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GETTYSBURG 
 
THE BATTLE OF 
 
 GETTYSBURG 
 
 From 
 
 THE WORLD DISARMED" 
 
 By 
 J. FRANK HANLY 
 
 Cincinnati : Jennings and Graham 
 New York: Eaton and Mains 
 

 Copyright, 1912, 
 By Jennings and Graham 
 
 £CU301)G50 
 
 »fc^ 
 
IN EXPLANATION 
 
No indictment of war is com- 
 plete without an exhibit of a battle 
 scene. That this accusation may 
 be a full, true, and complete present- 
 ment, I submit such a scene, and it 
 is difficult to conceive a greater, a 
 severer, or a more terrific arraign- 
 ment of war, with its madness, its 
 frenzy, its horrors, and its atrocities, 
 than the picture constitutes. 
 Here it is: 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
BEFORE THE BATTLE 
 
 June 30, 1863 
 
Scene: A Pennsylvania Village. 
 Hour: A Mid-Summer Evening. 
 
 West of the village, running north and 
 south, an elevated ridge, covered with an 
 open wood. On this ridge, an academy 
 and a seminary of a Christian Church. 
 To the north, a mile and a half away, 
 a commanding knoll — Oak Hill, sloping 
 gradually to the west five hundred yards 
 to another ridge — McPherson's, wider, 
 smoother, and lower. Oak Hill is their 
 intersection, commanding a clear view of 
 the slopes of both ridges and of the valley 
 between. 
 
 North of the town, flat and open country. 
 On the south, a bold, high ridge, bowlder- 
 strewn and rock-ribbed, terminating on the 
 
 [13] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 east in a well- wooded hill — Gulp's Hill — 
 and on the west, overlooking the town, in 
 another hill — Cemetery Hill, on the crest 
 of which is the village cemetery. 
 
 From this hill to the south, for a mile and 
 a half, runs a ridge — Cemetery Ridge, 
 sloping gradually to the west and the south. 
 Near the western base of Cemetery Hill, a 
 grove — Zeigler's. Nine hundred yards to 
 the south, on Cemetery Ridge — a clump of 
 trees. About this clump of trees the ridge 
 is smooth and open. Three-quarters of a 
 mile away it terminates in a high, rocky, 
 bowlder-covered hill — Little Round Top. 
 Further to the west and south, but closely 
 connected, is Big Round Top. 
 
 Fourteen to sixteen hundred yards to the 
 west. Seminary Ridge, lying in full view. 
 West of Little Round Top, five hundred 
 yards, and one hundred feet lower, a pile of 
 huge rocks and bowlders so flung together 
 
 [14] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 as to form innumerable crevices and holes 
 large enough for men to shelter in — Devil's 
 Den. The slopes of Little Round Top are 
 covered with gigantic bowlders. Near its 
 base, marshy land. Immediately west of 
 Devil's Den the country is wooded, and 
 west and north, eleven hundred yards, a 
 large peach orchard. South of the peach 
 orchard, a wheatfield. The valley between 
 Cemetery and Seminary Ridges presents 
 rolling slopes of pasture, in which cattle 
 are grazing; undulating fields of growing 
 corn and squares of ripening wheat, inter- 
 sected and separated by fences of posts and 
 rails and stone, and dotted here and there 
 with houses and orchards and barns and 
 gardens; the whole constituting a scene of 
 quiet ease and plenteous contentment; a 
 panorama of unusual beauty, typical of 
 Pennsylvania pastoral life. 
 
 About it all the enamored sunlight ling- 
 
 [15] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 ers, loathe to leave, kissing ridge and valley 
 into mellow, changing beauty; flecking the 
 pasture slopes with dappled shadows; turn- 
 ing the wheatfield into a lake of gold; 
 touching the peach orchard with particles 
 of filtered amethyst; hanging the oak 
 boughs with threads of light; wreathing 
 Zeigler's grove and the Clump of Trees in a 
 film of velvet air; spreading a sea of purple 
 about the wood-draped hills; tipping the 
 Round Tops with celestial glory, and lifting 
 between their crests a bending bridge of 
 sapphire — and above it all, a serene and 
 peaceful sky. The perfect close of a per- 
 fect day! But the sunlight does well to 
 linger. It will never again find these 
 fields and hills the same. It will return, 
 but they shall be different. Their peace 
 will be broken, their beauty defiled, their 
 loveliness despoiled. The morning's earli- 
 est dawn brings the change. A human 
 
 [16] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 cataclysm breaks over them like a torren- 
 tial flood. Over and across them it rolls 
 and flows like an avalanche. Its shock is 
 like the earthquake's. One hundred and 
 sixty thousand armed men meet with an 
 impact that shakes the continent. For 
 three days they wound and kill until one- 
 fourth their number fall, injured or dead, 
 and the living drop from exhaustion. The 
 little cemetery on the hill widens and 
 spreads until ten thousand dead find sepul- 
 cher, and ridge and valley, hill and plain, 
 are one Necropolis. 
 
 [17] 
 
FIRST DAY 
 
 July 1, 1863 
 
The tragedy begins with the morning and 
 continues with the fury of a tempest 
 throughout the day. The agonies of na- 
 tions are in it — of Ufe, of death, and of 
 birth — the Hfe, or the dismemberment and 
 death, of one; the birth, or the miscarriage 
 of another. 
 
 At first, a few scattered, uncertain, hesi- 
 tating shots betw^een the scouts and pickets 
 of Heth and Buford — the videttes of the 
 gathering hosts; and then the steadier roll 
 of connected conflict between augmented 
 numbers, deepening gradually into the 
 clash and roar of deadly battle — the impact 
 of divisions and of corps — quickening the 
 march of thousands of weary feet, calling 
 Lee and Meade to the fatal field, and draw- 
 
 [21] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 ing two armies to its red bosom. Reynolds 
 arrives and falls. Howard takes command. 
 Upon him bursts Swell's storm of war. 
 Paul is wounded, both his eyes are out. 
 Rhodes sweeps southward from Oak Hill. 
 Stone and Weister are wounded. Hundreds 
 fall. Williams is dead. Gordon strikes 
 Howard's right flank, taking it obliquely 
 from the rear. Barlow is desperately hurt. 
 Beneath the concentrated fire from front 
 
 and flank the heroic lines break and dis- 
 solve. Leaving their dead and wounded, 
 they find refuge at Cemetery Hill. It is 
 evening. The first act of the tragedy is 
 closing. Lee is on the ground. On the 
 other side Hancock is in command. The 
 twilight deepens. The tired and wounded 
 divisions sleep on their arms in the ranks. 
 The dead and injured lie where they fell. 
 The dead, unconscious of sky or star or 
 dew. The wounded, keenly conscious, do 
 
 [22] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 not want to die. Some of them crawl and 
 drag themselves to shelter. Others are 
 rescued by sympathetic comrades or gener- 
 ous foes. But hundreds of them turn their 
 sad, imploring eyes to the sky, and lie 
 through the night among the slain, un- 
 found, with no companions but the stars. 
 Others pass away in the silent watches be- 
 tween the midnight and the dawn, to find 
 amid the shadows of the other side the 
 peace denied them here. But death has 
 scarcely yet begun to take its toll. Its 
 appetite is only whetted. To-morrow it 
 will reap a real harvest. And the next 
 day! Ah, God forgive! The next day it 
 will glut its jaws with victims! 
 
