“There Will Never Be Any Such Gathering of Men Again” The 1913 Soldiers Reunion at Gettysburg

Saturday, June 29  |  1:00pm – 2:00pm  |  Speaker: John L. Hopkins

It was front-page news throughout the country—the largest gathering of Union and Confederate veterans ever held. “[It] will be talked about and written about as long as the American people boast of the dauntless courage of Gettysburg,” declared a woman who accompanied her father to the reunion. But as the years passed, it was all but forgotten. The 1913 Gettysburg reunion is a story of 53,000 old comrades and former foes reunited, and of the tension, even half a century later, between competing narratives of reconciliation and remembrance.

John L. Hopkins is the author of a new book published by Savas Beattie entitled The World Will Never See the Like. He is a communication and public relations professional with more than three decades of experience in higher education, nonprofit, and agency settings. He was born and raised in New York City, earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Williams College, and was transplanted to the Midwest in the mid-90s. He and his wife have three grown daughters. This is his first book.