151 years ago today, the final day of The Battle Of Gettysburg took place, culminating in Picketts Charge. General Lee, his assaults on the Union flanks the day before having failed, ordered an attack upon the Union center, beginning at 1 P.M. with a two hour bombardment on the Union position from Confederate Artillery. The artillery fire did nothing to weaken the Union position. At 3 P.M. ,15,000 Confederate soldiers under the command of General George Pickett stepped off and began their march over a mile of open ground toward the Union center. Most of them never made it. In less than an hour, more than 7,000 Confederate troops were killed or wounded. This battle was the turning point in the war, with the Confederacy suffering its first major defeat. In three days of fighting, between 46,000 and 51,000 soldiers from both armies were casualties in the battle. Thats almost as many Americans as died in the Vietnam War. Ill finish this with Lincolns Gettysburg Address, made four and a half months after the battle: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 23:30:53 +0000
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