 [23] 
 
SECOND DAY 
 
 July 2, 1863 
 
The hour is three-thirty in the afternoon. 
 Both armies are in position. The Federals 
 are stretched along Cemetery Ridge from 
 Gulp's Hill to Cemetery Hill, past Zeigler's 
 grove, the Clump of Trees, and up to Little 
 Round Top. 
 
 The Confederate lines extend from the 
 woods in front of Little Round Top, along 
 Seminary Ridge, through the town and 
 around to the front of Culp's Hill. Divi- 
 sions and corps have been arriving and 
 going into position on either side through- 
 out the night and all the day. The stage 
 at last is set. Lee and Meade are both on 
 the field. Little Round Top is the key to 
 the Federal position. Lee has determined 
 to possess it. Longstreet's divisions are 
 
 [27] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 ordered into action and the struggle for its 
 possession begins. Starting in the woods 
 in front of it, the fighting reaches Devil's 
 Den, spreads to the Peach Orchard; rolls 
 through the Wheatfield, and breaks at 
 last along the slope and upon the crest of 
 Little Round Top itself. 
 
 Hood is soon in hot contention. His 
 division sweeps out of the woods, up to 
 Devil's Den, around it and over it, fighting 
 among the bowlders, breaking the Federal 
 lines and pushing them to the foot of Little 
 Round Top, to be in turn hurled back to 
 Devil's Den. The fighting is tremendous. 
 Men and officers are stricken by hundreds. 
 Hood is wounded. Brook is disabled. 
 McLaws and Kershaw are involved. Both 
 are desperately engaged. A hundred can- 
 non join in the noise and slaughter. At 
 the Peach Orchard the battered Confeder- 
 ate line staggers, reels and is bent back. 
 
 [28] 
 
GETTYSBURG . 
 
 The Federals rush through its thinned 
 ranks. But the Confederates meet them 
 in a terrific counter-charge. The hues 
 coUide. They fight hke demons. The 
 slaughter is terrible. The Peach Orchard 
 is riddled, as the wave of battle rolls 
 through it on into the Wheatfield. Sickles 
 is frightfully maimed. Zook is killed. Back 
 and forth, across the Wheatfield, the red 
 tide ebbs and flows, amid a raking fire of 
 shell and canister. Anderson is wounded. 
 Swanson falls, expiring. Meade's horse is 
 shot from under him. Willard is dead. 
 The very air is quick with pain. The 
 valley, choked with war. The din is in- 
 cessant. The confusion, indescribable. 
 Wild, discordant sounds rend the air — the 
 rattle of rifles; the scream and crash of 
 bursting shells; the shouts of commanders; 
 the roar of cannon; the cheers and cries of 
 enraged and struggling divisions. Men 
 
 [29] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 run hither and yon; rush to and fro; come 
 in contact with one another, fight hke 
 maniacs, hand to hand; shout, struggle, 
 fall and die, shrieking with mortal agony. 
 Air, earth and sky, unite in one universal 
 wail of pain and despair. The Blue lines 
 are driven backward. Thousands struggle 
 with death. Some are sitting up, unable 
 to rise, sobbing convulsively. Others are 
 binding up their wounds as best they know. 
 Some are limping from the field. Others, 
 half prostrate, plead piteously for succor 
 that can not be given. And others are 
 prone upon the ground, cumbered with the 
 dead, trampled beneath the feet of the 
 living, bruised and broken by the iron rims 
 of hurrying batteries and the shod hoofs 
 of galloping horses. Biglow's battery has 
 remained too long. The Confederates fight 
 for its possession, hand to hand. The can- 
 noneers meet them with clubbed muskets 
 
 [30] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 and with hand-spikes. Twenty-eight out of 
 one hundred and four of the battery's men 
 are killed or wounded; and sixty -five out of 
 eighty-eight horses. Nearer and nearer the 
 Gray lines fight their way. Barksdale falls — 
 he 's dying. Half of Kershaw's brigade is 
 swept away, but the survivors do not halt. 
 They are out of the Wheatfield. They are 
 at the foot of Little Round Top again. 
 They climb its slopes, struggling up be- 
 tween rocks and trees. They mount it. 
 They grapple for its crest, fighting hand to 
 hand, in a frenzied struggle to possess it. 
 Vincent, Weed, and Hazzard go down one 
 after the other. The fury of the conflict 
 trebles. The apex of the crest is the point 
 of final, terrific, deadly strife. Men drop 
 in scores. Half their numbers fall, but the 
 Blue lines do not yield. They seem rooted 
 to the hill, as immovable as the bowlders 
 about them. The attacking ranks are 
 
 [31] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 shattered into fragments. The Gray hnes 
 waver, flesh and blood can not withstand 
 the strain. The tide recedes, followed by 
 a tempest of musketry and a concentrated 
 storm of shot and shell. The conflict at 
 last is over and twenty thousand men are 
 stretched upon the narrow field, wounded, 
 dying and dead — the work of less than five 
 frenzied hours! It is evening again. The 
 shadows thicken. The hills and valley 
 are still with death. 
 
