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Gettysburg reporter captured nation's loss
The gist
The New York Times marked its 175th anniversary with a story on war correspondent Samuel Wilkeson Jr., who found his son's body at Gettysburg.
The 1863 dispatch, published two days later.
How it unfolded
- Jul 4, 1863After the battle at Gettysburg, rain fell on the blood-dappled fields and tens of thousands of dead, dying and maimed; New York Times war correspondent Samuel Wilkeson Jr. searched the Pennsylvania landscape for his teenage son and found the body of his son Bayard, a lieutenant of Battery G, Fourth U.S. Artillery.
- Jul 6, 1863Two days after finding his son, The Times published Wilkeson's eyewitness account of Gettysburg.
- Nov 1863President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address four months after Wilkeson's dispatch, which may have informed it.