During the summer of 1913, more than 53,000 Civil War veterans descended on Gettysburg for the fiftieth anniversary of the great battle. Over the course of six days, the old soldiers told stories over campfires and mess tables, heard from speakers like President Woodrow Wilson, visited Devil's Den and Little Round Top, and reenacted Pickett's Charge. History remembers their reunion through black-and-white photographs of veterans charging across farm fields and shaking hands across the stone wall where they once tried to kill each other. In Old Soldiers Never Die, Lee Vetter brings these events to colorful life in a well-written book that explores the emotional and often humorous encounters between former enemies half a century after the Civil War's turning point. From June 29 to July 4, 1913, the veterans (average age: seventy-two) gathered at Gettysburg, representing forty-six of forty-eight states. Nearly 9,000 Confederates made the journey north of the Mason-Dixon Line to the site of their defeat. A vast tent city was constructed on the battlefield, staffed by the U.S. Army and the Boy Scouts. Most of the battle's generals were dead or too infirm to travel, but ninety-three-year-old Daniel Sickles, the rascal general who lost a leg at Gettysburg attended and held court for anyone willing to listen. Grandchildren of George Meade, James Longstreet, and George Pickett were there. For the most part, the reunion unfolded peacefully, with the notable exception of a fight that broke out - over Abraham Lincoln - in the mess tent that left seven stabbed (they recovered). Otherwise, the old soldiers reunited with friends, swapped stories at the battlefield's landmarks, and engaged in shenanigans, such as the impromptu raid Union veterans launched on the Confederate section of the encampment. Relying on contemporary newspaper accounts, Lee Vetter captures the grand sweep of the Great Gettysburg Reunion through the stories of the old men who assembled to relive the battles of their youth and held the rapt attention of a country, north and south, eager to find common ground fifty years after the Civil War. Old Soldiers Never Die offers a unique perspective on the Battle of Gettysburg, the Civil War, and American history.