 At the hour of sunset another scene in 
 the awful three-days' tragedy is being en- 
 acted a mile and a half away. The Con- 
 federates fight their way into the first line 
 of Federal intrenchments at Gulp's Hill, 
 and climb up the steep face of the slope at 
 Cemetery Hill under a withering Federal 
 fire. They break over the stone wall into 
 the Federal works on the brow of the hill 
 and reach the crQst, overrunning Rickett's 
 
 [32] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 batteries, bayoneting the cannoneers, fight- 
 ing among the guns. The conflict becomes a 
 melee, a personal encounter. Assailants and 
 defenders intermingle. They fight with pis- 
 tols, with bayonets, hand-spikes, rammers, 
 stones, and even fence-rails. Pender is dead. 
 Avery is killed. The dead and wounded lie in 
 piles about the batteries. Again the strain 
 becomes unendurable, too much for mortal 
 courage. The Gray lines weaken. They 
 are repulsed and driven headlong down the 
 slope, with terrific, sickening slaughter. 
 And then the night falls — "a night of bod- 
 ing silence fraught with terror." The moon 
 sweeps into the cloudless sky. The two 
 armies sink to rest, weak from the awful 
 hemorrhage of countless wounds. The dead 
 are left uncounted, the wounded unsuc- 
 cored. They lie among the batteries on 
 the crests of the hills; in the crevices of the 
 rocks at Devil's Den; amid the fallen, 
 
 [33] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 trampled wheat; beneath the trees in the 
 Peach Orchard, and amid the tangle of the 
 woods where Hood's division started the 
 conflict. The wounded and the dead! 
 More than twenty thousand! 
 
 [34] 
 
THIRD DAY 
 
 July 3, 1863 
 
GULP'S HILL 
 
With the dawn the conflict on the 
 Federal right is renewed and con- 
 tinued until eleven in the morning, 
 Geary and Ruger recover their 
 trenches after desperate fighting. 
 The losses again are heavy. Fif- 
 teen hundred dead and wounded 
 Confederates lie on the ground in 
 front of Geary^s hreast-ioorks alone. 
 The very trees are so scarred and 
 maimed by missiles that they die 
 of their wounds. 
 
THE CANNONADE 
 
It is one o'clock. The din and tumult of 
 the battle at Gulp's Hill has ceased. A 
 foreboding silence settles over the field, en- 
 veloping both armies — a pervasive, breath- 
 less, portentious stillness, so intense that 
 it almost wounds. The shuddering air is 
 sentient with dread. The whispering winds, 
 voluble with horror. All nature bodies 
 forth disaster. The sense of it is in and 
 upon everything. All are conscious that 
 a last and supreme effort to possess the crest 
 of Cemetery Ridge is about to be made. 
 All stand expectant. The drama trembles 
 to begin. Suddenly a single gun in the 
 Confederate center breaks the silence, fol- 
 lowed in quick succession by a second; two 
 rings of gray-white smoke circle upward 
 
 [43] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 into the pulsating air; and then the whole 
 Confederate front, two miles in extent, 
 bursts into flame. From the red mouths 
 of one hundred and fifty-eight cannon 
 leaps a bursting, withering tempest, strik- 
 ing the Federal lines like a death-ladened 
 blast from a mighty furnace. For fifteen 
 minutes the one-sided cannonade contin- 
 ues, volley succeeding volley in rapid and 
 unbroken succession. Then eighty Federal 
 guns make response, sending their death- 
 dealing answer from a line a mile in length, 
 across the valley and into the Confederate 
 batteries. 
 
 For an hour and a quarter two hundred 
 and thirty-eight cannon, massed within an 
 area of a single square mile, join in a storm 
 that crowds the air with flying missiles and 
 the hurtling fragments of exploding shells; 
 filling the valley with smoke and flame; 
 making the heavens tremble; shaking the 
 
 [ 44 ] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 solid hills and rocking the earth itself, as 
 though it were in the throes of an earth- 
 quake. 
 
 The guns vomit an avalanche of fire and 
 iron. The roar is deafening. The shock, 
 cataclysmal. The shells go hissing and 
 screaming from the bellowing throats of the 
 guns on either side. Some meet and burst 
 in mid-air between the lines, lighting the 
 clouds of dense, black smoke with lurid 
 snake-like flashes of flame. But enough 
 of them reach the ridges to make them un- 
 inhabitable. 
 
 The crests of both are seething volcanoes, 
 wrapped in flame and in lilac-colored smoke. 
 The ground is ploughed with shot, the slopes 
 seamed and gashed with metal. The monu- 
 ments in the cemetery are overthrown and 
 broken. Forest trees are shattered and 
 torn. Great oaks are stripped of their 
 boughs, and their trunks, riven and splin- 
 
 [45] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 tered, go crashing to the earth. Every hv- 
 ing thing is withered, as with a breath from 
 hell. 
 
 Along the center of the Federal lines the 
 Confederate shells do horrible execution — 
 bursting above the crouching troops and 
 among the batteries, the supply trains, 
 and the ambulances; dismantling guns, 
 shooting off their wheels, blowing up 
 limbers, and exploding caissons; breaking 
 up Meade's headquarters, wounding mem- 
 bers of his staff, sending a horde of camp 
 followers in terror to the rear; striking 
 down horses and killing men, and piling 
 all — carriages, horses, and men — in heaps 
 about the batteries. 
 
 At length the Federals gradually slacken 
 their fire as though their ammunition were 
 exhausted or their batteries disabled. This 
 action indicates to the Confederates an 
 expected and much-desired condition. Pick- 
 
 [46] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 ett's, Garnett's, and Pettigrew's divisions, 
 formed behind the wood in ranks for the 
 charge, have been waiting for it. It is 
 herald to the hour of fate. Destiny rides 
 into the valley, beckoning the gray, bellipo- 
 tent hosts to death and glory on the op- 
 posite crests. 
 
 [47] 
 
PICKETT'S CHARGE 
 
LoNGSTREET, Unable to speak the order, 
 nods assent to Pickett's inquiring plea. 
 Both understand the peril and the hazard 
 of a charge across the valley against the 
 grim, unyielding Federal lines, but both 
 are soldiers, familiar with death, accus- 
 tomed to obey. Instantly Pickett's pic- 
 turesque form straightens in the saddle; his 
 sword leaps from its scabbard, flashing 
 in the sunlight, and the daring, splendid 
 horseman gallops over the crest to the 
 head of his column, and leads his division 
 forward, followed by Garnett and Petti- 
 grew with their divisions — in all fifteen 
 thousand men. Formed with a front of 
 eighteen hundred feet, in columns three 
 lines deep, they advance with easy, swing- 
 
