i'm scott hartwig. i worked at gettysburg national military park for 34 years. i was a supervisory historian here. i had the job that chris gwinn nowhas. i retired hard to believe two years ago and i told my wife this week icame back from the y i ran into somebody
Places To Have A 50Th Wedding Anniversary Party, there and they said to me like"scotty retired now?" i've been asked that i think by the same person about threetimes yeah yeah yeah i'm retired. "enjoying it?" yeah still enjoying it. but iget the impression that people think that when you're retired from national parkservice you sit down you turn the tv on
in the morning and you sit there all dayyou watch tv and you kinda amble up get something to eat you go back down that'snot how i live my life i hardly watch any television at all iretired from the national park service because i could and it gave me theopportunity to write so now i'm gonna tell people i'm a writer and not retired. ijust retired from the park service and i'm working on my sequel to to antietamcreek and this is my working title is, "i dread the thought of the place: thebattle of antietam." so it carries on the story it's about the battle and the endof the maryland campaign. i'm about up to the 12 corps is entering the east woods and the cornfield that part of the battle so
supposed to have it done by 2017 and i amworking hard to do that the other thing i'd like to do with the introduction outof the way is just make an acknowledgement i know there's a reallynice crowd in here i heard there was a great crowd in here yesterday i came inyesterday morning for the the book talk with tony horwitz which was absolutelyphenomenal and the acknowledgement i'd like to make is to the guy who took myjob chris gwinn. he has done a phenomenal job in carrying on theseprograms that we started a number of years ago it's not an easy thing to doit takes a lot of work to plan these things and i think he's really done
an outstanding job [audience applause] he has done what you hopepeople will do he's taken something that you have worked on and he's made it better so i thinkthat's something we can all appreciate and if you have the opportunity forthese book talks to come in i know they're going to start the one aboutwilliam oates the commander of the 15th alabama. by all means do it. it's really interesting and a really enjoyable experience now to the high water mark.now you're going to approach the high water mark today from the south alonghancock avenue you can be driving along hancock avenue and you have never reada book about the civil war you've never been to gettysburg before you don't know ablasted thing about this place but as
you drive up and you look at that youknow without a doubt that something important happened here i'm gonna stophere. what's that fence doing around those trees? that open book two cannons over there and then they allthe monuments and the national park service waysides. somethingsignificant happened in this place. indeed it did in fact as you walkthrough this is an area heavy with symbolism heavy with memory one of themost heavily symbolic and laden with memory places i would say of any civil warlandscape in the entire country and it's always been for a long time it's been avery symbolic place in 1913, 50,000 veterans gathered here we'lltalk about that a little bit later in
and the impact that has on heighteningthe importance of this place in american culture some of you may have been inthat group 2013 over 40,000 people who participated in the pickett's chargecommemorative march - 15,000 marched in the footsteps of the confederates and25,000 along cemetery ridge - that was thebiggest gathering of people for the entire 150th so it tellsyou the importance in the popular mind of the public of this place on thebattlefield but it wasn't always that way photograph was taken by matthew bradyfrom little round top in july of 1863
mid-july and at this time period you cansee the clump of trees in the brian orchard grove it was just a farmlandscape most of the the battlefield had been picked up and the dead were buried onthe field. the national cemetery wasn't even startedyet. you go forward 19 years to 1882 and it stilldoesn't look much different than it did in 1863. you see some wagon tracks and that is the clumpof trees - the copse of trees - with the iron fence around it let's look at thisnext picture notice how the copse really is part of a brushy area appear around this rocky these all thesetrees are gone only this remains these
were here remnants of these were here when i gothere in 1979 but they got trampled to death i mean people love this area so theywalked all over the roots of the trees and the trees died now there's a signhere i don't know what the sign says i think it says something about pickett'scharge but we continue over. there's no monuments, there's no avenues there's no nothingabout pickett's charge nothing symbolic no memory no nothing here it'sjust a battlefield landscape now that was going to begin to change and personwho would have a major role in changing
it and shaping our view of this placeand the popular view beyond people who are really interested in real life aboutthe civil war people who just maybe know a little bit about it and you may askthem what was the turning point in the civil war and they say "gettysburg! gettysburg is the turning point in the civil war!" well this is the man who has a lot to do do with why people think that johnbadger bachelder. bachleder was an artist and educator and he taught atsome sort of a military school so had this honorary title you'll sometimes hear him referred to as colonel john bachelder he was never in the army he was anartist and educator. he was with the army
in the peninsula in the spring of 1862he did a lot of paintings when he was down there he also thought that wasgoing to be the climactic campaign of this war he got sick as did a lot ofpeople during that campaign and then it turned out it wasn't the climacticcampaign. he went back to new hampshire where he lived and was waiting for thatbattle that moment that he felt was going to be the turning point of the warand when he heard about the battle of gettysburg - he read about in thenewspaper. the day he read about it he made his plans to leave and cometo gettysburg. he got down here immediately after the battle and he spent i believe75 days on the battlefield
sketching the landscape, interviewingwounded union and confederate soldiers who were here or ambulatory he wouldtake them out on the field and talk to them about wherethey'd been and where they fought and so on and went back to new hampshire afterall this work but he spent here and he worked on this map this is just asection it - the isometric map. an isometric map is a bird's eye view of thegettysburg battlefield it was endorsed people don't do this anymore it was a commercial venture and was endorsed bygeorge gordon meade, the commander of the army the army of the potomac everybody looked at thismap and the army was astounded by it. they all wanted
