Hallowed Ground - James M. McPherson [0]
Land's End, by Michael Cunningham
After the Dance, by Edwidge Danticat
City of the Soul, by William Murray
Washington Schlepped Here, by Christopher Buckley
ALSO BY JAMES M. MCPHERSON
Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution
Battle Chronicles of the Civil War
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (Pivotal Moments in American History)
Days of Destiny: Crossroads in American History
Drawn with the Sword: Reflections of the American Civil War
Fields of Fury: The American Civil War
For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War
Gettysburg: The Paintings of Mort Kunstler
Is Blood Thicker Than Water? Crises of Nationalism in the Modern World
Lamson of the Gettysburg: The Civil War Letters of Lieutenant Roswell H. Lamson, U. S. Navy
Marching Toward Freedom: Blacks in the Civil War 1861-1865
The Negro's Civil War: How American Blacks Felt and Acted During the War for the Union
Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction
The Abolitionist Legacy
The American Heritage New History of the Civil War
The Struggle for Equality
To the Best of My Ability: The American Presidents
We Cannot Escape History: Lincoln and the Last Best Hope of Earth
What They Foughtfor 1861-1865
Writing the Civil War: The Quest to Understand
To James McPherson Long
May he too befriend
Mr. Lincoln
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
MAP FOR JULY I
Day One: July i, 4 863
MAP FOR JULY 2
Day Two: July 2, 1863
MAP FOR JULY 3
Day Three: July 3, 1863
EPILOGUE
PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIER'S CEMETERY IN GETTYSBURG, NOVEMBER 19, 1863
PROLOGUE
IN HIS ADDRESS at the dedication of the cemetery for Union soldiers killed in the battle of Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln acknowledged that “in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our power to add or detract.”
More than any other place in the United States, this battlefield is indeed hallowed ground. Perhaps no word in the American language has greater historical resonance than Gettysburg. For some people Lexington and Concord, or Bunker Hill, or Yorktown, or Omaha Beach would be close rivals. But more Americans visit Gettysburg each year than any of these other battlefields—perhaps than all of them combined.
And Gettysburg resonates far beyond these shores. At least sixty thousand foreigners are among the nearly two million annual visitors to the battlefield. In 1851 the British historian Sir Edward Creasy wrote a famous book titled Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. The last of the fifteen was Waterloo, fought in 1815. After the American Civil War, Creasy published a new edition with a sixteenth decisive battle—Gettysburg.
During the bicentennial commemorations of the American Revolution in 1976, a delegation of historians from the Soviet Union visited the United States as a goodwill gesture, to take part in these events. A colleague of mine on the history faculty at Princeton University was one of their hosts. When they arrived, he asked them which historic sites they wanted to visit first—perhaps Independence Hall in Philadelphia, or maybe Williamsburg and Yorktown in Virginia, or Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. But their answer was none of these. They wanted to go first to Gettysburg.
Why Gettysburg? asked my astonished colleague. It had nothing to do with the American Revolution. To the contrary, replied the Russians; it had everything to do with the Revolution. In Lincoln's words, it ensured that the nation founded in 1776 would not “perish from the earth.” These Soviet historians may have been more familiar with Lincoln's Gettysburg Address than was my colleague. They knew that the famous opening words of that address—”Four score and seven years ago”—referred to the founding of the United States in 1776, and that Gettysburg was the battlefield