In the anniversaries of the civil war. This 45 minute talk was sponsored by the Shenandoah Valley battlefields foundation. Its always nice to be the keynote speaker. You can speak in a disjointed way and everyone says this marvelous. Im going to do a disjointed speaker speech for you this morning, if i may. Lets start with a couple of reflections on the confederate battle flag. If politically correct people were capable of understanding history, which they are not they , would complain not about the Southern Cross banner, they would complain about the stars and bars. The emblem of a government, with slavery as its backbone. The battle flag is different in another sense. A soldiers home was the regiment not the brigade, not , the division. In the regiment he served with friends and neighbors from the same area. What did the second, fourth, fifth, 27th, and 33rd virginia have in common . They all came from the southern part of Shenandoah Valley. As you all know, those five immortality in
For the previous weeks, he had been getting telegrams from republican politician say it, you cannot be real elected. Cannot be reelected. The people have had it with your administration. You have to address certain things. This meeting, he did. He asked every member to sign a letter which lincoln had written. In that letter, he and his cabinet pledged their support to the next administration, who lincoln thought would not be him. Bud touched upon it, but if you go back a little bit, think of this. If you look at the Overland Campaign to put it in perspective, the army of the potomac, that army that defended Little Round Top disappeared in may and june 1864. They suffered more casualties than antietam, chancellorsville, and gettysburg combined. I saw a newspaper from new york. In those days, when you publish something, it was for pages. It was four pages. It was published that summer in a small new york county. It listed the casualties. That is all the paper was about. You can imagine t
Youre making me think about this, and i love this. This is the thing you may not te audiences and although what ive said is a compilation of what all of the historians and this is a consensus to a large extent on much of this now, but you may not buy any of it, but what i hope is that you will never look at this man and this march in the same way. Before i step away from this podium its an honor to be here with so many distinguished historians and so many great people, Richard Murray and you started the day out with the best and you started the day out with bud robertson and you ended it with the least, as far as im concerned. So thank you very much. Donald trump and Hillary Clinton made the conventions a mustsee on tv. This morning we will show you the featured speeches from cleveland and philadelphia. You will see democratic speeches by michelle obama, bernie sanders, bill clinton, joe biden, michael bloomberg, tim kaine and the acceptance speech by Hillary Clinton and sunday morning
60 miles across from one end to the other as it goes out to the sea. She said in reality it was more like fingers of destruction. Stitches through the landscape. Because the army was advancing down roads. And most places they stayed a day. If that much. So the destruction, the destruction is limited to how far off the roads they can go. So she said there are vast areas in between those roads. That were untouched by it. And those people of course applied food and help to the other people who had lost so much during the march. Its interesting, because i had not even thought about this. We do have this image of tsunami of fire going across and if fact it really is more like fingers of destruction going across georgia. Yes, sir . People in the valley recognized that sheridan not only planned, organized and carried out zonal destruction, so this was an order of destruction. And it was very thorough, although theres many other phases to it. But thats different than what happened in georgia.
The relationship between warfare and the creation of historical memory with particular emphasis on the preservation of battle fields. Her first book on a great battlefield, the making, management, and memory of gettiesburg National Military park earned the 2014 award for contributions to historical nderstandings of the getty sburg campaign. Many of you in the audience have benefited from her superb tours. She is working on a geography of general gordon meade which i hope will be published by the university of North Carolina press. Ian isherwood to the left of jen, he is the assistant director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College for a few more months. He has accepted a position as a assistant professor in war and memory studies which i assume will be part of the civil War Studies Program right here at Gettysburg College. Its a good thing for our students, not a great thing for c. W. I. He has been a very important part of what we do here. He is fantastic, though, with our s