copies of it. it's still an amazing map, in fact when we were doing the landscape rehabilitation work here oneof the foundational maps that we used was bachelder's map because he'd spent so muchtime here studying the landscape right after the battle of gettysburg another thing that bachelder did is he spent alot of time on the battlefield with veterans of the battle we see him herein 1885 the road you see in front is hancock avenue that's what hancock avenue look like in1885 and they're near the spot where hancock was wounded but he was here withlots of different veterans in fact he
convened the first time union and confederate veterans gottogether on the battlefield it was in 1869 they stayed at the springs hotelwhich is over where the old gettysburg country club was and they spent timetouring the battlefield but also driving in steaks where units were positionedwhere specific events had occurred and one of the confederateofficers and this is not a picture of walter harrison in the right - it is bachelder again - one of the confederate officers who attended - there weren't very many - was walter harrison who was the aig that means acting inspector general of pickett'sdivision during the battle of gettysburg
and i don't know whether it was thistime were harrison came back again but it was in 1869 bachelder and harrisonsat underneath the copse of trees it was hot so it had to be the summer time they were trying tocatch the shade and they're sitting there and they were talking about thebattle. they spend a couple of hours here harrison said - bachelder writes this - "he explained to me what an important feature the copse ofe trees was at thetime of the battle and how it had been a landmark towards which longstreet'sassault of july the 3rd 1863 had been directed." this deeply impressed bachelderwho then writes, he said to harrison, " a colonel was a battle of gettysburg wasthe crowning event of this campaign this
copse of trees must have been thehigh-water mark of the rebellion" harrison agreed. bachelder wrote he was"imbued with a reverence for those trees." so now he's talked to walter harrison.harrison doesn't say that was the objectivethat's one mistake people make is the clump of trees was the objective and what they do withthem - make a few fence rails - but there's not really any military value. it was alandmark is what he was saying and infantry assaults in the civil war needed landmarks to guide movementson so soldiers hit the area you wanted them to strike because they didn't havedetailed maps and they didn't have radio
communications so what harrison is sayingis we used these trees and harrison should know he was know - he was on pickett's staff so bachelder is imbuedwith this reference but one of the people who wasn't reverent about thecopse of trees was basil biggs. he's a tough looking fella i got to tell you! he looks hard as a rock! basil biggs was a an african-american farmer who lived west of the battlefield at thetime of the battle he was very active in the undergroundrailroad before the war this guy was a mover and shaker in the community and hewas an astute businessman and after the battle was over he acquired the landthat included the copse of trees and the angle. so in 1869 same year bachelder metwith harrison he's riding along and he runs
in the basil cutting down the copse forfence rails well the first thing that bachelder does he says my good man the historical value of these trees i meanthis is what happened here. it doesn't work with biggs. biggs is like yeah i have to make a living you know i'm gonna cut the trees down and bachelder was a smartfellow so who tried a different tactic he said you know because of the historicalvalue of these trees this organization we're going to talk about in a moment - thegettysburg battlefield memorial association - will probably pay prettygood money to acquire this land from you if you leave these trees intact they'reworth more to you than if you cut them
for fence rails biggs was a good businessman. ok that made sense to him.he preserved the copse of trees. so that's how how the cops from trees is preserved betweenbasil biggs and john bachelder and we mention the gettysburg battlefieldmemorial association this was an organization that was incorporated in shortly after the battle in the fall of1863 it was patriotic local individuals who felt that what happened at gettysburg was maybe not the turning point in the civil war but it is an extremelysignificant moment it was the most significant union victory of the war andthey wanted to preserve it and to these
men the monument was the battlefield. we are not going to do anything to it - no avenues, no monuments, no nothing - we are going to leave it just the way it is. we aren't going to do to do any restoration, we won't do any rehabilitation,nothing. well in 1878 i believe it was, this manman man attended a veterans reunion on east cemeteryhill. his was name was john vanderslice he was i don't believe vanderslice was at gettysburg but he was a pennsylvaniaveteran decorated soldier in the union army during the war. and vanderslice looked at this landscapeand saw great possibilities here that he did not think the gbma were rising to.they owned some land, they owned a good part of culp's hill, east cemetery hill, a little bit of land on little round top they owned where
reynolds had been killedon july 1st, so they owned a few pieces of land. it wasn't anything that wasconnected it was no real overall plan here. what vanderslice orchestrated wasa takeover he got union veterans to vote out most of the local membersof the gbma board and replace them with a broader pennsylvania group of veteranssome of whom were people like john geary who was a governor of pennsylvania and wasa division commander here at gettysburg winfield hancock would be on the boardat one point so he had some significant people involved but it wasmainly rank-and-file veterans who voted to take over control of the board of thegettysburg battlefield memorial
association. now vanderslice is going toinstitute a number of changes he wants a new direction for this organization onethat encourages the opening of avenues and this by the way folks is hancockavenue that's it right there that's where it's going to be he wants to openavenues up to give people access to areas of the battlefield particularlyfor veterans to be able to get there and once you have access now veterans canraise memorials. he wants veterans to commemorate what they've done on thebattlefield he wants to see that the gbma aquires more land so that they canget the battlefield and this change is going to have a profound effect uponhow we see this place we call the
