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The Union and Confederate soldiers who moved south from Gettysburg in July 1863 left behind thousands of fallen comrades, a devastated Pennsylvania landscape, and the basis for one of our most powerful patriotic legends. Almost at once the battle was recognized not merely as a crucial Union victory but also as an event with broader cultural significance. In its bloody way the engagement clearly seemed to have enhanced America's position in the wider sweep of Western experience. “Waterloo Eclipsed!!” announced a headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer three days after the fighting ended. On the same day, a New York Times correspondent, whose eldest son had been mortally wounded at Gettysburg, assured his readers that “there never was better fighting since Thermopylae.” In the years that followed, such comparisons—which contributed to national self-importance—were often repeated, as Americans demonstrated an almost insatiable interest in the three-day struggle and in Abraham Lincoln's two-minute address at the consecration of the Soldiers' National Cemetery. |
