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Angry Staff Officer

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14 Feb, 56 tweets, 10 min read

Welp, it's Valentine's Day

Guess it's time to watch Gettysburg again

I don't make the rules

Randy Edelman's score for this film SLAPS

and I will not brook dissent on this

The opening will always remind me of dad. He'd comment on how he loved Adams County, PA.

I can hear most of his commentary in my head as I watch this. And how he would whistle the score

We used to watch it about once a month or so

My mother is obviously a very patient person

The picket line, featuring the one fat guy in the whole Army of Northern Virginia

I'm guessing he also played Santa Claus at Christmas time

They probably ate him during the retreat from Petersburg

I used to not like Martin Sheen's "frantic and concerned" Lee

Now, I actually kinda dig it. Helps break the "marble man" mythos.

I totes relate with Chamberlain not wanting to wake up when people show up with bad news

Granted, I've never been woken up to "we've got 120 mutineers showing up"

It's more like "hey, we can't find a set of NODS"

Now, I know this JLC speech is mainly fiction - I mean, he did speak, he did convince most of them to fight, but we don't know just what was said. But.

I love this speech so much.

"We are an army out to set other men free...it's the idea that we all have value"

That moment you remember that you unfortunately purchased the extended edition and realize just WHY all these scenes were cut

Because they're sooooooo bad

I do love Buford's monologue, but Meade wasn't gonna attack Lee if he'd seized Cemetery Hill

He already had plans developed for a defensive line near Pipe Creek for this very purpose. Plenty of "good ground" in southern Pennsylvania

Also, Buford's message to Reynolds was wayyyyyy more detailed as befitting the outstanding recon officer that Buford was. Probably one of the best people to have out front as the eyes of the army

Ah, a lovely deleted scene about treating Lee ordering good treatment of the civilian population

Not gonna mention the hundreds of free African-Americans taken by Lee's army and marched south into slavery, eh?

The first engagement: Gamble's brigade was not formed in line trading volleys with rebel infantry. They would have lost. Badly. Breach-loading carbines were outranged easily by rifles. Instead, the dismounted cavalrymen forced Heth to deploy his troops into line

They'd mount up and fall back when a heavy line of infantry was deployed. Buford traded space for time, but did it smartly. As evidenced by his light (4%) losses on July 1.

Only those without souls can observe Sam Elliot tearing up at "Sir, it's General Reynolds!" without feeling emotion

There should've been several minutes devoted to dialogue between the 2d, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin so that everyone could've been deeply confused/disturbed at their accents

Just as all right-feeling people are by Wisconsin accents

The Iron Brigade whupping up on Archer's brigade just doesn't get its due here. Archer was captured, brought to the rear, and presented to his old friend MG Doubleday, who said he was glad to see him. Archer replied that he was NOT glad to see him

So much for southern chivalry

And this idiotic scene depicting the collapse of the XI Corps...

Not even deigning to give Hubert "Hot Pants" Dilger his due

How can you just NOT mention a guy who wore leather pants into action and aimed cannons so well that he plugged the enemy cannon's bore with round shot?

Amazing that they could get through a 4 hour movie giving a woman only one line (a worse than pointless one) and SHOWING a person escaped from slavery BUT NOT GIVING HIM WORDS

Example of a narrative trying to take away the agency of enslaved persons

Runaway enslaved person had INCREDIBLE agency during the war. They flooded US lines and made US commanders decide what to do. Some commanders armed them, some tried to send them back. This forced the War Dept & Lincoln to do something: the Emancipation Proclamation

*persons. Good lord. Got so annoyed that my grammar failed me.

Jeff Shaara perpetuated some Lost Cause myths, although he breaks from it to raise up Longstreet and cast doubt on Lee, which was in exact contravention of the Cult of Robert E Lee

Lee, of course, was the epoch of human history, as the cult said

Longstreet lost Gettysburg, they said. Then had the temerity to become a Republican after the war, and led multiracial troops against insurrectionists in New Orleans in 1874

So yeah, they did NOT like him

*Michael* Shaara

Altho Jeff Shaara wasn't much better in his lionization of TJ Jackson

Ahhhh, the outraged General Trimble with the "we could've taken Cemetery and Culp's Hills!" narrative. A false one.

The narrative goes that Ewell failed to take the hills following the retreat of the US Army to Cemetery Hill because he wasn't aggressive enough

@Ty_Seidule

It presupposes that had Jackson been there, he would have taken the hills. In all probability, had Jackson been at Gettysburg, he would've smelled very bad having been dead for 2 months

(All cred to @Ty_Seidule for that joke)

Once again, it's an argument removing agency from a group. Namely the I, XI, and XII Corps with Generals Hancock and Howard who very rapidly turned both those hills into bulwarks, and would have made it another Malvern Hill. & proceeded to do so in the next few days.

