“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?” – Robert Browning

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

July 2

‘The Battle of Gettysburg pitted 76,000 Rebels under the leadership of the dazzling Robert E. Lee against 92,000 Yankees under the leadership of the newly–appointed George Gordon Meade. The Rebels had taken the town, but the Yankees had seized the high ground to the south of the town. The battle itself, lasting from 1 – 3 July, 1863, was a prolonged series of Rebel attempts to break the Yankee line and seize that high ground. Lee had defeated that same Northern army in December 1862 at Fredericksburg and again – the most spectacular success of Lee’s entire career – in May 1863 at Chancellorsville. His fabled Army of Northern Virginia had merely to walk on water one more time. But it was not to be - each successive Rebel attempt to break the Union line ended in failure.’

- Arnold Kunst

‘Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.’

- Leonardo da Vinci