Healing, Heat Exhaustion and Remembrance: The Story of the Gettysburg 50th Anniversary Reunion in 1913

  Some hearty souls walk for over one-hundred miles in the scorching summer sun to arrive.  Some come via horse and buggy, or by-way-of  the new cutting edge technology of the automobile, traveling over unpaved dirt roads, in some cases for nearly a thousand miles, just to make it on time.  But most arrive by means of the railroad, the mode of transportation so essential to the conflict in which they served as young men and mere boys nearly a half century ago.

It is said that one eighty-five year old Confederate veteran, after being forbidden by his family to travel on account of his old age and infirmity, snuck out of his bedroom window in Texas in the middle of the night and hopped a freight train just to attend the event with his old war buddies from the deep south.

The 1913 Gettysburg reunion to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the largest battle ever fought in the western hemisphere, the defining battle of the American Civil War which took place between July 1 and July 3, 1863, was attended by upwards of 55,000 American Civil War Veterans, most of whom were aged at the time in their late seventies and early eighties. 

The Battle of Gettysburg 50th Anniversary Reunion, which took place between June 29 and July 4, 1913 was, and is to this day, the single largest gathering of American war veterans ever held.   All men who had served in the Grand Army of the Republic for the Union during the war years from April of 1861 until May of 1865 and all men who were part of the United Veterans of the Confederacy were personally invited by the War Department (now called the Department of Defense) on behalf of the federal government of the United States of America to attend.

In the end 55, 407 veterans, including nearly 9,000 former Confederate soldiers would attend the reunion.  During the week that the reunion was held Gettysburg, normally a small town of just over 5,000 residents  would become Pennsylvania’s third largest city, surpassed in population for that brief period of time in 1913 by only Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Union Veterans at the 50th Anniversary Reunion

Such an influx of visitors from around the country to the normally small and tranquil town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was not without its pitfalls as indicated by a report in the Gettysburg Times from July 3, 1913 with the headline: EIGHT STABBED AT LOCAL HOTEL.

This article stated that, “Applying a vile epithet to Abraham Lincoln, W.B. Henry of Philadelphia, claiming to be a son of Confederate General E. R. Henry of Taswell, Virginia precipitated a melee at the Hotel Gettysburg (where Lincoln had originally composed the Gettysburg Address) Wednesday which resulted in the stabbing of eight persons…”

Though I have little doubt that this crime, may in fact, have actually occurred due to the influx of tens of thousands of visitors from around the country that descended upon Gettysburg during the reunion, it should also be kept in mind that given President Lincoln’s assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth in April of 1865, a great fear of wayward former Confederates still existed on the part of many northerners even as late as July of 1913 nearly fifty years after the conclusion of the War Between the States.

It should be remembered that after the Civil War many veterans struggled with the horrific memories of combat at a time when little  recognition of the traumatic suffering that they had gone through was acknowledged by anyone.  Of the fighting at Gettysburg Confederate veteran James Vernon of the 18th Virginia Regiment said during the Reunion in 1913 when asked about the experience of Civil War combat that, “Those who were not there can form no idea of the horrors of it.”

Former President William Howard Taft, as well as dozens of former Union and Confederate Generals, along with countless United States Congressmen would give speeches during the reunion.  A closing address would be given on July 4th by President Woodrow Wilson.  Every major city and large town, a total of over 500 in all, would send at least one reporter to the reunion.  

President Wilson Addressing Reunion July 4, 1913

It is unfortunate that only a few pre-selected and screened veterans were ever allowed to speak during the Reunion and no African-Americans or any civilians were allowed to address the assembled veterans or press reporters gathered in the “Great Camp” between June 29 and July 4, 1913.

Veterans from forty-six of the then forty-eight states attended the reunion, with only the sparsely populated states of Wyoming and Nevada not being represented by the over 55,000 veterans who gathered at what came to be called “The Great Camp”, a sprawling tent city encompassing over a hundred acres on the site of the old battlefield that was erected by the United States Army to house the elderly veterans for the event.

It all began over five years earlier in April of 1908 when Civil War veteran and Philadelphia resident Henry S. Hudeikoper, who himself had lost an arm and won a Congressional Medal of Honor in combat at the Battle of Gettysburg, suggested the idea for a 50th anniversary reunion to Pennsylvania governor Edwin Sydney Stuart.

Less than a year later in 1909, the Pennsylvania State Assembly formed the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg Commission.  This specially formed Commission, composed of government officials and Civil War veterans from the state of Pennsylvania successfully pitched the idea for a 50th Anniversary Reunion to both houses of the United States Congress.

On August 26, 1912 a bill passed in Congress that appropriated $150,000 in federal funding for the Reunion and directed the War Department to erect a “Great Tent Camp” to house all returning veterans who would be invited to attend the Reunion.

