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"Historian Garry Adelman describes the events that took place during the Battle of Gettysburg from July 1-July 3, 1863." I found this video very well done in just 4 minutes. Gave me a good start to understanding this complex battle and also something to think about on this day of Pickett's Charge. I don't know how many of you here are well versed with the way the battle went but for me it's still a learning experience.

Late in the afternoon of July 2, 1863, on a boulder-strewn hillside in southern Pennsylvania, Union Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain dashed headlong into history, leading his 20th Maine Regiment in perhaps the most famous counterattack of the Civil War.

GETTYSBURG, PA (WHTM/CNN) - Tensions ran high during a Confederate flag rally in Pennsylvania this weekend. A Southern heritage group held what it calls Confederate Flag Day in Gettysburg, PA, but there were plenty of vocal opponents to the event. The flag has 13 stars, three stripes and two very different meanings. The refrain is familiar. Supporters such Mark Landree, executive director of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, says it's about history. Opponents like Christina Hansen only see hate.

Supporters and opponents of use of the Confederate flag clashed verbally in opposing demonstrations at Gettysburg National Military Park, with tensions high at times. [...] The Sons of Confederate Veterans Gettysburg group said its Confederate Flag Day gathering at the park's Eternal Peace Light Monument was intended to honor Southern ancestors. A counter-demonstration was organized by a Gettysburg College associate professor of history and Africana studies, Scott Hancock, who said he wanted to offer a different perspective on the flag's meaning. ...

Video at link

The National Park Service Wednesday asked groups operating gift shops at national Civil War battlefields and monuments to pull the Confederate flag and items featuring only the flag — mugs, key chains, T-shirts — from store shelves, said Kathy Kupper, a National Park Service spokeswoman. The Gettysburg Foundation, which runs the gift shop and book store at the Gettysburg National Military Park visitor Museum and Visitor Center does not plan to pull its Confederate flag items.

Would the Civil Rights movement have taken place if Abraham Lincoln survived the assassin’s bullet by John Wilkes Booth? Allen Guelzo, a civil war era professor at Gettysburg College, posed this question in a recent lecture at Hillsdale’s Kirby Center. Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, failed to bring the Union together after the end of the Civil War and “barely survived impeachment” from his own Republican Party. Guelzo wondered, “Could Lincoln have found…some practical system” to reconcile the South and North when the war ended. Lincoln had already tried at least one Reconstruction proposal in 1863, which was “bitterly criticized” by...

By March 1865, it was obvious to all but the most die-hard Confederates that the South was going to lose the war. Whether that loss was inevitable is an unanswerable question, but considering various “what if” scenarios has long been a popular exercise among historians, novelists and Civil War buffs... Perhaps the most common scenario centers on the actions of Gen. Robert E. Lee... What many fail to recognize is that Northerners were just as committed to winning as the Southerners. Some saw it as a war to free the slaves, while others fought to ensure that their republican form...

elma: After ignoring the battle that ended slavery under the first Republican president, President Obama at the 50th anniversary of Democrats' blocking the Selma bridge says, "We're the slaves that built the White House." The parts of American history that this president chooses to commemorate and what he says about them speaks volumes about his view of America and American history. His America is not only unexceptional, it is perpetually and deeply racist, an overbearing world bully with no right to lecture the world about morality, democracy or freedom. He reminded us over the weekend that despite any progress since...

A skull that was thought to have belonged to a Civil War soldier killed at Gettysburg is actually more than 700 years old and from the Southwest, say experts. The National Park Service has revealed that forensic anthropologists determined that the skull is from the late 1200s and belonged to a Native American man in his early-to-mid 20s. That's nearly 300 years before Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World and 400 years before the first settlement of English in the United States. The company that nearly auctioned the skull last year said notarized documents had showed it was discovered...

The Gettysburg Address November 19, 1863 Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated 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...

First Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing was bleeding profusely from wounds to his abdomen and shoulder as thousands of Confederate infantrymen advanced on his artillery battery in the Battle of Gettysburg. At least one of his soldiers begged him to seek medical treatment, but he refused. He stayed on the battlefield another 90 minutes while under attack, ordering his men to keep firing their three-inch cannons right up until the moment that he was killed with a gunshot to the head. The Union Army’s ability to stop that assault by at least 13,000 soldiers — known as Pickett’s Charge, after a...

On November 19, 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, President Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg Address, arguably the most famous speech in history.On November 19, 2013, the first black President of the United States blew off the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. This from a President who has repeatedly claimed he had much in common with President Lincoln.The White House spin zone worked frantically on some kind of an acceptable excuse for the snub but the truth is pretty obvious, President Obama would be smart to avoid any side-by-side comparison to President Lincoln. These two men don’t have subtle differences; they...

The White House released a letter Tuesday handwritten by President Obama .....< snip > OBAMA'S LETTER COMMEMORATING LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS In the evening, when Michelle and the girls have gone to bed, I sometimes walk down the hall to a room Abraham Lincoln used as his office. It contains an original copy of the Gettysburg Address, written in Lincoln's own hand. I linger on these few words that have helped define our American experiment: "a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Through the lines of weariness etched in his face,...

This is a remarkable display, even though it is a promo for Mr. Burns special. I however choose to point out one little distinction. If you visit the site you will be able to watch 63 plus people deliver the address. All of them delivered it as delivered by President Lincoln but for one. Those who did are named below, after them is the one who left out two words...under God Randi Weingarten - American Federation of Teachers Debbi Wasserman Schultz - Chair of the DNC Richard Trumpka - President AFL-CIO Nina Totenberg - Journalist Uma Thurman - Actress U.S....

Today is the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s delivery of the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln’s words helped heal our wounded nation. Lincoln predicted, “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,” and he was right. The trajectory of the war and the nation itself course-corrected back to the republic our founding documents envisioned – a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” We are still that nation! Thank you sincerely to the beautiful people we’ve met on this book tour so far. They embody all the best of this great...

......."Today, to mark the anniversary, Twitter is arguing about why President Obama didn't say the words "under God" in his videotaped recitation of the speech. God bless America."......

Ted Cruz isn’t opting out of the Gettysburg anniversary like some presidents we know. Instead, he created this tribute:

It is hard to know whether to be outraged or grateful that President Obama has decided to skip the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s famous speech at Gettysburg this week. He’s sending his secretary of the Interior (who?), when even Attorney General Eric Holder would be more appropriate. It is not Obama’s first act of diffidence or disdain for American icons; think of his casual and intermittent relationship with the American flag pin on his lapel, for example, along with some of his overseas pronouncements tacitly attesting to his ambition to embody some kind of “post-American” ethos to go along with...

Martin Luther King, Jr. modeled his famous “I Have a Dream” speech after President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Allen C. Guelzo, Director of Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College, said at the Heritage Foundation on the anniversary of the latter speech. Lincoln’s famous address was one of the shortest speeches that became famous, given at a dedication ceremony for the soldier’s cemetery in Gettysburg. Even though it barely spanned 200 words, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address has been the focus of multiple studies and critiques. The speech was praised by many, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ralph Waldo Emerson, at the...