Gettysburg's 50th Anniversary, Told by James Rada Jr.
Author James Rada Jr. gives us an interesting talk on what occurred at the 50th Anniversary of the famous battle.
Author James Rada Jr. was our presenter for our second PROMM event this year, and his talk on the 50th Anniversary of Gettysburg was very interesting, to say the least. The evening began with a power outage from the harsh thunderstorms coming through the area and threatened to spoil our planned event. However, the electric was back up and running for all the brave attendees who poured in to hear this talk.
The reunion occurred in 1913, which was recognized as probably that last time they were going to be able to bring the Civil War veterans when the average lifespan was merely 47 years old. What was first a project of Pennsylvania's own making, had captured the attention of the government who wanted to help with organizing and funding for the large scaled event. A call had been issued to see how many of the veterans would like to come out, having planned for around 5,000 people in a tent city holding 10-12 men per tent (though they were expecting to put about 8 in each "building") and a main circus style hall with a capacity of 10,000 men at once. But despite having to rework the train scheduling and transportation issues that may arise, the organizers could not have anticipated the 56,000 veterans who poured out, not to mention family members, newspaper reporters, and all the tourists coming to witness the reenactments and to see the men who fought during those long days in July, 1863.
In order to accommodate for everyone, water tanks were brought in and hooked up to fountains for the former soldiers. To provide them with a cool and refreshing drink, ice blocks were stashed underneath the ground where the water lines would run over and they even refitted a refrigerated train car to store ice cream for all the lads! Now, of course, to feed a crowd of that magnitude, certainly took mega amounts of food to match up with the miles of new roads, additional phones hooked up to miles of wire and even a temporary post office. With free calls to anywhere they wanted, the men were having fun making 7- 8,000 calls a day.
From June 29 to July 4th, the whole town of Gettysburg was swarming with people either visiting the event or with veterans walking around from the campsite. There was even a story of a confederate soldier and an union soldier going to the local store to buy a hatchet and buried it on the battlefield to bring the old saying to life. Men from both sides of the war came in droves, and the confederate flag was allowed to fly at a lower level than the nation's flag. As far as accounts from the boy scouts who helped the men, the spectators who attended, and the soldiers who arrived from all over the country, the event was a huge success if not including the ending segment of fireworks being set off around men dealing with PTSD. It was one thing they hadn't thought about.
Some of the books Mr. Rada Jr. brought along with him for the presentation.
Chris M. with the author, getting her books signed.
We were delighted to host Mr. Rada Jr's talk and our readers appeared to really be enjoying the information with pictures and extra stories. Thanks to everyone who came out for our PROMM event and we look forward to seeing you at the next one!
Thanks to Sarah Ickes for getting the pictures from the evening and to Mr. Shields for notes on the lecture. #gettysburg #soldiers #civilwar #summernights #authorevent
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