1. See, for example, Nevins, Allan, Robertson, James, and Wiley, Bell I., Civil War Books: A Critical Bibliography, 2 vols. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967)Google Scholar, I, v, and Robertson, James I., “The Continuing Battle of Gettysburg: An Essay Review,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 58 (1974), 278–82.Google Scholar

2. Brief introductions to some of these subjects may be found in Bloom, Robert L., “The Battle of Gettysburg in Fiction,” Pennsylvania History, 43 (1976), 309–27Google Scholar; Gibney, Abbott M., “Gettysburg: The 50th Anniversary Encampment,” Civil War Times Illustrated, 9 (10 1970), 40–46Google Scholar: McLaughlin, Jack, Gettysburg: The Long Encampment (New York: Appleton-Century, 1963)Google Scholar; Vanderslice, John M., Gettysburg: A History of the Gettysburg Battle-Field Memorial Association (Philadelphia, 1897)Google Scholar; Pfanz, Harry W., “From Bloody Battlefield to Historic Shrine,” Civil War Times Illustrated, 2 (07 1963), 45–47Google Scholar; and Lee, Ronald F., “The Origin and Evolution of the National Military Park Idea,”Google Scholar unpublished report distributed by the National Park Service Office of Park Historic Preservation, 1973, copy in the library of the Gettysburg National Military Park.

3. Barton, William E., Lincoln at Gettysburg (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1930), p. 125.Google Scholar

4. Three extremely helpful discussions of the development of the Soldiers' National Cemetery are Warren, Louis A., Lincoln's Gettysburg Declaration: “A New Birth of Freedom” (Fort Wayne, Ind.: Lincoln National Life Foundation, 1964), pp. 26–38Google Scholar; Klement, Frank L., “‘These Honored Dead’: David Wills and the Soldiers' Cemetery at Gettysburg,” Lincoln Herald, 74 (1972), 123–35Google Scholar; and Tilberg, Frederick, “The Location of the Platform from which Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address,” Pennsylvania History, 40 (1973), 179–91Google Scholar. Another study I have found most helpful is an unpublished paper by Georg, Kathleen R., “The Development and Care of the Soldiers' National Cemetery Enclosures at Gettysburg,”Google Scholar Gettysburg National Military Park, June 16, 1978. Primarily intended as a discussion of the development and condition of the boundaries and fences at the cemetery, this paper is much more wide-ranging than its title implies. It is filled with interesting and perceptive comments on the origin and history of the cemetery.

5. Jacobs, M., “Later Rambles Over the Field of Gettysburg,” United States Service Magazine, 1 (1864), 71Google Scholar. For two interesting overviews of the situation at Gettysburg in the days after the battle, see Coates, Earl J., “A Quartermaster's Battle of Gettysburg,” North-South Trader, 5 (11–12 1977), 17–21, 36, 40Google Scholar, and Hoffsomer, Robert D., “The Aftermath of Gettysburg,” Civil War Times Illustrated, 2 (07 1963), 49–52Google Scholar. Perhaps it should be noted that the casualty figures cited in the text represent a fairly conservative estimate of the losses of the two armies at Gettysburg. According to Scott, R. N. et al. , eds., War of the Rebellion … Official Records (Washington, D.C.: 1889)Google Scholar, Series I, xxvii, Part I, 187 and Part 2, 346, the Union dead numbered 3,155 whereas 2,592 Confederate soldiers had been killed in action; Thomas Leonard Livermore's frequently cited study Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861–1865 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1901), pp. 102–3Google Scholar, accepts the Official Records total for the Union dead but puts the Confederate total at 3,903.

6. Philadelphia Public Ledger, 07 15, 1863.Google Scholar

7. Wills, to Curtin, , 07 24, 1863Google Scholar, Pennsylvania State Archives Executive Correspondence, RG 26, Department of State, Secretary of the Commonwealth, Box 43.

