Buried in my old history files is a copy of a January 1963 Stamp World article – “The Longest Sunset”. Ostensibly, the topic for this philatelists’ magazine was two three-cent stamps issued in 1949 and 1951, commemorating the last reunions of the two Civil War veterans’ organizations – the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) and the United Confederate Veterans (U.C.V.).
However the author, George Amick, spent only three paragraphs discussing the stamps and the remaining four pages writing a historically accurate and very poignant tribute to these two post-Civil War veterans’ organizations.
Amick reviewed the formation of each group, the differences in mission and impact, the last survivors on both sides, and of course, the big “double reunion” (“encampment”) they coordinated for the fiftieth anniversary at Gettysburg in July 1913. At least 55,000 old Yanks and Rebs attended that celebration.
What a reunion it was too! Here are some memorable stories from that encampment. One was funny, and the other was heart-warming.
In the lobby of the Gettysburg Hotel that weekend, the war almost started again. It seems an elderly, former Confederate soldier made a disparaging remark about President Abraham Lincoln. An elderly, former Union soldier got to his feet and pulled a knife in protest, and suddenly a group of seventy and eighty-year-olds were going to it – refighting the war! Fortunately, all seven stabbing victims recovered.
The highpoint of the reunion was the reenactment of Pickett’s Charge July 3. Only 150 aged Confederates took part, and they covered only a few hundred feet, not the dreadful mile that lies between Seminary Ridge and the low stonewall that was the South’s high water mark. Behind the wall, beneath the Trefoil banner of the Union’s II Corps, waited some 180 federals. This time, when the two sides met at The Angle, instead of desperate hand-to-hand combat, there were hands clasped in friendship – and tears shed in emotion. [1]
At The Angle, one of those 150 Confederates – a Virginian – told the former Yanks and Rebs standing around him how he fell wounded in the charge at this very point, and how a Union soldier came along and saved his life. Nearby, a former Pennsylvania soldier said to several Southerners: “It was right here that I gave one of your boys a drink of water, hauled him up on my back, and toted him to the hospital.” Hearing the end of the story, the Virginian took the Pennsylvanian by the shoulder, turned him around, and looked hard at his face.
“Why good God, mister!” he exclaimed. “You’re the man that saved my life!”
There are millions of stories from the Irrepressible Conflict. This was just two of them.
Mac
Works Cited
[1] Amick, George. “The Longest Sunset”. Stamp World Magazine – January 1963.
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