Map of the Great Camp on the Battlefield

The 50th Anniversary Commission in conjunction with the War Department of the United States erected the Great Camp on the site of the former battlefield.  The “Great Camp” designed to house the elderly returning veterans was situated across 280 acres of the old battlefield and composed of over 5000 canvas tents.  The Great Camp was laid out in a grid pattern, with main streets.  The tents were divided by state, just as the regiments in which the former soldiers had served during the war, and there was a clear separation between North and South.

In addition to the tent city of the “Great Camp” that was erected there was a specific “Great Tent” that was built which could hold major events capable of hosting thousands of spectators.  In the Great Tent on July 1, 1913 before a crowd of 13,000 spectators the Chairman of the Pennsylvania Commission opened the Reunion.

The Great Camp was illuminated by electric lighting and each tent contained a water bucket as well as a trough of fresh, clean drinking water.   Several wells to provide fresh water had been dug around the Great Camp well in advance of the Reunion to host the crowd of returning veterans that were expected to attend.

The Great Camp at Gettysburg 1913

However, during the first week of July in 1913 a great heat wave swept the eastern half of the United States.  Each day, between June 28 and July 3 , 1913 high temperatures climbed in excess of 100 degrees Fahrenheit and many veterans chose to sleep outside, in the open air, just as they had done during the great battle way back in 1863.

The Pittsburgh Gazette for July 2, 1913 reported that: “Through tear-dimmed eyes Federal and Confederate veterans of the Civil War stood last night with clasped hands or arms affectionately thrown around once broad, but now stooping shoulders and watched the sun go down.”

Over 700 former soldiers had to be hospitalized for sunstroke and heat exhaustion during the reunion, but given the fact that the average age for a veteran in attendance at the reunion was seventy-two, the War Department in an official report made months after the Reunion stated that, “It was nothing short of miraculous,” that only nine veterans died in hospital during the Reunion despite the extreme heat and the many miles that the elderly former soldiers had to travel just to get there.

During the 50th Anniversary Reunion in Gettysburg, at a time when Temperance movements forbidding the consumption of alcohol were gaining popularity and support across the United States, in the years leading up to the passage of Prohibition across the country in 1920, the town of Gettysburg itself was declared a dry town during the Reunion, which prohibited the sale of alcohol during the event and meant that veterans had to make due with whatever adult beverages they had already brought to the gathering.  The spirit of camaraderie that developed during the Reunion meant that local Army Hospitals set up to deal with the sick and injured had to deal with many instances of, “Many over indulgences of alcohol,” in addition to those cases of heat exhaustion that were already expected, and treated, in the United States Army hospital tents that were set up as part of the “Great Camp”.

Veteran being Taken to Hospital by the U.S. Army

Initially, President Woodrow Wilson had declined to speak at the 50th Anniversary Reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg because upon being elected he had pledged not to travel outside of Washington D.C. whenever Congress was set to be in session, but due to pressure by the news media and veterans groups he did reconsider and eventually decided to attend and address the Reunion.

On July 4, 1913 at 11 in the morning President Woodrow Wilson addressed all of the assembled veterans of the 50th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg Reunion where he spoke of the healing and unity embodied in the coming together of all of these veterans who once served as bitter enemies clothed in blue and gray.  After the President’s address, the Star Spangled Banner was played by the United States Army Band and then the old warriors of the American Civil War started to head home.  By July 6, only two days after President Wilson’s address to close the Reunion, the last of the old veterans had left the “Great Camp” to return home.

When it was all over, most of the veterans both North and South returned home, just as they had come home five decades before from the horrific war they had fought in, but this time the old soldiers in blue and gray returned with a different message.  In the wake of the 50th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg Reunion the American heroes that fought together, and witnessed horrors unimaginable, did not come home in silence.  

In 1913 the veterans who attended the Great Reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg came home telling stories to all who would listen of old friends come and gone; they came home armed with a message of peace, healing and forgiveness at a time when our nation was divided by issues of foreign and domestic policy; at a time when war loomed overseas in Europe during the run up to the First World War and when social strife was rampant at home over issues such as race relations and voter’s rights.

Confederate Veterans at the 50th Anniversary Reunion

In 1938 there was a 75th Anniversary Reunion held at Gettysburg attended, at that time, by only a few surviving Civil War veterans all of whom were by then nearly one-hundred years old, but the groundwork for our nation’s healing, and coming together as one, had already been laid by the 50,000 plus who had first come together twenty-five years before in 1913, not to settle old scores, but in peace and brotherhood to heal the wounds our great nation suffered during the bloodiest conflict in our history, the American Civil War.