The Gettysburg Compiler

Realization: Reflections on the 150th

Though my own musings have led me to doubt the traditional interpretation of the Battle of Gettysburg’s military importance, I still hold Gettysburg to be the greatest battle of the American Civil War, without question worthy and deserving of continued study. In order to reconcile these two points of view I pondered further, attempting to unearth other, less-thought-of reasons for the importance of the Battle of Gettysburg to the course of the American Civil War.

Again my thoughts turned to the summer I spent at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. As one of my duty stations that summer had been Spotsylvania Court House, the second battle in Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign, I had gained much experience explaining the concepts of this crucial campaign. The most famous aspect of Grant’s series of south-east movements in the spring and summer of 1864 is, of course, his unswerving determination to keep moving towards Richmond, no matter the cost. Grant’s fearless use of the North’s superior manpower and industrial capacity to defeat the waning strength of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia has become legendary in American history. Yet mention of this war of attrition in the American Civil War only truly begins to rear its head in the context of ending the war with the opening of the Overland Campaign. Though Grant and his generals may have been the first to integrate attrition into their strategies, the attrition of Southern armies began almost as soon as the war started. Though victorious at nearly every battle, Robert E. Lee continually lost a higher percentage of his men than did his opponents, and it is this idea of Confederate losses that brings me back to Gettysburg. It is estimated that, out of a total of approximately 70,000 effective soldiers at the start of the campaign, Lee’s army suffered a total of around 23,000 casualties, fully 33% of its force. Among those casualties lurks a second, even more devastating fact. This same percentage of losses was reflected in the Army of Northern Virginia’s officer corps, with at least a third of them becoming casualties over the course of those three days in July, 1863. In an army which has, rightly or wrongly, time and again been lauded for its superior leadership, the loss of so much of that leadership can only have been devastating to the continued performance of the army. In light of these figures, could it not be better to think of Gettysburg as one of the greatest disasters for Southern arms not because of the defeat itself, but due to the cost of any battle so bloody, be it a victory or a defeat?

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Examination: Reflections on the 150th

By Bryan Caswell ’15

Gettysburg, the first three days of July, 1863. An epic clash of titans sways back and forth across the fields and hills of this small Pennsylvania town. The two armies who fought here left in their wake over fifty thousand men broken in three days of combat, and the significance of their actions to the course of the American Civil War has rarely been doubted. The Union’s victory at Gettysburg put a halt to Robert E. Lee’s second invasion of the North, an invasion that could have broken the Northern civilians’ will to continue prosecuting the war. The crushing repulse of the Confederate charge on July 3 shattered the myth of Confederate invincibility, delivering the first major Union victory in the Eastern Theater. This battle has widely been heralded as THE turning point of the American Civil War, the battle that permanently ended Confederate hopes of victory and set the Union on the road to victory. My experiences of the battle’s sesquicentennial commemoration and of a summer spent working at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park inspired me to look deeper, however, and upon closer inspection, cracks began to show in this traditional view of Gettysburg’s paramount importance. Continue reading “Examination: Reflections on the 150th”

Commemoration: Reflections on the 150th

By Bryan Caswell ’15

There is nothing quite like residing in the town of Gettysburg during the years leading up to the sesquicentennial of the great battle fought here in 1863. As a devoted student of that great internecine conflict known as the American Civil War, I had applied to Gettysburg College in 2011 with the full knowledge of what was to come only two short years in the future, and could not have been more excited for it.

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A Timeless Charge: The Gettysburg Address from 1863 to 2013

By Avery C. Lentz ’14

For as long as I can remember, one of the most recognizable and famous speeches I ever learned about was the Gettysburg Address. The image of Lincoln I have had since grade school is one of a great emancipator who cared deeply about freeing the slaves. As I have grown older and read many different works from many different authors, this image of Lincoln has transformed. However, when reading the words of the Gettysburg Address, you can see that by November 1863, Lincoln truly believed that the American Civil War was a war then waged for freedom and not just reunion. Being at the Soldier’s National Cemetery on the cold, blustery morning of November 19, 2013, I almost couldn’t fathom that 150 years earlier, Abraham Lincoln was on Cemetery Hill too, speaking his immortal words. He was not only asking for the nation to keep fighting, but invoking the idea that there was still work to be done for the future generations to create the nation that the forefathers had envisioned. Continue reading “A Timeless Charge: The Gettysburg Address from 1863 to 2013”

“Home Again:” The Contrasting Experiences of Richard D. Dunphy and Lewis A. Horton

By Sarah Johnson ’15 and Kevin Lavery ’16

Union veterans returning home from the war in 1865 faced a myriad of experiences and reacted to the return to civilian life in a variety of ways. Richard D. Dunphy and Lewis A. Horton, both double-arm amputee veterans of the Navy, ably demonstrate the differences in experience and reaction to the war and life afterwards.

It is estimated that about 45,000 men survived amputations, causing the first widespread demand for artificial limbs in American History. The post-war period saw the first government subsidized limbs for qualifying soldiers. Experiences with these early models of artificial limb varied, however.

