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This Month's Headlines:
Editor's Letter
A new year has begun in Adams County, Pennsylvania; and we at The Gettysburg Experience are eager to welcome 2015 by a nostalgic look back into the past -- with an array of interesting, carefully researched articles. We also offer some old-fashioned and time tested recipes, and have updated our Calendar of Events, which begins on page 11 of this issue.
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Did You Know? Eisenhower Trivia
Dwight David Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States. Although he was born in Texas and grew up in Kansas, Eisenhower lived a good portion of his life in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Here are a few more interesting aspects of the man called Ike:
1. Ike first came to Gettysburg in 1912, while attending West Point as a cadet. He was assigned to command Camp Colt, which was most of the battlefield at Gettysburg, in 1918. Camp Colt was created as a training ground for tank warfare -- since the tank was the new weapon of World War I.
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The Year 1915
Looking back at the year 1915, it is perhaps a bit surprising to realize that these events happened one hundred years ago and not sooner. When considering the eternal perspective, however, a century is not such a long time after all.
In 1915, Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States. He was also engaged to be married. Having been widowed for about a year, he met and ardently courted the Washington socialite Edith Bolling Galt. The pair were wed on December 18, 1915.
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George Washington Shining On
Documenting history, at best, is like putting together a large puzzle with missing pieces and trying to capture the essence of what is left behind. Bias and guesswork often cloud further the shadowy vestiges that we attempt to examine as students of this elusive subject. However, it does not mean that history is impossible to interpret. We can catch a glimpse of clear views, sometimes even clearer than those who lived it, by studying that large puzzle – like the Battle of Gettysburg, for example. We know more about what occurred there than even George Meade and Robert E. Lee did. We have a better estimate of the size of their respective armies, we know what many of their soldiers felt in the moments leading up to epic struggles on Little Round Top, Culp’s Hill, and Pickett’s Charge. We can peruse pension records and learn of the struggles and misery of the families the fallen had left behind. While sometimes key evidence to certain historical eras or biographical studies may turn up unexpectedly in our day; still the farther we find ourselves from the event, or the life we study, the more difficult it is to piece together the truth – rather like circumstantial evidence in a crime scene.
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1865: "There is No Peace"
New Year’s Day dawned coldly on a Sunday in 1865. In Washington, the Lincolns hosted a New Year’s Day reception at the Executive Mansion. There were larger numbers of people in attendance than ever before, with members of Congress, the Cabinet, and the diplomatic corps in attendance as well as a sizable amount of the populace, eager to shake hands with the President. There was a crowd of onlookers outside the White House, too, and among them groups of civilians of African descent -- some of them former slaves. After a few hours of mingling with those inside, Lincoln caught sight of the crowd outside and welcomed them in. The overjoyed blacks wept at the sight of their Commander-in-Chief, exclaiming, “God bless Abraham Lincoln!” 1
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Recipes, Yesterday, & Today >
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