GettysBlog

A Face in the Crowd

Crunch time. In two very short weeks you--the members of the Cornell Class of 2012--will be arriving in Ithaca. Have you started packing yet? Have you read the book? And written your short essay? Do you have any questions about the book, the Reading Project, or Cornell? 

Ithaca is a small place, but Cornell is a big and busy place, especially during Student Orientation and the first weeks of classes. Please know that you do not have to be just another face in the crowd. Ask your questions. There are plenty of students, staff, faculty, administrators, and librarians here to connect you with the information you need.  All you have to do is ask.

With so much to do and so little time left to do it, who has time to even think about Abraham Lincoln? You do. Above is an image of President Lincoln at Gettysburg. He is lost in the mass of people swirling around him. This close up of the image locates a familar face. Well almost. No, he is not one of the men in top hats. Rather we see him without a hat (and probably seated) in the very center of this image--lost in the crowd. Now try to spot Lincoln in these newly discovered images from that day.

To learn more about what happened in Gettysburg, listen to the NPR audio file of a 1938 interview with a man who was there that day. You can also read how the event was reported in the Friday, November 20, 1863 edition of the New York Times. And there is the Lincoln at Gettysburg Photo Tour for those of you who want to see modern images of Gettysburg sites.

See you all in Barton Hall in a few weeks.

Who is Erasmus E. Bassett?

You will not find his name in the index of Lincoln at Gettysburg. He was not a famous man nor someone that I knew personally. He was one of the Union soldiers that I purposefully did not name in my address at Gettysburg, but it is "altogether fitting and proper" that I do so here, because this brave man was one of the thousands of men who gave "the last full measure of devotion" on that battlefield.

Erasmus E. Bassett and his brother Richard (Dick) were from Barrington, NY, a town not far from Ithaca. They enlisted in Company B of the 126th New York Volunteer Infantry on August 4, 1862.  Their father gave Erasmus a diary while he was home on leave at Christmas time that year. That dairy is now a part of the archives in the Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections in Kroch Library at Cornell. Pictured here is page 76 of that diary. The entries (with added annotations) read:

Tuesday, June 30, 1863

Send Dick $5.00. Pitch tents in woods near Unionville. Boys all come in*. Go to house & wash & eat. Muster. March on 1 mile and camp. Buy wool hat for $2.00 at Unionville. March 1 mile

*The long hard march of the 29^th left many stragglers along the way. This day of only marching 1 mile allowed stragglers to catch up.

Wednesday, July 1, 1863

Leave camp at 7. Go to Taneytown 6 ½ miles. Ordered back 3 miles then march within 5 miles of Gettysburg and stop for the night, been fighting at Gettysburg

Thursday, July 2, 1863

Start towards Gettysburg at 4 A.M. Arrive near town at 6 ¾ A.M. Form line of battle. 39^th NY go out skirmishing, lose several...

____________________________________________________________________________

12 O’Clock at night I find my Brother Erasmus lying dead where I took this from his pocket.

R. A. Bassett**

**Captain Richard Allen Bassett, brother to Erasmus E. Bassett referred to many times in this diary as “Dick” wrote home of the incident, “I thought of George [another brother who had died at Antietam] and then think of Rapsy [Erasmus] falling so near him. I could not help weeping.”

Richard marked his brother's battlefield grave and later Erasmus's body was sent home for reburial in Barrington. See The Bassett Boys Go to War for a more detailed account of the Bassett brothers at Gettysburg.

"In great deeds, something abides."

These are the words of Joshua Chamberlain, the Union hero who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for the defense of Little Round Top on the second day of fighting at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. His story is featured in the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara and in the film Gettysburg that was based on this book.

It is fitting that we think of him on this anniversary of his deeds. After Gettysburg he went on to become one of the war's most extraordinary soldiers and later the Governor of Maine. But I would like to focus on his other profession today. Prior to the war he had been a professor of Rhetoric at Bowdoin College. (He could read in seven foreign languages: Arabic, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Syriac.) After the war he returned to Bowdoin to teach and to become its president.

In his excellent book, Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg, James McPherson tells of Chamberlain's return to Gettysburg in 1886 to dedicate a monument for his Twentieth Maine regiment. Let us read more of Chamberlain's speech and his rhetoric:

"In great deeds, something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear, but spirits linger, to consecrate the ground for the vision-place of souls. And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them...." 

Done for us.

[Image: Little Round Top, 1863. It is from the Library of Congress Selected Civil War Photographs collection.]

Lincoln and Gettysburg Today

Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address seven score and five years ago, that is 145 years ago. Garry Wills wrote this book about Abraham Lincoln in 1992 or about the time that our incoming Class of 2012 Cornellians were only two years old. This is all history. This is the past.

But Lincoln and Gettysburg are in our current headlines, news, and media. Appearing on magazine racks this last week of June are copies of a Special Edition of the magazine U.S. News & World Reports on the Secrets of the Civil War. A young, clean-shaven Abraham Lincoln is on the cover. Inside you will find articles about "The Real Lincoln" including an excerpt from Gabor Boritt's 2006 book, The Gettysburg Gospel, a fascinating book about the Gettysburg Address that I will discuss in a later posting.

Given that we have another senator from Illinois presently running for the Presidency of the United States, there have been numerous Lincoln references made about Barrack Obama. See today's (June 26, 2008) Doonesbury cartoon strip for some up to the minute political commentary. There will be more to say about Mr. Obama later this summer as well.

And back on April 24th, the new Gettysburg Museum and Visitor's Center opened at the Gettysburg National Military Park. I was there two weeks ago and wished that my schedule had allowed me to spend more time there. I highly recommend visiting the museum, the battlefield, and the cemetery. (By the way Gettysburg is about a 4 hour drive from Ithaca for those of you wanting to make this field trip.)

And Lincoln is with us here at Cornell. This image is of a marble bust by the American artist, Vinnie Ream Hoxie. This sculpture resides in the Dean Reading Room of Uris Library here on campus.

As the American novelist, William Faulkner, has written, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."