1066: The Battle of Hastings and a Christmas coronation gone wrong

What does a battle in October have to do with Christmas?

When Edward the Confessor died 1065 without a direct heir, it left a massive power vacuum in England. The choice now was between the Saxon, Harold Godwinson, and William, Duke of Normandy. Harold had been a powerful nobleman for many years. He claimed that Edward the Confessor had touched his hand, which meant he was now the new king. However, William could also have had some evidence for a claim. He said that Edward had promised him the throne, in fact said that Harold himself had sworn an oath to support him.

William had spent his early years fighting and conciliating his power in Normandy and eventually became the undisputed leader in the region. Harold gained a reputation as a good military leader in a successful war against his own brother.

After Edward died, Harold used all his political muscle to have himself declared king. William, hearing of this, gathered his armies and through his own political scheming garnered support of the Pope in a plan to invade England. Harold organized his own army of 18.000 men and waited. William wanted to move quickly, but the tides were not in his favor. Simon Schama wrote that while the waiting weighed on both men, it was particularly bad for Harold because most of his men were only supposed to serve for two months, and by September that time had run out and many wanted to return home to harvest their crops.

No sooner had Harold sent his men home than he received word that an invasion had taken place – not from William, but from the army led by Harold’s own brother. Harold quickly marched his troops to Stamford Bridge, north of London, and gained a bloody victory. The very next day, William’s army finally sailed for England, thus in less than a week Harold found himself preparing his army for yet another battle.

On October 14, 1066, the men led by Harold set up battle lines in Hastings field. On the opposite side was William’s army. William ordered his men forward; the two armies slammed together. In several minutes of brutal fighting, Harold’s axmen proved devastating to the Norman horsemen, who fell back. Part of the Saxon line broke to follow them. Harold, in the midst of the fighting, could not control the overall movement of the battle. William, on the other hand, was on horseback and could better see what was happening, and ordered other cavalry units to swing around the Saxons and attack from behind. Over the next six hours William ordered charges and retreats again and again. Each time, he weakened the Saxon line. William also had his archers rain down arrows, and according to legend, Harold looked up just as an arrow found his eye. The Saxons around him tried to fight on, but William’s faster and more maneuverable cavalry broke through the lines and killed Harold. The battle was over.

William spent the next several weeks conquering the remaining Saxon strongholds in the South of the England. On Christmas Day, he arrived in the town Westminster to be crowned king. The ceremony was proceeding as planned when the crowd began shouting out their approval. Outside the church, the Norman guard heard the noise and thought a riot had broken out, and they began burning the surrounding outbuildings. Smoke soon drifted into the main building and half of the people inside panicked and ran out, leaving the newly crowned king nearly alone in the middle of his coronation.

William now known as “The Conqueror,” spent the remaining years of his life fighting factions in the north of England who wanted a return to Saxon rule. The Battle of Hasting and the coronation of William had far reaching consequences – the Normans established a new system of laws, a new Norman ruling class, and new ways of building that would influence England for generations to come.

William himself eventually succumbed to injuries he received during a raid in France in 1087. Ironically, he had failed to name an heir, leaving with his death the same power vacuum England had experienced twenty one years earlier.  England sank into a series of civil wars, and it would not be until the reign of Henry II, almost a hundred years later, that the political situation would stabilize.           

Washington’s Christmas present

On Christmas night, 1776, Hessian Colonel Johann Rall sat with other officers drinking and playing cards. Rall must have been relaxed that night – the British Army, his current assignment, had won two major victories against the less organized and ill-equipped troops under General George Washington. In many British circles, it was even believed that the war would be over shortly, once spring came and the armies could once again be out in the field. For the moment, they were content to let Washington sit in Pennsylvania and await his fate. As recent word from British sources said Washington could attack his position, Rall had acted quickly, doubling the guard and sending out extra patrols. Even this very night, he’d received another note of warning. But as the night wore on, a storm of snow and ice began to blow in. Men began to relax – no attack had come for weeks and now the weather had turned so they could afford to rest their vigilance. After all, who would be so bold as to launch an attack in the dead of winter?

The year of 1776 had been a rocky one for the burgeoning republic of the United States. In January, word had arrived from England that King George III had declared them to be in rebellion as a result of two small battles the previous April. Then in July, delegates at the Second Continental Congress had released the Declaration of Independence and officially severed all ties with England. Still, these had only been diplomatic maneuvers, and despite military success in the taking of Boston and Fort Ticonderoga, British forces remained determined to strike a blow. The British Army had landed on Long Island in late August and after a short battle, American forces had scattered. Only three days of rain and a morning of fog had saved Washington’s Army from complete destruction and he had used that time to escape back to the New York mainland. Then the British had won a second victory, which had driven his forces through New Jersey to the banks of Pennsylvania.

Now, as Christmas approached, Washington found himself with only six thousand men, dwindling resources, and poor morale. On top of this, enlistments were set to expire on the first of January. Washington wrote to his brother John, “Between you and me I think our affairs are in pretty bad condition.” He bluntly told his brother about the situation and said that unless his men would agree to stay on, the war was over. In Philadelphia, Congress called for a day of prayer. The revolution which had begun in so much triumph a few months before was on the verge of collapse.

Then on December 22, a letter arrived from Washington’s adjutant. In it, he told Washington that due to recent raids in the area around the Delaware River, Hessian forces had been on high alert, and that they were showing signs of exhaustion. The adjutant further stated that Washington could not afford to wait for another opportunity. Washington needed little pushing, as he had already written several people that he was looking for a “counter stroke.” On Christmas Eve, he called a council of war and announced that he had decided to attack the Hessian garrison in the town of Trenton.

The following afternoon, troops were ordered to begin marching down to the Delaware River. It was hoped that the troops could get across the river and could surprise the Hessians before dawn. However, problems immediately began to dog the operations. First, men were slow to arrive at the crossing points – this may have been because many were in poor health and barely covered in ragged clothing; some were even without shoes. Initially Washington had planned to have his army cross in three different places in the river; this had to be forgotten as the weather suddenly worsened around midnight and forced the units at two of the points to call it off. The rain and snow were falling hard, making the river overrun its banks and become choked with huge chunks of ice. Despite this, Washington pressed ahead. Historians have argued that Washington had little choice; if he turned back, the war was over. By all accounts, Washington seemed to have become very fatalistic, selecting as the password for the night: “victory or death”.

Writers like David Hackett Fischer, David McCullough, and Joseph Ellis have been critical of the Washington’s Crossing painting by Emanuel Leutze, which depicts Washington bolding leaning over the wide bow, draped in a American flag. In actuality, the boats were long and narrow, and the biggest ones had forty men shoulder to shoulder with very little room to move; anyone who had attempted to lean over the bow would have immediately fallen in the river. Most likely, Washington would have been indistinguishable from the other men as the dark storm had enveloped them. But while the weather did nothing to help the men’s moral, it did help mask the noise of the crossing and likely guaranteed any Hessian patrols that night would not stray far from camp.

It wasn’t until 3:00 a.m. on December 26 that all of the men with Washington had made it across. By now, they were three hours behind schedule and still had ten miles of icy roads to march before they arrived in Trenton. The exhausted troops kept moving even when two of their number fell dead to the ground in the cold. Finally, just before 8:00 a.m., Washington ordered his men toward outposts surrounding the town. Still a good distance away, they opened fire. Hessians soldiers, caught by surprise, were overwhelmed and fell back. Rall was roused by a staff officer and rode out to rally his men. It was erroneously reported that Washington’s forces had managed to take control of a key bridge outside of town, leaving the Hessians no escape route. Rall gathered his two regiments around him and moved them forward, and his men began falling as result of American volley and artillery guns that had been moved across the river. As Rall advanced, he became cut off; then, as he turned in his saddle to shout orders, he was hit twice. His officers pulled him down and carried him a nearby church, where he died several hours later, with the note warning of a potential American attack still in his pocket. Still under fire from three directions and with Washington’s forces closing in, the Hessians began laying down their arms.

In all, nearly all of the over one thousand Hessian soldiers were taken prisoner; twenty-two were dead and another eighty-three were wounded. Amazingly, only a few of the 6,000 Americans were wounded. Among them were William Washington (Washington’s nephew) and James Monroe, the future president of the United States. Washington did not savor his victory for long. The next morning he ordered his men to move back across the river, before larger British forces could counter attack.

The sudden victory shocked the British. General Charles Cornwallis, who had been planning to return to London, found himself having to rapidly form an army to march on Washington. This would lead to another improbable American victory in the town of Princeton, just north of Trenton on January 3, 1777. The result of the combined victories proved an enormous boost to the fledgling American nation. More than half of the men under Washington reenlisted, and others joined up for the first time, notably from the newly freed territory of southern New Jersey. The victories also gave Congress hope that the war was not yet over and renewed faith in Washington himself.

