Robert
P. Scott, Confederate veteran speaks at
75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg
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recording sample
Performed by Robert
P. Scott
June 30, 1938
In late June 1938, the last living veterans of the Battle
of Gettysburg came to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to commemorate
the seventy-fifth anniversary of the historic battle.
The battle, fought over the first three days of July
1863, was the largest military engagement ever waged
in the Western Hemisphere and the turning point in the
American Civil War. With victory at Gettysburg, Union
forces repulsed the Confederacy's last invasion of the
North at the total cost of 51,000 Americans killed,
wounded, or missing in action. Among those who survived
Gettysburg was seventeen-year-old Confederate soldier
Robert P. Scott, who despite his youth had already been
fighting two years for the Southern cause. Three-quarters
of a century later, Scott, then ninety-two years old,
returned to Gettysburg to attend the ceremonies surrounding
the battle's seventy-fifth anniversary. On June 30,
1938, he recounted his Civil War experiences, including
details of a battle fought near his home in Missouri
in which he was shot off his horse.