July 1, 1863 ....

It was 7:30 am, the air was already warm and muggy when Union Lt. Marcellus Jones was ordered to fire. His firing launched the Battle of Gettysburg. For the next three days the Union and Confederate soldiers fought the bloodiest as well as deadliest battle of the Civil War. By the end of July 3, 1863 both sides had lost more then 23,000 soldiers. A total of 46,000 American men and boys lost their lives .... It's no wonder the hollowed grounds of this battle field are still haunted 161 years later.

Casualties and losses
23,055 (3,155 killed  14,531 wounded  5,369 captured/missing)[4]	23,231 (4,708 killed  12,693 wounded  5,830 captured/missing)[5]

 Union numbers are on the left, Confederate on the right.

Historians later claimed that the battle of Gettysburg was the turning point in the Civil War and the time when the Union began to take control.

While watching the Angels play baseball this evening I was sewing a binding on a quilt I made at our Spring retreat. 

I'm busy tacking down my binding with my tootsies sticking out the bottom!

 I realized the fabric I used on the back was a scene from the 3 day Battle of Gettysburg and I started reading it and and tracking the battle lines. I noticed that today was the anniversary of the battle.

Right there it is Battle of Gettysburg, PA. July 1,2,and 3rd 1863

I don't believe in coincidences, nothing is random. God has a plan for everything that happens and for some reason I was supposed to put binding on this quilt today. Maybe to pay tribute to these men who lost their lives for equality ...

Day 1, the battle lines a drawn, Confederate soldiers have surrounded Gettysburg and the Union troops under General Mead's orders march into Gettysburg.

In mid November President Lincoln travels to the battlefields of Gettysburg to address the nation ...

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 For reasons unbeknownst to me I am drawn to this era of our history. I am attracted to American antiques, patriotism, and 1800's era quilts.

A small collection of my Civil War era quilts ....