The largest division of the XI corps had remained in reserve on Cemetery Hill and the I Corps artillery, some of the best in the Army of the Potomac, had mostly made it out of its fight intact

Attacking would have been a horrible idea

Shaara and Turner taking the massive leap of having Longstreet say "we should've freed the slaves THEN fired on Fort Sumter"

This is a ridiculous statement. Only under intense duress at the end of the war did a few rebels imagine freeing a few slaves to try to save everything

Good ol Father Corby praying with the Irish Brigade right before it went and got cut into even tinier pieces than it was at the beginning, with like 100 guys per regiment

Ah, and Longstreet bringing up the troublesome "oath" problem that he and Lee violated

Lee and his "there was always a higher duty to Virginia"

That's not what half your family said, traitor-face

Col. Strong Vincent. God, what a fantastic name for an outstanding leader. A PA lawyer who took it on his own initiative to move his brigade to Little Round Top without orders, risking court martial

Too bad the movie omits Sgt Tozier, the color bearer, the moment where he is standing alone on the rock, with the colors in the crook of his arm, firing a rifle like a BAMF

Much of this fighting is taken directly from Chamberlain's own memoir "Through Blood and Fire at Gettysburg," notably using his own brother to plug a hole in the line and oftentimes seeing more of the enemy around him than his own men

Notably, Chamberlain, Spear, and LT Holman Melcher would all have differing accounts of how the epic charge happened. As will happen as time passes and memories change. What is indisputable is that it happened

and it was damned glorious

And THAT'S how professors fight

Nicknames in the 1800s were so weird.

Hiram Ulysses Grant: Sam
James Peter Longstreet: Pete (ok,I'll buy that)
John Bell Hood: also Sam

"Hi, my name is Jeduthan Tucker Prudence Archibald III, but my friends call my Clem"

Lee: "the attacks were not properly coordinated"

Well, yes, Longstreet did take forever to get in place, but his attack was coordinated. Hill & Ewell however, failed to coordinate their attack & demonstration

Also, the US V Corps showed up to kick serious ass that day

Richard Jordan providing a heart-rending performance as the agonized Armistead

He died of brain cancer before the film was released

"I have never left the enemy in possession of the field"

Lmao so Antietam just isn't a thing, eh?

Well, this WAS my seat

Just in case people wondered, no, the 20th Maine wasn't sent to the center of the line. Artistic license by Michael Shaara so he could get Chamberlain to talk to Hancock and Frank Haskell

Unsure that Longstreet ever made this prophetic speech about the attack of July 3 failing. But, it matches his overall begrudging attitude during the whole battle, and his desire to firmly place responsibility for it anywhere else that he could

@UNC

Trimble and Pettigrew forever forgotten in history. Only Pickett's name got to live on

Well. Sorta

James Johnston Pettigrew still has 1912's Pettigrew Hall named for him at @UNC

Because he was an "esteemed student known for his intellect"

Suuuuuuuure

Hancock saying nothing was going to happen is in exact contravention to what Meade told him that day, accurately predicting that Lee would strike the center and advising Hancock & Gibbon to place reserves

Meade outsmarted Bobby Lee on July 3, yes.

A word on the colossal cannonade that is going on: who DOESN'T love watching artillery firing en masse?

What you don't see, tho, is the masterful genius of the US Army's chief artillerists. They all knew when their fire was deemed suppressed, the rebel infantry would advance

Henry Hunt, chief of artillery for the Army of the Potomac, ordered the US batteries to withdraw or go silent, one by one. Poor EP Alexander thought his fire was having good effect. Nope. Hunt & his chiefs were replacing damaged guns, replenishing ammo, and waiting

Waiting

One whole section of 44 guns on southern Cemetery Ridge would stay hidden until the infantry advanced. They were then rolled over the crest and did horrific damage to the right flank of the assault just as the left flank was struck with plunging fire from Cemetery Hill

Instead of seeing this, we now get a whole long talk about how great Virginia is at fighting for a proposed nation-state dedicated on the supremacy of the white man and built on chattel slavery

Dad, being raised in NC, used to get very annoyed at this whole sequence and ask why no one ever showed the North Carolinians. Valid question. 130,000 Tarheels went to the Confederate army (10-12K to the US Army). NC was poorer than VA, less inclined to romanticise the war

Plus, Virginians love to talk about themselves. And the cadre of the Lost Causers were Virginians. So it's a pretty toxic mixture, really.

Never mind that Virginia was so divided that half of it left during the war

God, I love it. 69th PA giving em hell, next to Alonzo Cushing's double canister. At this moment, Stannard's Vermont brigade was slamming into the right of the attack as the 8th Ohio fired into the left flank. Double envelopment enabled by US fire driving CS units to the center

Imagine getting flanked with New Englanders on one side and Ohioans on the other

Just give up at that point, you're done for

Too bad this movie doesn't show General Hays - commanding at the stone wall - kiss his aid, grab a rebel flag, mount his horse, them ride his line, dragging the flag after him through the dirt, followed by his staff, doing the same

Because he did

Hays, incidentally, designed bridges in Pittsburgh before the war

If you've been there you know how important that is in a city that's mostly rivers

He was killed in action in 1864, sadly