The war would drag for another seven years, and more low moments lay ahead. But Washington would manage to keep his army inspired and effective, by fighting a largely defensive war that would eventually leave the British forces largely trapped in New York for the rest of the war. Today, Washington’s Christmas assault is seen by many historians as the decisive moment of the War for Independence, and the battle that saved the Revolution.

Two books by found very helpful in writing this article were

1776 by David McCullough

Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, and the plight of the poor

With Christmas fast approaching, many people will be dusting off their copies of the Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol. While we know the classic tale to be about the Golden Rule and keeping Christmas traditions, few realize it was a biting and timely political piece meant to shed light on a serious problem in London society.

London of the 1840s was in the mist of the industrial revolution which had begun at the end of the 18^th century. Textile mills, steam engines, and other innovations allowed England to import and exports goods as never before, making business owners and enterprising inventors extremely rich. However, this same industrial age had created a vast poverty class, leaving thousands unemployed and with only the option of working in “poor houses” which were government run building where poor families would go to live and do manual labor. In his documentary series on Britain, Author Simon Schama explained, “Workhouses had always been deliberately designed to be as much like prisons as possible, to deter anyone with who had slightest chance at a job.” Thus, Scrooge, the old money-lender symbolizing the indifferent upper class, facetiously inquires in the first chapter of A Christmas Carol, “Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?”

If anything could have been worse than life in a poorhouse, it would be life in a factory. An American observer in the city of Manchester during this time wrote of the people “Wretched, defrauded, oppressed, crushed human nature lying in bleeding fragments.” Worse yet was the widespread use of child labor. Often the children would be told a retrieve pieces of cotton from underneath moving machinery where one brief slip could crush their arm.

Dickens himself, visited Manchester and elsewhere, and was shocked by the poverty he saw. Dickens’s father had been forced into a debtors prison, and as a young boy Charles had to work in a shoe polish factory. As Dickens remembered, wages were horribly low and the factory teemed with rats. The experience left Dickens with deep bitterness toward his parents and a great sympathy for the lower classes. Then in 1842, the Second Report of the Children's Employment Commission was published, which showed the growing problem of child labor in England. Dickens wanted to write a response to this in form of a political pamphlet, but put it off.

Finally, he wrote A Christmas Carol. In his story, Scrooge came to represent everyone in the upper class who blatantly ignored the conditions of the poor and only made money for themselves. Again and Again Scrooge is told how he should use his money for good, but the direct appeal to help the poor comes in form of a cold warning when the Spirit of Christmas Present lifts his robe to expose two poor children. “They are Man’s,” he says, “This boy is Ignorance. The girl is Want. Beware them both, and all their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that which is written is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it.” Dickens was saying that the poor and the problems they faced would continue to get worse unless addressed, and could lead to the overthrow the wealthy class. Dickens struck one last chord at the end of the story when Scrooge sees that his house has been ransacked and that he has died alone without friends. To every well bred Englishman, the thought that they would not be liked, or at very least respected at the time of their death, was a terrifying thought.

Ultimately, Dickens wanted greater attention for the poor, and for them to be provided with more opportunities through moral changes in society and greater financial support.  

Dickens would not be the last one to focus on the plight of the poor. Four years later Elizabeth Gaskell would once again plunge the British readers into the slums of England in her novel Mary Barton. The book focused on two poor families in Manchester who had to work in factories and watch their children starve. Gaskell brought into sharp contrast, and Schama believed even more so the Dickens, the great divide between the rich and poor. Gaskell’s main point was that poor people cared little about the luxuries of the upper class and only wanted to see their children fed. In one scene, she showed how a family’s life depended on what a wealthy character considered loose change. 

That same year German writer Karl Marx published his Communist Manifesto and echoed what Dickens and Gaskell had said when he wrote, “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie [wealthy class] and Proletariat [lower class].” Marx also wrote, “Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of [laborers] crowded into the factory are [organized] like solders.” Here the worker became more a part of the machinery than a man. Up to this point Marx reflected the writing of the Dickens and Gaskell, but where Dickens and Gaskell believed that society should voluntarily take care of the poor by admitting their existence, Marx thought that compromise with upper class was pointless and that only true solution was to mount a violent overthrow of the government.

So while A Christmas Carol emphasizes a broad theme of Christian charity in keeping with Christmas traditions, it should be remembered that it was also part of a powerful series of books that, for the first time, brutally focused on the plight of the poor and demanded serious changes in how the privileged viewed their responsibilities to society.

How a Christmas card led to a holiday tradition

How a Christmas Card started a holiday tradition

As Christmas approaches many people get movies that fit the season – any number of adaptations of A Christmas Carol, the more recent A Christmas Story, and of course, It’s as Wonderful Life. But did you know that It’s as Wonderful Life started out as just a Christmas card?    

On February 12, 1938, writer Philip Van Doran was shaving when an idea for a story came to him in a sudden flash. The work would tell the story of a man disillusioned with his life and getting to see what it would be like if he hadn’t been born. Van Doran, a primarily non-fiction author, later remembered, “I was just learning to write fiction, so the first version was pretty terrible.” Still, he thought of a title that fit the main point of story: The Greatest Gift.  Van Doran finished a second draft in 1943 with better results and gave it to his agent. Van Doran’s daughter later wrote, “After [his agent] tried everything from the Saturday Evening Post to farm journals it was evident that no magazine would touch it.” So Van Doran decided to rewrite it once again and release it as a twenty page Christmas card to his family and friends. A copy of one of the cards was shown to Charles Koerner, the head of RKO Studios, who immediately paid the incredible amount of $50,000 for the copy.  Van Doran’s agent sold the movie rights to the story to RKO Studios for $10,000 soon after.

In spite of its appeal, the story proved difficult to mold into a screenplay, and after three failed scripts the studio decided to drop the project for the immediate future.  Van Doran’s creation, like so many story ideas before and after it, may well have died there. However on a visit to the studio, Frank Capra happened to being talking to Koerner, who was eager to unload the troublesome project. Koerner talked about the wasted scripts and told Capra that they had failed to capture the original story. Capra was no stranger behind the camera and had directed such films as It Happened One Night, You Can’t Take it with You, and Mr. Smith goes to Washington. During World War II he had gone into the Signal Corps and directed a series of documentary films about the war. Still Capra was nervous about his working on his first major film in several years. “I was scared to death,” he later remembered. Despite his misgivings, Capra jumped at the chance to buy movie rights, re-titling the story, It’s a Wonderful Life. Capra later said, “It was the story I had been looking for all my life!” Capra hired new writers, who were finally able to turn out a version worthy of being produced. He also determined that only one man could play the role of George Bailey.

Jimmy Stuart and Capra had worked together on Mr. Smith goes to Washington and You Can’t Take it with You. Stuart, who had spent the last four years flying bombing missions over Nazi Germany and had just been discharged, was reluctant to take the role, but Capra talked him into it. Capra now turned to filling in the role of Mary Bailey.  Initially, Capra wanted Jean Arthur, but ultimately chose Donna Reed. For the town of Bedford Falls, a three block set was constructed, complete with specially produced fake snow – it was one of the largest sets ever constructed at the time. Stuart and Reed immediately generated on-camera chemistry, best featured in the phone scene where George tells Mary he loves her. In the scene, Stuart actually forgot a page of lines, but Capra was so impressed that he used the first take. 

After its long journey to the screen, It’s a Wonderful Life proved a modest box office success, making enough money to rank as twenty-sixth most profitable film of the year of four hundred released. It was also nominated for five Academy Awards but failed to win any and was quickly forgotten. The film was put into a studio vault for almost ten years. Then in 1951, the new medium of television began broadcasting this forgotten picture. In the ensuing decades that followed, It’s a Wonderful Life became a traditional, if not vital part of the holiday season for hundreds of thousands of TV viewers. Fan mail poured into Stuart and Capra, and the movie became one of the most critically acclaimed of all time. As recently as 2007, the American Film Institute placed it at number 20 on the 100 Greatest Films list. Its theme has been the plot for dozens of movies, books, stories and television shows, and it’s been referenced, honored and even parodied on programs like The Simpsons and South Park. Every TV fan knows a few of the famous lines from the now classic film.

Still, the visionary directing by Capra and the brilliant performances by Stuart, Reed, and the rest of the cast would never have happened, had it not been for a simple Christmas card.

