Lincoln’s 2-Minute Gettysburg Address – By Sandy McBride

On June 30, 1863 Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was a small, quiet village of 2500 inhabitants.  It had seven churches, a college and a seminary, and it was surrounded by rolling farm fields and wooded hills.  Three days later, its streets and the nearby fields and woods were littered with the bodies of 6,000 soldiers and the rotting corpses of 3000 horses killed in an epic battle of the Civil War.  97,000 Federal soldiers had converged on Gettysburg to confront the invasion of 75,000 rebel troops. 50,000 men . . . nearly one out of every three . . . had been killed, wounded or captured. The Union had won the three day battle, but failed to end the war.

 

Read the full story in the Nov. 7th edition of the Express.

July, 1863: Gettysburg Part I – By Sandy McBride

In the beginning, it was about shoes.

In the green and glorious countryside of northern Maryland and southern Pennsylvania at the end of June in 1863, two opposing armies groped their way toward destiny, neither knowing for sure where the other was or where it was headed.

There was a small town called Gettysburg in southern Pennsylvania where nine roads converged, almost like the spokes of a wheel.  It was rumored that there were shoes to be had in Gettysburg, and many of the Confederate soldiers who had marched all the way from Virginia still had no shoes.

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