 [51] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 ing step toward the Clump of Trees in Han- 
 cock's line. Skirmishers spring forward 
 and deploy in the open field. The first 
 line advances with the precision of a parade, 
 beautiful in the perfectness of its order. 
 One hundred yards to the rear is the second 
 line, and back of that the third. Over the 
 crest of the hill, down the gentle slope and 
 across the undulating fields the majestic 
 columns sweep in solid march — banners 
 fluttering, swords flashing, bayonets gleam- 
 ing. Composed of the tried veterans of an 
 heroic army they present a front terrible 
 and irresistible — a spectacle impelling and 
 magnificent in its grandeur. An involun- 
 tary murmur of admiration runs along the 
 waiting Federal lines. As the columns 
 leave the hill the Confederate batteries 
 open with renewed vigor, flinging shells 
 over the heads of the advancing lines into 
 the Federal batteries beyond. Half the 
 
 [52] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 distance is covered in steady, rapid ad- 
 vance before the Federal fire becomes de- 
 structive. At first only single files are 
 cut, now and then, here and there, but as 
 they come within easy range the Federal 
 guns pour upon them a converging, con- 
 centrated tempest of shot and shell. The 
 batteries from the ridge rake them in front, 
 while those from Little Round Top take 
 them in the flank, enfilading their lines 
 with deadly effect. The gaps in their ranks 
 increase. Great openings are torn in them, 
 but are instantly filled from the rear. 
 Officers and men fall on every side. Yet 
 the columns hold their formation and sweep 
 on with a steady front. But their ad- 
 vance brings them within fatal range. An 
 avalanche of canister and shrapnel bursts 
 upon them with converging, cataclysmic 
 fury, from the entire Federal line, from 
 Cemetery Hill to Little Round Top. In- 
 
 [53] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 stantly the big gaps multiply. The living 
 press to the center to fill the open spaces 
 made by the dead. The lines shrink to 
 half their length. The right of the column 
 is torn into shreds. First a battalion and 
 then a whole brigade goes down. The 
 slaughter is awful. Whole lines are swept 
 away. The fearful missiles tear them to 
 fragments. All seem to have become food 
 for powder. A cloud of smoke and dust 
 envelops them like a cowl. Above the 
 cloud, into the clear air, fragments of 
 bodies, arms, legs, caps, and guns are 
 thrown as from a caldron. A moan of 
 anguish goes up from the stricken field, dis- 
 tinctly heard above the noise of the con- 
 flict. Suddenly a west wind lifts the cloud, 
 driving it from the field, and the whole 
 horrible, sickening scene is limned in the 
 sunlight : 
 
 The hot plain covered with the dead and 
 
 [54] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 the dying; maimed and torn fragments of 
 dead bodies, scattered promiscuously, where 
 only an instant before living hopeful men 
 marched and cheered; broken forms; pud- 
 dles of blood; horses and men lying singly 
 and in heaps; and over all the continuing 
 crash and roar of battle — a terrible, helpless 
 slaughter. 
 
 And yet the thinned and shortened 
 lines press on — on over intervening fences, 
 across pasture, cornfield, and swail and up 
 an incline toward the flame-wrapped lines 
 on the ridge near the Clump of Trees. 
 There the crippled batteries are being with- 
 drawn and additional ones put in. This 
 done, the artillery fire redoubles. Again 
 the columns are torn and shattered, and the 
 terrible, decimating slaughter is renewed. 
 Half a column disappears as if swept bodily 
 off the face of the earth, mown down — 
 annihilated. Whole ranks are torn out. 
 
 [55] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 Men stagger and fall. Some lie still upon 
 the ground. Others are writhing in agony 
 unspeakable, tearing up the grass with 
 stiffening fingers and gnawing the earth in 
 delirious frenzy. Field officers are con- 
 stantly falling. Whittle is dead. Garnett 
 is killed. Kemper, Pettigrew, and Trimble 
 are wounded. But the living rush on, 
 never stopping their grim advance, not 
 even halting. With ringing cheers they 
 break into double quick, moving on in 
 impetuous charge — an irresistible line of 
 flesh and steel. They are almost within 
 reach of the coveted crest — now only two 
 hundred yards away! Now one hundred! 
 Now only fifty! The Federal musketry 
 fire has been withheld, but now in an in- 
 stant eighteen thousand muskets are dis- 
 charged at point blank range, adding their 
 murderous fire to that of the artillery, and 
 leaving upon the ground a line of dead. 
 
 [56] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 The shattered first hne halts, dehvers a 
 fierce fire of musketry, and is swept away, 
 hterally melting beneath the concentrated 
 fire of canister, shrapnel, and musket balls, 
 poured upon it from the crest of the ridge. 
 But the survivors in the second line pass 
 over the dead bodies of their fallen com- 
 rades, not pausing to consider them or 
 even to bear away the wounded. Color- 
 bearers fall, but before the humbled ban- 
 ners touch the ground they are caught by 
 other hands and borne aloft again. Their 
 staffs are shot away. Their folds are torn 
 and riddled — burned at the cannons' very 
 mouths, but in their place caps are lifted 
 on the points of swords and bayonets to 
 guide the advancing storm. The intrepid 
 columns sweep up the declivity like a 
 cyclone, so close that the expression on the 
 faces of the men can be seen: Features, 
 hard and tense; lips, pale and drawn; white 
 
 [57] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 teeth, set in supreme resolution; eyes, 
 aflame with frenzied fury. 
 
 Through the tense air are heard little, 
 dull, strange sounds — the impact of lead 
 in human flesh; the thud of bullets, striking 
 the warm bodies of living men — splashing, 
 ripping, sickening sounds. 
 
 On the Federal side Hancock, Gibbon, 
 and Webb are wounded, but the defenders 
 of the ridge stand firm, redoubling their 
 efforts and pouring volley after volley into 
 the faces of their assailants. All that por- 
 tion of Pickett's division within the im- 
 mediate zone of fire melts and disappears. 
 A terrific crash of musketry is poured into 
 the right of Armistead's column, killing 
 and wounding hundreds, but the survivors, 
 unawed, hurry to the rear of Pickett's 
 center, and all rush upon the stone wall — 
 up to the cannons' red-lipped mouths, up 
 to the very muzzles of the flaming muskets. 
 
 [58] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 Their clothes are burned; their beards, 
 scorched by powder and exploding cart- 
 ridges, but there is neither stop nor pause. 
 They strike the crest and drive themselves 
 like a monstrous wedge into the Federal 
 line with an impact that shakes the very 
 hills! 
 
