Codie Eash, SRMEC Director of Education and Interpretation, will present “The Summer of 1869: Gettysburg’s First Blue-Gray Reunion” at Shepherd University’s George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War. The program begins at 7:00pm in the Cumberland Room of the Student Center (210 N. King St., Shepherdstown, WV, 25443). For more information from the Civil War Center, visit https://www.shepherd.edu/civilwar/civil-war-events.

Just six years after the Battle of Gettysburg, and four years after the end of the Civil War, the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association attempted to bring together United States and Confederate veterans once again at the site of the conflict’s bloodiest battle. Though it paled in both size and fame to other more prominent gatherings, for several days in August 1869, several dozen Union officers and a handful of their former Rebel adversaries congregated in the first joint Blue-Gray reunion in Gettysburg history. Join Codie Eash as he explores those who attended, the subjects veterans discussed, the controversies they debated, and the legacy of an underrated, consequential moment regarding collective memory of the Civil War.