19131776 Club
53,000 Blue and Gray veterans converge on Gettysburg, fifty years on
Wilson tells the assembled crowd the old quarrel is forgotten; men from 46 states share meals and a tent city built for 60,000 on the ground where they once fought.
Fifty years after the bloodiest three days of the Civil War, the men who had fought there came back. Beginning June 29, 1913, some 53,407 veterans — roughly 8,750 of them Confederate — converged on Gettysburg for the largest Civil War reunion ever held, representing 46 of the nation's 48 states. They ate together, camped together in a tent city built for nearly 60,000 people, and on July 4 sat together under a canvas roof while President Woodrow Wilson told them the quarrel was forgotten…
