Lincoln Square - 'One Big, Beautiful Bill': The Pickett's Charge of Trumpism

Stuart Stevens

When I grew up in Mississippi, the Fourth of July was a muted holiday. July 4, 1863, was the day Vicksburg fell to Grant. On July 3, 1863, the 11th Mississippi Regiment, with the University Grays of the University of Mississippi, led Pickett's Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. They reached the stone wall of the Union defenses, the furthest advance of Lee's army. The Mississippi casualty rate was 90 percent. The Flag captured that day belonged to the 11th Mississippi Regiment, now on display at Richmond's Museum of the Confederacy.

In the living room of my house in Vermont is a large wooden chest that a relative used to pack belongings when moving into the Vicksburg caves that served as bomb shelters during the siege. On the inside of the top, my many-times-great-aunt marked each day of the siege with a precise line carved into the hardwood. There are 47 lines.


I've been thinking a lot about those days in 1863, a hinge in history that changed the world, as did another summer day in 1944 on the beaches of Normandy. If my ancestors had prevailed, what kind of country would we have today?

Strangely and sadly, the Trump-led Republican Party is trying desperately to answer that question. It was Sergeant Ferdinando Maggi of the 39th New York Infantry who captured the 11th Mississippi Regiment's flag at that stone wall in Gettysburg, where the Confederacy began to die. Today, another New Yorker is fighting to reverse the Union victory by reviving the glory and values of the Confederacy.

https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/one-big-beautiful-bill-the-picketts