“. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . .”

Abraham Lincoln

Detail from State of Louisiana’s Monument at the Gettysburg National Battlefield, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Detail of a fallen Confederate soldier from the State of Louisiana’s monument at the Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The three-day Battle of Gettysburg was a turning point in the American Civil War. The Union victory ended Confederate General Robert E. Lee  and his Army of Northern Virginia’s most ambitious invasion of the North. Gettysburg was the Civil War’s bloodiest battle and was the inspiration for President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, from which the quote above was taken.  An estimated 51,000 soldiers were killed, wounded, captured, or listed as missing after the guns of battle faded.

The male figure represents a wounded soldier from the New Orleans Washington Artillery; he holds a Confederate battle flag to his heart. Louisiana’s contingent of the Army of Northern Virginia was the seventh largest of the twelve Confederate states at Gettysburg, and it suffered the seventh highest casualties— approximately 725. The text from the monument reads: “This memorial was erected by the state of Louisiana to honor her sons who fought and died at Gettysburg July 1-2-3, 1863. In particular it memorializes the 2300 infantrymen of Hays and Nicholl’s Louisiana brigades, the cannoneers in the Washington Artillery of New Orleans, and those in the Louisiana Guard, Madison, and Donaldsonville Artillery Batteries.”

WPC: Details