This Month's Headlines:

Editor's Letter
 

A new year has dawned in historic Gettysburg. To welcome the year 2025, at The Gettysburg Experience we offer our newest issue to help you pass through the winter days of January and February: including our updated Calendar of Events, delicious winter-time recipes, and articles of historical interest.

Since New Year’s Day 1863 was one of our nation’s most significant first days of the year, we offer Remembering the Great Emancipator, beginning on page 15. A biographical glimpse at one of Gettysburg’s great generals is chronicled in General G.K. Warren: His Finest Hour, beginning on page 23. A look at what life was like a century ago is offered in The Year 1925, beginning on page 31.

Our Editor’s Corner highlights an unusual New Year’s resolution in A February Face, beginning on page 34. Read More >

Remembering the Great Emancipator

In the latter part of September, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln announced a promise to issue a proclamation to free the slaves in the South. Called Proclamation 95, the document, an Executive Order, is also known to history as The Emancipation Proclamation. In the five-page document, preserved in the National Archives, the 16th President avers that “all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be, then, thenceforward, and forever free.”1

Lincoln had long detested the institution of slavery. As a young man, he was employed in taking merchandise south to sell in New Orleans from his home in New Salem, Illinois. Lincoln’s cousin, John Hanks, accompanied him on his first voyage to Louisiana on the Mississippi River. Hanks recalled, “We saw negroes in chains – whipped and scourged…and his sense of right and justice rebelled. The whole thing was so revolting that Lincoln moved away from the scene with deep feeling of unconquerable hate….[he said] ‘By God, boys let’s get away from this. If ever I get a chance to hit that thing (meaning slavery), I’ll hit it hard.'”2  >Read More

General G.K. Warren: His Finest Hour

The late afternoon of July 2, 1863 was hot, made worse by the crushing humanity in woolen uniforms, wearing blue and gray. Scanning the Emmitsburg Road, about a half-mile to the front of the Union deployment at Gettysburg, a slight but stalwart officer wearing the blue noticed a phalanx of Federal troops far to the front. They were the Union Third Corps, and the general knew they weren’t supposed to be there. Deciding to check the entire Union line, the officer was aghast to find that Little Round Top, the anchor to the Union left flank, was devoid of fighting troops. He noticed that men in gray – the Confederates – were already progressing toward the spot. Noticing among the bursting shells and crackle of musketry a brigade in blue advancing below the hill, the officer quickly rode after it.

What followed would prove a turning point for the battle and the war.

Gouverneur Kemble Warren was born to be a soldier. The fourth of twelve children, he came into the world on January 8, 1830. Warren grew up just across the Hudson River from West Point Military Academy. He was, in fact, named for a Congressman and close friend of his father, named Gouverneur Kemble – a diplomat who established an iron works foundry for artillery in the area. The namesake youth followed in Kemble’s footsteps with a penchant for all things military, and was accepted to West Point at the age of 16. He graduated near the top of his class in 1850, as a lieutenant in the topical engineers.1 >Read More

The Year 2025

A century ago, the year 1925 began on a Thursday, and it was an impressive year.

The vestiges of World War I and the deadly pandemic of the Spanish influenza had dissipated, and the people of the United States and the world wanted to look ahead.

Calvin Coolidge, who had taken over the Presidency since the sudden death of Warren Harding in 1923, was handily reelected in 1924. His Vice-President, Charles G. Dawes, was the son of Civil War veteran and Gettysburg combatant Rufus Dawes. The two men worked to bring financial security to the nation after the debt incurred from the recent war. Vice President Dawes received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925, in fact, for his aid in helping Germany to manage the daunting reparations they incurred from the Treaty of Versailles after World War I.1 >Read More

Editor's Corner:  February Face

Most of us make New Year’s resolutions, only to break them most of the time. Hopefully, this year we can make progress with healthier food consumption, more patience with those irksome drivers we always seem to be around, and ramp up our exercise.

I have a suggestion for another resolution: We could implement better speech practices.

Are you sometimes appalled at the language heard around town, in films and television, and in books? We are and we empathize with anyone who is equally shocked and disheartened. A few years ago, I received a novel for a Christmas gift – written by an author I had not heard of. On a trip a few weeks later, I decided to read it on the plane. After one chapter I had to close that book and throw it away, because the language was so foul and obscene that it was painful to see those words. For the rest of the two-hour plane trip, I sat there with nothing to read. And I didn’t like that. It’s getting more difficult to choose books and programs because the language is so awful. >Read More

Recipes