strange men are shooting…

Book review:

The Diary of a Lady of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

From June 15 to July 15, 1863

by Pennsylvania Lady of Gettysburg

Ithaca, NY: The Cornell University Library Digital Collections, 2023

29 pages

There is not much fireworks in The Diary of a Lady of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Rather, this largely muted account of a civilian lady in Gettysburg during the famous battle is a compelling tribute to the civilians and combatants who unhappily endured the terrible fighting and killing that could have effectively ended the American Civil War, but didn’t.

A devastating insight into the civilians’ stress and suffering is this: during most of the battle, they really didn’t know very much about what was going on. The civilians who stayed in the town (most of them) repeatedly hunkered down in their cellars and waited until the artillery bombardments ceased. The civilians repeatedly talked with both Union and Confederate soldiers who were in or moving through the town. The civilians, in the main, tried to care for the wounded men of both sides who happened to be nearby.

The battle of Gettysburg was terrifying for the civilian residents of the town, and, luckily for them, it didn’t last too long.

Try to imagine hiding in your house for four or five days, desperately wondering what’s going on, while strange men are walking and running through the streets, shooting at everything, and cannon balls are hitting buildings every so often.

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Book review: The Sea Runners

…it informs, it does not soar…

by Ivan Doig

click here

Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,

and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)

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