The two reporters, one traveling with the Union army and the other with the Confederates, knew that something important was afoot. But on the eve of the battle they could not have known that in the next days the history of the United States would be decided. These two magnificent firsthand accounts will give readers a sense of why it is important to review as much eyewitness testimony as possible in attempting to reconstruct any episode from the past.


"Whitelaw Reid and A.J.L. Fremantle bequeathed a substantial legacy to anyone interested in the Gettysburg campaign. Their accounts, which nicely complement each other, summon the past in a way possible only with firsthand observations. Modern readers who traverse these pages have the opportunity to form, from the same texts read by thousands of Americans during the Civil War, their impressions of Gettysburg and the events surrounding it." - from the Introduction


Whitelaw Reid (1837-1912), a reporter in Ohio in his younger days, enjoyed a subsequent career as a journalist and became active in politics, eventually running unsuccessfully as vice-president on the Republican ticket with Benjamin Harrison in 1892. He was minister to France (1889) and was ambassador to Great Britain under Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.


A.J.l. Fremantle (1835-1901) will be familiar to readers as a character in Michael Shaara's Pulitzer-prize winning novel of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels. He was a lieutenant colonel in the British Army and a captian in the Coldstream Guards. During a posting on Gibralter he became interested in the American South, travelling there and keeping a journal. After returning to Britain he advanced in the Army and became governor of Malta.