high-water mark. from what we see here in1882 where really nothing has happened here except where some guys drove their wagonsup where hancock avenue is going to be to what it is going to become so in 1881july of 1881 the new members are now intact on the board and meeting andin july 1881 at one of their meetings they make a decision that they are going toopen up an avenue from taneytown road to little round top. they don't name it yet an avenue will become hancock avenue whichruns along cemetery ridge they acquired the angle from basil biggs in november of1881. i think they paid him $470 for the land that he hadso a lot better than cutting those trees
down he made out okay and in july 1883for two years later here john bacheldor is named the superintendent of tabletsand legends. if you are going to put up a monument or a tablet or a legend or the legend that will be on thetablet or the monument he's the person who has to to appprove it. he is not a veteran of the battlebut any veteran who's been in the battle of gettysburg will tell you if you wantto know anything about the battle you talk to him he knows more about itthan anybody who was in it because most of the men were in it only saw a very small slice of it.they don't really understand the whole battle. bachelder is viewing the entirebattle and he has met with all these different people he's written all thesethings he's done the map
he knows it better than anyone that'swhy he swas elected to be the superintendent of tablets and legends a month after hewas named to this post this monument in the foreground will be the firstmonument placed in the high water mark area. august 1883 the 72nd pennsylvaniaerected it but the monument is to the philadelphia brigade which occupied theangle area during pickett's charge on july 3rd so it's the firstmonument that's going to be erected there now shortly after this inoctober of 1884 the board is meeting and they're trying to plan what they'regoing to try to do with this land and
it it's kind of difficultbecause most of the board has to travel to get to these board meetings. there are somelocal members but others have to travel so they are not meeting all the time anddon't imagine this is like the national park service managing this landscape becuasethere's only a couple of guys that they have here who can do work on the field. butin october of 1884 the board directed its resident committee those members whowere living in the gettysburg area to mark the spot where armistead fell with agranite stone remember that because they don't do it. we don't know why. maybe they didn't have themoney they couldn't put it together, it was probably some reason like that but remember that they direct the
local resident committee to put it upbut it doesn't go up yet. in november of 1884 perhaps in response to thismonument that has gone up and maybe some others, there are not very many more on thefield, bachelder introduces a resolution at one of the board meetingsthat "no tablet or monument will be permanently erected on the grounds heldby the association without permission from the board of directors nor untilits legend has been approved by the superintendent of tablets and legendssubject to appeal to the board of directors." so if you want to put amonument on the battlefield you first have to have it approved on land that the gbma owns, you have to have it approved by them and the legend has
to be approved by bachelder but you can appealit to the board of directors if you don't like what bachelder has to tellyou. bachelder also in 1885 november of 1885 you can see as these years arecreeping by they're not doing a lot right now there's not a great deal happeninghere that's gonna change very quickly but in november of 1885 bachelder isperceiving because we've opened up hancock avenue we're getting more peoplecoming along one of the problems that were encountering is some of theseveterans and other people are going into the copse of trees and they're cuttingout small trees to make walking sticks
and walking canes we should protect themand he makes a motion to erect an iron fence around the copse of trees and themotion fails i think the reason the motion failed they don't have any money this would come out oftheir own pockets they don't have any money to build an iron fence and he's going to bringit up again in 1886 when they meet again and again it's defeated so there's no iron fencearound the copse of trees yet by the way on the battlefield this is wherethat monument to the philadelphia brigade is located in that photograph. meanwhile while these things are goingon with the gbma, veterans are at work planning monuments to be placed on thebattlefield and in october 1885 and june
of 1886 monuments to the 15th this isthe 15th massachusetts this is not the monument dedication i believe this is asojourn that veterans of the unit made to gettysburg and to antietam and theystopped at their monument this is the copse to trees there's their monument that's the19th massachusetts monument with some veterans around it that's the copse of trees yousee there's no iron fence. you see all the brush how rough it is compared to what you seetoday? and also the 20th massachusetts monument. what's missing? the big puddng stoneright they haven't installed that yet. notice again no iron fence around the copse oftrees now the other important thing about this is this is the position thatthese units all advanced to in the
counter-attack to repulse pickett'scharge but now we've got even more people coming here more veterans more just general publicand they are pilfering the trees and they're going to make a problem with thepreservation of the cops are trees so in february 1887 it is approved to erect this iron fence around the copseof trees so that's how the iron fencethat you see today comes to be around the copse of trees. it was really to protectthem but they wanted also to be decorative and it was in response tothis evolving change that was occurring
in this part of the landscape now this samemeeting that they approved putting up the fence in february 1887 john vandersliceis gonna make a motion to john bachelder, "prepare an appropriate andsuitable tablet descriptive of the engagement and the commands engaged at thecopse of trees where pickett's division assualted the union line said tablet to beplaced upon a metallic post there at." this is the idea for ahigh-water mark monument pretty simple they're talking about just a post andthey're going to put some tablet on there that talks about the differentcommands who are involved in this but remember that because we will come back to thatbecause bachelder is going to