Veterans Day

Since the American Revolution, a select group of Americans has always answered the call to duty. Many do not seek a military career, but do feel compelled to serve their time during a national conflict, then come home and be civilians again.
Nearly everyone knows someone who is a veteran – most of us have grandfathers who served in World War II or Korea, fathers or mothers who served in Vietnam, or sisters or brothers now in Iraq.
The price of serving one’s country in wartime has always been high. During World War I, in only one year, the U.S. suffered over 116,000 men killed. In World War II, more than 405,000 American soldiers died, in the Korean War nearly 44,000 died, and in Vietnam we lost over 58,000. It is my belief that it is the soldier on the front lines, not politicians, America industrial might, or the number of planes or ships produced, that ultimately wins the war. It is these people that are asked to do the killing, asked to take positions known to be well-defended, and asked to perform difficult feats under fire that after- action reports can never truly describe.
Many soldiers win medals for these actions, but thousands more go unrecognized for their heroism. Many, like my great uncle Don who flew supplies in the Burma Theater, never saw the enemy, but he still faced the challenge of navigating his C-46 cargo plane through volatile weather over treacherous mountain peaks.
When their involvement in the war is over, these veterans come home and attempt to live a normal life, but in the words of Harold Moore, author of We Were Soldiers Once… And Young, “Those who were, miraculously, unscratched, were by no means untouched.” Serving in the military is a job that a changes a person’s life, whether or not they see combat.
In my own family, my great uncle Joe, who survived island fighting in World War II and watched one of his best friends die right in front of him, would only talk about it in private to his brother Les, and even then, only briefly. Les, meanwhile, served late in World War II and never made it out of the U.S.; he guarded S.S. prisoners and worked on ships in San Diego, but talked about his time in the Navy until the day he died.
Despite their sacrifices, veterans have asked for very little in return. The vast majority says about their acts of heroism, that they were not doing it for their country; they were doing it for the men next to them. The veterans I have met, without exception, are modest about their military service and say they were only doing their job.
Today our veterans stand as a testament of American strength and what we must overcome to remain free. Many are now in the twilight of their lives; World War II veterans are dying at a rate of 1,200-1,500 a day and are now in their late 80s; many Korean War veterans are in their early 70s; Vietnam veterans are now entering their 60s.
While many monuments have been built to honor veterans, I believe that our generation should do two things: first, talk to someone you know who is a veteran – I’ve found of the veterans I've talked to always show surprise at the interest of a younger audience in their experiences and are, more often than not, willing to talk about them. Next, visit a national cemetery for veterans to understand what numbers cannot really show: the true scope of sacrifice of the many people who have fallen in defense of this country.

Christmas 1914

Christmas has often been used by armies as a time to attack weak points in enemy lines and gain an element of surprise while others celebrate. George Washington famously moved his army across the Delaware River on Christmas night, and attacked and overran Hessian (German) positions at Trenton on the New Jersey side of the river. In 1944, the Germans launched their last major offensive of World War II on December 16, and were not driven back until the day after Christmas. Also, in 1972, Richard Nixon ordered some of the heaviest bombing of the Vietnam War against Hanoi the capital city of North Vietnam on Christmas Day.

But in 1914, something very different occurred. Europe was in the fifth month of what would become known as World War I with troops from France, England, and Russia on one side, and Germany and the Ottoman Empire on the other. In August the Germans had made an initial thrust toward Paris and had come within a few miles of it, but had gradually been driven back. The British and French had then attempted to force the Germans out of France altogether, but found that they could not take key positions in the German line. Nearly everyone had thought the war would be over by Christmas, but as the trenches got deeper, so did the soldier’s convictions that the war would go on much, much longer.

The weeks leading up to Christmas had been particularly frustrating. The weather, which was much like we have been experiencing here in the Northwest, caused men’s guns to jam, it was cold, and no long term advances had been made by the British or the Germans. However, something astonishing happened on Christmas Eve. Historian Martin Gilbert writes, “There was in sections of the front line, a moment of peaceable behavior.” German and British patrols ran in into each and wished each other a merry Christmas. Songs were heard being sung in German, French and English. This brought more men out of the trenches. As Gilbert writes, “That Christmas Day, fraternization between the Germans and their enemies took place almost everywhere in the British No-Man’s Land, and at some places in the French and Belgian lines.” If the singing or the patrols did not bring a truce, direct messages were sent between the commanders on the line, which asked for the fighting to stop temporarily.

The two armies agreed that the bodies that littered the field between the lines were to be buried. In one point in the line, the armies decided to hold a joint church service at one of the burials.Solders walked over to each other’s trenches to see what they looked like. A game of soccer also took place. One British solider would write later, “There was not an atom of hate on either side that day;” Sapper J. Davey, another British solider, wrote, “Most peculiar Christmas I’ve ever spent and ever likely to.” He continued, “One could hardly believe the happenings.” The men traded hats, buttons and even gave each their addresses and promised to visit as soon as the war was over.

However, all of this sudden interaction created a problem. Neither the German, French or British high commands had approved or even thought that such a thing would take place. In some sections of the lines, commanders ordered men to attack even though it was Christmas. French and British officers scrambled to get men back in the fighting and the high command ordered all the friendly activities to stop.

In the coming days after Christmas, those units who had refused to fight were transferred to other parts of the line. The German commanders went as far as to move some men all the way to the Eastern front, and French officers who had promoted the truce were demoted. In December of the next year, the British army commanders ordered a steady shelling of the German lines to prevent a truce from happening again.

The war would continue until 1918, when Germany agreed to a negotiated peace settlement. Today, the story of the truce continues to be held up by many as an example of man’s goodness even in the worst of conditions. A wonderful French film, Joyeux Noe,l tells this story and details what happened at one spot in the trench lines. There are also a few books on the subject. I found Martin Gilbert’s general history of the war the most interesting source.

It’s important to remember that even in the focused hostility of war, human spirit and common tradition transcends hatred and predigest.

The Battle of Gettysburg and the First Minnesota Regiment Part I

In June, 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee launched his boldest gamble of the American Civil War when he ordered his army to move into Maryland and up through Pennsylvania. Lee’s reputation could not have been higher – he had defeated the larger Army of the Potomac in two major battles in December and May. However, both battles had been costly and some of his best officers, including the legendary Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, were among the dead.

Despite Lee's successes, he had failed to destroy the Union Army, which had escaped mauled but intact after each battle. News from the West was worse. The Confederate armies had been beaten all across the theater and only the Mississippi city of Vicksburg, which had been under siege by Ulysses S. Grant since May 18, prevented Union forces from taking full control of the Mississippi River and cutting Confederacy in half. Confederate General John Pemberton continued to call for reinforcements for his beleaguered army. By this time, many residents of Vicksburg had been forced to abandon the city or dig caves into the hillsides to avoid constant shelling, and food in the city was known to be at critically low.

Lee had launched his invasion to solve both of these problems. He hoped that by threatening major cities in the North, he would draw attention away from Vicksburg, force the Army of the Potomac into a decisive engagement and a Confederate victory which would lead to a negotiated settlement of the war. Lee was also using the invasion as a way to provide his men with food and other badly needed supplies. Lee wrote in one of his official correspondence that the issue of supplying his army had caused him more sleepless nights then anything else.

Though a spy, Lee learned on June 28 that the Army of the Potomac, up until now in Virginia, had followed him into Maryland and was near the Pennsylvania border; the exact location of the army was not known. On June 30, one of Lee’s division commanders Harry Heth requested that he and some of his men move into the town of Gettysburg where there was rumored to be a supply of shoes. As the confederate regiment approached the town, shooting began, and Heth, under strict orders not to draw a full engagement, withdrew after spotting several Union cavalry. Unbeknownst to Heth or Lee, Union officer John Buford had received word earlier that day that the Confederate army was massing at Cashtown, north of Gettysburg, and Buford had decided to move all 3,000 men in his command into town. With ten major roads going into and out of Gettysburg and several hills surrounding it, he knew it could serve as an important road hub and a great defensive position. After Heth’s men met Buford’s, there was still some confusion – was this a separate mounted force or was this the whole Union Army? That night it was decided to move over 13,000 Confederates into the town at first light.


As the Confederates moved toward Gettysburg on the morning of July 1 the 330 men of the First Minnesota Regiment were also marching toward the town. The First Minnesota had set out from Uniontown, Maryland on the border of Pennsylvania. Because of the threat of enemy forces, the regiment had been pushed hard, covering 30 miles in one afternoon just two days before. Company Sergeant James Wright would later remember the march of that day “In the afternoon, we were ordered to move at quick time and to keep well closed up, and we felt the rapid marching.” The regiment was still reeling from the shocking news that its colonel, William Colvill had arrested after defying a superior officer for allowing his men use a log to cross a stream rather than marching through it. In another upsetting move, the commanding general of the Army of the Potomac, Joe Hooker had been replaced by George Meade for failing to pursue Lee. Isaac Taylor, also a solider in the First Minnesota, wrote in his diary for that day, “The news that Gen. Meade has superceeded [sic] Hooker is confirmed I shall hope for the best but I do not like the idea of changing commanders on the eve of battle.”

