Legal Eagles Travel Log: A Gettysburg Anniversary Special

"A national divorce? Didn't we try that once?"

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In this special episode of Advisory Opinions, Sarah follows Judge Alan Norris, a Sixth Circuit judge, on a trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The Legal Eagles, a group of Judge Norris’ colleagues and law clerks, accompany him on an annual trip to relive the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.

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  1. Randall Briggs

    My last assignment in the U.S. Army was on the Staff Ride Team of the Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Every year, we had three sections of foreign officer-students in a course named "The American Civil War." The culminating event was a staff ride to Gettysburg. We spent two days moving about the battlefield, discussing command decisions made by leaders at each stop. We concluded the 2nd day by walking Pickett's Charge, followed by an oral reading of the Gettysburg Address.

    My best memory was when we were walking away from a stop called "Lee's Decision" to get our box lunches. A Ukrainian colonel fell in beside me and told me that he was glad that the Union had won the Civil War. I agreed with him, of course, but I asked him for his reasoning. His answer was that the Union victory ensured that the United States would survive as a united country to lead the fight for freedom in the 20th century.

    This was only about 7 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and his comment moves me as much today as it did on that day.

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    Mitch S.

    This episode is fantastic. Interesting, enlightening, enjoyed the fun & camaraderie as well as the seriousness taken for the subject. Thank you to Sarah and crew for the episode.

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    Rjosephpaquette

    Overall enjoyed this. But, I would have enjoyed more of the actual lectures and speeches and less about the mechanics of the trips. Hearing about walking in a field and finding ticks was a distant second to hearing about legal history. I’d love to have heard more about the history of civil war battlefield hospitals for example.

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    Lawyer.Tksmall

    This was really fun! Your legal and history nerdery is delightful.

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  5. Helbock

    Sarah, you are so funny. Thank you.

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  6. Mark S.

    Loved the Legal Eagles pod!

    On a different note, curious to hear Sarah and David's thoughts on this recent 4th Circuit faculty speech case: https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/221712.P.pdf.

    Orin Kerr weighed in: https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/1677022249403162624

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    Ethan Cordray

    I found this delightful! What a wonderful glimpse inside this event. I was captivated both by the history, and by the portrait of Judge Norris's devotion to sharing it. Thank you, Sarah!

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    Rich Dukes

    Sarah - that was a fun episode and very interesting!

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    Charles

    That was fun. Well done Sarah!

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  10. Guycatelli1

    For Your Possible Interest:

    "My dear Mother,
    This is the last you may ever hear from me. I have time to tell you that I died like a man. Bear my loss best you can..."

    OTD in 1863, when the sun rose 38 members of Ole Miss's University Greys were in the lead formation of what would be Pickett's Charge. At end of day, all were dead or wounded. The first to be mortally wounded was Jeremiah Gage.

    What follows is the recollection of 11th Mississippi field surgeon, Dr. Joseph Holt:

    Presently the wounded began to come in crouchingly; for many were killed and wounded before the charge began. The first to arrive, borne on a litter, was a princely fellow and favored son of the Eleventh Mississippi. I saw in an instant a condition of terrible shock.

    Keeping everybody close to the ground, I turned to him and he pointed to his left arm. I quickly exposed it and found that a cannon ball had nearly torn it away between the elbow and the shoulder. I made some encouraging remark when he smiled and said:

    “Why, Doctor, that is nothing; here is where I am really hurt,” and he laid back the blanket and exposed the lower abdomen torn from left to right by a cannon shot, largely carrying away the bladder, much intestine, and a third of the right half of the pelvis; but in both wounds so grinding and twisting the tissues that there was no hemorrhage.

    I then surveyed his personality, observing the tender devotion on the part of his litter
    bearers, and I saw a singularly attractive creature. Through his deathly pallor I
    could detect a sunburned blond, who in health would show a strong ruddy
    countenance; a large head with a tousled shock of reddish golden locks like a
    mane, with the musculature and form of an athlete. Deferentially polite, there
    was something singularly self-confident and manly about him …

    Without the slightest change of voice, he asked: “Doctor, how long have I to
    live?” “A very few hours,” I replied. “Doctor, I am in great agony; let me die
    easy, dear Doctor; I would do the same for you.” His soul peered from the
    depths of his blue eyes in an appeal of anguish that cut me to the heart and I
    replied, “You dear, noble fellow, I will see to it that you shall die easy.”

