The one about George Washington fighting at Gettysburg, yes that George Washington, yes that Gettysburg.
I'm not a school child, MLA format can suck a fat one
google the gettysburg address
Hey everybody, welcome back to another Thursday episode of nightmare now! Where we laugh about lurid lore and learn about lost languishing laments in layman’s terms and lay on the levity talking about loss, life, love and in today’s show, liberty. I thought it might be fitting to do our first foray into ghost and war stories on the week of memorial day. And what better american veteran to cover than the man, the myth, the legend, MC dolla bill ya boi george washington himself. Memorial day was first celebrated as a holiday in 1868, known then as decoration day to honor union soldiers in the civil war. Now as far as George Washington and the civil war goes you’ve got a couple of takes on it. The joke take is that sure, Washington was there in the flesh. The broke take is that Washington wasn’t there at all, after all my man died in december of 1799 and the civil war wasn’t for another sixty years or so. From April of 1861 to May of 65. The Woke take is that Washington’s ideals and legacy inspired people on both sides to fight for the America that they believed he founded. But then we get up to the straight bespoke take that George Washington’s ghost literally showed up at gettysburg in july of 1863 with a f**king lightsaber to turn the tide of battle like he’s obi wan kenobi. This episode of Nightmare Now brought to you by disney plus.
Glad to have you all here and I’m very excited and pleased to announce, thanks to you yes you with the headphones, that we hit 500 overall downloads, that’s a fun milestone and I’m super pumped about it and the future, watching that number grow, but more importantly what that number represents, and that’s you the listener deciding to listen to this greasy little show when there’s millions of others out there competing for your time. It truly means a lot to me so thank you all so much!
Now back to our regular scheduled programming about jedi george washington. Some of you history nerds may have heard this story before, I know I have, but I never actually looked too far into it until this week. And especially all the non americans listening might not have heard this either but lets just jump right into it.
As far as the civil war goes we’re zooming in on major part of it, the battle of gettysburg, but we’re gonna keep zooming in further to one of the more famous parts of that most famous battle. Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th maine infantry holding the strategic little round top. Gettysburg and even this particular skirmish within the three or four day battle of gettysburg are kind of outside the scope of this episode. I defineitely want to do a deep dive on the civil war, and probably gettysburg specifically, but the short version is like 6000 people died and like thirty thousand f**king people were injured, and most of them probably died later because medicine in the civil war was bascially just amputation and hoping for the best. Lotta blood lotta screaming, bullets blew apart in you and you died of infection most of the time. Not really a good time for anyone I reckon. Gettysburg ended up being one of the turning points, if not THE turning point of the American Civil war. The defense of the little round top, was part of the reason that the union won gettysburg because like the obi wan kenobi analogy from before, it was the high ground.
Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine fought off two waves of a larger force of confederate troops to defend the hill but eventually ran very low on ammo. With another wave incoming chamberlain and his famously quivering mustache yelled to fix bayooonnnneeettteeesss! And led his boys to charge down the hill in a last ditch defensive offensive bluff. Nobody is gonna fault the confederates for scattering after this lunatic gambit, because seeing your buddies shot is one thing, but seeing them skewered on a bayonet by a whole company of charging berserk soldiers is another thing entirely. This scattering and screaming and battle of quivering mustaches is a quintessential moment in american history. So how does george washington, I wanted to be dramatic and add his middle name there but apparently middle names weren't’ really a thing until the 1830s. Kind of a neat little tidbit there. Anyway how does george washington fit into all this?
While the story is mostly legend, it’s actually referenced in primary sources about the battle from members of the 20th Maine themselves and even Joshua Chamberlain himself. Big fan of this dude, being a Maine boy myself I gotta rep the home team. Sorry to all my war of northern aggression listeners.
So picture the scene, the 20th Maine infantry division, at it’s maximum comprised of a little over 1600 people, I don’t know how many of them were actually at gettysburg, because a number of them had died or otherwise been taken out of battle by a faulty smallpox v a c c i n e, (not trying to have this episode pulled for disinformation) that’ll have to be another episode. So they’re walking in towards Gettysburg. They don’t have tanks or cars or anything obviously but they come to a fork in the road. They’re map is totally out of date and they have no idea which way to go, one road leads to where they need to go and the other will send them down a wild goose chase away from the battle in the coming days.
