Gettysburg - The 1913 Reunion

Civil war veterans at Gettysburg anniversary

in 1913 – in pictures

1-3 July marks the 150th anniversary of Gettysburg, the battle that many historians cite as a key turning point in the US civil war, which left 50,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead on Pennsylvania farmland. In 1913, on the 50th anniversary of the battle, the same fields played host to the largest ever gathering of civil war veterans, where former soldiers from both sides – many in their 70s – returned to commemorate the war

All honourably discharged veterans were invited to the reunion, drawing more than 50,000 former members of the Grand Army of the Republic (the north) and the United Confederate Veterans (the south). Fifty years after the battle, many were in their 70s.



Union veterans in front of an Indiana tent. The War Department – the precursor to today's Defense Department – provided tents for housing the tens of thousands of veterans who made the pilgrimage back to Gettysburg.

The Blue and the Gray at Gettysburg: a Union veteran and a Confederate veteran shake hands at the Assembly Tent.

Confederate and Union veterans pass the time with a drum-and-fife corps.

A veteran takes a break in the shade. Many of the scheduled events involved dedications of memorials or low-key re-enactments of the charges and fighting of 50 years earlier. For others, the time was spent simply reminiscing.

Former Confederate soldiers gather at a North Carolina Tar Heel tent. Of the 50,000 veterans who came to Gettysburg, fewer than 10,000 were Confederates.

Union and Confederate soldiers gather around a cannon.

Union veterans pose in the July heat.

See more at The Guardian.co.uk/world/gallery