Review - "The World Will Never See the Like: The Gettysburg Reunion of 1913" John Hopkins

[The World Will Never See the Like: The Gettysburg Reunion of 1913 John L. Hopkins (Savas Beatie, 2024). Hardcover, photos, footnotes, appendix, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:x,182/208. ISBN:978-161121-684-4. $32.95]

In the summer of 1913, an estimated 53,000 elderly Civil War veterans in their 70s and 80s arrived at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania for a national commemoration of the great battle fought there fifty years earlier. Any honorably discharged veteran, blue or gray, was cheerfully invited to attend. What happened that late June to early July and the prodigious planning that went into staging such a grand event are eloquently recounted in John Hopkins's The World Will Never See the Like: The Gettysburg Reunion of 1913.

One might readily imagine the challenging logistical requirements of putting on an organized gathering of this scale in what was still a small town, and Hopkins offers an insightful survey of who made it a reality, from the cooperative efforts of businesses big and small, veteran groups, and other private organizations to local, state, and federal governments. The author traces how bickering among stubborn committee members and uncertain funding sources unnecessarily drew out the planning phase of the reunion (and on occasion even threatened cancellation), but everything came together in the end. Hopkins justly credits the U.S. Army for its deft management of much of the event's logistical and material needs. As Hopkins observes, that positive outcome did not go unnoticed or unappreciated. Indeed, the reunion's success went some way toward redeeming a reputation stained by the embarrassing disorganization and avoidable human health crises attendant to the army's mobilization during the Spanish-American War a decade and a half earlier.

Cornerstone placement, to be overseen in person by President Woodrow Wilson, of a massive peace memorial celebrating national reconciliation and the reunited country's prosperous present and future was intended to be a grand focus of the reunion, but congressional parsimony torpedoed the project. However, that disappointment could not detract from the heartfelt reconciliationist feeling that infused the entire event and its veteran participants. Against some early opposition to such concessions, organizers fostered good will by allowing ex-Confederates to wear gray uniforms, fly the battle flag under which they fought, and not have their defeat waved in their faces. Additionally, by generally avoiding the centrality of slavery when it came to discussing the root causes of the conflict and by not challenging certain Lost Cause tenets, most attendees and reporters alike generally smoothed over potential intersectional sticking points in favor of emphasizing commonality. Some who hoped to use the reunion to alter the established historical narrative of the battle itself would find only disappointment. For example, North Carolinians seeking their fair share of credit for the valor and sacrifice displayed during Pickett's Charge were unable to crack the edifice of the Virginia-centric historical story line.

Hopkins's text is regularly infused with vivid first-person accounts of the reunion, chief among them veteran perspectives and colorful newspaper reporter observations, all seamlessly incorporated into the main narrative and insightfully contextualized by the author. Citing in both text and footnotes the work of recent scholars of Civil War and Reconstruction-era historical remembrance and veteran studies (ex. the scholarship of David Blight, Nina Silber, Donald Shaffer, Barbara Gannon, Brian Matthew Jordan, and others), Hopkins synthesizes those findings with his own research into how veterans, visitors, reporters, and keynote speakers experienced and interpreted the event. It's unknown how many black veterans attended the reunion (according to Hopkins's research, press coverage of their presence was sparse), but Hopkins notes the presence of several black unit GAR encampments.

Not everything went smoothly (for example, establishments serving alcohol to eager imbibers were persistent thorns in the sides of those promoting order and decorum), but Hopkins persuasively maintains that organizing authorities could be justifiably proud of their efforts overall. One of the greatest achievements was the small number of deaths, a comparative handful weighed against the full expectation that hundreds might not survive either the long journey to and from the reunion, the physical exertions involved during the reunion, or the oppressive summer heat and humidity. Carloads of coffins thankfully went unused, and much credit goes to plentiful and well-organized health services, solicitous and highly ubiquitous attendants (the Boy Scouts of American deserve special mention on that score), and modern sanitation measures.

In addition to its coverage of the reunion's 4-day series of main events (each day having its own theme), the volume describes a number of more intimate unit reunions and interesting side stories. Among the latter is the book's tracing of the self-serving memorialization alliance forged between James Longstreet widow Helen Dortsch Longstreet and Army of the Potomac Third Corps commander Daniel Sickles. In engaging fashion, Hopkins dryly observes how the pair enthusiastically aided each other in preserving for the two controversial generals the most heroic Gettysburg reputation possible. Of course, the aspect of the reunion best known to modern Civil War readers is the famous reenactment of Pickett's Charge that took place and photographic images of the old vets shaking hands across the stone wall representing the alleged "High-Water Mark" of the Confederacy. As Hopkins amusingly relates, the reality of the how the reenactment unfolded, the order and direction of which dissolved completely in the face of massive pressing crowds of reporters and visiting onlookers, was far different from the chaos-free, stage-managed image of it presented by the photographers for posterity.

As Hopkins notes in his preface, major publications related to the 1913 reunion are few and far between, and Thomas Flagel's excellent War, Memory, and the 1913 Gettysburg Reunion (2019) [site review (7/24/19)] was hot off the press just as Hopkins was finishing his own manuscript. Coverage elements found in each book both reinforce and complement the other. Praise for the event's organizers and widespread gratitude expressed by veterans are substantial themes common to both studies, but Flagel's investigation, to a much greater degree than Hopkins's, emphasizes internal motivations and communal spirit as being more important to the visiting veterans than wider engagement with national issues and themes. Flagel also focuses his veteran profiling most deeply upon four individuals he sees as representative of the breadth of attitudes and motivations displayed by attendees. Hopkins elects instead to offer his readers a wide-lens, less microscopic approach to his multifold exploration of individual and group stories (though, to be fair, Flagel also surveys attendee experiences to some degree). Both elegant works are rather slender overviews, neither aspiring to exhaustive status, but taken together they present students of the Civil War era with a richly drawn description and meaningful understanding of one of the grandest commemorative events in our nation's history.