Gettysburg Commemorates 2024 Dedication Day

Posted By Brandon Fey on Dec 8, 2024 | 1 comment

Members of the 26th Pennsylvania College Guard. (Photo courtesy 26th PCG)

By Brandon Fey, News Editor

Few symbols of Gettysburg are as iconic as that of President Lincoln delivering his famous Gettysburg Address in which he described the United States as a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The Gettysburg community honors this legacy each year by celebrating Remembrance Day, with events and traditions leading up to the anniversary of Lincoln’s famous speech on Nov. 19, celebrated as Dedication Day.

This year’s celebration began with the 68th Annual Remembrance Day Parade on Saturday, Nov. 16. This event is organized by the Sons of Veterans Reserve (the military department of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War) to commemorate the soldiers who fought at the Battle of Gettysburg with a procession of Civil War reenactors. The parade began on Middle Street around 1 p.m. and marched through the town along Baltimore Street to Steinwehr Avenue.

Gettysburg College’s student reenacting club, the 26th Pennsylvania College Guard, participated in the parade, marching alongside Annabel’s Battery.  

Anaya Koirala ’28 was among the students who participated. “I really enjoyed the community around it [the parade]” he commented. “The entire thing of Civil War reenacting is very new to me because I’m an international student. It feels very surreal.”

That evening, the PCG hosted its Remembrance Day Ball in the CUB Ballroom on campus.The event was open to all and attracted several members of the community who participated in nineteenth-century dances while sporting Civil War-era gowns and uniforms.

26th PCG Remembrance Day Ball, held in the CUB Ballroom. (Photo courtesy 26th PCG)

On Saturday night, the Gettysburg Foundation held the 22nd Annual Remembrance Day Illumination in Gettysburg National Cemetery. This solemn event commemorates Lincoln’s dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery (the original section of the Gettysburg National Cemetery), honoring the 3,512 Union soldiers interred there. Each grave was lit with a luminary candle as the name of each Union soldier killed at Gettysburg was read aloud throughout the night. 

Dedication Day fell on the following Tuesday and began with the Lincoln Fellowship of PA’s annual Dedication Day Ceremony at the Gettysburg National Cemetery at 10:30 a.m. The event began with a reading of the Gettysburg Address and included a ceremonial wreath-laying, as well as the accompanying U.S. Naturalization and Citizenship ceremony. Among the program speakers were acclaimed historians Harold Holzer and Craig Symonds, who also hosted a conversation at the post-ceremony luncheon at the Adams County Historical Society. Part of the luncheon also served as the annual meeting for the Fellowship.

These events culminated in the 62nd annual Fortenbaugh Lecture hosted by the history department and Civil War Institute of Gettysburg College along with the Robert Fortenbaugh family in whose memory the lecture is given. This event was held at the Majestic Theater at 7 p.m., with free admission for all who attended.

History department chair Dina Lowy delivered welcoming remarks at the lecture, during which she explained that the intention of this year’s lecture was to both “honor the memory and spirit of Lincoln’s visit to Gettysburg” as well as to honor the memory and spirit of the recently-deceased history professor and Civil War Institute Director Peter Carmichael.

History professor Jim Downs then introduced keynote speaker, Carolyn A. Janney, highlighting the profound impact of her publications on Civil War Scholarship as well as her position directing  the University of Virginia’s Center for Civil War History. He described Dr. Janney as having been “a force of light and brilliance within the field” and the conscious applicability of her work to current issues and developments.

Janney’s lecture, titled, “John S. Mosby: A Confederate Partisan at War,” described the exceptional history of the eponymous Colonel John Mosby, as he went from a lawyer to a Confederate soldier and eventually an outspoken critic of the Southern Lost Cause narrative. Before she began her talk, she commented on her personal and professional relationship with the late Peter Carmichael. 

“I am both incredibly honored to give this lecture that he [Carmichael] invited me to do back in the spring, and it is incredibly difficult to do today,” she said.

Janney’s lecture began with some observations she had made about Mosby’s diminishing legacy in Virginia, as he has been recently removed from the names of highways and heritage sites. She explained the irony of this trend, in that his likeness had been used to promote the Lost Cause narrative which he detested. 

“John Mosby proved an anomaly among white Southerners, as a Confederate who rejected the Lost Cause and struck out on his own path to national healing,” she stated.

She then detailed Moseby’s path to soldiering, having grown up among the slave-holding gentry outside of Charlottesville, and studying law while incarcerated after having shot a classmate at the University of Virginia. He married Pauline Clark in December 1856 and practiced law near the border of Tennessee. 

At the outbreak of secession in early 1861, Moseby enlisted on the side of the South, eventually joining J.E.B. Stuart’s First Virginia Cavalry. Having formerly been a staunch unionist, he was inspired to fight after reading Lincoln’s first inaugural address, with which he disagreed. 

Mosby quickly proved his skill as a scout, earning the trust of his superiors, and eventually gaining promotions and his own commands. By 1863, he had risen to the rank of major, commanding what would become the 43rd battalion of the Virginia Cavalry.

Janney explained that during this time, Mosby gained great admiration throughout the South for the effectiveness of his unconventional raiding tactics, and had likewise garnered considerable notoriety in the North. He was the subject of many newspaper articles, and would later inspire books, poems, and paintings from around the world. 

When General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederacy in April 1965, Mosby disbanded his men and attained parole after taking an oath of amnesty. While he remained a hero in the South, he was still despised among the Union commanders who now occupied the former Confederacy. Despite his parole, he was arrested multiple times by federal soldiers while attempting to practice law once again in Virginia. 

Mosby would publicly support Grant in the 1872 presidential election in his desire to reconcile the North and South, despite warnings that doing so would harm his reputation. By 1876, Mosby endorsed Rutherford B. Hayes and began to support racial equality.

Mosby’s political choices led to significant personal and professional losses. He was ostracized in his home state of Virginia, which led him to move to Washington D.C. after the death of his wife in 1876. Despite these challenges, his support for the Republican Party eventually earned him an appointment to a consul position in Hong Kong in 1878 and later a job with the Southern Pacific Railroad in San Francisco.

Mosby’s memoir, unfinished at the time of his death in 1916, was published posthumously by his brother-in-law, Charles Wells Russell, who inaccurately portrayed him as a hero of the Lost Cause. Mosby’s post-war life illustrates that the Lost Cause was a deliberate choice by former Confederates, deeply intertwined with partisan politics and efforts to reshape the narrative of slavery and the Civil War. 

Dr. Janney’s lecture spoke to the role of historical remembrance in the current day.

“Mosby’s story is a reminder that we can choose to acknowledge and learn from history, even its unsavory aspects, rather than revise, forget, or refute it,” Janney concluded. “Equally as important, it is a cautionary tale of how the stories we tell about our past have been and continue to be leveraged for political and cultural power.”

This article originally appeared on page 10 and 11 of the No. 1 December 2024 edition of The Gettysburgian magazine.