"On this date in 1913, Civil War veterans retraced their own steps in a reenactment of Pickett's Charge. Pickett's Charge was the last Southern charge of the bloody three-day Battle of Gettysburg; Major General George Pickett led 12,500 Confederate troops up Cemetery Hill, where Union troops were waiting for them behind a stone wall. Only half of Pickett's men survived...
Fifty thousand Civil War veterans traveled to Pennsylvania for the reunion in 1913; the youngest was 61, and the oldest alleged to be 112. It ended with Confederate survivors walking the path of Pickett's charge up to the stone wall, where the Union veterans were waiting to shake their hands and embrace them.
In 1938, almost 2,000 veterans — with an average age of 94 — attended a reunion to mark the battle's 75th anniversary. It was at this reunion that President Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the Eternal Light Peace Memorial, which commemorates the 1913 reunion and reconciliation. On the front of the memorial, these words are carved: "Peace Eternal in a Nation United." The flame can be seen from a distance of 20 miles."
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