turn that into something much moreambitious as we'll see. now bachelder approved the three massachusettsmonuments - it's on gbma land he had to approve them he had to prove the legendthat was on them but as bachelder studied the official reports of the battleand he looked at the maps of the battle he realized that we were going to have aproblem as we move forward in time there was going to be a problem not for thosewho lived the battle for those who came afterwards who didn't know the battlevery well the battle could look like a jumble of monuments because what youlearned is that there were ten other regiments that advanced to this pointand the counterattack against the
confederate breakthrough at the angle you are going to have 13 monuments gathered right there, how'dthey get there confusing, what bachelder thought so hetraveled to washington, d.c. and he met with the secretary of war a man namedwilliam endicott he also met with some regular army officers who've been in thevolunteer army during the war and they discussed how we should handle this andthey came up with a unanimous decision and that decision was that the desire ofthe memorial association would be better carried out if the lines of battle weremarked rather than the lines of contact when any regiment left their position togo into action. where those tablets are is
where the massachusetts regiments movedto contact not where they were in the line of battle. bachelder, thesecretary of war, and these army officers felt people could understand the battlemuch better if you mark the lines of battle the general position that thearmies occupied july 1, 2, and 3 rather than where they moved to and what youcould do is once you erected your principal monument on the line of battleyou could erect an advanced position marker and on the legend of that tellhow you had advanced to such-and-such a position and what you had done when you gotthere so bachelder is going to now move to the gbma because theyadopt this policy we call it the line of
battle policy and it's still in placetoday even though we don't erect monuments anymore but when the 11thmississippi monument that's the last regimental monument that went up on thebattlefield they had to erect a monument on the confederate line of battle andthen they put an advanced position marker up near the bryan farm theywanted to put their monument near the bryan farm but this policy was still inplay is still in place so the gbma approved it they would go forward withit but now what bachelder proposed is we need to move the monuments that arealready in place to bring them into compliance with this new policy and thatmeant that they had to go to the three
massachusetts regiments and ask them ifthey would move their monuments and they all agreed to do it so once theymoved remember the 19th massachusetts was right here that was where themonument was that's the 19th now there's hancock avenue so they moved to thesecond line because they were in the support line when the assault came andthey advance to that position where they first put their monument and engaged theconfederates at that point in the copse of trees so these men all come incompliance with it it was a big deal for them because you can understand thelogic of wanting to be up right near the copse of trees so they've moved theirmonuments and at the same meeting
these meetings are beginning to becomemore eventful that the gbma is having this is in december of 1887 there was aparty from the pickett's division camp down in virginia united confederateveterans and they came and they asked permission to erect a monument to wherearmistead had fallen remember who'd already approved that? the gbma. but they just passed a new policy theline of abttle policy to put your monument on the line of battle so what they tell thepickett's veterans theyare like well we can't do that you can't put your monument whereyou want to put it where armistead fell we recommend that you put this monumenton the confederate lines when those are
acquired. this was gonna be a problembecause the gbma's charter didn't allow them to acquire land or they couldn'tcondemn land that was behind confederate lines or on confederate lines.they had to get the seller to give them the land at whatever price so theodds of that was going to happen as confederate veterans didn't seem verygood and they weren't very happy and they left dissatisfied so it seemed likethey were using this line of battle policy pretty strictly in this case butthere was more to it here. it was also about memory we were wrestling with memoryhere how we were going to remember what happened at the angle there had been amonument erected in 1886 on culp's hill
to the first maryland battalion csa andinitially that monument had been approved to be inside the union lines becausethat's actually where the regiment advance to and took a position union veterans got wind of it and theywent bananas and they moved the monument outside union lines right next to theunion breastworks but it's outside the union breastworks and david buehler who is thevice president of the gbma writes to bachelder a month after the 1stmaryland monument dedication and in this passage i'll read to you, you get another senseof why they don't want the armistead marker he writes to bachelder saying that"the aim of the maryland regiment
confederate in the erection of theirmonument was not so much to mark their position as to glorify theirachievements on this field it was the disclosure of this spirit in ourintercourse with the committee which induce me to call a halt on theproposition to open up the field to the erection of confederate monuments withthe incidents and dedication services etc the historical delineation of a field isone thing the erection of monuments in honor of what was done here is quiteanother." so that's what really was at play indenying pickett's veterans the opportunity
to place this monument to armistead butthat's gonna change because while pickett's veterans are coming forward infront of the gbma asking them to erect this monument to armistead there were plansin philadelphia for a big reunion of the philadelphia brigade on the gettysburgbattlefield that would occur in july of 1887 they were going to dedicate themonuments to the 69th, 71st pennsylvania and also a small stone that colonel r.penn smith and the 71st pennsylvania we're going to erect to the memory ofalonzo cushing. this is gonna be a big event and it's a union event but some ofthe members of the philadelphia brigade felt that the time was right to kind of bury the hatchet andlet's invite some of the men we fought