 [59] 
 
FINALE 
 
Unafraid of death for the moment they 
 possess everything — the stone wall., the 
 Clump of Trees, the smoking, heated bat- 
 teries. Armistead falls, mortally wounded^ 
 at the very wheels of the Federal guns. 
 On the other side Woodruff and Roelty 
 are dead. Gushing, wounded in both thighs 
 continues to fight his battery — fights it 
 after all his officers are killed or wounded, 
 with only men enough to man a single 
 section. Pushing his last gun to the fence 
 he fires it with his own hand, into the very 
 faces of his frenzied assailants, falling dead 
 at the moment of its discharge. Sheldon, 
 too, is severely w^ounded, and Milne, mor- 
 tally so. There they lie, wounded and 
 dead, among their broken guns! Carnage 
 
 [63] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 and death reign supreme. Scarcely a Con- 
 federate field officer is left. But there is 
 no pause in the wild, discordant conflict. 
 Officers use their pistols. Men club their 
 muskets, and batter and bruise one another. 
 Thrust of bayonet is answered by swing of 
 musket, and crush of flesh by spurt of 
 blood and brain. Other regiments rushing 
 to the broken point in the Federal line 
 swarm around the Confederates, unofficered 
 and undirected. The din is awful. Cries 
 and oaths mingle with the crack of pistols 
 and the rattle of rifles. Voices are drowned 
 in the uproar. Commands can not be 
 heard. Amid the chaos of the close- waged 
 struggle all formation is lost. Confederate 
 banners mingle with Federal flags. As- 
 sailants and defenders are one disorganized 
 mass. The point about the Clump of Trees 
 is crammed with men, firing into each 
 other's very faces; closing with one another 
 
 [64] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 in mad fury, hand to hand in mortal com- 
 bat; driving their reeking bayonets through 
 sphntering bones and the soft, warm tissues 
 of Hving bodies. All terror of death is lost. 
 Men fairly rush to meet it, grasp at it as 
 though it were a boon, catch it in their glad, 
 impatient arms, and hug it to their heaving 
 bosoms. Possessed by imbecile wrath, they 
 fight like demons; tear one another with 
 teeth and nails; claw and bite one another; 
 bleed and shout and expire; *' atoning with 
 their lives for the faults of others!" The 
 conflict culminates with fearful rapidity. 
 Time is measured by seconds. Men sink, 
 despairing, shrieking, frantic. Some of 
 them fall face downward, their mouths in 
 pools of blood, biting the ground in a frenzy 
 of pain and rage. For five awful minutes 
 the struggle continues. Then, their sup- 
 ports fallen or captured, the Confederates 
 turn and flee. The Federals gather in 
 
 [65] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 pursuit. Guns from every quarter are 
 turned upon them. The slaughter is fear- 
 ful. Scattered, retreating fragments, torn 
 and tossed and prostrated, reel down the 
 declivity and across the plain under the 
 fire of a hundred guns, where but a few 
 minutes before fifteen thousand proud and 
 powerful men marched and cheered — seem- 
 ingly an irresistible human tide. Not a 
 mounted oflacer is to be seen. All but two 
 have gone down. Both armies are fright- 
 fully hurt. Gibbon's division has lost half 
 its strength, and one Federal battery twen- 
 ty-seven men out of thirty-six. Forty- 
 two Confederates lie dead about the Clump 
 of Trees. The Second Mississippi has lost 
 more than half its numbers, and a Confed- 
 erate artillery battalion one hundred and 
 forty-four men and one hundred and six- 
 teen horses. Out of the five thousand in 
 Pickett's division who started with him for 
 
 [66] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 the Clump of Trees, fewer than twelve hun- 
 dred returned from the fatal crest. Two 
 thousand were killed and wounded in front 
 of it in thirty minutes. 
 
 [67] 
 
AFTER THE BATTLE 
 
The ghastly tragedy is ended. The colos- 
 sal, monstrous crime is finished. But we 
 have vet to see the wreck and ruin, the 
 anguish and the horror of the after-scene — 
 its aggregated woe, the sum of its despair. 
 Let us go down the shell-sw^ept slopes; 
 down to the shot-sown field, trampled by 
 hurrying hoof and rutted with hastening 
 wheel; down through the valley where 
 swept the hurricane; dow^n to the Peach 
 Orchard and into the Wheatfield. Down 
 to Devil's Den, and up the red hills, along 
 the ridges where the battle lines and bat- 
 teries were; up to Little Hound Top; up to 
 the Stone Wall; up to the Clump of Trees; 
 up to the Cemetery among the fallen, 
 broken monuments; through the woods 
 
 ] 71 ] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 about Spangler's Spring, and out to Oak 
 Hill, the crux of the first day's fight. 
 What a scene of devastation it all is: 
 
 Battered canteens and shot-torn knap- 
 sacks; splintered rifles, shattered muskets 
 and broken swords; wrecked artillery, dis- 
 mantled guns, disabled limbers, ruined 
 tumbrels, bursted caissons, and crippled 
 ambulances, scattered and piled in mixed 
 and intermingled heaps. 
 
 Every living thing is sickened and with- 
 ered. Vegetation droops. On the grass, 
 a crimson dew. In the wheel tracks, red 
 puddles. The earth is saturated with blood 
 — a mire and mush of dirt and brains, of 
 soil and gore, of powder-grimed, flesh- 
 kneaded clay. The air is heavy with the 
 odor of saltpeter, mingled with the scent 
 of human blood and the stench of decaying 
 corpses. In parts of the field — scenes of 
 the first and second days' battles — ^grave- 
 
 [72] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 worms are reveling in a feast of putrid, 
 dissolving flesh, and over there, among 
 the bowlders, vultures are holding ban- 
 quets. 
 
 Death is about us everywhere — myriad- 
 handed, appalling — supreme in its inevita- 
 bleness. The field is filled with corpses — 
 thousands of them, literally and actually 
 thousands. Here, scattered and isolated, 
 their uniforms powder-burned and splotched 
 with blood, and there, where the crux of 
 the battle waged, are actually rows and 
 heaps and hills and mounds of them. The 
 whole field is an abomination of slaughter, 
 a vast and hideous accumulation of maimed 
 bodies and of mangled, bleeding trunks, 
 decaying in the hot sunshine and covered 
 with swarms of flies. Some of them cut 
 in two; some headless, some disemboweled, 
 torn and broken with shot and shell and 
 shrapnel; stabbed with bayonets, hacked 
 
 [73] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 with sabers, hammered and bruised with 
 clubbed muskets. 
 
