GDG-July 3 Charge

[Smith, David [USA]]

Beverly--

Just back from vacation.  I used this with my Civil War clause I taught last semester, when I talked about memory and the Civil War and the meaning of the Civil War to the South.  As one of my professors put it, Faulkner could really write!

Thanks for sharing.


David


Message: 1
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 13:00:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: "B. Ramsey" <ohauntieb at yahoo.com>
Subject: GDG- July 3 charge
To: gettysburg at arthes.com
Message-ID: <248949.4211.qm at web31708.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
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I am not a "lost cause" advocate at all, but I always read this famous quote from Faulkner on July 3rd. The one thing I was least pleased with when I visited the new visitor's center (which overall I thought was fantastic) was that they have used the History Channel movies already done which call the events of July 3 "Pickett's Charge." Only a tiny sign in the corner of the room reminds us that Pickett wasn't the only one out there. So for all the North Carolinians who made it almost to the wall, and all the others on both sides who were lost in this horrendous ill-advised charge, you are not forgotten.
Beverley Ramsey
 
"For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much
 to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago....

William Faulkner, Intruder In The Dust"