to come to this event. the pro-inviteconfederates because there was a large contingent of men who were anti-inviteany confederates to come to this philadelphia brigade reunion but the pro-invite group wrote that they believed "it was their holy and patriotic duty toinvite our late foes to meet us in fraternal reunion on that field thatturned the tide of the war." and there set the example of burying forever allanimosities they also justified the reunion on the grounds that "our victorywould be fruitless of all the citizens if all sections of the country could notenjoy equal rights and privileges as guaranteed by the constitution of ourcountry and noticing that bitter hatred
for kept alive by unscrupulous anddesigning man they felt it was their duty to attempt to reverse this." now today as i look back on this i thinkthat to mend these sectional animosities that the war had brought on and still existed very powerfully wasreally an admirable goal but there's something we need to remember that theirjustification for inviting pickett's veterans also speaks to me thenationwide retreat by this point in our history to lincoln's vision of a newbirth of freedom. it was in 1887 the only americans in the united states ofamerica whose constitutional rights and
privileges were threatened were southern blacks.not former confederate soldiers. they had all their rights; they got them all back.pickett's veterans when they got the invitation said "no." why do you think theysaid no? the gbma told them they couldn't put their monument up and they were ticked aboutit well some of the pennsylvanians got windof this and they said if you'll come you'll get your monument. if you come wewill make sure you get your monument and they came about three hundred ofpickett's veterans came to the reunion also attending with them was lasalle pickett, pickett's widow and overall the reunion this is a photograph that we will talkabout in just a moment the reunion was a
huge success huge success the emphasis onsurprisingly was upon the mutual shared courage and the danger that they all sharedthe fraternity of veterans there had been tremendous suspicion on both sidesabout what this was all about. was this a yankee trap what are these rebels doinghere what are they gonna do but anthony mcdermott who was in the 69thpennsylvania said lasalle pickett was so gracious and so charming he said"it converted a lot of hard cases into the most intense advocates of paternitytoward our late opponents." william aylett the grandson of patrick henry whowould become the commander of armistead's
brigade after the battle also may havesoftened some feelings when in a speech he gave at the county courthouse thefirst night of the reunion said the following, "we have come forth from thebaptism of blood and fire in which we were consumed as the representatives of a new southand we have long years ago ceased to bear in our hearts any residium of the feelings born of the conflict." he also spoke, "of above theashes left by the war and over the tomb of secession and african slavery we havecreated a new empire and build a temple to american liberty in which you and ican worship together and over it we have
run up the star-spangled banner." on july 4th they took a tour of the battlefield with bachelder and whenthey came up towards the angle someone came up with the idea that hey we oughtto get pickett's guys on one side of the wall and let's get the guys from the 69th onother side and the men in the 69th all of these white pith helmets on and youcan see there's a barbed wire fence so they couldn't go very far pickett's menbut pickett's men climbed up over the wall on the one side actually standingon the wall and the men of the 69th behind the wall they defended. they extended theirhands and everybody shook hands. it's easy today as we look back to kind of say wellyou know a bunch of white guys shaking
hands over the wall but we can't forgetthat these white guys slaughtered each other over this same wall 24 years agoyou might be shaking hands with somebody who killed your best buddy you may beshaking hands with somebody you killed his brother you didn't know what it wasbut the emotions and memories that must have flooded their bodies and theirminds. it's pretty profound. i think it was a great moment onthis battlefield and it was a very symbolic moment in transforming thishigh water mark into something more than just a battlefield landscape. it was just a battlefield landscape that's what we'regoing to preserve the battlefields and the monuments. and
the veterans are beginning to makeit evolve into something more. its becoming more than a monument to union valor invictory they're trying to transform it now alsointo a place of reconciliation by seeking this common ground of mutual shared courage which both sides couldagree on but again we can't forget that as great as there fraternalfeelings were and that handshake over the wall the meaning of lincoln's new birthof freedom was being pushed to the side. five years after the end of thephiladelphia brigade reunion, by the way these these guys kept having theirreunions into the twentieth century and
they got to know each other so well thatfamilies married one another they had children and i think there'sgrandchildren and so on today as a result of these reunions so they reallyreally were successful it wasn't a one-time thing but bachelder finallygoing to achieve his dream 1892 the high water mark monument was dedicatedat the copse of trees notice how different that looks there in 1892 from 1882.that's just 10 years how it has been transformed and changed in thattime period. bachelder remember he was tasked with doing this. he personallyprepared and discarded more than 20 different designs he made the contractshe visited the legislatures he secured
the appropriations he paid the bills onthis "precisely as though it was my private enterprise" in fact part of itwas because they were short of money and he had to pay it out of his own pocket toget this monument up. he had to do all of this because the gbma made it clear there were nofunds to erect this monument so even though they're behind it, it really wasbachelder who made this monument happen. the final design that hesettled upon was this open book that you see - that's a close up of it - it's an open book supported by pyramids and cannonballs flanked by two napoleon canon. the legendthat he prepared as you can see there was not interpretive it didn't addressthe cause
didn't address the consequence of thebattle orthe war except obliquely in the inscription for "commands honored"which stated "in recognition of the patriotism and gallantry displayed bythe respective troops who met or assisted to repulse longstreet's assault." then it listed those states that madecontribution to the monument's preparation and in all the places onthis you can see it says longstreet's assault. it doesn't say pickett's chargeanywhere on there. that's one part of shaping memory where bachelder didn't win. what do we call it today?
