These Honored Dead

These Honored Dead: How the Story of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory. By Thomas A. Desjardin. (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, c. 2003. Pp. xxii+246).

The Battle of Gettysburg holds a central place in the Civil War’s historical memory. Part of this memory, though, involves a number of falsehoods and myths that have grown in the years following the battle. Desjardin’s These Honored Dead examines many of these myths surrounding Gettysburg, constructing their histories and trying to understand their presence. He ably avoids simply criticizing the myths, instead using them as a way to make a larger point about the difficulties inherent in writing and understanding history. In almost every instance of remembrance, he makes an attempt to justify the greatness and importance of Gettysburg not just to the Civil War, but the very image of America itself.

Desjardin’s story begins in the battle’s aftermath. He looks at solider recollections of the battle, both immediately following and in memoirs written years later. Even a cursory examination of these memories reveals a number of inconsistencies and physical improbabilities. What the memories also reveal is a desire on the part of soldiers to believe they were part of something epic and important. Desjardin gives special attention to the memories of Union General Dan Sickles. Sickles made a conscious attempt to justify his own ill-advised actions during the battle almost immediately, damaging the reputation of his superior George Meade in order to solidify his own heroic reputation. Where Sickles tried to create his own reputation, Joshua Chamberlain of the 20^th Maine had one created for him. Chamberlain becomes the American archetype, an untrained military leader thrust into a critical situation. Chamberlain rises to the occasion from a combination of courage and resourcefulness, discovering the perfect solution through his own intuition. If Gettysburg is the greatest battle of the greatest American conflict, then Chamberlain is its definitive hero.

Desjardin also turns his focus to the larger process of commemoration. The central figure in Gettysburg history becomes John Badger Bachelder, a New England painter who became the self-appointed expert on Gettysburg. Originally planning to commemorate the battle in painting, similarly to Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” Bachelder’s research into the battle took on a life of its own. Bachelder’s work turned towards commemorating the battle, remembering it as the most important in the War, and perhaps in all of American history. He was also the central figure in trying to highlight the so-called “high water mark,” supposedly the closest the Confederates came to breaking the Union lines at Pickett’s Charge. The “high water mark” and the surrounding mythology also play heavily into the Southern remembrance of Gettysburg, particularly within the Lost Cause ideology. Bachelder also played an important role in the “marble forest,” the vast field of monuments covering the battlefield. Regiments, states and individuals all receive commemoration, while the design and placement became the subject of battles between groups and the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association.

Drawing particular attention from Desjardin is likely the most recognizable history of the battle, Michael Shaara’s novel The Killer Angels and its film adaptation Gettysburg. Shaara’s fictionalized account of the battle drew on established images of the heroic Chamberlain and doomed Longstreet. Desjardin is careful to remind the reader that Killer Angels is a novel, and makes sure to highlight scenes, actions and characters the simply do not match the historical record. Noting that Shaara was an aficionado of Shakespeare, and Killer Angels represents his attempt at recreating a Shakespearean drama in American history. The resulting film adaptation continues these inaccuracies, and creates several more, such as the un-sourced and wildly incorrect claim that 50,000 men died in the battle, supposedly more than in the entire term of American involvement in Vietnam. Desjardin does remark that the fictionalized works did have some benefit for the battlefield, as their popularization of the battle, along with Ken Burns’ Civil War miniseries, generated tremendous public interest in Gettysburg and the Civil War, interest that turns into tourism dollars.

At times, These Honored Dead reads slowly and occasionally repeats itself. On at least three separate occasions, for instance, Desjardin relates the reason for naming the film Gettysburg rather than The Killer Angels. While identifying the dubious sources for a number of Gettysburg myths, Desjardin continues to remind the reader of their larger, underlying cause. Gettysburg fills a particular need, a place of malleable memory capable of standing for timeless values of honor and courage. Though it may not have truly been the site of the most important battle in the most important war, the public knows Gettysburg as a place all Americans can find some relation to, and some understanding within.

Texas Christian University Keith Altavilla

These Honored Dead: How the Story of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory. By Thomas A. Desjardin. Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2003.

The problem of human memory continually confounds historians. The search for an accurate, truthful account of any event encounters multiple difficulties, not least of which is varying and conflicting narratives. Sifting through the biases, embellishments, and inaccuracies of first-hand accounts of military battles, documented in letters, diaries, memoirs, or personal histories, requires diligence and careful analysis on the part of the historian. Complicating the task is the propensity of the event participants, the populace, or the historian (or a combination of all three) to elevate the historical encounter to Olympian heights. In short, both historical actors and historians often shape events, or perpetuate previous [mis]understandings, in order to fulfill the human need for a clear, unambiguous historical record. This phenomenon is the subject of Thomas A. Desjardin’s examination of the Battle of Gettysburg and the collective conscious of Americans, found in These Honored Dead: How the Story of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory. Desjardin argues that the historical understanding of Gettysburg has been repeatedly, and divergently, molded by Americans in order to serve as symbols of heroism, virtue, sacrifice, humility, reconciliation, and more.

The multiple meanings attached to Gettysburg are attributable to the inherent ambiguity of history itself. The idea of an objective, official, indisputable account of a past event, though enormously appealing, is simply naive and mistaken. Instead, as evidenced by the multitude of conflicting narratives by men participating at Gettysburg examined by the author, the historical record of battle is suffused with gaps and discrepancies that obfuscate meaning. Furthermore, the complexity of such an event is augmented by the clouded perceptions of participants enduring the heat of battle. The “fog of war” endured by the soldier challenges any accurate recollection of the event. According to Desjardin, the details of Gettysburg articulated by the soldiers and officers diverge to such an extent that no complete, faultless understanding of the battle is possible. In short, the historical understanding of Gettysburg is hampered by human memory.

Soldiers, officers, historians, novelists, filmmakers, and the American public have accepted as “fact” aspects and details of the battle that are, at best, highly suspicious. The reason for ignoring conflicting reports, or elevating particular individuals or actions, rests in the need to establish myth and ideal within American history. Thus, Joshua Chamberlain becomes an incontrovertible hero though no record of his ordering a charge is found. Also, Chamberlain was stricken with cramps and diarrhea at the time of battle, evincing an image at odds with the Wagnerian heroic figure he has become. The central role, and “high water mark”, that Pickett’s Charge, including the immemorial copse of trees, performs in America’s historical understanding of Gettysburg is actually the result of the machinations of a landscape artist and untrained historian, John Badger Bachelder. He, like other historians and Civil War veterans, tenaciously perpetuated personal perceptions and understandings of the battle in order to secure for prosperity what they deemed most important and valuable. This same tendency runs throughout the Lost Cause literature and its formulation of the meaning of Gettysburg. Later novelists, such as Michael Shaara, and filmmakers such as Ken Burns, have continued to endorse faulty accounts of Gettysburg while delving into the process of mythmaking.

While not an iconoclastic attempt to destroy the myths surrounding Gettysburg and its participants, Desjardin succeeds in questioning the authenticity of the historical understanding of this most famous battle. Furthermore, the author underscores the ease with which history is transformed into myth, as well as the human need for such myth. The symbolic value of Gettysburg, in the end, is of equal importance to understanding America and its history, as the particular details of the military event itself.