Spent some time in Gettysburg recently. Been there many times. It’s an important place – the setting of a nineteenth-century event that changed the country, for the better. We’re still learning from it.
Getting close to what the individual people experienced before, during, and after the event interests me. The human side of things.
Here’s a spot I like visit – near where Father William Corby stood on a hot July morning giving absolution to members of the Irish Brigade. Father Corby later wrote:
Nearby stood a brilliant throng of officers who had gathered to witness this very unusual occurrence, and while there was profound silence in the ranks of the Second Corps, yet over to the left, out by the peach orchard and Little Round Top, where Weed and Vincent and Hazlitt were dying, the roar of the battle rose and swelled and re-echoed through the woods, making music more sublime than ever sounded through cathedral aisle. The act seemed to be in harmony with the surroundings. I do not think there was a man in the brigade who did not offer up a heart-felt prayer.
I like to think that Father Corby gave absolution to everyone there that day, no matter which side of the field they stood.