pickett's charge. he lost that oneit is still there but nobody calls it longstreet's assualt hardly at all theyall call it the high water mark and if you ask that average american on thestreet what was the turning point in the civil war i go back to what bacheldershaped our memory to because so many millions of people have seen this overthe years and heard about it and seen photos of it and read about it and idon't care how many historians have written books trying to dethronegettysburg and i'll stand up with them andsay there is no single turningpoint in the civil war but bachelder won this battle because in popularmemory it is seen as the turning point
in the civil war so we've seen thisbattlefield evolving from the simple landscape to a place of memoryreconciliation and a turning point of the war. the thing i hope that you'repicking up on this as well is there is no grand design here there's no documentthat someone can open up and say this is how they designed the park the park isan evolution it's an evolution that was responding to external forces and inthese early years it's primarily veterans who are coming to the field andwanting certain things and you're reacting to what these veterans want andyou're trying to do the best that you possibly can in remembering whathappened here
commemorating what happened here inmarking what happened here for them and for you in the future to understand whathappened there was one thing that marred this landscape this progression ofevents that seemed to be going so well and it was the 72nd pennsylvania monument onjune 15 1887 the the pennsylvania legislature passed anact that appropriated $125,000 to the gbma for the purpose of marking thepositions of pennsylvania commands on the battlefield the governor of the state appointed afive-man commission whose job it was to meet on the field with representativesof the different pennsylvania regiments
and batteries and working with the newline of battle policy of the gbma mark the positions of those commands and fortwo days in april of 1888 the commission met on the field with the regimental andbattery representatives of the pennsylvania commands and they marked their positionswith stakes in the case of the 72nd pennsylvania i don't think any of theveterans were able to be here so the commissioners did the best they couldand they drove a stake in the ground right where you see this approximately here so this is looking atthe 1882 photograph there's hancock avenue that's about where they markedthat the monument to the 72nd pennsylvania
should be. because they were on thesecond line remember i showed you the picture of the 19th massachusetts's theywere on the second line so they were saying this was your line of battleposition that's where your monument goes so when word of the steak being driven onthe ground reached the veterans the 72nd a number of them objected to its location they wanted tobe placed right up at the stone wall between the 69th pennsylvania and the71st pennsylvania they said that's where we were so the commission was trying tohonor what these veterans wanted so they agreed to meet with members of thephiladelphia brigade in philadelphia
they also had some fellows from otherregiments that came to this and during the meeting this general j.p. s. gobemanhe was one of the commissioners that the governor had appointed one ofthese pennsylvania commissioners to mark positions of pennsylvania commands hetestified that the allegation was made that we have been mistaken in the location ofthe monument to the 72nd some men from other regiments challenge the 72nd'sargument and claimed that the 72nd was not entitled to go down where they wanted to go down nearthe angle one of the most vocal opponents of
the 72nd going forward was this fellowanthony mcdermott he was a private during the battle he would write the regimentalhistory of the 69th pennsylvania he didn't want them down there he said they weren't there they came up there at the end of the fight but he said theyweren't there so on july 3, 1888 several members of the governor'scommission and a committee from the 72nd pennsylvania come to gettysburg and theyappear before the board of directors and the gbma to discuss the monument. sothe veterans of the 72nd again protest the location of the monument they want itplaced in the front line between the 71st the 69th remember those were both put upin 1887 and on the motion of bachelder the
gbma ruled that the 72nd would have toerect its principal monument where the commissioners had placed it on the crestof the ridge where evidence as bacheldor presented place them during the fight sothey kept arguing and finally the gbma relented they're like okay alrightalright we did allow you to put that monument up here remember this was theline that the 72nd probably advanced to and took most of their casualties on youcan put your monument in there probably near where the philadelphia brigademonument was located survivors rejected that compromise andthey continued to press to have their monument placed up at the wall so sometimeafter this july 3rd meeting the
governor's commissionersagreed to meet with the representatives of the 72nd again in gettysburg theyalso invited anthony mcdermott to come out to make this case against the 72ndbut mcdermott couldn't attend so all the commissioners heard from was guysfrom 72nd it was a very large delegation of men from that regiment however thetestimony failed to sway the commissioners and they were inclined to not to movethe monument any farther forward then this position that the gbma had agreed to john p. nicholson who had becomesuperintendent gettysburg national military park eventually under the wardepartment commission he was one of the
