Tea at Trianon: 1913 Gettysburg Reunion

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, July 5, 2020

1913 Gettysburg Reunion

If they could get over it then we should be able to. From Wikipedia:

The 1913 Gettysburg reunion was a Gettysburg Battlefield encampment of American Civil War veterans for the Battle of Gettysburg's 50th anniversary. The June 29–July 4 gathering of 53,407 veterans (~8,750 Confederate)^[1] was the largest ever Civil War veteran reunion, and "never before in the world's history [had] so great a number of men so advanced in years been assembled under field conditions" (Chief Surgeon).^[2]^:60 All honorably discharged veterans in the Grand Army of the Republic and the United Confederate Veterans were invited, and veterans from 46 of the 48 states attended^[3] (cf. Nevada and Wyoming).^[4]^[5]

Despite official concerns "that there might be unpleasant differences, at least, between the blue and gray"^[6] (as after England's War of the Roses and the French Revolution),^[7] the peaceful reunion was repeatedly marked by events of Union–Confederate camaraderie.^[8] President Woodrow Wilson's July 4 reunion address summarized the spirit: "We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather, our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten—except that we shall not forget the splendid valor." (Read more.)

More HERE.

From Real Clear Defense:

As historians James Hessler and Britt Isenberg suggest in their brilliantly cast and elegantly written Gettysburg’s Peach Orchard, Lee’s July 2nd order to First Corps commander James Longstreet—that two of his divisions should attack “up the Emmitsburg Road” and occupy the high ground of the orchard that borders it—was given with Chancellorsville in mind.[5] After much debate, and the dispatch of scouting parties, Lee supposed the federal position on the Emmitsburg Road was as exposed at Gettysburg as Hooker’s was at Chancellorsville and that, as crucially, the high ground of the Sherfy Peach Orchard was a second Hazel Grove. Overrunning the orchard “would destroy Federal resistance and thereby compel enemy troops to retreat. If not withdrawn, the Union defenders might be so demoralized that Longstreet’s infantry might sweep them from the field,” Hessler and Isenberg note. “If [rebel artillery Colonel E.P.] Alexander then rolled his guns into the captured orchard, and unleashed hell on Cemetery Ridge beyond, the tactical situation would resemble a replay of Hazel Grove.”[6] As it turns out, Robert E. Lee wasn’t the only commander who viewed the Peach Orchard as a second Hazel Grove. Union Third Corps commander Daniel Sickles—who had his own vivid memories of Chancellorsville—took the same view and so, a short time before Longstreet’s attack, deployed his divisions to occupy it, thereby creating a nearly indefensible salient in the Union line in the shape, from the Union Army’s perspective, of an inverted V—and seeding a debate on his generalship that lasts to this day.[7] (Read more.)