8. A year before the battle of Gettysburg, Congress authorized the president to acquire land for the purpose of creating a “national cemetery for soldiers who shall have died in the service of the country.” By the end of 1862 at least fourteen national cemeteries had been established—most with little patriotic fanfare or commemorative embellishment—near troop-concentration points and relatively inaccessible battlefields. The Soldiers' National Cemetery, it should be noted, was not created under the authority of this act. For an extremely interesting discussion of these developments, and of the creation of a system of national cemeteries in the United States, see Steere, Edward, Shrines of the Honored Dead: A Study of the National Cemetery System (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1953–1954), especially pp. 1–17Google Scholar. This study brings together six articles, which initially appeared in the Quartermaster Review in 1953–1954.Google Scholar

9. Telephone conversation with National Park Service historian Michael M. Phillips, Saratoga National Historical Park, March 2, 1979; Heaton, Ronald E., Valley Forge … Yesterday and Today (Norristown, Pa.: Heaton, 1968), p. 20.Google Scholar

10. New York Times, 11 15, 1863Google Scholar, and Philadelphia Press, 11 12, 1863Google Scholar. Compare the New York Herald, 11 20, 1863Google Scholar: “Not only is this the first time that such an event has taken place in our history, but ceremonies of this character over the bones of the fallen have not, we believe, taken place since they were one of the institutions of the republics of Greece.”

11. Revised Report Made to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, Relative to the Soldiers' National Cemetery, at Gettysburg (Harrisburg, Pa.: Singerly & Myers, 1867), pp. 6–7, 161–64Google Scholar. The bodies of 158 Massachusetts soldiers were also moved to the cemetery under an independent arrangement negotiated by the agents of the state. Samuel Weaver, who supervised the larger operation, noted in his report that the graves of more than three thousand rebel soldiers were also examined during this time. With a certainty that inspires more confidence in his patriotism than in his literal correctness, Weaver concluded that “we never had much trouble in deciding, with infallible accuracy, whether the body was that of a Union soldier or a rebel. And I here most conscientiously assert, that I firmly believe that there has not been a single mistake made in the removal of the soldiers to the cemetery by taking the body of a rebel for a Union soldier.” While one may be permitted to doubt Weaver's infallibility, his claim does serve as a useful reminder that the commemoration efforts originated as a tribute to Northern heroes and not (as it occasionally appeared in later years) as a memorial to the bravery of all the combatants.

12. Revised Report, pp. 144, 153Google Scholar. The entries cited are the opening and closing portions of the “List of Articles”; Whitman, Walt, Leaves of Grass, eds., Blodgett, Harold W. and Bradley, Sculley (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

13. Revised Report, pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 11; Warren, , pp. 33–35Google Scholar; Klement, , 125–26.Google Scholar

15. William Saunders, handwritten memoir, dated December 2, 1898, copy in the library at the Gettysburg National Military Park. The quotations from Saunders that follow are either from this memoir or from the Revised Report, pp. 158–59.Google Scholar

16. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 11 16, 1863.Google Scholar

17. Gettysburg Star and Sentinel, 07 9, 1869.Google Scholar

18. Nearly three thousand of the bodies were reburied in the Hollywood Cemetery at Richmond, Virginia. See Tilberg, Frederick, Gettysburg, rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1962), p. 38.Google Scholar

19. Saunders memoir. Saunders added, even more tartly, that “this was in keeping with the performance of military officers, who, as a general thing, are very destitute of artistic taste in anything.” In “The Development and Care of the Soldiers' National Cemetery Enclosures at Gettysburg,” Kathleen Georg notes that Calvin Hamilton, the last disabled-veteran superintendent, died in 1914. She argues persuasively that about this time the pattern of care of the cemetery underwent a notable shift: “The preoccupation with cutting the grass and building new visitor and maintenance facilities arrived on the scene almost immediately after the passing of the disabled-Civil-War-Veteran superintendent” (pp. 88–89).

