrellas. When they reached the stone wall, they were met by Union survivors who 50 years before had met them in bloody hand-to-hand combat. Some survivors clasped hands across the wall and cheered. Others buried their heads in each other’s shoulders and cried.
Suddenly a Union veteran surged forth, holding aloft a new American flag to give the Confederate veterans, and said, “Since the days of Betsy Ross, the Stars and Stripes has been the emblem of this nation. It was your flag and our flag in the closing days of the Revolution. We had no quarrel then, for we stood side by side in grand and successful resistance to our common attacker. It was your flag and our flag when we marched upon the Mexican capital. Grant and Lee supported it then. It was our flag when you raised the Stars and Bars, but we continued to hold and to cherish it not alone for ourselves, but for you.”
“It is still your flag, as it is still our flag. Today you have truly made this ground more sacred by uniting upon it in bonds of amity and fellowship. When the final summons comes, you can face eternity with the mantle of charity and kindness covering the last vestige of enmity that may have found a lurking place in your heart.”
That night the veterans were treated to a massive fireworks display. With spectators, Gettysburg’s population briefly rose to more than 100,000.
The next day saw President Wilson address the veterans. “We have found one another again as brothers and comrades,” he said, “enemies no longer, our battles, long past, the quarrel forgotten
— except we shall not forget the splendid valor, the manly devotion of the men then arrayed against one another, now grasping hands and gazing into each other’s eyes.”
Newspaper reporters telegraphed their stories. “Few days in American history have been so big as this. You may search the world’s history in vain for such a spectacle.” And “The very idea of the Reunion itself, the merging of friend and foe on the field that was the Armageddon of the Civil War, has all the elements of drama on a huge scale. Better than all this is the thing for which it stands — the world’s mightiest Republic purged of hate.”
Before the veterans left for their homes, they had one last duty to perform. It was a duty they had planned. At noon on the Fourth of July as sounds of church bells rolled across the old battlefield, cannon began to boom in the distance. Flags were lowered. And then for five minutes — before hearing The Star-Spangled Banner and Saluting raised flags, that mighty brotherhood of 56,000 weathered Veterans, some frail old men, stood silently at attention.
Approaching the end of life, they gave us a great gift. They who fought each other ended up uniting us all.
**
Oh, how good, how pleasant it is
for brothers to live together in harmony.
Psalm 133:1 (CJB)
