Fifty-three thousand veterans attended the Great Reunion at Gettysburg in 1913, including 8,750 Confederates. 53,000!, which is still not as many times as I've heard the "da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da" from The Nutcracker but  I had no idea there were that many there. The reunion was capped by a reenactment of Pickett's charge immediately below which was followed by fraternal hugs and handshakes between the former combatants. The Civil War is the most written about subject in American history and only Jesus and Shakespeare have been more written about than Abraham Lincoln. I have been to Gettysburg twice, once as a child and once, a couple of years ago with mi amor CCC. Carmen and I walked across that wheat field. I remember standing on Pickett's end of it beforehand and being...overwhelmed. I called one of my brothers and choked up. To see what the Confederates had to do, the hopelessness of it. "Run ol' hare; if I was an ol' hare I'd run too," said one of them according to Shelby Foote. It was that way with my ancestor at Fredericksburg too. What were the generals thinking? The Civil War is difficult to comprehend, so much killing, so much destruction, but the most surreal is the 1913 reunion and how the nation bound up its wounds and became a singular noun, the United States.