Wright recalled, “We had been on the road for two hours or more when it became certain that there was cannonading.” When they moved to a small ridge overlooking Gettysburg, Wright explained, “we could see and hear enough to satisfy us that there was real fighting going on. A heavy and well-sustained artillery fire was generating great masses of smoke which were rising and expanding into white clouds as the wind carried it away. On this, the late afternoon sun was shining, making the hills appear as if covered with snow. But none of us imagined there was a snowstorm there.” Wright continued, “Within another mile or so we began to meet citizen and soldier refugees occasionally, and later we met many of them.” As Wright, Taylor and others asked how the battle was going, soldiers told stories of a dire defeat taking place. Finally the regiment arrived just outside Gettysburg later that night. Wright later wrote of men that evening “Pregnant as the situation was with possibilities for the morrow (and they were not forgotten or ignored), I do not think much time was spent in their consideration by those not obliged to keep awake.” Wright himself "had drunk not less than a pint of strong coffee” and still fell fast asleep. While Wright slept soundly, Isaac Taylor laid awake talking to another member of the regiment, his younger brother Henry, about what was about to take place.

When Heth’s men had moved into Gettysburg earlier that morning they had met Buford’s men on McPherson Ridge. The shooting had begun around 5:30 in the morning when Heth’s men, backed up by reinforcements, came down the Chambersburg Pike Road. The fighting, small in scale at first, had grown more intense as both sides called in more men. Just as it had looked in late morning hours as if Buford’s men would be overrun, Union General John Reynolds had arrived with his corps. Criticized in the past for his lack of aggressiveness in battle, he was riding at the front directing the attack and as he turned in his saddle to give an order, he suddenly fell, hit in the back of the neck. He was one of the highest ranking officers to die during the war.

Throughout the afternoon, Union forces had held off repeated assaults from the Confederates until the forces anchoring the Union line right flank collapsed. These were the men that walked past the men of the First Minnesota with tales of a defeat. By the time the First Minnesota arrived, the Union forces had fallen back through the town itself and taken positions along Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill, to the north. Cemetery Ridge in the center  and the several other surrounding hills, south of the town. At this point in the battle, Lee’s forces could have taken Cemetery Hill, which anchored the extreme end of the Union right flank.However, Lee had issued a series of confusing orders and the end result of this was that Richard Ewell, one of Lee’s corps commanders, had decided not to push his men any further after the Union line broke. It was a decision that would haunt him and Lee for the rest of their lives.

The Battle of Gettysburg and the First Minnesota Regiment Part II

Wright was awakened by his captain the next morning, July 2, and was told to get the men ready for the march. All around him the second corps, of which the regiment was a part, was moving. Author Brian Leehan later wrote that the men moved so early that morning that its skirmishers, a small group of men sent out during the night to guard the camp, did not have time to catch up. The regiment finally reached the battlefield and took their place in reserve on Cemetery Ridge, a slight incline overlooking the boulder strewn ground and small creek bed called Plum Run on the left flank of the Union line. Wright wrote, “We had a deep interest in the results and great curiosity to know what had really happened the day before. And we could not have been without some anxiety as to what might happen to the army, the regiment, or ourselves during the day that was soon to dawn.” Taylor noted in his diary an order given by their division commander General John Gibbon: “Order from Gen. Gibbon read to us in which he says this is to be the great battle of the war & that any soldier leaving the ranks without leave will be instantly put to death.” Years later, Wright would look back on this moment with a bit of skepticism, writing, “If anyone had a premonition that we had reached the culminating battle of the war and that the day was to be the saddest, bloodiest, grandest, and the most glorious day in the history of the regiment, I do not recall it being suggested.” Around this time the regiment got a welcome surprise as Colonel Colvill arrived and announced to great cheers that he was retaking command.

In the Confederate camp that morning, Lee was putting his final touches on his battle plan for the day. He had decided that he would send most of his men to attack the Union left flank with the objective of taking Little Round Top and the nearby hills, allowing his men to get behind the Union Army. Lee would send the rest of his men to Union Right flank to attack Culp's Hill It took much longer to get his men into position than he originally thought and the attack did not start until the afternoon. As the Confederates moved toward Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top they suddenly ran into General Daniel Sickles’ third Corps which was originally supposed to be on Cemetery Ridge along with the Minnesotans, but at the last-minute Sickles had decided the ground to his front looked much better. In the bloody fighting that followed, Confederate forces were able to push Sickles back to Cemetery Ridge at very heavy cost. Sickles’ move had badly delayed Lee's plan and by the time they reached Cemetery Ridge, many men in the original advance had been killed, wounded and the rest were exhausted. As a result the Confederate line was in much confusion. On Little Round Top, Confederate forces attempted to go up to the summit, but found the men of the Twentieth Maine waiting for them.

As the First Minnesota hugged the ground, it shook from the sound of battle as Confederate and Union shells flew overhead. Watching the fighting below him, Wright wrote, “It was a wonderful scene we were witnessing. And it left no desire to have it repeated, for it is a fearful thing to see an army corps crushed in the collision of battle. It was a scene not easily effaced from the memory and exceeding difficult to describe.” He continued, “All along the lines of the contending forces, there was a whirling tempest of fire and smoke, and about them gathered clouds of sulphurous vapor – into which the reinforcements plunged and were lost sight of and out of which came streams of wounded and the fragments of broken regiments.” Leehan wrote, “The smoke, coupled with light and shadow on that part of the battlefield, made all of the combatants in the distance seem exceedingly tall. It was as if the men on the battle line along Cemetery Ridge were watching a struggle between giants on the distant forward line.” In addition to the fight they could see, the men on the ground could hear the volleys of gunfire coming from Little Round Top to their left. Wright’s Company was ordered to move away from the rest of the regiment and form a skirmish line to prevent or at least delay a Confederate attack from that direction and were quickly engaged and eventually had to fall back. Sickles’ men could no longer hold their position and were overwhelmed. Sickles himself had a cannon ball nearly rip off his leg. He was carried off the field calmly puffing a cigar.

As he watched the Union line break, Minnesotan John Plummer remembered, “I never felt so bad in all my life. I thought sure the day was gone for us, I felt that I would prefer to die there, rather than live and suffer the disgrace and humiliation of a defeat.” On the left of the Minnesotans Confederate General William Barksdale smelled victory and ordered his men to keep moving forward even though they were becoming disorganized. Winfield Scott Hancock commander of the second corps, riding along the ridge saw the dangerous gap that Sickles move had created, and that a thousand Confederates were racing through it, up toward the top of the ridge. At that moment he rode past Minnesotans laying on the ground, and he said, “My God! Are these all the men we have here?” He then looked at Colvill and said “What regiment is this?” Colvill replied, “First Minnesota.” Out of options, and badly needing at least five minutes to get more men on Cemetery Ridge, Hancock yelled back “Charge those lines!” William Lochren later wrote, “Every man realized in an instant what that order meant – death or wounds to us all.”

Colvill ordered his men, who without Wright's company and several others, now numbered around only 262 to 280, to their feet. They shouldered their rifles and began moving down the ridge at the double quick. In front of them were upwards of 1,100 Confederates, who were only three hundred yards away and closing. Halfway down the ridge, Colvill ordered his men to into a full charge. Nearly on top of the enemy, the Minnesotans still at a run, opened fire at point blank range. It was later reported by some that a whole row of Confederates fell. Lochren recalled the Confederates’ “supporting lines, confused and excited, commenced firing through the mass in front, slaughtering their own men by the hundreds and throwing the whole column into confusion, while their artillery from the rear fired on friend and foe alike.” Colvill himself ran behind the man carrying the regimental flag. When he reached Plum Run, he crouched down. Suddenly he felt something slam into his back with such force as to spin him around. A bullet had hit his right shoulder, nicked his spin and lodged in his left shoulder. As Colvill attempted to steady himself, another bullet hit his right ankle. In agony, he fell to the ground and rolled into a ditch. Within moments, more officers went down. With the Confederate line stopped, the Minnesotans attempted to push them back even further, but multiple attempts failed to move them. Many men threw themselves to the ground or hid behind boulders and fired at the Confederates. On the right flank of the regiment, hand to hand fighting broke out and the Confederate forces pushed that part of the Union line backward, folding it upon itself and exposing the backs of men to the left of it, but the left flank held firm.

