Historian John Heiser from the Gettysburg National Military Park joined Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow to discuss the historic battle and its legacy on Monday for the show’s special Memorial Day episode.
The park’s website states:
The Battle of Gettysburg was a turning point in the Civil War, the Union victory that ended General Robert E. Lee’s second and most ambitious invasion of the North. Often referred to as the “High Water Mark of the Rebellion,” Gettysburg was the Civil War’s bloodiest battle and was also the inspiration for President Abraham Lincoln’s immortal “Gettysburg Address.”
Heiser reflects on the battle itself, as well as its significance to the United States over time. The national cemetery sprang as much, if not more, from the soldiers who fought there returning time and again, as it did from some national effort to establish a monument.
“The opportunities for the South to win that summer were never as high as before and never would be as high again. I think that’s why Gettysburg is so highly regarded not just by historians, but even by the veterans. The soldiers who fought here came back again and again and again. They’re the ones who gave it that label, the high-water mark of the Confederacy.”
Heiser also discusses Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. “What the president was trying to do,” said Heiser, “was revitalize the Union effort, rejuvenate the American spirit, especially those in the North. Why are we fighting this war? Why are so many young men, fathers, sons now dead on the battlefield lying in what will be national cemeteries? How do we remember their sacrifice? I think that’s why it was so important and why he accepted the invitation to come that fall.”
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