20. Gettysburg Star and Sentinel, 06 3, 1868Google Scholar. For a brief account of the origins of Memorial Day, see Buck, Paul, The Road to Reunion, 1865–1900 (New York: Vintage Books, 1937), pp. 120–26Google Scholar; W. Lloyd Warner discusses the significance of the Memorial Day rituals in American Life: Dream and Reality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), pp. 5–34Google Scholar. Warner's interesting analysis pays relatively little attention to changes over time in the forms and functions of Memorial Day observances; for a useful and imaginative study that emphasizes progressions in Memorial Day activities, see Albanese, Catherine, “Requiem for Memorial Day: Dissent in the Redeemer Nation,” American Quarterly, 26 (1974), 386–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Gettysburg Star and Sentinel, 06 6, 1878, and 06 2, 1904Google Scholar. The crowds on these two occasions were, of course, unusually large because of the presence of Hayes and Roosevelt; for a list of Memorial Day speakers from 1868 to 1896, see Vanderslice, , Gettysburg, pp. 197–98Google Scholar. Perhaps it should be noted here that Memorial Day observances at Gettysburg by no means ceased in 1913. The cutoff date I have chosen for the present study seems, however, to mark a distinct and significant period in the history of the gatherings. By 1913 the Gettysburg observances had become relatively formalized, nationalized, and democratized, at the same time that they continued to undergo gradual changes in inclusiveness, focus, and intensity.

22. Gettysburg Star and Sentinel, 06 4, 1869.Google Scholar

23. Ibid. Compare an article in the Gettysburg Compiler, 06 11, 1869Google Scholar, approving the exclusion. In Decoration Day ceremonies at the Colored Burying Ground on York Street in 1873, Aaron Russell, disclaiming sympathy with a resolution “that the colored people be requested to decorate the graves of the colored soldiers,” went on to ask, “If these caste distinctions are to be followed beyond the portals of the grave, where is the boasted civilization of America?” The typical pattern that emerged at Gettysburg in the 1870s and 1880s seems to have involved a separate parade to the black cemeteries in the morning—and the decoration of other village burial grounds—before the main Memorial Day observances in the afternoon. Newspaper accounts of these proceedings are generally brief and not altogether helpful. For one fairly comprehensive report, see the Gettysburg Star and Sentinel, 06 1, 1886Google Scholar. The subject of racial relations on the hallowed ground seems to me to deserve further careful analysis.

24. Gettysburg Star and Sentinel, 06 2, 1874, and 06 2, 1885.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., June 8, 1881.

26. Ibid., June 3, 1884.

27. Ibid., June 7, 1877.

28. Ibid., June 11, 1902; Marx, Leo, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), especially pp. 5–11.Google Scholar

29. Gettysburg Star and Sentinel, 06 5, 1894, and 06 6, 1899.Google Scholar

30. Gettysburg Star and Sentinel, 06 7, 1898Google Scholar; June 6, 1899; and June 11, 1902. For an earlier emotional attack on the subverters of American values, see the report of the oration by George Morrison in the Star and Sentinel, 06 2, 1891Google Scholar; Theodore Roosevelt emphasized the need for self-restraint in his speech reported in the Star and Sentinel, 06 1, 1904.Google Scholar

31. Gettysburg Star and Sentinel, 06 6, 1900.Google Scholar

32. Gettysburg Times, 05 6, 21, and 28, 1913.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., May 31,1913. The speech, including the paraphrase of Lincoln, was also reported in the New York Times, 05 31, 1913, p. 18.Google Scholar

34. For a useful account of the reunion, see Beitler, Lewis E., ed., Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg: Report of the Pennsylvania Commission, rev. ed. (Harrisburg, Pa.: Wm. Stanley Ray, 1915)Google Scholar. The proposal for a peace monument was offered in a speech by Colonel Cowan at the New York veterans' celebration reported on pp. 165–66.