By now, the charge had stalled the Confederate advance and bought Hancock a priceless ten minutes to bring up reinforcements. While the First Minnesota fought it out at Plum Run, other Union forces attacked to the left, driving back Barksdale’s division fatally hitting the general himself. Other Confederate units were brought up but found they could not get through Plum Run and so moved around it. More Union forces arrived and drove back all the units to the left and right of the Minnesotans. Colvill, still laying in the ditch, gave the order to fall back. The right side of the line, which by now had arguably taken the worst of the fight, needed no encouragement to retreat. The left side did not immediately hear the order and only fell back when it was pointed out that others were leaving. Issac Taylor, who had amazingly survived the charge and the fighting down on Plum Run, began retreating to Cemetery Ridge, one soldier would later tell Henry that his brother had just fired his gun for final time turned, smiled and was hit and killed by a shell fragment. By now it was around 7:30 and darkness was quickly falling over the field. From the moment Colvill had given the order to stand up to when he called retreat only twenty minutes had passed.

After he helped Colvill to a barn which had been turned into a hospital. Henry Taylor spent the next several hours looking for his brother before realizing that he that he must of have been killed. A little while later, Wright, who had spent the afternoon fighting to the left of the regiment in a skirmish line, and had missed the charge, still had not made it back to the regiment and was waiting for news. He remembered one officer who said he had “found only a few men of the regiment, and it was believed the rest were killed or captured. This was indeed depressing news, and at first almost stunned us, though we were expecting bad news. Then there was a general expression of belief that ‘it could not be quite so bad as that.’” When the numbers were finally tallied, only forty seven men were still standing. For the rest of the night, what remained of the regiment, searched the field. Some men managed to crawl or lump back to Union lines, others like Colvill required help, with some the men they could only record their last words. Years later men of the regiment would still remember the cries and moans that came from Plum Run after the battle. When firing was again heard far to the north at Culp's Hill on the Union right flank Plummer recalled “We made up our minds that we were whipped, and expected before morning to see the whole army routed, flying for Baltimore.” The attack would turn out to be the last of the day as the Confederates made one final attempt to take the hill that partly succeeded in taking some positions. Many like Wright were too exhausted to fight anymore and simply decided to fall asleep with the guns still rumbling the distance.

The Battle of Gettysburg and the First Minnesota Regiment Part III

A new round of cannon and artillery fire around Culp's Hill awoke Wright three hours later, the morning of July 3. Told by his captain that the news from Plum Run was as bad as the initial reports had indicated, Wright was ordered to get the company ready to move out in several minutes. What Wright was hearing that morning was a massive barrage of artillery fire that the Union forces hoped would drive the Confederates off the hill, but it failed to penetrate the entrenchments that protected them. For several hours the fight over the Culp’s Hill continued before it was finally retaken by Union forces for the last time at eight that morning. When Wright’s company came upon their regiment, “We had not been separated far or long, but the greetings were as sincere and earnest as if oceans had divided us and years had elapsed.” With so many senior officers killed or wounded the previous day, Nathan Messick, only a company captain, took over what remained of the regiment. A little while later, the First Minnesota was ordered to take up another position along Cemetery Ridge, but unlike the day before when they had been on the far left flank of the army, today it would be in the center along a stone wall about two feet high. Wright explained “Under ordinary circumstances, an organization that had suffered one-half the loss that we had would have been sent to the rear instead of the firing line. But this was not an ordinary occasion. It was believed that every available man and gun would be needed for the defense of the ridge if another assault were made.”

In the Confederate camp that morning, Lee was frustrated but still confident. He had hoped that his men on Culp's Hill would have been able to hold on or even find an opening in the Union line on which to attack. This no longer feasible, he turned his attention to planning his final assault on the Union lines. He ordered one hundred and sixty cannon brought up; they were to fire on the center of the Union line. Lee hoped that this overwhelming show of firepower would drive the Union guns from Cemetery Ridge. This done, he would have General George Pickett's newly arrived division of 12,000 men, move out over a mile of open ground and assault the center. Despite the fact that the previous day his men had taken none of their planned objectives, Lee still believed that Meade would have most of his men positioned on the left and right flank, making the center more vulnerable. Lee instructed Pickett to have his men aim for a small stone wall and copse of trees on Cemetery Ridge.

Early that same morning, Henry Taylor, with the help from another soldier, found his brother Isaac near Plum Run and buried him. On a wooden slab that was placed over the grave, he wrote, “No useless coffin closed his breast, nor in sheet nor in shroud we bound him, but he lay like a warrior taking his rest, with a shelter tent around him.” Around one o’clock, the First Minnesota was at the far left end of the stone wall and the men were taking the opportunity to drink coffee and eat hardtack. Others worked on strengthening the small wall and getting more ammunition. Several companies of the regiment, which had been previously held in reserve, were also brought up to this point on the line, increasing the strength of the regiment to 150 men. While there had been a brief artillery duel earlier when the regiment had moved into position, the day had been relatively quiet. Plummer sat with several other men reading a newspaper account of the fight the day before. Close to the trees, Mead, Hancock and Gibbon sat down to eat and discuss the plan for the day. According to William Harmon who was in another company of the First Minnesota standing nearby, Meade said he had seen Lee’s buildup of artillery on the center and expected an attack to begin at any moment. Meade explained that Lee would throw every man he had at the center and that the fighting would be “so desperate that every available man must be used.” Gibbon ordered Harmon to tell his company to move into line. At that moment, two cannon shots ripped through the air and landed nearby. It was a signal for all of Lee’s guns to open fire.

Plummer and the men around him threw down the newspaper and “hugged the ground just about as close as human beings are generally in the habit of doing.” He continued, “The air seemed to be filled with the hissing, screaming, bursting missiles, and all of them seemed to be directed at us.” An anonymous officer of the regiment recalled the artillery fire “was tearing up the ground and flying with horrid screeches, as if invisible demons, through the air, dismounting cannon, shattering limbers, mangling thousands of horses and men.” Wright echoed this scene, writing, “There was an incessant, discordant flight of shells – seemingly in and from all directions – howling, shrieking, striking, exploding, tearing, smashing, and destroying – producing a scene that words cannot present and was well nigh unbearable.” For two hours Lee bombarded the federal line. Fortunately for the Minnesotans, the Confederate shells sailed harmlessly over their heads. The shelling seemed to Lee to have the desired effect, as many of the Union cannon on Cemetery Ridge were destroyed and many others fell silent. What he didn't know was that Meade, in an attempt preserve his ammunition, had ordered all firing from Union side to halt. With the center of the line sufficiently softened up, Lee ordered Pickett to send his men forward.

With that, Pickett’s division emerged from behind some woods and formed two lines a mile wide. They marched forward, moving past Lee’s guns and into the rolling “no man’s land” that sloped up to Cemetery Ridge. At that moment, Union guns opened fire. Artillery observers on Little Round Top began seeing the shells punch into Pickett’s division, creating several holes in the line. Wright wrote, “It was a magnificent spectacle. A rising tide of armed men rolling towards us in steel-crested billows. It was an immensely interesting site especially to us who must face it, breast it, break it, or be broken by it.” The closer they came, the more artillery fired on them, on the extreme right and left flank of Pickett’s men, the casualties became so devastating that eventually the regiments anchoring these positions decided to retreat. Those who continued soon crossed the Emmitsburg Road about six hundred yards from the Union line, where, all at once, men hiding behind the wall stood in one massive line and fired into them. Seeing this, Hancock ordered another regiment on the far left to move forward, then was hit himself. His order allowed the regiment to fire directly into the side of the Confederate line. Wright remembered that as the Confederates approached, the First Minnesota “sent a rolling fire to the right oblique, directed at their feet, which was about all we could see of them at that time.” He continued, “Then, every man fired as rapidly as he could handle cartridges and adjust caps [on their rifles].” Minnesotan Alfred Carpenter wrote, “Men stagger[ed] from their ranks by the scores, hundreds, thousands, but on they came like an enrolling wave of the sea.” He continued, “Men fell about us unheeded, unnoticed; we scarcely knew they were fallen, so great was the intensity of attention to the approaching foe. Our muskets became so heated we could no longer handle them. We dropped them and picked up those of wounded. Our cartridges give out. We rifled the boxes of the dead.” By now what remained of Pickett’s men were nearly at the wall itself. Led by General Lewis Armistead, the Confederates poured over the wall and charged into the Union line. The Minnesotans ran to the right to meet the oncoming Confederates. Wright remembered, “It was a grand rush to get there in the quickest time, without much regard to the manner of it – and we knew very well what we were there for and proceeded to business.” At that moment captain Messick, who had commanded the regiment for less than twenty hours, was stuck and killed by shell fragment. Seconds later the last flag bearer who held the regimental banner fell to ground, Henry O’Brian grabbed it and raced heedlessly toward the oncoming enemy, with the regiment following close behind. Suddenly, he was hit in the head, but appeared not to notice and kept coming. Then a bullet ripped into O’Brian’s hand and shattered the flag staff. O’Brian fell, but the flag was quickly recovered again. Within moments the First Minnesota slammed into the side of the Confederates. Harmon later remembered, “If men ever become devils, that was one of the times. We were crazy with the excitement of the fight. We just rushed like wild beasts.” Wright wrote, “Closing in on them with a rush and a cheer, there was shooting, stabbing, and clubbing.” The lack of the commander made no difference to anyone at this point as the world, for each man, narrowed to just killing the man in front of him. In the mist of this, Minnesotan Marshall Sherman saw a Confederate officer on the other side of the wall carrying a flag and trying to inspire his men. The officer walked to within feet of Sherman, but because of the smoke and noise did not see him. Sherman brought his bayonet down to the man’s chest. Seeing only this, the officer dropped the flag, which was quickly recovered by Sherman. In several minutes it was all over, Wright remembered, “As soon as the smoke lifted sufficiently to permit us to see, all that could be seen of the mighty force that had been driven so ferociously against us was scattered and running to the rear.” Armistead lay dying, and those left of the Confederates who had passed over the wall surrendered. Later it was found that the First Minnesota captured 500 prisoners that day. As they watched the Confederates limp back to Lee’s lines, a wave of exhaustion came over the men: “For about 65 hours we had been under almost constant physical or mental strain – or both – and had pretty nearly reached the limit of both,” Wright wrote. Upon examination, he found blood coming from his shoulder and neck, apparently the result of a rifle that exploded nearby, but he decided it was not serious enough to report. The regiment was called together a little while later, and it was found that another 23 men had been killed another 32 had been wounded.

