In theory, they were all fighting for ideas — the Southerners for slavery and independence, and the Northerners for the abolition of slavery, and the preservation of the Union. But seen from the perspective of Bernard Matthews, one ordinary soldier among the 170,000 who fought at Gettysburg, ideas and ideologies were soon forgotten. What took over during the battle was fear:
The smoke lay over everything so that you were lucky to see the man next to you. Your ears couldn't distinguish shot from shot. It was all one roar, so that the hillside shook...you did just what the man ahead of you did, or the man next to you.
After all, the enemy, the Confederate army, was just a few steps away, as was perhaps death itself. As the Confederates approached, Union artillery fired upon them, tearing bloody holes in the straight lines. This was war on a major scale in a way that the new nation, barely 100 years old, had never seen. Perhaps somewhere in the back of the mind, the issue of slavery burned dimly. But in the heat of the battle, the men who fought had no time for thoughts... [200 words]