Welp, it's Valentine's Day

Guess it's time to watch Gettysburg again

I don't make the rules

Randy Edelman's score for this film SLAPS

and I will not brook dissent on this

The opening will always remind me of dad. He'd comment on how he loved Adams County, PA.

I can hear most of his commentary in my head as I watch this. And how he would whistle the score

We used to watch it about once a month or so

My mother is obviously a very patient person

The picket line, featuring the one fat guy in the whole Army of Northern Virginia

I'm guessing he also played Santa Claus at Christmas time

They probably ate him during the retreat from Petersburg

I used to not like Martin Sheen's "frantic and concerned" Lee

Now, I actually kinda dig it. Helps break the "marble man" mythos.

I totes relate with Chamberlain not wanting to wake up when people show up with bad news

Granted, I've never been woken up to "we've got 120 mutineers showing up"

It's more like "hey, we can't find a set of NODS"

Now, I know this JLC speech is mainly fiction - I mean, he did speak, he did convince most of them to fight, but we don't know just what was said. But.

I love this speech so much.

"We are an army out to set other men free...it's the idea that we all have value"

That moment you remember that you unfortunately purchased the extended edition and realize just WHY all these scenes were cut

Because they're sooooooo bad

I do love Buford's monologue, but Meade wasn't gonna attack Lee if he'd seized Cemetery Hill

He already had plans developed for a defensive line near Pipe Creek for this very purpose. Plenty of "good ground" in southern Pennsylvania

Also, Buford's message to Reynolds was wayyyyyy more detailed as befitting the outstanding recon officer that Buford was. Probably one of the best people to have out front as the eyes of the army

Ah, a lovely deleted scene about treating Lee ordering good treatment of the civilian population

Not gonna mention the hundreds of free African-Americans taken by Lee's army and marched south into slavery, eh?

The first engagement: Gamble's brigade was not formed in line trading volleys with rebel infantry. They would have lost. Badly. Breach-loading carbines were outranged easily by rifles. Instead, the dismounted cavalrymen forced Heth to deploy his troops into line

They'd mount up and fall back when a heavy line of infantry was deployed. Buford traded space for time, but did it smartly. As evidenced by his light (4%) losses on July 1.

Only those without souls can observe Sam Elliot tearing up at "Sir, it's General Reynolds!" without feeling emotion

There should've been several minutes devoted to dialogue between the 2d, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin so that everyone could've been deeply confused/disturbed at their accents

Just as all right-feeling people are by Wisconsin accents

The Iron Brigade whupping up on Archer's brigade just doesn't get its due here. Archer was captured, brought to the rear, and presented to his old friend MG Doubleday, who said he was glad to see him. Archer replied that he was NOT glad to see him

So much for southern chivalry

And this idiotic scene depicting the collapse of the XI Corps...

Not even deigning to give Hubert "Hot Pants" Dilger his due

How can you just NOT mention a guy who wore leather pants into action and aimed cannons so well that he plugged the enemy cannon's bore with round shot?

Amazing that they could get through a 4 hour movie giving a woman only one line (a worse than pointless one) and SHOWING a person escaped from slavery BUT NOT GIVING HIM WORDS

Example of a narrative trying to take away the agency of enslaved persons

Runaway enslaved person had INCREDIBLE agency during the war. They flooded US lines and made US commanders decide what to do. Some commanders armed them, some tried to send them back. This forced the War Dept & Lincoln to do something: the Emancipation Proclamation

*persons. Good lord. Got so annoyed that my grammar failed me.

Jeff Shaara perpetuated some Lost Cause myths, although he breaks from it to raise up Longstreet and cast doubt on Lee, which was in exact contravention of the Cult of Robert E Lee

Lee, of course, was the epoch of human history, as the cult said

Longstreet lost Gettysburg, they said. Then had the temerity to become a Republican after the war, and led multiracial troops against insurrectionists in New Orleans in 1874

So yeah, they did NOT like him

Ahhhh, the outraged General Trimble with the "we could've taken Cemetery and Culp's Hills!" narrative. A false one.

The narrative goes that Ewell failed to take the hills following the retreat of the US Army to Cemetery Hill because he wasn't aggressive enough

It presupposes that had Jackson been there, he would have taken the hills. In all probability, had Jackson been at Gettysburg, he would've smelled very bad having been dead for 2 months

(All cred to @Ty_Seidule for that joke)

Once again, it's an argument removing agency from a group. Namely the I, XI, and XII Corps with Generals Hancock and Howard who very rapidly turned both those hills into bulwarks, and would have made it another Malvern Hill. & proceeded to do so in the next few days.

The largest division of the XI corps had remained in reserve on Cemetery Hill and the I Corps artillery, some of the best in the Army of the Potomac, had mostly made it out of its fight intact

Attacking would have been a horrible idea

Shaara and Turner taking the massive leap of having Longstreet say "we should've freed the slaves THEN fired on Fort Sumter"

This is a ridiculous statement. Only under intense duress at the end of the war did a few rebels imagine freeing a few slaves to try to save everything

Good ol Father Corby praying with the Irish Brigade right before it went and got cut into even tinier pieces than it was at the beginning, with like 100 guys per regiment

Ah, and Longstreet bringing up the troublesome "oath" problem that he and Lee violated

Lee and his "there was always a higher duty to Virginia"

That's not what half your family said, traitor-face

Col. Strong Vincent. God, what a fantastic name for an outstanding leader. A PA lawyer who took it on his own initiative to move his brigade to Little Round Top without orders, risking court martial

Too bad the movie omits Sgt Tozier, the color bearer, the moment where he is standing alone on the rock, with the colors in the crook of his arm, firing a rifle like a BAMF