Overview

"Union and Confederate veterans meet at Gettysburg on the 50th anniversary of the battle This June 29–July 4 reunion drew over 55,000 official attendees plus thousands more who descended upon a town of 4,000 during the scorching summer of 1913, with the promise of little more than a cot and two blankets, military fare, and the presence of countless adversaries from a horrific war. Most were revisiting a time and place in their personal history that involved acute physical and emotional trauma. Contrary to popular belief, veterans were not motivated to attend by a desire for reconciliation, nor did the Great Reunion produce a general sense of a reunified country. The reconciliation premise, advanced by several major speeches at the anniversary, lived in rhetoric more than fact. Recent scholarship effectively dismantles this ""Reconciliation of 1913"" mythos, finding instead that sectionalism and lingering hostilities largely prevailed among veterans and civilians. Flagel examines how individual veterans viewed the reunion, what motivated them to attend, how they acted and reacted once they arrived, and whether these survivors found what they were personally seeking. While politicians and the press characterized the veterans as relics of a national crusade, Flagel focuses on four men who come to the reunion for different and very individual reasons. Flagel's book adds significantly to Gettysburg literature and to Civil War historiography."

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9781606353714

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Reviews

Thomas R. Flagel . . . blazes a path of his own, presenting a refreshingly bold and wholly original interpretation of the fiftieth anniversary reunion in Gettysburg. Reaching beneath the reunion's public face and its cloying, oft-quoted speeches, Flagel's book provides the first real, 'bottom up' account of what the reunion actually looked and felt like for the veterans themselves, from the moment they departed their hometowns on Gettysburg-bound trains until their return. Here is the sense of anticipation as crowded locomotives lurched toward south-central Pennsylvania; the clatter of vendors hawking souvenirs; the remorseless heat; the layout of the sprawling Tent City; and the attendees' urgent 'need to find' and make sense of the past. To convey all of this, Flagel mines a rich array of source material, but he pays special attention to four veterans-two federal and two rebel-who made the trip to Gettysburg. This gem of a book has managed to say something truly new about Gettysburg and memory. -The Civil War Book Review

[Flagel] blazes a path of his own, presenting a refreshingly bold and wholly original interpretation of the fiftieth anniversary reunion in Gettysburg. [...] Flagel's concise and accessible study, prolifically illustrated and spiced with the insights of modern war psychiatrists, is a most welcome addition to the growing literature on Civil War veterans. This gem of a book has managed to say something truly new about Gettysburg and memory. For students of those subjects and for anyone seeking to understand in what it means to survive war, it is required reading. - Civil War Book Review, 21.3

Author Information

Thomas R. Flagel is associate professor of history at Columbia State Community College in Tennessee. The author of several books, Flagel has also worked with multiple historic preservation groups including the Civil War Trust and the National Park Service.

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