Not to mention it is at this point nearing the dead of night and even if their map was correct it would be hard to read and hard to navigate. According to witnesses an imposing man on horseback, dressed in revolutionary costume and a tricorn hat emerged conveniently and unexpectedly from behind a tree and pointed them in the right direction, saying that they were going to be needed in the ensuing fight.
The men didn’t really have anything else to go on and the man had a familiar look to him that they trusted. He seemed like he couldn’t lie. Something something cherry tree.
A few days later the 20th Maine was in their most famous battle and ammunition was running horrifically short. If you saw jeff bridges in gettysburg or listened to the last five minutes of the show you know what happened next, the famous bayonet charge. But what the movie and textbooks generally leave out is that the mysterious figure that guided them down the right, fateful road made yet another appearance at this pivotal moment. So chamberlain weighs their options, if they stand and fight without ammo they’re f**king toast, if they retreat, the confederates take the round tops and gain a huge tactical advantage over the entire hill, I’m sure there’s people that wrote alternate history novels about this exact scenario, if they took the round tops it could have changed the whole outcome of gettysburg and the civil war as a whole, suddenly we’ve got two different united states and confedearte states in modern day. Luckily we don’t have anything like a two party system that doesn’t get anything done today, and we have a working government for the people by the people!
Just as chamberlain was giving the order to Fix bayonets, man that’s fun to do, my mustache isn’t nearly long enough to do it justice right now but I’ll work on that, just as he was yelling to fix bayonets, the figure appeared, this time it was clear. It was george F Washington. Since my man didn’t have a middle name his middle name in the nightmare now continuity timeline is f**king. George f**king Washington himself was there at the battle of little round top right behind Joshua Chamberlain and yelled FIX BAYONETS, CHARGE! And then George Washington unsheathes his curved saber from its scabbard and as he pulls it out the thing lights on fire. (Lightsaber noise) This renews the union soldiers resolve and they all charge with him. He's up on his horse wearing his full revolutionary war gear and supposedly runs down and breaks up the confederate line in front of the rest of the 20th maine. Allegedly the confedereate troops below focused fire on him and his white horse but to no effect, so he was bulletproof as well. His sword is on fire, and at this point it’s obvious to those around that it is truly George Washington, not some revolutionary war cosplayer like they thought when they first saw him at the split in the road.
Georgie boy charges forward with the rest of the 20th Maine into the confederate line who I believe is composed of the 15th Alabama infantry. They aren’t ready for the madcap bayonet charge, ghost of the first president or not and it helps turn the overall tide of the battle. After the initial carnage George Washington isn’t seen again. At least not at Gettysburg, there’s like a million other stories about george washington’s ghost at his home and in other important american places. But this was the coolest and the most fitting for memorial day though.
We have to ask ourselves though, is it real? I mean let’s handwave whether ghosts are real and for the sake of argument say that they are. I would agree with that but I think ghosts are a complicated kind of phenomena that I’ll put some more thoughtful discussion towards in another episode. But even treating the world as if ghosts are 100% real, what is the veracity of this claim? Is this historical fanfiction? The neat part is that if it is just presidential fanfiction, it started right away. First hand reports told this story, it’s in the primary sources! There was an investigation! After the civil war, Lincoln's secretary of war Edwin Stanton opened an investigation into the event. Hopefully like the whole little round top and not just burning up post war tax dollars on a ghost hunt but whatever. In said investigation a few of the soldiers that were there testified that they had indeed seen him that day.
Joshua Chamberlain himself when interviewed said quote “We know not what mystical power may be possessed by those who are now bivouacking with the dead. I only know the effect, but I dare not explain or deny the cause. I do believe that we were enveloped by the power of the other world that day and who shall say that Washington was not among the number of those who aided the country that he founded?” unquote it’s pretty f**king cool right?
Kinda weird that George Washington was from Virginia and repped the union but it also made sense that he would want to be on the side to attempt to keep his country together. I don’t know. In the end it’s a really cool ghost story that has a lot of primary sources backing it up, it’s thematic, it’s patriotic and I love it. Special thanks this episode to everyone that sacrificed for this country. As Lincoln said “We have come to dedicate a portion of that podcast, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”
Thanks to all of em and thanks to everyone listening, as always, I’d say sweet dreams, but we all know it’s only gonna be nightmares now