These Honored Dead How The Story Of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory

Since the guns of Gettysburg ceased their booming in July of 1863 and Lincoln stepped away from his two-minute speech on the same ground four months later, the story of this three-day conflict has come to mean many things to many people. It has become a symbol for innumerable ideas, causes, groups and principles--sometimes at polar opposites. American memory has established Gettysburg as the greatest, biggest, most important, most heroic, most savage, bloodiest battle this nation has ever fought. It has become our Waterloo, our Stalingrad, our battle of Marathon, our siege of Troy. The soldiers who fought have become heroes in our national pantheon--they fought the hardest, endured the worst, and achieved the most, nothing less than saving the United States from self-destruction. If D-Day has become our "longest day" and our "finest hour," Gettysburg, where five times as many Americans died, has become the defining conflict in our history as a people. How did the story of Gettysburg evolve? Why did the battle become a legend? And how much truth is behind the myth? Author Thomas A. Desjardin, a prominent Civil War historian with the balanced perspective of a keen cultural observer, has written a critical analysis of how flawed our knowledge of this enormous event has become, and why that has happened. It is, in effect, a biography of a story--the story of Gettysburg. It is also an examination of how Americans have shaped, used, altered and sanctified our national memory, fashioning the story of Gettysburg as a reflection of, and testimony to, our culture and our nation.

Thomas A. Desjardin holds a Ph.D. in American History and has been an archivist and historian for the National Park Service at Gettysburg. He is currently Historic Site Specialist for the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands and is a frequent television commentator on Civil War topics.