"When This Cruel War Is Over": Helen Gilson at Gettysburg
Life on the Civil War Research Trail
•
9m 14s
During the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, Helen Gilson lent her considerable skills as a compassionate caregiver to Union and Confederate wounded. At one point, a patient asked her to sing. The song she chose moved Northern and Southern hearts,
Up Next in Life on the Civil War Research Trail
-
“Let’s Go and See” John Buford at Get...
John Buford, one of the most respected Union generals, displayed grit and determination on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. After the war, one of Buford's staffers, 1st Lt. and Signal Corps officer Aaron B. Jerome, worried that history would forget Buford. So he wrote a letter to promot...
-
Pickett's Charge: “Hold Your Fire, Bo...
One of the top correspondents in the American press during the Civil War, the Boston Journal's Charles Carleton Coffin, arrived at Gettysburg after the first day's fighting. His description of Pickett's Charge, from the Union side, is vivid, poetic prose.
-
The 1864 Paper by a US Army Officer W...
Captain Edward Carlisle Boynton, a West Point educated veteran of the Mexican War who returned to teach at his alma mater during the Civil War, wrote a paper published in 1864 that called for the establishment of a military Bureau of Photography. He was a man ahead of his time—by more than a half...