commissioners for this pennsylvaniacommission he said the veterans of the 72nd were very much dissatisfied withthis decision so these guys are angry they are insistent they want their monument up.so nicholson and the other commissioners it's getting late in the day they agreethey'll transfer the meeting to the united states hotel in harrisburg andthey will hold an evening session to further discuss this question of the 72ndmonument so they have this meeting general gobeman says it went to one ortwo o'clock in the morning these commissioners are sitting around anddiscussing and gobeman says "we're at a loss to know what to do in view of yourdesire to locate the monument just where it
belonged." but samuel harper who was thesecretary of the committee found what he thought was the breakthrough and it wasthis passage in the gbma policy "if the same line was held by other troops themonuments must be placed in the order in which the several commands occupied thegrounds first being the first line the second least 20 feet in rear of it andso on the inscriptions explaining the movements." i can interpret that prettyclearly and that means that if that stonewall had the 1st brigade of the 1stdivision of the 2nd corps there on july 2nd and the 2nd brigade of the 1stdivision came up and relieved them their monuments go twenty feet behind thefirst guys who were there right that's
what it means you are in the line ofbattle there you didn't advance there you were in the line of battle there. but i think these guys were exhausted its two o'clock in the morning they see this okay lets go down and tell the guys from 72nd they can put their monument up twenty feet back from the wall they went down explained that to the veterans andveterans said ok alright sounds good the only problem was you still needed tohave thegbma approved this they don't know anything about it see these guys are fromthe governor's commission. the governor's commission has met with the 72ndveterans and they have said look we'll
put the monument 20 feet back from thewall then we'll tell the gbma but they don't tell the gma for whatever reasonso in december of 1888 some fellows from the 72nd pennsylvania came out theydrove a stake in the ground right about here and as they were doing so somebodyfrom the gbma came out and said what are you doing? we are putting a steak in for a monument. you're defacing gbma land. you're underarrest. they arrested them for trespassing. so we're gonna go to court on january 7th 1889the 72nd pennsylvania filed a bill in adams county court requesting that thecommittee be allowed to erect its monument where the agreement made with a statecommission in harrisburg located it. the gbma objected and the court sustainedthem and dismissed the case so they win
but it's not over 72nd appealed it .the case wentto the pennsylvania supreme court where it heard tremendous amount of testimonyfrom many veterans most from the 72nd but also from alexander webb, the birgade commander, also fromanthony mcdermott from some other fellows in the 69th some fellows in the71st pennsylvania, some fellows from the 19th massachusetts they saw after-actionreports there were maps there's a lot of documents that they were able to use afriend of mine who's an attorney said that he's read through the entire caseand he's convinced that somebody get paid off
because where's the monument? who won that case? the 72ndwon the case and it now appears it's a great monument. it's an iconic monument but forthe average person who comes says those guys fought hand-to-hand right there atthe wall against pickett's charge when arthur devereaux who was a major in the19th massachusetts heard about this he was furious. remember of those guys theyall moved their monuments back they all went where they were asked to go "how isit and if stated on what grounds," he wrote john bachelor he was incredulous"with the honorable board of trustees and the gbma permit me to put the monument to myregiment to the front where it belongs or must it stay away back or gives no sort ofidea of the service performed by it?" then he
asked rhetorically, "what is the value ofa monument on a field anyhow when it attempts to enforce a lie i permittedthe removal of my regiments monument back to the meet the ideas of thetrustees but not anticipating such a travesty of truth thereby." eight monthslater he kinda soften and he writes bachelder, " i'm getting reconciled to the72nd monument. it blazens their shame and the story will be told to all comers andthey might have seen the waters of oblivion roll over it but for their own action." the gbma felt obliged in their executive committee toissue a public statement about this and they wrote "this mislocation ofthe 72nd's monument is the only
break in the harmony of the entire fieldit is the only act done for which we feel that an apology is required to bemade to anyone and so locating at law was misunderstood and misinterpretedfacts from misunderstood and inferences were unjustifiably drawn theassociation's sought by every means within its power to save our commonwealthfrom an error which puts it in a false position before the entire army of thepotomac and therefore before the whole country." but for all the predictions bythe gbma and by devereaux and by others that themonument's placement was going to bring great shame on the 72nd uponpennsylvania the truth was going to be
told to all comers wasn't to be. truthisn't told to any comers. the 72nd pennsylvania won the battle of memory here.in fact the quarter of gettysburg - that's the monument on it. nowwhen i saw it i was like it's an iconic monument! what better photograph can youtake when the sun is setting get the 72nd pennsylvania monument and the codori farm? it's brilliant! it is a brilliant design! you notice they got it just back - it'stwenty feet back from the front wall and it infuriated the veterans of the 69th inthe 71st but this was a battle about memory and in this battle the 72nd won.this place as i have said has become this place of reconciliationand nowhere was this more solidified
