July 3, 2008 (Thursday)
The Battle of Gettysburg ended on this date in 1863. Both sides paid a terrible price. For all practical purposes, Gettysburg was the decisive battle of the war, but the bitter conflict raged for two more years.
Gettysburg was a terrible defeat for General Robert E. Lee, who graduated second in his class at West Point and was Lincoln’s first choice to be the military leader of the Union armies. He wrote to his sister April 20, 1861 about how he was torn between loyalty to the United States and loyalty to his beloved state of Virginia: “With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State, with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed, I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword…..”
The many monuments at the Gettysburg battlefield are solemn reminders of the ideals that motivated the states and their citizens in the war between the states. No monuments by the Confederate States were allowed at the site until the twentieth century (except Maryland in 1884), so bitter was the conflict and the ensuing era of ill will.
Thankfully, most of the bitterness of those days is behind us now. But these days of truly being “One nation, under God” were slow coming. Hatred and animosity between North and South prevailed for a long time after the war. I recall in my 8th Grade music class in 1945, one of my classmates refused to sing, “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” When chastised by the teacher and commanded to sing with the class, he adamantly refused, defiantly staring at the teacher eye to eye, with the words, “I ain’t singin’ no Yankee song!”
I believe if Robert E. Lee had been a student in that music class, he would have joined in singing the song. He was indeed a great man.