Gettysburg- the Battle that Saved the Union

Dear readers, it's the 3rd of July - the day before America's Independence Day, but the very day that undoubtedly saved the Union, that is, the United States as we know it today. From the 1st to the 3rd of July 1863, in a quiet little Pennsylvania town just north of the Mason-Dixon Line that traditionally divided North from South, the Battle of Gettysburg decided the outcome of the Civil War, the War of Secession, as it is known to most of the world. The battlefield that is spread out over hundreds of acres has become a beacon for Americans. More than a million visitors annually walk over its sites - where Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and George Gordon Meade’s Army of the Potomac fought over the questions that determined the political future of America. The questions were simple enough - could a State or States simply quit the Union and form a second nation on American soil without approval of Congress? Could some States enforce slavery laws while the majority of States rejected slavery as inimical to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? The cost of the answer at Gettysburg was 50,000 dead and injured in the rolling hills of southcentral Pennsylvania. Had General Robert E. Lee won at Gettysburg - although he had already told his Confederate commander-in-chief Jefferson Davis, president of the secessionist Confederacy, that the South could never deliver a final defeat to the North's superior numbers and supplies - the Confederacy could probably have worn down the already fading support in the North for continued war on "brothers" in the South. A deal would have been brokered, surely over Lincoln's objections, that would have returned America to the failed model of a loose confederation in which the federal glue that holds the United States together would have been lost. That is why President Lincoln stayed in the telegraph room in Washington for three days. He had to have a Northern victory and he had to know as soon as possible that it had been secured. That is why Robert E. Lee, one of the great field generals in history, chose to risk everything on the famous Pickett's Charge of 3 July 1863. He knew that if he lost at Gettysburg, all that was left was retreat and total surrender. Lincoln received his victory telegram. Lee retreated south and his army continued the war for almost two more years before he was forced to offer his unconditional surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on 9 April 1865. Less than a week later, on 14 April 1865, President Lincoln was assassinated - in a real way the last casualty of the war he had tried so hard to avoid and had finally fought with fervor in the realization that winning was the only way to save the Union. ~~~~~ So, dear readers, if you want to see the key points in American history, go to Philadelphia and look at the Liberty Bell. Go to Boston and walk over Bunker Hill where it all started. But, then, go to Gettysburg, for there lies the hallowed ground. Without Gettysburg, America would have become a short-lived failed experiment. Because of Gettysburg, America survived and "government of the people, by the people and for the people" did not perish from the earth. That is what the 3rd of July is all about. ~~~~~ And just to bring Gettysburg down to a personal level - my great grandmother was born on 3 July 1863 and she would have been 150 years old today, the same as the Battle of Gettysburg. Her father was absent when she was born because he was a rather famous Quaker preacher who was at Gettysburg, ministering to soldiers going into battle and praying with the wounded and dying.