In Which Pickett's Charge Is A Metaphor

In the mornings, I usually get up well before Mr. Craft Knife, so when we're on a trip, I like to hop out of bed, get dressed, and head out with my nook to have a little snoopy around whatever free breakfast options there are in the hotel lobby. On this particular morning, I beelined for the coffee machine, waiting in line behind a guy dressed in pajama bottoms who was making a couple of cups.

As he moved aside to do his cream and sugar dance, I put my own cup under the spout and hit the button for coffee. It filled my cup something like 20% full, then stopped, so I hit the button again, which was apparently the signal for coffee to start streaming forever out of the spout and never stop again. I worriedly let my cup get 99% full and then pulled it away, but that meant that the coffee was now hitting the metal bottom of the dispenser instead, which caused it all to loudly and wildly splash EVERYWHERE. Like... just absolutely everywhere. I was horrified, the guy next to me was clearly horrified--but also comfortingly supportive! He handed me napkins and was all, "I'll pretend like nothing happened if you do!" It was very sweet, and I thanked him and used his napkins to mop up the mess while he escaped before I could spill coffee all over him, too.

I calmed my nerves over a book and a breakfast of white toast, cream cheese, and hard-boiled egg (I don't know why hotel breakfasts always have the most random assortment of breakfast foods, but this combo turned out to be DELICIOUS!)--

--then decided to brave the coffee machine again for a refill.

This time, a sign that I had not seen before was taped to the machine directly at my own personal eye level, and it said, "Please press button only ONCE for coffee." So I pressed the button--only once!--and, okay, the spout dispensed my coffee cup only about 25% full, then paused and made some grumbling noises, then started pouring again without me having to press anything else. Still, though, I kept my hand on the cup, at this point ready for anything...

...except for a voice right behind my ear that said, "Don't spill it!" Startled, I jerked away, meaning that the hand that was holding the coffee cup also jerked away, meaning that the coffee cup in my hand also jerked away, and once again a stream of coffee hit the metal bottom of the dispenser and began splashing EVERYWHERE. Horrified, I turned around and met the again equally horrified eyes of the same man from before, this time fully dressed, clearly just having gotten off of the elevator to see that crazy coffee lady again (still?) at the coffee machine, perfectly set up for him to say the funniest thing ever for us to both have a lighthearted chuckle at.

I tell my husband ALL THE TIME that I am incapable of interacting with other humans out in the wild, because every single time I do it gets weird, and he always tells me that cannot be true, that he himself is constantly interacting with people out in the wild without issue and surely all the weirdness is just all in my head.

And yet.

So let's go see some other people who made bad decisions out in public!

Next to this sign is another sign asking you to please not deface the Confederate memorial. I think that it's obviously correct and ethically sound not to deface this memorial, but I still feel like the miniature Confederate battle flags are a little much.

The day before this last day of battle, Robert E. Lee had gathered experiential evidence that neither attacking the left flank nor attacking the right flank of the Union line could get his Confederate forces through. So on this day, he'd planned to send his troops right through the middle. Major General Pickett's division hadn't actually done any fighting yet in this battle, so they were going to be in front, which I guess is why it's usually called Pickett's Charge even though several commanders and their divisions were involved. Shrug!

Throughout this whole plan, the guy who was supposed to have the overall command during this attack, Lieutenant General James Longstreet, was generally just a big wuss about the whole thing. He did not want to do it, said it wouldn't work, had a different idea that he thought would be better, but instead of obeying like he was supposed to, or flat-out disobeying like Sickles had the day before, he just hedged and hemmed and hawed and half-assed it and eventually obeyed, but only in the worst way possible that definitely fucked the whole thing up. He didn't start the charge when he was supposed to, which means that the Confederate attack on Culp's Hill at the Union right flank that was supposed to divide the Union forces wasn't simultaneous like it was supposed to be, so the Union could easily bring reinforcements to the center of the line. Pickett himself had to go find Longstreet and literally ask if he should start the charge, and even then Longstreet wouldn't give him a direct answer, but instead just bowed. Like... okay? What is THAT supposed to mean, Dude?

After Pickett left to go start the charge Longstreet even tried to get another guy to go find him and tell him nevermind, but that guy was all, "Bro, it is TOO LATE. WE ARE CHARGING."

