Posted on 07/05/2026 6:42:22 AM PDT by DFG
Union and Confederate veterans shake hands during the 50th anniversary reunion at Gettysburg, 1913.
Fifty years after the Battle of Gettysburg, thousands of aging Civil War veterans returned to the Pennsylvania battlefield where they had once fought as young soldiers. The 1913 Gettysburg Reunion commemorated the battle’s semicentennial and became one of the largest gatherings of Civil War veterans ever held. Men who had once faced one another across stone walls, ridges, and open fields reunited as survivors of the conflict that had transformed the United States.
Veterans were housed in a sprawling temporary camp near the battlefield, and many were now in their seventies or eighties. They revisited landmarks such as Cemetery Ridge, Little Round Top, and the site of Pickett’s Charge, where some of the war’s fiercest fighting had taken place in July 1863.
One of the reunion’s defining moments came during a ceremonial reenactment of Pickett’s Charge, when surviving Confederate veterans crossed the field and were greeted by Union veterans with handshakes instead of gunfire. More than 50,000 veterans attended the event, and the widely photographed gestures of reconciliation became enduring symbols of national reunion, even as many of the war’s underlying issues and legacies remained unresolved.
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
"Another Pickett's Charge, 1913"
This was the era of “Blue and Gray marching together.”
Up in Virginia one time I drank beer with a couple of ex-NVA guys.
After the war the two sides reconciled. They were each able to have mutual respect for one another.
The Left has been doing everything it can to undermine and overturn that. They’ve been demonizing the South and all things Southern since the South stopped voting Democrat a couple generations ago. Of course the South stopped voting Democrat because the Democrats became Socialist, soft on Communism and soft on Crime all of which is anathema to Southerners who have always tended to be very Conservative.
😀
And World War 1 would start the following year.
I always found it ironic that the 1913 reunion coincided with the nails in the coffin of our republic as envisioned by the founders with the adoption of the progressivism of The Fed, the income tax and the removal of representative election of the Senate. All Marxist-Socialist-Darwinist progressive “improvements” to advance society “Forward”.
On the way to summer vacation on the East coast in 1963 my parents detoured from the Pennsylvania turnpike to take us to Gettysburg. I was young but standing near the Bloody Angle was profound and what I remember most about the experience even before all the subsequent reading I’ve done.
The other irony is that it isn’t a stretch to postulate that the war was a crucible both sides went through to transform the US into a terrible swift sword God used to save the world from the demonic Marxist-Fascist-Socialist evil of the 20th century.
The 21st century faces the same evil using different tactics.
This Gettysburg reunion was the wistful end of the Reconciliation Movement, which died with the veterans who mainly comprised it. It lasted from rougly the 1870s right up until around World War I and originally included prominent generals like Grant and Lee. Longstreet was a hugely popular GAR speaker. By the 1880s, Confederate conventions in cities like Atlanta were inviting Union soldiers to participate. But sadly, it died with the veterans and the politics of the Lost Cause then dominated the narrative.
The last verified Civil War veteran passed away in 1956.
He was born when Zachary Taylor was president.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Woolson#
The last widow of a Civil War veteran passed away in 2020 (!).
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/last-surviving-widow-civil-war-veteran-dies-101-180976702/
They couldn’t envision the heights of American achievements coming up as we dominated the world in science, technology, engineering, medicine, education and on and on, even walking around on the surface of the moon and then flying home, and then reaching the 21st century a 100 years after their brotherly gesture of battlefield respect and Americans suddenly becoming dragged back down into the Civil War, a nasty reimmersion, with hatred and statues destroyed and meted down, civil war riots and our youth radicalized and divided with Civil War hatred.
Hum. I remember the old segregationist Democrats from the South. The Byrds, Fullbrights, Wallaces…I didn’t see them as conservative at all. They all loved government money and they all wanted more and more of it, and that is how they voted. They were FDR New Dealers all the way, not Conservative.
Why did the South become Republican? Two words….Air Conditioning. ;~))
“Up in Virginia one time I drank beer with a couple of ex-NVA guys.”
I did not know the South recruited Vietnamese into their army. Given the subject obviously you meant Army of Northern Virginia. Though depending on the date you met them they could have been ex-NVA
That must have been an interesting discussion.
I will never forget the feeling of the presence of the warriors and the chill of almost seeing and hearing the battle raging when I visited the Gettysburg battlefield...
I have two great-grandfathers who served in the Civil War, both with New York units. One was born in New York, the other in Dublin. My name descends from the one born in New York. His father was his regiment’s recruiter, and his brother served in the same regiment, 14th New York Calvary. His brother died of wounds received during the Red River campaign in Louisiana.
The enormous casualties and irreplacable genetic losses of the Civil War fundamentally changed America forever.
This will not be the case after the civil war that's unofficially going on now.
“Virgil Caine is my name”
I vividly remember reading that in the newspaper when I was 12 years old. I was raised Union by a Confederate grandfather who gifted me Confederate flags to catch fireflies in. The Civil War was something real during my childhood, as was the Second World War in the 4pm TV movies. Respect for the military on both sides of the past and current military was so strong that the only hitchhikers we’d pick up on the road were those in uniform. The pride in our family when brother joined the Air Force was sky high. I so much miss those days. The Civil War was truly over and respect for the other side was truly real.
Very touching photos of this event.
I have a picture of my Mom as a child standing next to her great uncle Bob who served in the misunderstanding.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.