Library of CongressVeterans arrive at the site of the 50th Gettysburg reunion. Over 22,000 former Union and Confederate soldiers hailing from nearly every state took the reunion commission up on its offer of free transportation by rail to and from the event at a total cost of approximately $140,000.
In April 1908, Civil War veteran Henry S. Huidekoper reached out to the governor of Pennsylvania, Edwin S. Stuart, with a request. Huidekoper, a former Union army officer who had lost an arm at the Battle of Gettysburg (and been awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions there), thought his native state should plan a “fitting observance” to mark the upcoming 50th anniversary of the epic engagement fought on its soil in July 1863. The idea quickly gained traction. The following spring, a state commission authorized by Stuart began preparations to “properly recognize and fittingly observe” the anniversary in hopes of making the occasion “one that will stand foremost in the martial history of the world.”
Over the next four years, members of the commission worked to raise funds (over $1 million in total), invite the participation of veterans and state and federal officials, and ultimately oversee the creation of a “Great Camp” at Gettysburg in which to hold the festivities and house, feed, and care for the attending ex-soldiers. In the end, 53,407 veterans (44,713 Union and 8,694 Confederate) arrived to participate in the commemoration, which took place July 1–4, 1913. On the following pages, we tell the story of the event through images.
Library of CongressThe Great Camp
The Great Camp, which was open June 29 through July 6, 1913, stretched across 280 contiguous acres and was home to 5,000 tents—which housed attending veterans plus approximately 1,500 U.S. Army personnel (assigned by the War Department to police and protect the camp), 155 newspapermen “guests,” and several thousand other helpers and laborers. An estimated 47 miles of avenues and company streets—fitted with hundreds of electric lights and 32 strategically placed “bubbling ice water fountains”—ran through the massive camp. A focal point was the 13,000-seat “Great Tent” in which most of the event’s anniversary addresses were delivered by a variety of veterans and politicians. Shown above are panoramic shots of the sprawling camp.
The organizers of the Great Camp were determined to provide for their guests’ every possible need, from equipping each tent with cots, blankets, lanterns, and candles; constructing 90 latrines with a “seating capacity” of 3,476; establishing a temporary post office and Western Union messenger service center; to laying 90 miles of telegraph wire to connect 87 Army telephones at stations throughout the camp and battlefield and establish 35 pay phones for veterans’ use.
Perhaps the biggest logistical effort was in supplying three meals a day to the veterans, who ate for free during the celebrations and were given complimentary mess kits. Between June 29 and July 6, the camp’s 2,070 cooks and kitchen staff, divided among 173 kitchens and equipped with a total of 425 Army field ranges, prepared 688,000 meals “of excellent quality, wholesome variety and bounteous quantity,” in the words of the official account of the commemoration. Below a photo titled “Dinner Hour, Gettysburg” shows lines of veterans waiting to be served their evening meal.
Library of Congress“Dinner Hour, Gettysburg”: Staff provided the veterans prepared 688,000 meals during the reunion.
Besides food and shelter, event organizers made sure around-the-clock medical care was available for the attending veterans, whose average age was 72. Army medical staff operated 11 first aid stations and 5 hospitals (the latter with a capacity of 1,136 beds) in camp; these were augmented by 14 Red Cross first aid and rest stations set up at “historic points at which veterans and others would most naturally congregate.”
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Report of the Pennsylvania CommissionRed Cross volunteers aid veterans at a relief station.
In all, the Red Cross facilities assisted 11,540 veterans, while nearly 10,000 others were treated at the Army facilities, 744 of whom were admitted to one of the hospitals. High temperatures (which peaked at 103.5 on July 2) were a big issue; 58% of hospital admissions were related to heat or physical exhaustion. Nine veterans died during the event, or approximately one out of every 6,000 in attendance.
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Report of the Pennsylvania CommissionRed Cross volunteers aid a veteran in the field.
A contingent of some 350 Boy Scouts played an important role, assisting camp staff in myriad ways with the veterans in attendance wherever possible. A member of the Army medical staff praised the Scouts’ dogged determination to lend a hand: “[T]his splendid body of intelligent young gentlemen, in their neat service uniforms,” were “here, there, everywhere, any hour, day and night, until their officers actually forced them to desist for necessary rest.”
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Report of the Pennsylvania CommissionA Boy Scout escorts a veteran through camp.
The reunion’s organizers made a concerted effort to discourage the rise of bad blood between former enemies—or to agitate the massive northern and southern veterans’ organizations (Grand Army of the Republic and Sons of Confederate Veterans) that had been crucial in helping pull off the event—by treating the ex-soldiers from both sides with equal reverence and respect. (Months earlier, for instance, Governor Stuart had settled a “vital question” from southern state delegations by authorizing their attendees to wear their old gray uniforms and carry Confederate flags if they so desired.)
