Twenty percent of the federal armies were composed of Ohio volunteer regiments. Ohio regiments fought at Gettysburg, and many of them were composed of German immigrants who had come to America for freedom and opportunity, fleeing Prussian authoritarianism. They were anti-slavery and pro-Union. William Brian Jordan’s A Thousand May Fall traces the history of the 107 Ohio Volunteer Infantry that on the second day of the battle stood its ground and was nearly annihilated.
On the afternoon of July 3, after a two-hour cannonade, 12,000 rebels attacked the Union center. The attack was a disaster. Nearly 7,000 rebels were killed or wounded by Union cannon and enfilading infantry rifle fire. By July 4, 1863, over 51,000 men had been killed or wounded in both armies in three days. That same day, Lee’s army retreated with a wagon train 17 miles long carrying wounded. July 4, 1863, Vicksburg surrendered to Grant. The rebel army had suffered a decisive defeat at Gettysburg and the Mississippi was now “unvexed to the sea.”
I recently met a beloved nephew and his wife at Gettysburg and walked the hallowed ground marked by memorials to Union units that stood on history’s stage and sacrificed everything to oppose treason. Bob and Karen are, for me, symbolic of the best of America.
Karen is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Georgetown University. She had perfect scores on the LSAT. Bob is a carpenter. A man who works with his hands and helped build the Kansas City skyline. Politicians talk about the working man and roll up their sleeves to pose, but few, if any, of them today has worked with their hands in the cold and the heat, been laid off or waited at a union hall for a job assignment.
Bob and Karen married after graduation. No law school, but two sets of twin girls. One set of twins paid for their education with ROTC. Both paratroopers, both about 90 pounds each. One to Afghanistan, one to Korea.
November 19, 1863, was a day of dedication. In Gettysburg, one orator spoke for two hours. Abraham Lincoln, the greatest orator in America, spoke mere minutes.
“It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
David Madden is a retired trial attorney and a spokesperson for the ACLU. He was an Infantry platoon leader and LTC in the JAG Corps. His book The Constitution and American Racism was published by McFarland Press in 2020.
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