Resisting the Pickett T-Shirt

Abstract

To the popular romantic imagination, great disasters have an irresistible appeal. Before the Titanic came Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee; before that, the Alamo and Valley Forge. Professional historians may argue all they like that Custer was an arrogant incompetent, or that the battle of the Alamo was a tactical blunder, but to most people this is like arguing that Betsy Ross did not sew the first flag. It may be true, but so what? Charge is one such disaster. The attack of two Confederate divisions plus elements of two others-between 10,500 and 13,000 men all-across an open field between Seminary Ridge and Cemetery Ridge on July 3, 1863, has earned a permanent place American folklore. As Carol Reardon repeatedly points out this lively and informative history, the affair doesn't really deserve to be called Pickett's Charge at all, since the regiments of several states (notably James Johnston Pettigrew's North Carolinians) had an equal hand it. But as Reardon also shows, what actually happened on the day of the charge was subsumed almost immediately a tsunami of Virginia patriotism, white veteran reunionism, and touristic reenactment. A pointless attack on an immovable position one day after the battle's outcome had been settled at Little Round Top somehow became the central event of the three days' fighting, and even the turning point of the Civil War. Charge has become so central to the meaning of Gettysburg that souvenir shops at the battlefield park now offer T-shirts commemorating leaders such as Lewis Armistead and Richard B. Garnett, and park rangers must regulate the charges of impromptu re-enactors across the field east of the Emmitsburg Road. Reardon begins by laying out the few things we know with any certainty about the charge: the artillery bombardment that preceded it, the disposition of the attacking and defending armies, and the approximate size of each force. Yet from the first shot, the roads of remembrance diverge. From the very start, writes Reardon, in its efforts to answer questions about the formation