Tomorrow, July 1st, began a battle which decided the fate of American history. On that day in 1863, 74,000 Confederates forces under the command of General Robert E. Lee, General James Longstreet, et al, advanced from the northeast into a small town in southern Pennsylvania, Gettysburg. If successful, Lee's battled hardened and largely successful corps of men could have threatened major northern cities and likely ended the Civil War in a forced truce that would have left slavery intact in the United States and divided the Republic-- perhaps forever.
The Union, led by a newly-appointed Commander, General Meade, pushed quickly up the Baltimore Pike road from the southwest to meet the invader with slightly larger forces (90,000). Three days later, after 50,000 men had been killed or badly wounded in a horrific series of skirmishes and mass charges, the biggest battle in the Western Hemisphere ended with a narrow Union victory and a renewed hope for an end to slavery and the joining of Americans as a single nation on a path of progress in human equality.
Here's a portion of the 1993 film, with no shots fired or bombs exploding. It is a scene taken from Michael Shaara's award winning novel, "The Killer Angels," and serves as a reflection of what vast differences there were--perhaps always are--in how experience shapes how we perceive our fellow beings.
How many will remember the sacrifice of these men 145 years ago? I don't think many.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting dialogue in the clip Doug from a dramatisation of a conflict with historic repercussions not only for America, but the whole world. The short clips touches upon issues of patriotism, racism, justice, imperialism, egalitarianism and the spiritual dimension of human existence... all in three and a half minutes. Pretty good going I would say.
ReplyDeleteI imagine Confederate soldiers had their own battlefield discussions of what was at stake for them at Gettysburg in the prospect of winning or losing. Who knows what the outcome would have been if they had won, more wars very probably, but did the Civil War really unite the country or did it widen the debate captured in this clip between divine destiny and social justice?
We shall never know what a disunited states of America would have become and how it's destiny would have unfolded, but as it is I wonder which of these views portrayed in the clip would feel vindicated by what eventually did come to pass? Either, neither or both?
An interesting take on the passions that fuelled the conflict and the bloodbath that it commemorates, I would have preferred to hear it without the incidental music, but this is movieland I guess where wars are high on music and low on stench. Thanks for sharing the clip Doug.
I was in that film, Doug.
ReplyDeleteBack at the time, I was a Civil War reenactor; a member of the Pacific Northwest Civil War Council (we coordinated the Civil War reenactments at Silver Falls State Park and over near Astoria every year) - when the casting-call went out, I was working for myself at the time and scheduled my vacation around it.
Got to play frisbee with Sam Elliott (he's an Oregon native; by the way) - mainly, it was a lot of marching and doubling-back for re-takes; I got to get killed off on the far-left during the reenactment of Pickett's Charge.
(Thanks for posting this. The Civil War has always been a big part of my life - both of my great-grandparents were killed on the same day; July 2nd, 1863 at Little Round Top.)
Jen and I have recently watched Ken Burns fantastic TV serial on the Cival War. The number of casualties were truly stagering. It's amazing that the US managed to come through it and become the great nation it has.
ReplyDeleteAlmost a religious experience watching that clip between the music and the "sermon". Guaranteed to pull out all the patriotic emotions. Well done.
ReplyDeleteThe Civil War was anythig but civil. I am always horrified when I read the accounts of the battles.
ReplyDeleteNot as many as should be, Cille, certainly not in my part of the country. But there are always those like yourself, who, to paraphrase Lincoln's most famous speech, never will forget what happened there.
ReplyDeleteYes, its a quite moving and thoughtful three minutes, only impaired, as you state, by that old-fashioned abundance of uplifting music. I thin kthe director should have trusted that the words alone had the power he needed to carry the power of the ideas and the respect those two men had for one another and the very different worlds that they came from.
ReplyDeleteCounterfactual Civil War scenarios are always interesting to me, and you make a good point that I have heard from others who study history and events like this---did it really do for the nation as its been advertised? The Union won the Civil War, of course, but the South became an economic basket case, and for decades after the Federal troops withdrew from the region in 1877--the end of the so-called "Reconstruction Era", African-Americans suffered en masse in a way very close to how they had been as slaves. Would some other event--a peaceful end to this war and a later Compensation Act for slave holders, for instance, lessened the wrath of the defeated and--to their minds--abused white Southern elite? Might a less bloody compromise been reached that would have staved off the terrors of sharecropping and violent suppression of black citizens that sent many of them North, only to find racism of another variety? We won't know.
Lincoln had been moving in that direction (toward compensation) and a longer framework for emancipation at the beginning of the war, but by this point (July, 1863) the die was cast. The maimed and the dead from all the battles cried out for something definative,at least to him and his advisors. It was "The Second American Revolution" as historian James MacPherson put it, but like many revolutions the just cause petered out and the myth of "The Long Cause" took its place.
Wow! And again, wow! Thank you, Astra, for sharing those memories and your work on that very film and your commitment to Civil War reenactments.
ReplyDeleteSam Elliott is an actor I've always liked; his speech in the film (as the cavalry officer, Colonel Buford I believe ) who imagines yet another horrific Union defeat if reinforcements don't arrive quickly to secure some high ground against Lee , is another highlight of that landmark film.
I agree Jim. I never fully appreciated the trauma of that war in American history until I saw that series. The world might have been very different (and for the worse) without a united United States--but, we never can be totally sure.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, we can't expect Canada to do it all. ;-)
I concur, Iri Ani. I remember seeing "Gettysburg" for the first time and feeling a spiritual pang when I saw this scene. It still kind of shakes me up, even if the music is a little overthe top.
ReplyDeleteGood summation, Fred. I don't know how the women and men on the home front on both sides faced all the losses of lives and limbs, over and over up and down the batlefields, and still kept sending off troops for fighting over four years.
ReplyDeleteThis war was, arguably, as Lincoln alluded to in his Second Inaugeral, a bloody retribution for the sin of two centuries of colonial and national slavery, although that was not apparent to all when the war began.
Very thought provoking, Doug, thanks for posting it.
ReplyDeleteI guess that many combatants of many wars, in many quiet moments, on many battlefields, have tried to rationalise their reasons for fighting. The reasons expressed in this clip are as noble as any that I have ever heard.
I agree with you, Jeff.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm sure there were many combatants in many battles who wished that the political leaders of the respective sides would be on hand to see and experience the carnage first-hand.