Join us on Zoom for our final History Happy Hour of the season as we welcome historian and educator, Keith Harris, author of Across the Bloody Chasm.

There are over 1300 monuments memorializing sacrifice and commemorating fortitude at Gettysburg. Most of these monuments went up during the late-19^th and early-20^th centuries and nearly all of them commemorate the victory of the United States Army of the Potomac in July 1863. Veterans played a vital role creating this commemorative landscape. The words that resonated on the battlefield during this commemorative era explained why Union soldiers supported a cause to secure the integrity of the Republic on the premise of freedom and free institutions. Their commemorative ethos suggests that a generation of citizen soldiers thoroughly embraced a national creed and used the Gettysburg battlefield as the central place from which to articulate their beliefs and national vision. They told the world that they had fought to resolve a mid-19^th century crisis of American exceptionalism, and by the Grace of God they were victorious. 

*Please note this program is accessible via Zoom only.