"Ever Changing History and Pickets Charge" Topic

Interesting Interview and Book by Dr Carol Reardon

YouTube link

link

"Over the years, soldiers, journalists, veterans, politicians, orators, artists, poets, and educators, Northerners and Southerners alike, shaped, revised, and even sacrificed the 'history' of the charge to create 'memories' that met ever-shifting needs and deeply felt values. Reardon shows that the story told today of Pickett's Charge is really an amalgam of history and memory. The evolution of that mix, she concludes, tells us much about how we come to understand our nation's past."

I cannt remember the name now, but I read a somewhat recent book whose treatise was that the Charge was not a dumb idea – that it was a good plan, and would have worked had one general started his advance too late. That if he had stayed on schedule, there would have been enough troops to punch threw the Union lines and right into their rear – which would have most likely caused chaos and broken them.

Now I am not an expert on Gettysburg, but I have a fair grasp of the time period warfare, and it may me think there was somethgin there worth considering.

But as a historian, I know all too well the scourge of shifting memories. I'll tell you those of us who did WW2 seriously, saw a distinct change in interviews with vets about D-day after Private Ryan came out. No fault to the men, but their memories did change when that film, and all its associated hoopla, was relased.