An internal compass for Gettysburg historians

          In her tremendous book, Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory, Professor Carol Reardon quotes Lieutenant Frank A. Haskell about the Battle of Gettysburg.

Haskell was at Gettysburg. He witnessed Pickett’s Charge. His letter to his brother about that day in the farm fields outside the little town in Pennsylvania should be an enriching resource for historians.

Maybe it is. Your loyal blogger has not read the letter.

But the quotes selected by Reardon’s perceptive eye have an even greater impact than just a description of the final clash at Gettysburg. Those quotes should serve as an admonition or maybe an internal compass for historians.

From Reardon’s book, a quote from Haskell’s letter: “a full account of the battle as it was will never, can never be made…It’s not possible.” The ellipsis is not in the original.

Again, from Reardon’s book, Haskell wrote, “some eye that never saw the battle will select, and some pen will write what will be named the history.”

“As a consequence,” Reardon wrote, “we know less about what really happened on July 3 at Gettysburg than history purports to tell us.”

Reardon’s book is published by the University of North Carolina Press. The research into how the history of that day came down to us is tremendous. Anyone out there who thinks the modern day’s PR wars are something new can learn from this excellent book. The constant bickering between Virginia troops and their former comrades from North Carolina is fascinating.

In addition, the chapter covering the reunion of Federal and Confederate soldiers at the battle’s 50^th anniversary observation is gripping stuff.

The message in the first few pages, which includes the Haskell quotes, is powerful reading. Think about what those words mean: We know less than we think we do and as we continue to research the Civil War in the future, the reports on any new discoveries will be written by owners of eyes which never saw the battle and never conversed with a participant.

Here is a reality check alert: The same is increasingly true for both world wars, the conflict in Korea and, yes, even Vietnam.

Perhaps historians do a better job when they are far removed, in terms of time, from an event. There is a lessening of emotional attachment to the subject that way and that distance might allow for a clearer eye.

But can’t you picture this? An old veteran reads a book about the battle of Gettysburg and summarizes his opinion with the words, “That’s a nice try, but you weren’t there.”

All these years later, we can pour over reports, diaries and letters in order to extract information about what happened during those three days. Photographs from the days immediately following the fighting might also lend us some clues. We can determine what happened, who made it happen, where it happened and why.

But the fictional veteran described above would be right: We weren’t there. We can’t know the experiences that impacted individual soldiers.

On the other hand, it is also true that no participant in an action with the size and scope of the Battle of Gettysburg could possibly know much of what happened, either. Soldiers know what they themselves did during those three days, but seldom know more than that.

This is the central point we should take away from Haskell’s letter: Participants in an event of such a large scale can’t know the dramatic twists and turns that happen even a few hundred yards away. What they do have is a feel for the experience.

Modern scholars can determine with a certain degree of accuracy the who, what, when, where and how of the battle. Strategic choices can be questioned but the record is solid about who made them, when those decisions were made and the reasons for the decisions. The data for the number of soldiers involved and the casualty counts is reasonably clear.

Researchers, however, cannot have the feel for the event that the participants had.

The point?

The point is that no serious student of the Battle of Gettysburg should fail to read Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory because there are many, many thinking points and the feelings of many of the participants are made clear. Your loyal blogger wore out a new highlighter reading this book. Maybe you’ll do the same.

Thanks for highlighting…uh…reading.