Civil War 150th: On this date in 1863.
LATEST FROM THE NORTH.
THE GREAT BATTLE AT GETTYSBURG.
We have received from Hon. Robert Ould, Commissioner of Exchange, New York papers of the 2d, 3d and 4th insts. The following dispatches in the New York World give an account of the progress of the fighting. The first contains extracts from the official report of Gen. Meade, which was all the War Department would allow to be telegraphed from Washington to the Northern papers:
Washington, July 3d.--An official dispatch was received this afternoon from Major-General Meade, dated headquarters, Army of the Potomac, 11 o’clock P. M., July 2nd, which says:
“The enemy attacked me about 4 P. M. this day, and, after one of the severest contests of the war, was repulsed at all points. We have suffered considerably in killed and wounded. ... We have taken a large number of prisoners.”
Dispatches about the Fighting.
Philadelphia, July 3.--A special dispatch to the Bulletin, from Harrisburg, says:
Nothing is yet known as to results, but the impression prevails that the great decisive battle of the campaign has been fought in the neighborhood of Cashtown, between Gettysburg and Chambersburg.
It is believed that we have suffered heavy losses in officers and men, but Lee is so crippled as to be placed on the defensive.
Yesterday Gen. Meade assumed the offensive. The day before Lee had attacked Meade, and was repulsed with heavy loss.
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Tilford: Gettysburg’s legacy still paying off.
It was a war fought by dirt-poor Southern white farmers on one side and a lot of German and Irish immigrants filling out the ranks of dirt-poor Yankee farmers on the other side. Despite sharing the same race, religion and history, they slaughtered one another with alacrity.
What a different country this might have been if, 400 years ago, someone had suggested, “Let’s pick our own cotton.”
On several occasions I visited that place where, 150 years ago, the future of this republic was decided. When I taught at Grove City College in western Pennsylvania, I showed the movie “Gettysburg” to my U.S. military history classes.
It took eight months to bury the dead. More Americans died on each of the three days of the Battle of Gettysburg than have died in the dozen years of the War on Terror.
Half the soldiers killed in all American wars since the 17th century — about a million in all — died in our Civil War. Almost all of the Civil War casualties were of Anglo-Saxon, Scots-Irish or German-Dutch descent. They were mainly Christians and mostly Protestant, with Catholics from Boston and New York City, Savannah and New Orleans thrown in.
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Bryan: The Civil War transformed American medicine.
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My grandfather told me that when he was a boy, he would steal glances at a Civil War veteran sitting in church every Sunday. The man had a gaping hole in his forehead, a gruesome reminder of the violence of war. But it was also evidence that people could survive horrific wounds before the development of modern medicine. Why was that man alive, yet so many other soldiers were not so fortunate? Was it luck or the result of skilled medical practice?
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Despite its brutal reputation, Civil War medical care played a significant role in the advent of modern medicine. As medical historian George Wunderlich contends, the war "was a watershed that changed the practice of medicine to such an extent that it would never be the same. Many aspects of modern patient care that we take for granted today can trace their origins to that war."
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http://www.timesdispatch.com/opinion...9bb30f31a.html