 The mutilations are monstrous; skulls 
 crushed, brains oozing and spilled; chests 
 mashed into pulp; thighs shattered, legs 
 broken, arms torn from their sockets; ar- 
 teries severed, veins slit; broken jaws; 
 bleeding, protruding tongues; noses gone, 
 lips bruised; eyes torn out, faces shot away; 
 legs, arms, feet, hands, and bodies cut into 
 fragments, ripped and torn into shreds. 
 Death can be seen in every form; the dead, 
 in every attitude. Some prone and stark; 
 some sitting upright, propped among the 
 fallen; some with up-turned, staring but 
 sightless eyes; some with grinning lips, 
 parted over set and glistening teeth, sig- 
 nificant with purpose. It seems to have 
 caught and stamped unalterably upon each 
 set countenance the emotion dominant at 
 the instant its message was received. On 
 
 [74 ] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 this one, energy and determination; on 
 that one, the resolution of despair; on 
 yonder one, the rapture of high resolve. 
 This one is white with horror; that one, 
 beautiful in its proud defiance. On this 
 one, terror indescribable; on that one, the 
 tranquillity of painless peace. Here, the 
 lips are parted in a smile. There, unutter- 
 able sadness has left its seal. One is in- 
 expressibly mournful; another, happy in 
 its calm repose. Here is a captain. In 
 his stiffening fingers, a woman's photograph, 
 spattered with blood; on his face, a look of 
 love and yearning tenderness. This is a 
 colonel. His numbed and stricken hand 
 still grasps his sword, unsheathed and bare. 
 Fallen from his bosom lies a Testament — 
 the gospel of the Prince of peace. 
 
 Here is a baby's likeness, smeared with 
 the blood of bruised and bleeding lips. 
 
 And here, a drummer-boy — a mere lad 
 
 [75] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 — fair, blue-eyed and dimple-cheeked. His 
 sweet and wistful face is strangely out of 
 place in such a scene. Death, if it had to 
 come to one so young and fair, should have 
 found him within parental portals, in the 
 arms of her who bore him, rather than here 
 amid the hellish sounds and scenes of such a 
 cataclysm as that in which he fell. And it 
 should have called with gentler summons 
 than the broken shell that tore this gaping 
 wound in his tender breast. 
 
 There are others, almost countless others. 
 The Blue and the Gray, mixed and inter- 
 mingled — men and officers — blouse and 
 shoulder-strap — cap and plumed chapeau. 
 All are equal here — leveled by the equality 
 of death. 
 
 To some death came swift and sudden 
 as a bullet's flight. A painless, convulsive 
 moment, and ail was over. But upon 
 others it crept with slow and torturing pace, 
 
 [76] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 reaching for their vitals and finding them 
 only after long delay; filling the intervening 
 hours with pain and struggle, with hope and 
 despair; making each an age of agony and 
 of thirst, of frenzy and delirium. 
 
 To others it has been so long in coming 
 that they are dying only now. Dying after 
 a night and a day of dreadful suffering, 
 conscious of life's ebbing tide, yet fighting 
 to live, and losing at last, through neglect 
 and want of succor. 
 
 Among the dead and the dying are the 
 wounded — more than thirty thousand — 
 not yet rescued. Some have lain prostrate 
 beneath the July sun since yesterday, crazed 
 with thirst and fever, pale and unconscious 
 from pain and loss of blood, and yet their 
 white lips move and moan. 
 
 In this pile of shell-torn human flesh and 
 mutilated dead, and in that confused heap 
 of twisted and bleeding trunks, are living, 
 
 [ 77 ] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 breathing men. Wounded and inextrica- 
 bly tangled amid the awful human debris, 
 they are unable to rise or even to cry out; 
 but their weak, white hands still move 
 convulsively in mute appeal. 
 
 Mingled v/ith the human dead and 
 wounded are dead and wounded horses, hun- 
 dreds upon hundreds of them. The dead, 
 piled amid the guns of the wrecked batteries 
 and among the fallen men, their swollen, 
 bulging carcasses befouling the air; the 
 wounded, limping across the field with 
 broken limbs, galloping riderless in terror, 
 or sinking in exhaustion. Some disem- 
 boweled, are making frantic efforts to rise, 
 entangling their feet in their own entrails; 
 their death-cries filling the va^lley with 
 trembling, shuddering horror. 
 
 Yonder is a field hospital, improvised 
 and crude. For three days it has been 
 crowded beyond all capacity with the vie- 
 
 [78] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 tims of the missile-swept field. Toward 
 it the wounded continue to make their en- 
 feebled, tottering way, and from ambulance 
 and stretcher, upon the ground about it, 
 the limp and crumpled forms of maimed 
 and pallied men are still being deposited. 
 The bruised and battered shadow^s are 
 everywhere. Some, walking about; some, 
 sitting; some, reclining; some, lying un- 
 conscious, stretched where they were laid. 
 Some are paralyzed, their backs broken, 
 their faces distorted with pain. In others 
 are grea.t gaping wounds emitting gushes 
 of blood at every respiration. There are 
 broken hands and severed fingers, hanging 
 by threads of skin; feet crushed into a mass 
 of jelly, and cloven skulls with the palpi- 
 tating brain beneath laid bare, and rows 
 of silent, ghastly dead. 
 
 Outside are piled fragments of flesh and 
 bone, heaps of amputated hands and feet 
 
 [79] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 and legs and arms — the bloodly offal from 
 the red tables within. 
 
 Inside are the nurses, the surgeons and 
 their assistants, all too few, many times 
 too few, for the task laid upon them. The 
 nurses, calm and gentle; the assistants, in- 
 telligent, comprehending and quick; the 
 surgeons, grim, impassive, imperturbable, 
 with nerves of steel and hearts of oak, and 
 souls knit of bravery's finest fiber. 
 
 There is no time for consultation, scarcely 
 for diagnosis. The need and the numbers 
 of the wounded are too great. A glance, an 
 inspection, quick and instant, and then 
 action, purposeful and decisive. The flash 
 of a knife, and the naked, quivering flesh 
 lies open; the faint rasp of a saw, and a 
 limb is severed. Joints are disarticulated 
 at a single stroke; arms taken off in three 
 motions of the hand. 
 
 Buckets of blood and fragments of flesh 
 
 [80] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 are caught and borne away and poured 
 upon the grass outside. The suffering is 
 direful and excruciating. The misery, ago- 
 nizing. The groans and moans are piti- 
 ful. With the cries of pain and delirium 
 are mingled the impatient wail of the wait- 
 ing and the death-rattle of the dying. The 
 hot, sultry air is heavy with the sweet and 
 insipid odor of chloroform. The smell of 
 blood is nauseating. The stench of gan- 
 grene and the fetor of putrid flesh are be- 
 yond endurance. The mephitic breath of 
 fever is upon everything. 
 
