From the Collection: Gettysburg

From the Collection: Gettysburg

by Jessie Cortesi & Kayla Gustafason

By the time the Battle of Gettysburg took place on July 1–3, 1863, the Civil War had been raging for two years. Stopping the Confederate advance into the North at Gettysburg was a critical development of the war. The items featured here from the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection tell just a few of the stories surrounding the battle and its aftermath.

“The Battle of Gettysburg” song was published in 1864 to commemorate the Union victory. Its lyrics included: “Oh when the Rebels first advanced to take our Keystone State / They thought they’d meet no fighting boys, oh what a sad mistake. . . . They made some gallant charges and Lee’s men got their fill / Of Uncle Abraham’s soldiers and our Northern Yankee pill.”

One of the most poignant items in the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection relating to Gettysburg is this carte de visite of Union sergeant Amos Humiston’s children. After this image was found in his hands as he lay dead on the battlefield, the sale of reproductions (such as this one) went to support children orphaned by war.

On July 3, the third and final day of the battle, Confederates under General George Pickett attempted to advance to the top of Cemetery Ridge at the center of the Union line. Pickett’s Charge proved disastrous for the Confederates; they faced close-range Union fire and artillery bombardment, leading to a forced retreat.

The Battle of Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle of the war, with over 50,000 total casualties—dead, wounded, captured, and missing. The carnage left the battlefield strewn with corpses and dying men. The Union army and local citizens worked together to set up a field hospital, Camp Letterman (shown here), and to begin burying the dead.

After the Battle of Gettysburg, the eighteen northern states purchased seventeen acres of land and presented it to the federal government for a national cemetery for the soldiers who died there. Construction began on the cemetery’s Soldiers’ National Monument in 1865, and four years later, on the sixth anniversary of the battle, the monument was dedicated. In 1872 construction of the cemetery was completed and administration of the cemetery was transferred to the federal government.

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address has become one of the most famous speeches in American history. The efforts that he had begun with his Emancipation Proclamation were articulated at Gettysburg: turning the war into one not only to preserve the Union, but one also to ensure freedom for all Americans. Some 15,000 spectators attended the dedication ceremony. This postcard was printed in England as part of a series honoring the centennial of Lincoln’s birth.

Jessie Cortesi is Senior Lincoln Librarian and Kayla Gustafson is a former Senior Lincoln Librarian with the Rolland Center for Lincoln Research at the Allen County Public Library.