1913 Gettysburg Reunion - Events

Events

The Great Camp opened for supper on June 29 with PA veterans from the state reunion that adjourned on June 28 and other early veterans (e.g. 2 Confederate vets of Culp's Hill had arrived on June 26). The 21,000 arrivals on the 29th instead of the 6,000 expected by Capt McCaskey of the Quartermasters Corps resulted in initial shortages (some veterans left without staying). After the 1912 base of the Virginia Monument was dedicated on June 30, official reunion events began on July 1, Veteran's Day.

July 2
Military Day included an address recommending a stronger military ("we ought to build two battleships for every one laid down by Japan"), a reading of the Gettysburg Address, and a Seminary Ridge review of the VA division by their governor. At night, an impromptu Union raid on the Confederate side of the Great Camp resulted in joint parades and camp fires following the "charge".
July 3
Civic/Governors' Day had 65 unit reunions, the Wells statue dedication, and a Webb/Pickett flag ceremony at the Bloody Angle on the hour of Pickett's Charge. In the Great Tent from 4:30-6 P.M. was the New York Veterans' Celebration, which included a speech by Colonel Andrew Cowan in which he again called for a Gettysburg peace memorial. The fireworks by the Pain Fireworks Display Company at 9 p.m. included "gigantic set pieces covering the entire face and crest of Little Round Top".
July 4
On National Day, the Pennsylvania State Memorial with 8 statues installed in April was dedicated, and President Woodrow Wilson arrived at 11 a.m. in a special train car, traveled through the borough, and entered the Great Tent through 2 rows of Boy Scouts. Wilson addressed the audience in the Big Tent about national unity and departed the camp after the National Anthem that followed (attendees similarly returned to their quarters). The subsequent Tribute to Our Heroic Dead with "a silent, solemn, sacred five minutes at 'Attention' by" people throughout the Gettysburg area, e.g., at the "College Hotel" & "Seminary Hotel". The Tribute began with a bugle salute over the camp while the Gettysburg bells tolled noon in the distance, followed by the remaining minutes of silence punctuated by periodic artillery firing from the distance. From 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., 7,147 automobiles (at least 1 from each state) used the national park roads.

Departures included 12,000 veterans on July 2 and about the same number on July 3, and dismantling of the Great Camp began immediately after the July 4 Tribute. The hospital closed on July 5, and the last veteran left on July 8. The annual military instructional camp (250 college students) used a few tents of the veterans camp while encamped at the "Meadeboro" camp (Newspaper Row) from July 7-August 15. The Quartermaster headquarters on Baltimore St closed on August 13, and by August 15 the entire Grand Camp had been removed except "four great water storage reservoirs". A movie, United at Gettysburg, documented the reunion, and Lt Col Lewis E. Beitler, Secretary of the Commission, completed the compilation of the organizations' reports on the December 31, 1913.

To commemorate the 1913 Gettysburg reunion, a colonial portico was opened in May 1914 at the Seminary's Old Dorm (only the concrete base remains), and the 1938 Eternal Light Peace Memorial was erected on Oak Ridge, north of Gettysburg.

For the 75th battle anniversary that President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed, see 1938 Gettysburg reunion. Reunion names in the official report

The Congressional committee used the name Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, but other organizations and officials used numerous other names:
· Celebration of the Semi-Centenary of the Civil War
· Gettysburg Celebration · Reunion Celebration at Gettysburg
· Gettysburg Reunion · Gettysburg Peace Reunion
· Great Peace Reunion · Great Peace Jubilee · Golden Jubilee
· Great Reunion · Grand Reunion · Blue and Gray Reunion
and in a souvenir program of poems: Grand Reunion of the Blue and the Gray on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg

Read more about this topic:  1913 Gettysburg Reunion

Famous quotes containing the word events:

    “A curious thing about atrocity stories is that they mirror, instead of the events they purport to describe, the extent of the hatred of the people that tell them.
    Still, you can’t listen unmoved to tales of misery and murder.”
    —John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    “If there is a case for mental events and mental states, it must be that the positing of them, like the positing of molecules, has some indirect systematic efficacy in the development of theory.”
    —Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)

    “On the most profitable lie, the course of events presently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient footing, and makes their business a friendship.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)