 In the Wheatfield, at Spangier's Spring, 
 and here and there, throughout the red, 
 stricken field, the living are beginning to 
 sepulcher the dead. Long, shallow trenches 
 are being digged just wide enough to re- 
 ceive the maimed and broken forms laid 
 crosswise in them. There are no burial 
 services, no prayers, no songs, no ceremonies 
 
 [81] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 of any kind, not even a requiem save the 
 sighing of the shuddering summer-wind. 
 The dead — more than ten thousand — are 
 too many. All is hurried haste. Whatever 
 is done must be done quickly. The bodies 
 of comrades — those who for three awful 
 years have shared the privations and the 
 dangers of civil war, messmates, and even 
 bunkmates — are gathered by the survivors 
 and laid in the trenches with the others, 
 in long rows, side by side, face upward. A 
 blanket or a blouse is thrown over the 
 crumpled forms to keep the clods from im- 
 mediate contact with their faces, and the 
 loose soil is hurriedly thrown in upon them, 
 making a covering so thin that the rain of 
 the morrow will melt it away in many 
 places, leaving exposed protruding feet 
 and extended hands, and in some instances 
 the decaying trunks themselves. There 
 are no outward expressions of grief. No 
 
 [82] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 lamentations, no tears. The sensibilities 
 of the tenderest have been hardened into 
 adamant by the frequency with which they 
 have faced like experiences on other fields 
 — Malvern Hill, Antietam, Fredericksburg, 
 Chancellors ville. 
 
 Whenever known the name by which 
 each was known in life, and the organiza- 
 tion in which he served, is marked upon a 
 thin board stuck in the ground at the head. 
 But frequently a body is found mangled 
 beyond recognition, stripped of everything 
 tending to its identification. It is laid 
 among the others, and upon the rough 
 board at its head is scrawled a single 
 word — the only tribute posterity will ever 
 pay to him who tenanted it — the simple 
 word, "Unknown." When he fell he sur- 
 rendered not only his life, but his identity 
 forever, giving his all, even his name, as 
 an atonement for another's sin. 
 
 [83] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 The details of the vast and grewsome 
 spectacle are repeated and multiplied until 
 the heart grows sick and the awed soul 
 shrinks in terror. The whole enormity of 
 the monstrous three-days' deed wrought 
 in this valley and among these hills will 
 never be known. It is beyond mortal 
 concept. Pen and pencil fail. Speech is 
 inadequate. The tongue, dumb and help- 
 less. Language can not portray or im- 
 agination body forth the awful whole. 
 
 We turn from the fratricidal field — the 
 adjective here is aptly used, for the field is 
 a fratricidal one in very truth. They who 
 struggled here were children of a common 
 ancestry, of one blood and of one country, 
 speaking one language, loving freedom and 
 cherishing liberty for themselves and their 
 posterity, and coming not infrequently 
 from one community and sometimes from 
 one home. It is the irrefutableness of this 
 
 [84] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 fact that adds so tremendously to the 
 pathos and the mournfuhiess of the awful 
 scene — we turn from the fratricidal field 
 with a feeling of awe, of reverence, and of 
 admiration — awe for the dead lying out 
 there, reverence for the wounded, and ad- 
 miration for the living — for their courage 
 and their chivalry. 
 
 We are conscious, too, that out of the bap- 
 tism of fire and blood and the holocaust 
 of carnage and of woe the Union is rising, 
 rising undismembered and unbroken, sub- 
 lime in the unity of its forging purpose, 
 glorious with the splendor of future en- 
 deavor, and luminous with achievement. 
 Through the smoke and the clouds we see 
 the breaking light of a better, nobler day 
 than the Nation yet has known — a day of 
 asperities forgotten, of wrongs forgiven, of 
 a people reconciled. 
 
 All this we see and are conscious of as 
 
 [85] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 we leave the valley and climb the hills, but 
 down in our heart of hearts and soul of 
 souls we know that Gettysburg ought 
 never to have been. That what took place 
 down there was a colossal, monstrous 
 crime. That back of it all some one had 
 blundered. That the conditions that seem- 
 ingly made it necessary might have been 
 different — so different that it, itself, could 
 have been avoided. That in spite of the 
 valor and the consecration poured upon its 
 sacrificial altars, it will forever remain a 
 stain upon our history, an indictment 
 against the civilization of the age. 
 
 [86] 
 
REQUIESCAT 
 
Fold up the banners! Smelt the 
 
 guns! 
 Love rules. Her gentler purpose 
 runs. 
 A mighty mother turns in tears 
 The pages of her battle years. 
 Lamenting all her fallen sons. 
 
 — Will H, Thompson, 
 
BATTLE INTENSIFIED 
 
All that, and more than that, was Gettys- 
 burg — fought fifty years ago. Since then 
 conditions have changed tremendously, 
 more, in fact, than in the preceding three 
 hundred years. A pitched battle between 
 two or more great nations now would be 
 vastly greater both in the numbers engaged 
 and in the magnitude of the spectacle pre- 
 sented. The fatalities would be incom- 
 parably larger; the horrors, many times 
 intensified. Indeed, it is impossible to 
 estimate the extent of the change or the in- 
 crease of the casualties. The augmented 
 power of explosives, the multiplied velocity 
 of missiles, the enlarged caliber and in- 
 creased range of guns, the greater accuracy 
 and rapidity of fire, smokeless and noiseless 
 
 [93] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 powder, and the partial mastery of the air, 
 all tend to augment immeasurably the 
 losses and the disasters of battle. 
 
 Arms, ammunition, and the mechanisms 
 of slaughter have been so improved that 
 war between powerful nations now would 
 be simple annihilation. 
 
 The modern rifle kills at two miles. It 
 repeats its fire many times with almost in- 
 stantaneous rapidity. Bullets speed from 
 its muzzle in a stream, on approximately 
 straight lines, striking all they meet, with 
 a velocity that would carry them through 
 successive files of soldiers. 
 
 When Gettysburg was fought, only eighty 
 to one hundred rounds of ammunition 
 could be carried into action. Now, five 
 hundred and seventy-five rounds can be 
 carried. Musketry fire is forty times more 
 effective. 
 
 Cannon have reached a hitherto impos- 
 
 [94 ] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 sible caliber — ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, 
 and even seventeen inches — delivering 
 shells equipped with time fuses as perfect 
 and reliable as clock-work, and weighing 
 from a thousand to two thousand four 
 hundred pounds, a distance of from nine to 
 twenty-one miles. 
 