Kevin: Although Dunphy reported that one model of prosthetic arm allowed him to write and eat without assistance, he did not frequently use them later in life. His wife lamented this fact, saying that instead he was content allowing strangers to transact his business for him. In another deposition, an acquaintance describes how Dunphy could “take up a glass of soda off the counter between his teeth and hold his head up and drink it down,” depicting how he had adapted to his disability.

Sarah: Horton tried to use prosthetic arms, but found them to be “tiresome, of no use.” Noting that he had no control over his six-inch stumps, it makes sense that he would not like prosthetic arms if he could not manipulate them. Horton rehabilitated in a different way, learning to write with the pen in his mouth and re-teaching himself how to sail his beloved yacht. Continue reading ““Home Again:” The Contrasting Experiences of Richard D. Dunphy and Lewis A. Horton”

An Evening with David Blight

By Sarah Johnson ’15

Monday evening, November 18, students from Gettysburg College got to sit down and discuss memory with Dr. David Blight from Yale University, author of the renowned work Race and Reunion. The session was conducted as an informal panel with Dr. Blight and Gettysburg College’s own Dr. Isherwood and Dr. Jordan. Dr. Blight spoke about beginning his work when memory studies was not an official field and stumbling his way headlong into working with the memory of the American Civil War. When discussing whether or not memory studies were a fad that would pass away, Blight reassured the audience that people have doing memory studies long before there was an official field. Memory is essential to who we are as human beings and all peoples and all nations construct their past in a way that is useable to their future.

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Richard D. Dunphy: To Him, a War Goes On

By Kevin Lavery, ’16

Although I have so far treated Richard Dunphy as a man who achieved heroism through valor and suffered greatly for it, there is another side to his character that I have not yet explored. In 1899, his wife, Catherine, accused Richard of being too irresponsible to handle his own pension money. Furthermore, she accused him of abusing his family and failing to pay his bills. To resolve this conflict, the Bureau of Pensions sent Special Examiner E. G. Hursh to Vallejo to investigate. He collected about a dozen depositions in order to evaluate the validity of these claims. Richard Dunphy may have overcome this adversity – as I wrote in my first piece about him – but the question remains of whether he should have been allowed to, given the evidence against him.

Did Richard fail to pay his debts?

Catherine explains that “as a rule he pays his saloon bills first, leaving his grocery and other family bills unpaid for some future time.” The other depositions confirm this fact, although Hursh believes it to be exaggerated considering how nice a home he owned, “even with the luxury of a piano.” A review of the investigation after Richard’s death, however, indicates that the house was overvalued and “must have been made while either drunk or otherwise irresponsible.” Continue reading “Richard D. Dunphy: To Him, a War Goes On”

Richard D. Dunphy: Under the Knife

By Kevin Lavery ’16

Within four hours of Richard Dunphy’s grievous wounding at the Battle of Mobile Bay, both of his arms had been amputated. In a medical survey, he described the “extraordinary pain” that lasted “for about three weeks.” There was “a great quantity of pus, and twelve pieces of bone or splinters came out” from the wound for months after the surgery. Though the pain was great, it faded in time. The psychological and social effects of the operation, however, never went away.

Despite the traditional perception of Civil War surgeons as poorly trained butchers whose first instinct was to hack off any wounded limb, the truth is far more complicated. Trammel reminds us that although “these surgeries [were] rushed [and] many doctors were ill-prepared to perform them . . . Union statistics confirmed that immediate surgery resulted in higher survival rates” because it precluded deadly infections. The wounds being amputated were serious. Rusty shrapnel and poor sanitary conditions inevitably led to infections that could not at that time be treated with more subtle means. Even though surgery during this era was by no means sanitary, it was still safer than letting a wound fester. Amputation saved lives, though in the process, sometimes destroyed them later on.

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Gettysburg’s Dramatic Memory

By Emma Murphy ’15

I was excited to see the first experimental showing of the documentary Hallowed Ground on Thursday, November 14th. The movie focused on many main characters and included the history of a few physical sites. The first character, a Lincoln impersonator, held a deep passion for the time period and the 16th president which kept him going even through economic hardship. His story is symbolic of the difficulties between rivaling definitions of the Civil War.

A large portion of the film included a father-son story of southern Lost Cause sentiment and old time, white supremacist race relations. To offset the radical nature of these Sons of Confederate Veterans, Hallowed Ground featured the narrative of a battlefield guide who argued that the Civil War started over the issue of slavery. These two stories exemplified the constant battle between people who have a connection to the Civil War, whether through ancestors or just auxiliary obsessions.

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Ambivalent about Tragedy: David Blight on Bruce Catton

By Brianna Kirk ’15

November 19, 2013, marked a momentous day in the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg – the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The 272 worded speech given four months after the Battle of Gettysburg assigned meaning to the intense fighting and death that had besieged the nation for two years. With the war’s end nowhere in sight, Lincoln directed the American people on how to fathom the tragedy that surrounded them, both figuratively and literally, at the dedication of the National Cemetery in 1863. 150 years after this speech, thousands gathered to celebrate and commemorate those few appropriate remarks Lincoln made at a time when the nation’s future was tragically uncertain.

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