Dawn broke on the morning of July 4 with both armies still in the positions they had held the day before. Each of the commanding generals expected the other to attack but Lee’s men were too exhausted, and Meade was content to stay were he was. Thousands of miles away in Washington D.C., Abraham Lincoln had been nearly living in the War Department telegraph office reading every message that came from Meade for the last three days. Meade had told Lincoln about driving Lee back on July 2, but information on the outcome had remained sketchy. Finally, that morning Meade wrote the President that Lee had been defeated with severe losses. An exuberant Lincoln sent news of the victory all across the county. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin later wrote that the announcement set off spontaneous celebration all across the North.

On the same day in Vicksburg, Mississippi, General Pemberton decided he had had enough, and came out under a flag of truce and asked Grant if he would pardon all Confederate officers if he surrendered the city. Grant, who become famous for only allowing unconditional surrenders, refused. Finally, Grant’s fellow officers convinced him to accept the offer. At 10 o’clock that morning, white flags began appearing along the Confederate line in the city that did not celebrate Independence Day again until 1945. News of the fall of Vicksburg reached the War Department several hours later. Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, never an emotional man burst into Lincoln’s office and according to one man present “Executed a double shuffle and threw up his hat by way of showing that he was the bearer of glad tiding.” When he told Lincoln the news, the President hugged him and said “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.”

The Battle of Gettysburg by no means ended the war, but a critical point had been passed. While Lee was still beloved by many in the South, he never again enjoyed the sense of invincibility he had going into Pennsylvania. On July 5, his army began marching back to Virginia. Meade, like Hooker before him, failed to pursue. In three days of fighting, 55,000 men had been killed or wounded and the town had sustained massive damage.

On November 25, five days after Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to commemorate the new Gettysburg Cemetery, Grant smashed a Confederate army at Chattanooga Tennessee, where an eighteen year old Arthur MacArthur, father of Douglas MacArthur, earned the Medal of Honor leading his men up Missionary Ridge. The victory convinced Lincoln to bring Grant to Washington where he offered him command of all armies in the field. The victory also left the lower South wide open to invasion and set the stage for William Tecumseh Sherman’s march to sea. Unlike his predecessors, Grant had no problem following Lee deep into Virginia and fought it out with him in a series of bloody battles to grind down Lee’s army. Finally, in April 1865, his army all but gone, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House Virginia.

For the men of the First Minnesota, Gettysburg proved to be the regiment’s high water mark. After the battle, Hancock, who survived his wound, defended his decision to order the charge on July 2, saying, “I knew they must lose heavily and it caused me pain to give the order, but I would have done it if I had known every man would be killed. It was a sacrifice that must be made.” Of the men who made the charge. he said, “The superb gallantry of those men saved our line from being broken. No soldiers on any field, in this or any other country, ever displayed grander heroism.” He added, “There is no more gallant a deed recorded in history.” It has been calculated that in the three days of fighting of the 330 men involved, 80 men of the regiment were killed and another 149 wounded, a 70% casualty rate for the regiment – higher than any other unit involved in the battle. In August, the First Minnesota was on the move again, heading up to New York to make sure the riots that had broken out when Lincoln originally instituted the draft did not happen again when the draft was restarted. In October, the First Minnesota was at the Battle of Bristoe Station in Virginia, and in the one day of battle the regiment captured 322 Confederates and mercifully lost only one man. It was the last battle the Minnesotans fought. In February, 1864, the three year enlistment agreements the men had signed began to expire and the regiment was given orders to march to Washington D.C., where a huge banquet was thrown in their honor. Colonel Colvill, still unable to walk, once again surprised his men when he had himself carried in to greet them. Finally, on February 15, the regiment reached St. Paul Minnesota, and the war for them was over.

On July 2, 1897, 165 members of the regiment traveled to Gettysburg to dedicate a massive bronze statue to the regiment on Cemetery Ridge. It showed a union solider running toward Plum Run bent low, a rifle in one hand, a look of determination on his face. An engraving on the base of the statue showed the Minnesotans down at Plum Run. Today it is one of the most recognizable statues at Gettysburg, and stands prominently next to the Pennsylvania Monument. An obelisk was also placed at the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge showing where the men of the First Minnesota were on July 3.

In many Civil War circles the First Minnesota regiment has reached legendary status. While the regiment is well deserving of all of the accolades with which it has been honored, in his memoir Wright echoed a feeling of veterans down through the ages when he wrote, “None of us wanted our names in the casualty list; we all wanted to go home with a full complement of legs and arms; but we were there to meet the requirements of the occupation, were ready to do it, whatever it might cost.”

Epilogue

William Colvill, after the banquet in Washington D.C., stayed with regiment and was mustered out with everyone else. He returned to his hometown of Red Wing, Minnesota. Eventually his wound healed enough to allow him to walk with a cane. He entered politics as a Republican and served in the state house. However, he fell out of favor when he announced a year after his election that he would become a Democrat. For the remainder of his life, he was known as somewhat of a sage for his many areas of knowledge, but he refused to talk about the war. He remained close to many men of his old regiment and was a regular at reunions and ceremonies. He died in a veteran’s home in June 1905 preparing for one of these events. Four year later a bronze statue of him in full uniform and grasping the handle of his sword was placed in the new state capital building, and still stands there today.

Henry Taylor survived Gettysburg, but could not bring himself to write his parents for three more days. Mustered out in February, 1864, he briefly returned home to Wisconsin before reenlisting again .Taylor saw no action for the remainder of the war and came home for the last time in October, 1865. For the next several years he taught school before going into an insurance business in 1875. He passed away in December 1907.

John Plummer was elected clerk of Hennepin County shortly after he left the army, but died several months later.

William Lochren, like Colvill, became interested in politics and served in the state house, but failed to attain a higher office and years later served as Federal district judge. While his political career may have been mediocre, his writings on the First Minnesota remain a must-use source for any Civil War historian.

Alfred Carpenter stayed on in the army after the regiment was dismantled. In 1864, while commanding troops in Key West Florida he developed yellow fever and died.

Henry O’Brian and Marshall Sherman were both given Medals of Honor for their actions on July 3. Both reenlisted. In fighting around Petersburg Virginia, Sherman lost a leg and O’Brian was badly wounded in the chest then rescued by another soldier who would earn the Medal of Honor for this action. After the war, O’Brian became a postmaster general and later a government pension agent. Sherman, went on to sell insurance in St. Paul and own a boarding house. The flag he captured is housed in the Minnesota Historical Society.

James Wright reenlisted in time to participate in the fighting around Petersburg and was on hand to witness the surrender at Appomattox. Upon his return home, he worked in a tannery shop and railroad business and remained active in political and veterans affairs. Wright helped organize several regimental reunions in the 1870s and moved to Massachusetts. In 1911, he completed his memoirs but was unable to find a publisher and finally donated the writings to the Minnesota Historical Society. He died at the age of 95 in 1936; it is believed that he was the last surviving member of the regiment. Today his book is one of the most detailed and often quoted sources on the regiment.

Source Notes: Below are books on the First Minnesota that I found very helpful in writing this paper.

