Hands Across the Stone Wall

Fifty years after the Battle of Gettysburg turned quiet Pennsylvania fields into a brutal crossroads of war, something extraordinary happened. The veterans came back. Not to fight. Not to argue. But to remember. To stand together on the same ridges and fields where they had once tried to kill each other, and shake hands instead. More than 53,000 of them, Union and Confederate, answered the call for a reunion that would become one of the largest peaceful assemblies of former enemies in history.

The idea for the Grand Reunion was first sparked by a Civil War veteran named Henry Huidekoper. He had lost his right arm at Gettysburg. His body carried the scars of that war, but his heart beat for peace. Alongside historian Colonel John Nicholson and with the blessing of Pennsylvania Governor Edwin Stuart, the idea took root. Planning began in earnest in 1908, with the goal of bringing together 40,000 Civil War veterans for the 50th anniversary in 1913. What they got was even bigger.

There was a lot of nervousness about how this was going to go. After all, these were men who had once bled each other out on the very hills and lanes where they’d now be camping. Some feared fights. Some feared worse. But what they got instead was something much more powerful than conflict. They got reconciliation.

The government called it “The Great Reunion,” and for once, Washington lived up to the hype. States pitched in over a million dollars, with Pennsylvania alone putting up nearly half. The War Department carved out more than 280 acres to build what could only be called a small city. They raised 7,000 tents, laid down roads, installed wells and sanitation, built mess halls, and prepared medical stations. There were Boy Scouts and Red Cross nurses. There were trains running in on every rail, streetcars and taxis, even bubble fountains to fight the oppressive July heat.

The veterans began arriving on June 29, and Gettysburg swelled to the brim. The town of 4,500 suddenly found itself hosting well over 100,000 people. The camps were laid out like regiments. Union veterans were stationed on Cemetery Ridge and the Round Tops. Confederates set up on Seminary Ridge. Same ground. Same sight lines. Only this time, nobody was aiming a musket.

The soldiers—now white-haired and cane-carrying—walked their old routes. They found the tree lines where they’d fought, the hills they’d charged, the stone walls they’d held or crossed. Some even found each other. Two veterans, one from the 7th Texas and one from the 2nd New York Cavalry, recognized each other near a tree where they’d clashed in hand-to-hand combat. They’d last seen each other when one pointed a pistol at the other’s face. This time, they embraced like brothers.

Another veteran stood quietly at the grave of a Confederate he’d befriended in a hospital during the war. William Henry Scott, from Georgia, had once lain beside him, laughing and planning future visits. But he never came. The Union veteran wept when he found Scott’s name etched in stone. “Here he is,” he choked out. “Here he is.”

These were not the choreographed feel-good moments of modern political theater. These were raw, unfiltered memories dug out from beneath fifty years of living. There was joy, sorrow, and some unexpected anger too. One night at the Hotel Gettysburg, a Southern attendee used some unkind words about Abraham Lincoln and sparked a brawl. A Union vet threw his drink. The Southerner pulled a knife. Men were slashed, but all survived. It was a reminder that some wounds, even after half a century, were still a little tender.

Each day of the reunion had its own theme. July 1 was Veterans’ Day. July 2 was Military Day, with speeches about military readiness and peace. July 3 was Civic or Governors’ Day, which saw 65 unit reunions, the dedication of the General William Wells statue, and the famed reenactment of Pickett’s Charge. Only this time, when the gray lines crossed the field and met the Union line at the Angle, there were no bullets. There were tears. Handshakes. Embraces. One Confederate veteran fell to his knees and prayed aloud in front of the stone wall he once tried to breach.

That evening, fireworks lit up Little Round Top. You could almost hear the cannons again, only this time it was celebration, not slaughter.

July 4 was National Day. President Woodrow Wilson arrived just before noon, flanked by Boy Scouts and a chorus of applause. He gave a short but poignant speech calling for national unity and peace. He said, “Enemies no longer, generous friends rather… our battles long past, the quarrel forgotten.” Then at noon, a five-minute tribute to the dead blanketed Gettysburg in silence. Church bells rang, cannons fired in the distance, and a stillness came over the hills that had once trembled with war.

Afterward, the camp began to wind down. The hospital closed the next day. The last veteran left on July 8. By mid-August, the great tent city was dismantled, leaving only grass and ghosts behind.

Not every plan for the reunion had come to pass. The dream of building a Peace Memorial was shelved for lack of funding. But the legacy lived on in every handshake, every tear, every photograph taken beside a monument or name etched in bronze.

It’s easy to forget just how radical this all was. Fifty years earlier, these men were bent on destroying each other. Now they were sitting on camp chairs, swapping stories and laughing. It wasn’t perfect. Not everyone felt the same about the war. But it mattered. And it meant something that in 1913, with the world already creeping toward another catastrophe in Europe, America could look at its own past and say, We are still one nation.

History is often written in blood and fire, but sometimes it’s told in silence, in the clasp of hands across a stone wall. The 1913 Gettysburg Reunion wasn’t just a commemoration. It was a testament to what happens when men choose peace over pride. And in the end, perhaps one Talmudic truth says it best:

He who saves a single life, it is as if he has saved the world.

On that field in 1913, they saved each other. And they saved a nation from forgetting what it means to heal.