    No word or detail of this scene had faded from my memory. There was no
    thought of the dramatic; it was dreadfully genuine and naturally spontaneous, in
    the unconscious creating and acting of a grander tragedy than we might ever
    hope to play …

    I called for, and my hospital knapsack bearer, Jim Rowell, quickly handed me
    a two ounce bottle of black drop – a concentrated solution of opium, much
    stronger than laudanum.

    I poured a tablespoonful of it into a tin cup, with a little water, and offered it;
    but before his hand could reach it, a thought flashed into my mind, and
    withdrawing the cup, I asked, “Have you no message to leave?”

    It startled him, and in a low moaning wail, he cried: “My mother, O, my
    darling mother, how could I have forgotten you? Quick! I want to write.”

    By that time, all who were crouching under the low shelter, were crowded
    around, oblivious of their own injuries and weeping silently.

    I took my seat on the ground close beside him and lifted him over, reclining on
    my chest, his face close to mine to steady his head, his right elbow in the hollow
    of my right hand to support and steady his arm, and a pencil slipped into his
    hand; Jim Rowell had provided the sheet of paper, held on the smooth lid of the
    hospital knapsack improvised as a desk. He wrote rapidly – all of this transpired
    in haste – murmuring to himself the words, audible to me for I looked another
    way.

    He began with place and date – “On the battlefield, July 3rd , 1863.” He wrote
    a little more than half a page into which he poured with vehemence his whole
    soul of tenderest love never faltering for a word; and a message toward the last,
    with a name that he wrote silently, conscious of the presence of strangers; but the
    message was too personal and sacred to him for me to trespass. For it was holy
    ground.

    The last line he softly repeated aloud: “I dip this letter in my dying blood.”

    With that he turned down the blanket and seizing the letter pressed the back of it
    upon his oozing, bloody wound, and handed it to me; giving his mother’s address
    and begging to be sure she got that letter.

    From Virginia I saw that she got the letter, its content unrevealed except to
    herself.

    I arose from the ground and had him supported, when he turned to me with a
    reminder of my promise and of his hopeless pain. I handed him the cup and he
    feebly waved it saying: “Come around, boys, and let us have a toast. I do not
    invite you to drink with me, but I drink the toast to you, and to the Southern
    Confederacy, and to victory!” And he grabbed it to the last drop, returning the
    cup, saying, “I thank you.”

    Photo of Jeremiah Gage: https://tinyurl.com/mr2ppp5r

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    1. Paulkempf

      As moving an account of men at war as I can ever recall reading. Thank you for sharing it.

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      2. Guycatelli1

        Every fallen soldier has a grieving mother whose son has been taken from her by the Masters of War. Their evil motives for having done so make her grief no less poignant.

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        1. Guycatelli1

          Gage's letter in full (which is now in the Ole Miss Archives), reads as follows:

          "My Dear Mother,
          This is the last you may ever hear from me. I have time to tell you that I died like a man. Bear my loss as best you can. Remember that I am true to my Country and my greatest regret at dying is that she is not free, and that you and my sisters are robbed of my worth, whatever that may be. I hope this will reach you and you must not regret that my body cannot be obtained. It is a mere matter of form anyhow. This is for my sisters too, as I cannot write more. Send my dying release to Miss Mary....you know who.
          J. S. Gage
          Co. A, 11 Miss.
          P.S. This letter is stained with my blood."

          Gage read the words aloud as they were being written for his comrades in arms to hear -- until the final part, when he went silent. As Dr. Holt wrote:

          "... a name that he wrote silently, conscious of the presence of strangers; but the message was too personal and sacred to him for me to trespass."

          Even Dr. Holt wouldn't repeat the words. The Miss Mary mentioned in Gage's letter was Mary Wendel of Oxford, Mississippi (where I live now). After The War had begun, she had accepted his proposal that they would marry if he survived. At the same time, he told her she would be released from their betrothal if he died.

          The house Wendel lived in at the time still stands (it's now a children's clothing store). To its right is the building where William Faulkner's confidant and literary advisor Phil Stone had his law office (it's now a visitors bureau). It was Faulkner who quipped that in the South the past is never dead. It's not even past.

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