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"    Read the Esquire Gettysburg Reenactment series in its entirety here. I have learned in my time that you can get Civil War people arguing the way you can get cat people or baseball people arguing. And it&amp;#039;s not just the folks who sweat themselves into puddles in blue and gray flannel on the old battlefields every year. Ever since Ken Burns blessed the whole enterprise with banjo music, everybody became an expert on who should have done what in which cornfield in Tennessee or Virginia. This Fourth of July is the 150th anniversary of the Battle Of Gettysburg, the pivotal event of that war, the largest battle ever contested on this continent, and the acknowledged set-piece of Burns&amp;#039;s series, in which the director taught us all about the &amp;quot;unlikely textbook maneuvers&amp;quot; ordered by a professor of rhetoric named Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, later played by Jeff Daniels in a theatrical movie about the battle while wearing a scales-of-justice mustache that seemed to be fastened to his face with paperclips. In keeping with the anniversary, we have invited serving Army officer, military historian, keen observer, and longtime friend of the blog Bob Bateman, to contribute regular dispatches about the the Gettysburg campaign, the long series of maneuvers, counter-maneuvers, blind chances and lucky breaks that led up to the epic (and largely accidental) collision of the two armies in a small Pennsylvania college town. Knowing my friend, you will find your assumptions challenged, and some modern parallel drawn, and you will come away from this project knowing a little more about the battle, the people who fought it, and the country that it produced. All that said, take it away, Bob. -- Charles P. Pierce People think things are bad today. I see this sentiment no matter where I look. With the telling exception of the active military, everyone I see or read or meet seems to think that our nation is doomed. While I disagree with the conclusions, I cannot dispute the causes of concern.  What I see is that on the right there is screaming. But that is balanced, because on the left there is howling. What distresses me is that there are, inclined towards the center, great huddled masses. They are depressed by the buffeting winds of bloviating pontification coming from both poles. To me, it seems at times that most everyone in America has lost it. The sentiment is one of doom. Well, with one exception.  My peers, the men and women who have known war recently, the true bone-shattering, heart-rending finality of a war that is tearing a people apart, tend not to think that things are so bad in our country. It is all about perspective I guess.  I allow that nothing in our bifurcated society seems to satisfy the majority of anyone. I can only offer an observation. That is simply, that this situation, this screaming and shouting and flying accusations by this side and that, is actually historically the norm. It is okay folks. Trust me. Hell, our whole system of government is deliberately established to allow for this friction. So are we &amp;quot;doomed?&amp;quot; Yeah, no.  We are a great nation, dammit, and no matter our current issues, let me tell you folks, the problems we face today are nothing compared to what we have already been through. Which, apparently, is why my perpetual running-mate (Bateman/Pierce 2016, &amp;quot;Change You Can Dance To&amp;quot;) and Esquire.com have asked me to inject a little perspective. That is what historians do, after all. We put things in context. And in this, the 150th Anniversary year of the Gettysburg Campaign, I will try to do just that, by telling you some stories. Because, at the end of it, that is what makes good history. History taught dry in the classroom, without stories, is history lost. It is the stories that people remember and pass down. And so, just as it was with the Greeks, the Romans, and every great culture and nation before us, it is in this way those men who served, and preserved, our nation may be remembered.  So let me tell you a story about the greatest cavalry battle that was ever fought in America. We begin tomorrow with the Battle of Brandy Station. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a22998/introducing-esquire-gettysburg-reenactment-061113/>