"Never Fight Uphill, Me Boys. Never Fight Uphill"--Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg

A few thoughts about Donald Trump's word salad about the Battle of Gettysburg.

By now you’ve seen the clip of Donald Trump talking about the Battle of Gettysburg at a recent campaign event in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, which is about 130 miles from the famous battlefield.

Once again, it’s an embarrassing display of ignorance about American history for this former president. Social media had some fun with Trump’s incoherent interpretation and even Jon Stewart got in on the action.

Reading the text is even more embarrassing, if that is even possible.

Just a few thought. It appears that Trump is aware that Gettysburg was a Union victory, but what I find so interesting is how quickly he pivoted to Robert E. Lee. That shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Public memory of the battle has long been framed as a battle that Lee lost rather than one that Meade and United States soldiers won. Lee’s monument looms large over Seminary Ridge as one looks out from Union positions on Cemetery Ridge. It’s hard not to believe that it was Lee’s battle to lose.

Lost in all of this is any understanding that Pennyslvania was invaded by Confederate forces in late June 1863. Hundreds of its Black residents were forced to flee in south central Pennyslvania and those that were caught were sent back south to be returned to slavery.

I don’t suspect that too many people in Trump’s audience would be worried about this aspect of the campaign even if they were aware of it. Than again, I don’t get the sense that anyone in his audience is even listening to Trump while he speaks. Just look at their faces.

But I also think that Trump’s speech is the perfect metaphor for so much of the public’s discussion about the Civil War era. It’s easy to think that this is another example of the extent to which we are ‘still fighting the Civil War,’ but really our public discourse about the war is little more than a surrogate for disagreements over larger cultural and political issues.

Debates over the display of the Confederate flag and monuments rarely have anything to do with history. At least that’s the sense I get from the many conversations and interactions I’ve had with people from across the political spectrum about these issues over the past decade.

Without having to parse his word salad about Gettysburg, I assume Trump believed that he was delivering exactly what his audience wanted to hear about the famous battle—nothing more, nothing less. It was intended not as a history lesson, but as part of a bonding experience around a shared set of political beliefs, fears, and shared grievances.