No More Gallant a Deed: A Civil War Memoir of the First Minnesota by James A. Wright and edited by Steven J. Keillor

The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers by Richard Moe

Pale Horse at Plum Run: The First Minnesota at Gettysburg by Brian Leehan


Here are some books I used for general information on the Battle of Gettysburg

Gettysburg by Stephen Sears

They Met at Gettysburg by Edward J. Stackpole

Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage by Noah Andre Trudeau

The Civil War A Narrative Vol. II: Fredericksburg to Meridian by Shelby Foote

"Man on the Moon!"

On July 20, 1969 the normal flow of news in the United States was interrupted as people stopped what they were doing and went to the nearest television they could find. This was the day that astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin were to fulfill President John Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade and thus bring a dramatic end to the Space Race.

The Space Race had begun twelve years before in October 1957, when the Soviet Union had shocked the world by announcing that it had successfully sent the first satellite, named Sputnik, into orbit. Immediately afterwards, the Eisenhower administration scrambled to respond to this unexpected challenge. Many ordinary Americans and politicians feared that the moment represented a new and dangerous phase in the ongoing Cold War. As author Tom Wolfe later wrote some, including Speaker of the House John McCormack honestly believed, "The Soviets would set up space platforms from which they could drop nuclear weapons at will, like rocks from a highway overpass. ” For the next few years the United States and Soviet Union engaged in a game of one-upmanship, first with satellites then with sending men into orbit.

In his famous speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas, on September 12, 1962, President John Kennedy dramatically sharpened the goal of the race when he announced that he wanted a man on the moon before the end of the decade. He stated “The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time; and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind.” He added “In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation” Finally, he compared the moon to a new ocean. “… and only if the United States occupies a position of preeminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new ocean of war.”

Kennedy saw to it that NASA’s budget was dramatically increased. He also helped create the Apollo Program in 1963. According to historian Paul Johnson, NASA ultimately spent $5 billion on Apollo. The sudden death of Kennedy in November of that year gave NASA even more reason to get to the moon. For the next four years, they launched ever bolder missions that went deeper into space than ever before. A one point they were doing a new mission every month. In December, 1968, Apollo 8 NASA astronauts Frank Borman, William Anders, and Jim Lovell (who would later become famous as the commander of Apollo 13) gave NASA its biggest success up to that time when they orbited the moon and returned to earth. This helped set the stage for the moon landing seven months later. Ironically, both Armstrong and Aldrin were backup pilots for the mission and Mike Collins, who would be the third person on Apollo 11, had been chosen to be among those who would be on Apollo 8 but had to drop out because of surgery.

Armstrong and Aldrin sat in the Lunar Lander “The Eagle” on July 20, 1969, carefully hovering only a few thousand feet from the surface of the moon. Back on earth, news anchors Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley watched breathlessly as they heard the lowering altitude levels being read off. In Central Park, thousands of people braved rainy conditions to sit around a specially constructed screen. Thousands more watched in Disneyland, and in the vast JFK Airport thousands of people literally stopped what they were doing to watch the news reports on every available TV screen. Scenes likes these were repeated across the country and across the world. Later, it would be estimated that a record 500 million people watched the landing. In the Soviet Union and China, reaction was muted as all transmissions of the landing were blocked.

Even some Americans would not receive word of the landing for years. Bob Jones who was a P.O.W in North Vietnam in 1972. When during Communist radio broadcast to the prison about the evils of America, the speaker asked how the United States could continue bombings when "they had placed a plaque on the moon that said they came in peace for all mankind?" Jones recalled the reaction of the other men around him “Everyone said ‘On the moon?!’ and that was the first we knew about our moon landing, and their were cheers all the way through the camp” He added “After that, we’d point to the guards and the guards would come up and we would point to the moon say ‘U.S, U.S!’”

As the lander touched down, Armstrong uttered, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Engle has landed”. Houston responded “Roger Tranquility we copy on the ground. You gotta a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.” The usually impartial Cronkite yelled out, “Man on the moon!” Overwhelmed, he took his glasses off and showing his own excitement could only say “A jeez, oh boy!” He then turned to veteran astronaut next to him and added “You outta say something because I’m speechless.” Few outside of Houston and Cape Kennedy realized how close the landing had come to failure.

During that famous descent, Armstrong had made so many course corrections that it nearly overloaded the small radar system, which NASA officials ordered be turned off. Fuel for the landing also began to run critically short, and at the last possible second Armstrong decided that he did not like the original landing site and to fly a little further than planned. Despite all of this, the landing was still a success. Flight Director Gene Kranz would later admit that by the time they landed there was only seventeen seconds of fuel left. In the White House, President Richard Nixon made an interstellar phone call to the astronauts when they walked on the moon a few hours later and congratulated them on the mission.

While Armstrong surely realized the historical significance when he stepped on the Moon a few hours later, he also must have felt lucky to be there. In his first ever space flight on Gemini 8 in 1966, one of the thrusters had misfired during the flight, sending the capsule in to a violent spin which only stopped when Armstrong shut down many of the vessal’s systems. In May, 1969, just weeks before Apollo 11 took off, Armstrong was almost killed when he was flying a Lunar Lander Research Vehicle which was designed to practice a moon landing. In mid-flight it malfunctioned, forcing Armstrong to eject.

Armstrong and Aldrin ultimately spent twenty-one hours on the moon before safely taking off and re-docking with Collins, who had been orbiting above in the command module Columbia, the part of the ship that would return them home. The three splashed down in the Pacific four days later and were picked up by the USS Hornet with Nixon on-board waiting to greet them.

Apollo 11 proved to be NASA’s high water mark, both in terms of public interest and in the sheer daring of the mission. While people continued to be sent to the moon and make new scientific discoveries, the glamor and novelty of the1969 trip was no longer there, and missions increasingly looked routine. Finally, in 1972, NASA officials announced that due to budget cutbacks Apollo 17 would be the last moon landing. The Russia space program suffered a similar fate as Soviet leaders were forced to eventually admit that they had been beaten to the moon and ordered their space program’s energies be redirected. In the coming years, both countries began working more on space stations and satellites such as Mir, Skylab, and the international space station, as well as the Hubble Telescope. But while the limits of manned flight appear to have been reached, no one who witnessed that first moon landing will ever forget the sense of pride and wonder they felt, and how it transcended the political and cultural divisions of the time, and for one brief moment united the world.

Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation

Note: The issue of religion can be a very controversial one,
especially when it comes to history. In this post, my goal is NOT to
make Martin Luther look good while making the Catholic Church look
bad. Rather, it is to simply tell the story of the beginning of the
Reformation. Though I was raised Lutheran I grew up in an extended
Catholic family and have many friends who are Catholic. I don’t
believe the Church has always been perfect and feel at times that it
has not handled issues correctly. Neither do I agree with everything
Luther wrote, particularly his later writing on Jews and Anabaptists,
but I believe his early writings were him at his best. It should be
noted that even while Luther, a former Catholic monk, fiercely
decried the Church, he never made a complete break that several other
scholars advocated, and he fervently kept many Catholic traditions.
Even on his deathbed Luther still believed that he had been a loyal
Catholic and resented anyone who referred to his supporters as
Lutherans. It should also be noted that the Church at the time of the
Reformation was not a den of corruption; there were men such as Albert
who used their positions for personal gains, but there were also
religious leaders who admitted there were problems and always tried to
do what was best for the laity. With this in mind, I hope that you
will enjoy this article.

On October 31, 1517, in the small southern German town of Wittenberg,
a thirty-three year old professor and former monk made his way to
the doors of the Castle Church and carefully nailed up a letter to the
papacy listing 95 complaints, or theses, about church practices. Most
residents probably could not read the paper, as it was written in
Latin. Yet this paper and the man who wrote it set in motion events
that in a few short years would change the world.

By all accounts Martin Luther did not cut an impressive or imposing
figure; he stood only 5’2, had high tenor voice, and his facial
features consisted of a long narrow nose, deep set eyes, thin lips and
a head capped by hair cut in the traditional monk style. Yet his
modest appearance belied a powerful intellect.

Luther had been born November 10, 1483, in Eisleben, Germany and
educated at the University of Erfurt. In 1505, while walking back to
Erfurt in a thunderstorm, he narrowly missed being struck by
lightning. Terrified, he had yelled, “St. Anna, I will become a monk!”
and several months later, he had entered the order of the Observant
Augustans. By all accounts Luther was a hard working and thoughtful
monk; however, he would later confess that he had been tormented by
evil thoughts and the idea that he could never truly purify himself.
Five years later, Luther and two others had been chosen to go to Rome
to sort out a disagreement that had arisen with another monastery.
Although Luther enjoyed visiting all the holy sites he could find,
this particular diplomatic mission had failed completely. Upon his
return home, Luther had a falling out with several members of his
monastery and was told to go to the town of Wittenberg. In 1512 Luther
received his doctorate and began teaching at the local university and
preaching at the church. Luther may have spent the rest of his life as
a well established intelligent spiritual guide and academic authority,
never achieving any other fame, had it not been for the actions of
Albert of Mainz.