 Field artillery is effective at three and a 
 half miles. Range-finders give the range 
 with precision up to four miles, in three 
 minutes. Batteries are operated from de- 
 pressions behind hills instead of from their 
 crests as formerly, dropping their shells 
 upon the point desired with unbelievable 
 accuracy. Artillery as a whole is one hun- 
 dred and sixteen times more powerful and 
 effective than the Federal guns at Gettys- 
 burg, and many times more numerous. In- 
 stead of two hundred and thirty-eight guns 
 in action as at Gettysburg, there would now 
 be two thousand. There were more than 
 
 [95] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 one thousand in action at Sedan, even in 
 1871. The Prussians alone are said to have 
 had eight hundred. 
 
 Machine guns, not then invented, are now 
 capable of such rapid fire as to be able to 
 '^sprinkle the field with shot as roads are 
 sprinkled with water,'' operating with a 
 spiteful, sickening sound not unlike that 
 of an automatic riveter in a boiler factory. 
 
 The improvement in ammunition is 
 equally wonderful. Shells are composed 
 of explosives of terrific and deadly power — 
 dynamite, cordite, exrasite, melinite, motor- 
 ite, indurite, roburite, and peroxilene. 
 
 The shells used in the Federal guns at 
 Gettysburg on explosion burst into nine- 
 teen to thirty pieces; modern shells, into 
 two hundred and forty. Shrapnel then 
 burst into thirty to forty death-dealing 
 missiles; now, into three hundred and forty. 
 A bomb then burst into forty fragments; 
 
 [96] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 now, if charged with peroxilene, it bursts 
 into one thousand two hundred. 
 
 The storing, transporting, and use of 
 such explosives, under fire, are subject to 
 frightful hazard; their very presence being 
 a continuing and horrible peril. 
 
 Here is Jean de Bloch's picture of the 
 effect of a modern shell: 
 
 "A single explosion among the ammuni- 
 tion wagons of a battery would make 
 splintered chaos of everything — guns, wag- 
 ons, horses, and men — a storm of wood 
 and soil and iron, of cannon barrels and 
 wagon wheels, of torn carcasses, of mangled 
 flesh, blood, and brains — hopeless, hideous 
 confusion, destruction indescribable." 
 
 The rapidity and accuracy of fire — 
 musketry and artillery — are now phenom- 
 enal. As many projectiles could be fired 
 in the course of a few minutes as were 
 formerly fired during a whole battle; the 
 
 [97] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 best guns being capable of eighty-three 
 shots in three minutes. The work of a 
 single hour would now exceed, in quantity 
 of ammunition and weight of metal de- 
 livered, that thrown in the whole three 
 days at Gettysburg. 
 
 The effect of all this is to establish in 
 front of a line of battle an impassable zone 
 of fire, an area of extermination, of at least 
 a thousand yards in width, into and upon 
 which bullets would fall in handsful — a 
 storm of lead and iron constant as hail 
 and swift as lightning — an area within 
 which no living being could stand; and to 
 fall within it would be to die. The wounded 
 could not be removed. A charge across it 
 like that made by Pickett at Gettysburg 
 would be a physical impossibility. His 
 divisions would be utterly and completely 
 destroyed. Not a fragment of them would 
 survive. 
 
 [98] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 Brief but impressive corroboration of 
 this fact is found in a press dispatch from 
 Hankow, China, under date of October 
 31, 1911: "Of a rebel battahon which faced 
 the imperiahst machine guns with intrepid 
 tenacity, only two or three escaped. The 
 others were mowed down as grass before a 
 scythe." 
 
 There is yet another fact that would add 
 tremendously to the fatality and the terror 
 of a modern battle — the use of smokeless 
 and noiseless powder. The screen of smoke 
 would be removed from the field. Battle 
 would be made in the unclouded light. Its 
 terrible consequences would be visible to 
 all, with nothing to indicate from whence 
 the death-messages came. Marksmen con- 
 cealed at a distance of a thousand yards 
 would pick men off at will. Their fire 
 would be deadly. Every shot would claim 
 its victim. Neither smoke nor sound would 
 
 [99] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 betray their position. Men would fall, 
 killed and wounded, dropping in their 
 tracks where they stood, without visible 
 or audible cause — simply fall and die. 
 The soldier would not see or hear the cause 
 that deprived his comrades of life. He 
 would only see them fall and die, as though 
 stricken by an unseen, noiseless hand; by 
 a voiceless, invisible bolt from the blue, 
 or by the breath of the Almighty. 
 
 Battle under such conditions would be 
 terrible in its weirdness, unexampled in 
 its horror. The strain on the nerve and 
 morale of the men would be all but un- 
 endurable. Casualties would be trebled. 
 Among the officers they would be so great 
 as to destroy all command and direction, 
 leaving whole divisions unofficered. x\nd 
 an army unofficered under such conditions 
 would become a helpless mob, its doom a 
 certainty — utter and complete annihilation. 
 
 [100] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 Compared to battle between powerful 
 nations under modern conditions, Gettys- 
 burg, with all its fatalities and its horrors, 
 was but a skirmish — a battle in miniature. 
 
 [ 101 ] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
*' Fourscore and seven years ago our 
 fathers brought forth on this continent a 
 new nation, conceived in Hberty, and dedi- 
 cated to the proposition that all men are 
 created equal. Now we are engaged in a 
 great civil war, testing whether that nation, 
 or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, 
 can long endure. We are met on a great 
 battlefield of that war. We have come to 
 dedicate a portion of that field, as a final 
 resting-place for those who here gave their 
 lives that that nation might live. It is 
 altogether fitting and proper that we should 
 do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not 
 dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can 
 not hollow — this ground. The brave men, 
 living and dead, who struggled here, have 
 
 [ 105 ] 
 
GETTYSBURG 
 
 consecrated it, far above our poor power 
 to add or detract. The world will little 
 note, nor long remember, what we say here, 
 but it can never forget what they did here. 
 It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated 
 here to the unfinished work which they 
 who fought here have thus far so nobly ad- 
 vanced. It is rather for us to be here 
 dedicated to the great task remaining be- 
 fore us — that from these honored dead we 
 take increased devotion to that cause for 
 which they gave the last full measure of 
 devotion — that we here highly resolve that 
 these dead shall not have died in vain — 
 that this nation, under God, shall have a 
 new^ birth of freedom — and that govern- 
 ment of the people, by the people, for the 
 people, shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 [106] 
 

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