Gettysburg

“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” - Mark Twain

I know I've posted parts of this before, but I believe it's the sort of thing that it is impossible to read and reflect upon too frequently. Happy Fourth - and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd - of July.
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Among the units at Gettysburg on July 1st, 2nd and 3rd, 1863 was the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry. Minnesota governor Alexander Ramsey happened to be in Washington at the time South Carolina seceded from the Union, and was the first governor to offer troops to fight; therefore the First Minnesota was the first volunteer regiment of any state to be offered for the Union cause.

On July 2nd, during the battle at Gettysburg, the First was ordered to fill in a gap in the Union line until the area could be reinforced. Of 262 men who were ordered to attack, 215 ended the day killed, missing, or wounded. The following day, this same unit helped to repel Pickett’s Charge. The First Minnesota has the highest losses in any one battle (by total number of men) of the entire Civil War.

General Winfield Scott Hancock later said of the First,
“I had no alternative but to order the regiment in. We had no force on hand to meet the sudden emergency. Troops had been ordered up and were coming on the run, but I saw that in some way five minutes must be gained or we were lost. It was fortunate that I found there so grand a body of men as the First Minnesota. I knew they must lose heavily and it caused me pain to give the order for them to advance, but I would have done it (even) if I had known every man would be killed. It was a sacrifice that must be made. The superb gallantry of those men saved our line from being broken. No soldiers on any field, in this or any other country, ever displayed grander heroism.”

GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.