than in 1913 the grand reunion on thegettysburg battlefield and fifty thousand veterans from all parts of the countryare going to convene on gettysburg july 1 through 4 for the greatest reunionthat ever occurs in the civil war and the pinnacle of this reunion the highpoint of this reunion is going to be at this most symbolic place the high water mark. john h. leathers of kentucky was a former sergeant in the 2nd virginia soundeda familiar theme that you hear over and over again at this event. "all thebitterness of the war is gone with the flight of years we stand here today glorifying in one common cause onecommon flag the flag over a
reunited country." captain andrew cowanwhose artillery battery had mowed confederates down with canister fire hewould speak, " this grand celebration marks the high tide of peace between the northand south which shall never recede while americans love liberty and union.virginia governor william mann, "affirmed that the nation shouldn'tforget the years 1861 to 65 we came here to say not to discuss what caused thewar from 1861 to 65 but to talk over the events of the battle here is man toman and ascomrade to comrade to shake hands brothers and to recognize in eachthe splendid courage displayed upon this remarkable field of battle." the high water markwas now emblematic of the good fight of
sublime american courage in which bothwhites of the north and the south could share reinforcing this was presidentwoodrow wilson in his speech inside the great tent on july 4th he said, "wehave found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms. enemies no longer generous friends rather our battles longpast the quarrel forgot except that we shall not forget the splendid valor themanly devotion to the men then a raid against one another now grasping handsand smiling into each other's eyes." in a staged but very symbolic moment theygot the veterans of pickett's division these are pickett's men here and theseare the philadelphia brigade. look at that guy right
there he's ready some of these fellas i studied their eyesand you can see something in their eyes some memories coming back to these menothers it's more of a you know just kind of a frolic for them maybe they weren'there that day but we're gonna have the veterans of the philadelphia brigade and pickett's division shake hands over the stone wall they fought over 50years earlier and photographic it. pennsylvania congressman j.hamptonmoore addressed all of the assembled veterans after the handshake,"you meet again here at the bloody angle the very zenith of the mighty current of thewar not as furious fighting champions of
state or section but as messengers ofpeace you have truly made this ground moresacred by uniting upon it in bonds of amity and fellowship." so bachelder's highwater mark had become now the very zenith of the war and the sacred groundof peace and unity passages from lincoln's gettysburg address weresprinkled throughout many of the speeches given during the four days governor mann of virginia declared, "iflincoln can come back here and see what is going on how his patrioticheart would swell with pleasure when he saw the blue and the gray mingling asthey are today as friends and comrades."
no doubt lincoln would have for the reunionwas a very important and necessary moment in the nation's healing from thewar but i think lincoln also probably would have encouraged everyone present toreread his gettysburg address and contemplate what he meant the nation in1913 was in full retreat from the new birth of freedom he hoped that the warmight usher in jim crow racial segregation was the law of the landacross the south and president woodrow wilson was in the process of segregatingdepartments of the united states government by race but there was nomention of this is at the angle in 1913 it belonged to the quarrel forgotten andthe thus as david blight wrote in his book "race
and reunion," the "gettysburg reunion tookplace as a national ritual in which the ghost of slavery the very question of causeand consequence might be exercised once and for all in an epic conflict amongwhites elevated in the national mythology." but there weren't all whiteveterans there those days. these two men they may have been be the onlyafrican-american union veterans in 1913 who attended that event. davidblight writes there were none but the only reason we know these men were here is afriend of mine whose wife works at a little historical society in north carolina foundthis photograph. it's a confederate soldier who took this photograph and you readwhat it says, "contraband of war one of
these negroes said he belonged to a manin norfolk and the other one belonged in wayne county and both ran away toenlist in the federal army. they live now in philadelphia." when i see these two menwhat these two men represented i think why they were there is maybe most of thenation was retreating from the new birth of freedom this idea that lincoln hadadvanced in his gettysburg address but they'd lived it. they lived the idea theyhadn't been free they'd been slaves they run away they volunteered to fight theyrisk their lives and they were reminders to everybody who was present that this warwas about more than american valor it was about something so today when i lookat the high water mark in many respects
it hasn't shaken off the memory that wasattached to it in 1913 or even in 1887 you only have to visit the place onremembrance day in november or on the afternoon of a july 3rd anniversary to seethat it's still celebrated primarily as a symbol of shared american valor. causesand consequences the reasons men went to war and turned this into a killing ground on july 3rd remain largely absent perhapsone day this will change and we can celebrate both american valor andcourage shown by union and confederate soldiers and the fact that here at thishigh water mark the end of slavery in america and the hope of a new birth offreedom
won a crucial victory. thank you.
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