Albert had a burning ambition and sought to establish his family as
the dominant political force in Germany. By, 1517 he had become the
bishop of Magdeburg and Halberstadt and wanted the city of Mainz as
well, but he needed a substantial amount of money to obtain it. He
decided to get a get a loan from the powerful Fugger bank. Like any
bank today, Albert was given the money on the explicit understanding
that it would be repaid. Soon Albert had his new bishopric and turned
to what he believed would be the simple matter of repaying the loan.

Albert and Pope Leo X had decided to get the money through the sale of
indulgences. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Church had
introduced this practice, which involved a person admitting a sin and
paying a small fee to Church to have the sin forgiven and spend less
time in Purgatory. At first, indulgences had been used as one tool of
many by which a sin could be forgiven. Over time though, many powerful
figures within the Church began to see them as a new revenue stream.

The actual task of selling indulgences was given to Johann Tetzel a
balding, overweight man who was a Dominican preacher who had perfected the
talent of pitching these commodities. Tetzel would go into a local
village with great fanfare and announce that for only a pittance
people could have their sins forgiven, but they could also free
relatives still trapped in Purgatory. Then he would set up a table and
chest and his assistants would pen the names of the villagers on forms
prefilled with all but the particular sin to be added. As soon as the
last coins were in the chest, he would be on his way to the next
village.

In his letter with the 95 Theses, Luther sharply criticized the
practice of indulgences and stated that they could not be used as a
cure all for sins. Though he did not entirely denounce them, he wrote
in Theses 6. “The Pope cannot remit any guilt, except by declaring,
and showing that it has been remitted by God; or, to be sure by
remitting guilt in races reserved to his judgment.” However, Luther
thought that Tetzel had gone too far in saying what indulgences could
do. He noted that cannon law stated that no further harm would come to
those already in Purgatory and that they were freed of all sin. Luther
also pointed out that goodness came from within someone and was not
something that could be bought. Finally he struck at the larger
problem of indulgences by saying that it made the Church seem as if it
were only after money and took away from not only the peasants but
also the Church’s main message about salvation through spiritual
betterment.

The Theses found their way to a local printer and soon were translated
into German and many people began to openly protest against the
Church’s practice of selling indulgences. Soon after, Tetzel began
running into more and more strident opposition. It should be noted
that Luther was not the first to question this Church practice – the
famous Catholic figure Erasmus of Rotterdam once said, "It is clear
that many of the reforms for which Luther calls are urgently needed.”
Also many princes like Fredrick of Saxony and others saw indulgences
as little more than stealing.

After the Theses were posted and distributed, Luther went back to work
at the university, but within months his tract had been sent to the
furthest corners of Europe and become a sensation. Luther now found
himself being called to defend the Theses. For the next four years, he
examined his religious views and found himself growing increasing
distant from the Church. He also continued to write and publish his
ever developing beliefs. The whole matter finally came to head when
Luther was called to the Diet of Worms, a meeting of several major
political and religious leaders. He was shown several of his writings
and asked two simple questions: 1. Where these his? 2. Would he
recant? Luther admitted that they were his, but said that unless
someone could say specifically what he had said was wrong, he could
not recant.

With that, Luther left the gathering to return to Wittenberg. As he
traveled home he was met by several horsemen who asked if he was the
famous professor. Luther said he was, and with that, they grabbed him
and rode off into the night. Luther’s supporters were horrified when
they found out that he had disappeared and many feared him dead. In
fact, he was in safe hands. After the gathering, Fredrick of Saxony, a
prince who controlled the area Luther lived in, had ordered his men to
intercept him, as he believed that the Church would excommunicate
Luther and declare him an outlaw. Once Luther had been captured, he
was taken to the Wartburg Castle in Eisenach, Germany. He would spend
the next several months safely locked away where, among other
scholarly pursuits, he translated the New Testament from Latin to
German in six weeks.

Luther indeed was excommunicated and declared an outlaw shortly after
he had refused to recant his writings, and a death sentence was placed
on his head. With Frederick as his protector, he returned to
Wittenberg in 1522 where he would continue to develop his beliefs and
because of his work the University of Wittenberg would become one of
the most renowned educational institutions in Europe. His writing
would inspire similar movements throughout Germany, France, England, Holland and
Switzerland. Europe would become a divided camp between Catholic and
Protestants. Several wars would ensue over various religious issues
and finally come to a bloody climax in the Thirty Years’ War which concluded in 1648.
Afterward, the Pope could never again use his religious authority to
tell the leaders of Europe what to do, and kings came to have the most
power in foreign and domestic decisions.

Decades later, Luther would still say that he never expected his
dispute over indulgences to become a widespread cause, and he would
live out rest of his life in Wittenberg, eventually marrying and
having several children. Though he had done more than anyone to
criticize the Church, up to his death in 1546 he still considered
himself a Catholic. After his death, his body was laid to rest at
Castle Church where he originally nailed his 95 Theses to the doors.

“Black Tuesday” 1929

On October 29, 1929 a large crowd gathered outside the New York Stock Exchange. Thoughout the day, prices had been going down. This was not unusual as the Stock Market went up and down  all the time. But the rate of the descent shocked even government and business leaders. By day’s end many shareholders were staring at the numbers in disbelief. As author Richard Saleman later wrote, “Anyone who bought stocks in mid-1929 and held onto them saw most of his or her adult life pass by before getting back to even.”

What had caused such a thing to happen? There’s actually no straightforward answer. Part of the explanation lay in the fact that there had been wild speculation during the 1920s that had given many stocks inflated value. Another cause was that people had bought stocks “on margin,” meaning they had borrowed money to buy a portion of the stock in the hope that it would double its value before the payment was due.Still another cause was that farm prices had been increasing since the 1870s had suddenly began to decline rapidly.

There had been warning signs. Starting in the 1870s, the United States had experienced several major recessions, the most recent of which had occurred in 1924. While these had been significant, they had usually only lasted a year or two before prices appeared to once again stabilize. In actuality, each successive downturn had whittled away at an already weak economy, and only one more major blow was needed to push the country into a full-blown crisis.

By 1929, fears of another recession were forgotten as the Market continued to climb, with the Dow closing on September 3 at 381.17 – a new record – before stocks dropped steadily through the rest of the month. Then on October 23, a wave of selling occurred as margin values were suddenly called in. Author John Steele Gordon wrote of the following morning, “Soon known as Black Thursday, it was the most frantic in the history of the New York Stock Exchange up to that time, as stocks plunged, generating more margin calls, which caused more stock to be sold at any price, as the average spiraled downward. Meanwhile, short sellers added to the downward pressure on stocks in bear raids.”

That afternoon, executives at JP Morgan and Company met and decided to inject $20 million into the Market, and began buying up stocks dirt cheap in an attempt to stabilize prices. Steele writes that this action appeared to work as stock prices did improve for the rest of the week. Then on Monday they began to trend downward.

Wall Street opening bell sounded on Tuesday, October 29, heralding the beginning of a financial apocalypse. Gordon wrote that the Dow average “plunged from the opening bell and kept plunging nearly continuously all day.” By the closing bell, sixteen million shares had changed hands, a record that would not be broken until 1968. So much trading had occurred that the ticker had fallen behind and would not catch up until nearly eight o’clock that evening. The Dow closed 23% below where it had started. Forever after, the day would be known as "Black Tuesday"  All told, $14 million had been lost and another $16 million would disappear before the end of the week.

The U.S. Stock Market Crash of 1929 had the effect of a typhoon on other world markets. In Europe, Germany’s financial infrastructure – still trying to recover from World War I – collapsed as Germans watched their money become nearly worthless. Hitler would later rise to power primarily on a platform promising economic benefits. The Japanese market also buckled; in future years Japanese militarists would seek to solve their economic problems through territorial expansion. In America, people came to realize that even those who didn’t invest in stocks were gravely affected by the massive layoffs and bank failures that resulted from the crash. My own grandfather would vividly remember how “hamburgers were just nickel, but nobody had the nickel.” The “hard times” created a generation of people fearful of putting money in the bank, and prone to hoarding household items that might be hard to come by if another crash occurred.

The market continued to drop for the rest of 1929, and while it did recover for a short time in 1930, would continue to fall for the next several years. While Franklin Roosevelt attempted to jumpstart the economy through New Deal programs, many of them proved to be only a temporary solution. Ultimately it was the start of World War II that finally put Americans – and most of the world – back to work.