I get that Longstreet was all morally quandried or whatever, but come on. It's not like this is your first day in the army! You know how armies be! You fish or you cut bait or you go hide in a basement with the rest of the civilians you've put in the middle of your war zone! It's fine that he was acting like a baby about this, though, because he was one of the bad guys.

While Longstreet was having his whole little dither, there was one of the largest ever cannonades also going on, which would probably have been a little cooler if either side could have seen where they were shooting. But they couldn't, so both sides mostly missed, but that also meant that the purpose of the Confederate cannonade, intended to soften up the center of the Union line so they didn't slaughter the Confederates like dogs during their infantry attack, did not work at all. It did run the cannons on both sides almost clean out of ammunition, though this was a bigger deal on the Confederate side. The Union cannons had done this sneaky trick of kind of petering out their cannon fire, as if their cannons were getting hit one by one and going off-line. This made the Confederates think that they were safe to charge, but when they did, the Union cannons started blasting them again.

The actual Confederate charge was so, so, so stupid, and it turned out so, so, so bad. They started from way back here--

--and most historians think they were probably using that copse of trees over my left shoulder as a visual marker. None of them ever got that far, though. For one thing, they were WALKING, not running, supposedly in formation until that devolved into chaos. Also, this area was literally people's farmland back then, fields separated from each other by extremely sturdy fences that had to be climbed over or through but that did not provide any shelter from gunfire to the person doing the climbing or scrambling. Cannons were just blindly firing at them, some from as far away as Little Round Top, and since they weren't aiming at anything in particular they never knew where they'd hit, so in the space of a second the spot next to you, and all your buddies in that spot, would simply be obliterated, and you never knew if you'd be next.

Here's the view out from the Union line (with my trusty guidebook in the foreground, obviously!):

You can barely see the monument that marks the beginning of the charge way far off in the background, kind of near the left corner-ish.

monument to the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment

Obsessed with lining up my Gettysburg field guide just right so I can look up from the map and see the real place right in front of me. Major Magic Tree House vibes!

monument to the 1st Pennsylvania Cavalry

monument to Brigadier General Alexander Webb

I wanted to walk the whole length of the charge but we really didn't have time for that, so here's what it looks like partway through, looking towards the Union line:

The copse of trees is on the right, and the whole ridge is lined with Union cannons. The last time that I visited Gettysburg, with my kids, we did not know that you're not supposed to climb on the cannons--oops!

monument to the 59th New York Infantry

monument to the 42nd New York Infantry

The whole attack lasted less than an hour, and it was the disaster that knocked the fight right out of the Confederate side. They had a casualty rate of over 50%, and anyone who could have reasonably been in charge near the front lines was part of that, so there was nobody to organize a proper retreat--Confederate soldiers just ran back the way they'd come, or stayed hiding in the ditches on either side of Emmitsburg Road and waited to be taken prisoner.

I grew up in the South, where my education about the Civil War was not even-handed, but I still see Pickett's Charge as a metaphor for the Antebellum South--though not in the way that it was taught to me. I don't share a geographical nostalgia for the days of chattel slavery or a wistful, "if only" feeling about the racist bullshit that is the Lost Cause. I do, however, recognize what it looks like when a bunch of elites throw a bunch of poors at a cause as literal or metaphorical cannon fodder. They're still doing it today, throwing the ignorant poors with their ill-funded grade school public educations and resultant lifelong media and cultural illiteracy at Republican ideals, getting them to wear their stupid Trump hats and fly their stupid Trump flags--which all cost money!--and pretend like it's awesome that gas prices are exorbitant and screwworms are infecting cattle herds and their children are once again marching off to be on the wrong side of a war.

And god forbid any of us try to move on with our zero generational wealth and focus on carefully educating our children, doing double the work since it often requires re-educating ourselves, battling through unfair taxes that the rich don't pay and student loan debts that they don't have and wages that don't rise to match inflation that they don't have to worry about. We can support and encourage our kids to attend amazing colleges and study in useful fields as much as we want, but federal funding for early career scientists and every kind of public servant BUT the fat cat politician will get cut before they can even graduate with their hard-earned degrees from their amazing colleges, so back to blue collar work they go.

Anyway, let's go look at where Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address next.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!