History & The Human Experience-Remember the Battle of Gettysburg

History & The Human Experience – Remember the Battle of Gettysburg.

As the July 4th celebration approaches, I like to think about things that are a somewhat removed from the conventional summer holiday activities like fire works, cook-outs and potato sack races. That doesn’t mean I’m not patriotic. I’m a US Army veteran and American traditions, and legends of traditions, are near and dear to my heart. My eyes get moist and the bottom lip tends to quiver whenever I hear the Star-Spangled Banner and it can be a downright tear duct deluge when I see news footage of our military people deploying for duty overseas and especially with images of military people returning home and being greeted by adoring family and friends. And I get mad as hell every time I hear reports of American troops killed in action.

In these times of economic woe of soaring prices, mortgage and credit crunch, and that thankless war in the middle east, it’s important for Americans to pause and reflect on The Human Experience and the daily details and routines some people have to go through in order to do things that keep us safe. Take a cranial sojourn and energize your mind to engage a wide scope of human realities. For example – think about what a Special Operations unit, deployed on a secret intelligence mission in eastern Iran, had for breakfast this morning. Or, with respect to the pending July 4th holiday this weekend, what a South Carolina militiaman fighting under Swamp Fox Francis Marion had for a noon meal around July 4th, 1778.

One hundred and forty-five years ago today, tomorrow and Thursday, Americans
fought and killed each other in the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863. Spend some time thinking about that. Seek out and peruse websites that feature source materials like letters and diaries written by soldiers of both sides or observant residents of Gettysburg and its environs. Find sites with photographs of the battlefield, soldiers and prisoners of war. Those of you who are photographers and filmmakers think about how you might have gone about capturing images back then, with equipment of the time and with the technology we have today. Click on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Battle_of_Gettysburg.jpg and study “Harvest of Death”, a photograph taken after the battle by Timothy O’Sullivan, July 5th or 6th.

Timothy O’Sullivan (1840-1882) was an interesting and noteworthy individual, considered to be one of the first to create photography as a documentary form in the 19th century. Not a great deal is known about O’Sullivan’s life. According to sources, he was born in Ireland in 1840 and when he was two, emigrated with his family to New York during the potato famine. In 1858 he began working as an apprentice in Mathew Brady’s New York gallery. He later transferred to the Washington, DC gallery which was run by Alexander Gardner, then an associate of Brady’s. At the beginning of the Civil War, O’Sullivan assisted Brady in creating a comprehensive photographic history of the war. In 1863, O’Sullivan left Brady to start his own business and worked with Gardner who left Brady a year before. Gardner’s studio published the first collection of Civil War photographs, Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War, which featured 42 of O’Sullivan’s battlefield images.

After the Civil War, O’Sullivan was a photographer for the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, the first survey of the American West. The expedition started in Nevada and worked its way eastward. O’Sullivan’s assignment was to photograph the West, creating images that were used to attract settlers – an early version of land development promotion. O’Sullivan’s pictures were some of the first taken of prehistoric ruins, pueblo villages, Navajo life and the grand western landscapes.

In 1870 O’Sullivan joined a team in Panama to survey for a canal across the isthmus. From 1871 to 1874 he joined another survey venture west of the 100th Meridian exploring and taking pictures in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Some of the expedition’s boats capsized on the Colorado River and many of O’Sullivan 300 negatives were lost.

His remaining years were spent in Washington, DC as the official photographer for the U.S, Geological Survey and the Treasury Dept. While in Washington, O’Sullivan met and married Laura Virginia Pywll, the sister of a Washington photographer. In 1876 Mrs. Sullivan had a son who was stillborn. There were no other children. In 1882 Timothy O’Sullivan died of tuberculosis at age 41 or 42.

Eyewitness account of the battle by a teenage girl:
Go to: www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/gtburg.htm then scroll down to read the eyewitness account of Ms. Tillie Pierce, a teenage girl (b. 1848) who lived in Gettysburg at the time. Think about shooting an interview with her a few days after the battle. Research “You Are There”, the amazing, before-its-time 1953 CBS television show hosted by Walter Cronkite that combined history and technology in a most unique way that has yet to be paralleled.

See:
www.tv.com/you-are-there/show/5397/episode_listings.html for general background

and…

www.tv.com/you-are-there/show/5397/episode_listings.html episode guide.

In this thought exercise use your imagination, think in a 360 degree pattern and look for connections within youself and between sources, ideas, realities and above all dreams.
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