On this day in 1863, soldiers from the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac sat in the fields surrounding what had been a quiet little town in Pennsylvania, staring at each other through rain and over the some 51,000 casualties that littered the ground between them. The gruesome job of cleaning up the dead soldiers and animals was still to come. Each of the wounded were triaged and those who were unlikely to live dragged over to a designated area, often under a tree known as the Dying Tree, and left to their fate. Those who might survive were amassed and dealt with in almost an assembly line, as medics and civilian nurses attempted to help as many wounded men as possible.
One must wonder at the feelings of the defeated on this miserable 4th of July. Surely they felt something stirring in their breasts as this had been the day their forefathers had dreamed into being, from which their own dreams of freedom sprang.
So while we readily remember and honor those brave men and women who fought in our nations Revolution and, later, painful world wars, let us not forget those who fought and died in our own Civil War, each believing unto the death that they were fighting for the very code that our Founding Fathers set down all those years ago. Let their memories, and sacrifices, not have been in vain.