Most of the event’s speakers (as well as the journalists who reported on the activities) took the same approach, using their platforms to promote messages of national healing and collective duty to a reunited country through dramatic and romanticized tales of bravery and patriotism at the epic battle—while avoiding reflecting on any potentially controversial issues, such as the war’s causes.
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Report of the Pennsylvania CommissionA veteran points out a spot on the battlefield.
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Report of the Pennsylvania CommissionComrades play a game of cards.
Not all speakers avoided hot-button issues. The Rev. Newell Dwight Hills, for example, declared in a speech he delivered at the “New York Veterans’ Celebration” on July 2 that “the occasion of the war” was none other than slavery. As he explained, “Slavery was a cancer that had fixed itself upon the vitals of the South, and God appointed the soldier to be the surgeon to cut away the deadly disease, that Liberty might recover her youth and beauty.”
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Report of the Pennsylvania CommissionVeterans take in the Lincoln Memorial in Gettysburg National Cemetery.
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Report of the Pennsylvania CommissionGettysburg veterans gather for some battlefield reflection.
Besides thousands of rank-and-file Union and Confederate veterans, the festivities attracted a number of special guests, among them President Woodrow Wilson (who delivered an address in the Great Tent on July 4, the reunion’s final day), numerous congressmen and governors, famous former soldiers (including the “Drummer Boy of Chickamauga,” Johnny Clem), and descendants of prominent generals who led troops at the battle.
Daniel Sickles
Library of Congress
Daniel Sickles (shown in the image at right), who lost a leg while in command of the Army of the Potomac’s III Corps at Gettysburg, tours the battlefield by automobile surrounded by fellow veterans. The 93-year-old former general had reportedly remarked in the runup to the commemoration, “There will be a lot of ‘Johnny Rebs’ at the anniversary and I want to shake the hand of every one of them.”
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Report of the Pennsylvania CommissionDescendants of Confederate generals James Longstreet (first, second, and fifth from left) and George Pickett (third and sixth from left), who attended as “special guests” of Pennsylvania.
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Report of the Pennsylvania CommissionA granddaughter of Confederate general A.P. Hill (second from right) poses with three granddaughters of George Meade, who commanded the Union army at Gettysburg.
One of the more anticipated events of the reunion was the July 3 ceremony at the “Bloody Angle” to commemorate Pickett’s Charge, the repulsed Confederate assault against the center of the Union defensive line on the battle’s final day. The guests of honor were survivors of that action—180 Union and 120 Confederate—who formed in two lines, one on either side of the stone wall around which the fighting had swirled 50 years before. U.S. Representative J. Hampton Moore then addressed the crowd, after which the two lines advanced to the wall and, in the words of a London Telegraph reporter present, “clasped hands across the barricade and cheered, while some old fellows, overwrought by their exertions in the tropical heat, broke down and wept.”
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Report of the Pennsylvania CommissionVeterans reenact Pickett’s Charge for the camera.
Around noon on July 4, 1913, a bugle sounded and the colors at each state’s reunion headquarters were lowered to half-staff. “Immediately all over the great battlefield,” noted the official account of the event, “wherever they are at the moment, Veteran guests, in Blue and in Gray, Regular Army officers, visitors, Boy Scouts, enlisted men and civilian employees” stood at attention. A battery then fired a five-minute salute in honor of those who had been killed at Gettysburg, after which bands played the national anthem. With that, the Grand Reunion came to an end, the veteran guests began their homeward journeys, and authorities started the process of dismantling the Great Camp, work that was completed by August 15.
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Report of the Pennsylvania CommissionVeterans supply music for the departure.
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Report of the Pennsylvania CommissionGettysburg veterans doff their hats in farewell on the last day of the reunion.
In the eyes of the press, the massive reunion had been an unqualified success. “With the fall of the curtain upon the Reunion of the veterans the horizon of American life is brighter and the skies are clearer and the light of a common hope suffuses the land,” noted The Baltimore American on July 5, 1913.
Library of CongressA Union and Confederate veteran bid each other goodbye.
The same day, The Charleston News and Courier shared similarly positive comments: “The genuineness of the celebration, the absence of any untoward incident, the spirit of brotherhood there manifested show how completely this country has purged itself in the short space of fifty years of every vestige of sectional bitterness. That the metamorphosis has been so complete is an amazing thing…. Yet such is the fact; and the Second Gettysburg, a great victory for the North and for the South, is the best proof of it.”
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Great article!
I never knew the reunion happened.
To think. . .the carnage that those veterans endured, yet apparently, 50 years later, they welcomed the opportunity to meet and greet their former adversary.