Newt Gingrich: From Gainesville to Gettysburg

Our friend Newt Gingrich has a new book out, a novel, no less. It is called Gettysburg, and it is a historic novel about that great "what if' battle of the War Between the States. With all the controversy around Newt Gingrich, and his rise to power as the first Republican Speaker of the House in a zillion years, it is easy to forget that Newt is a PhD Historian. And not many people know he is an avid student of the American Civil War, and as a hobby a student of the strategy of many of the world's most famous battles.

Anyway, Newt has returned to his original area of knowledge, history, and with a top-notch novelist has written this book. It is a captivating story, especially so if you enjoy history, and more especially if you enjoy the history of the American Civil War.
And because it centers on the battle of Gettysburg, it should be obvious that one of the central characters in it is General James Longstreet, who is buried in Gainesville.

All this brought to mind a period back in the 1960's when a much-younger Newt Gingrich was in Gainesville working on the political campaign of Jack Prince, one of the brash young Republicans who had decided to run for Congress and take the South conservative. Newt was a graduate student at Emory at the time, and had been recommended as a bright young political strategist. A group of us were sitting in the Jack Prince headquarters late one night, in the building at the corner of Maple and Washington streets, and for some reason the subject of James Longstreet came up. Newt rattled off a quick summary of Longstreet's involvement in two battles: Gettysburg and Chickamauga. It was Newt who said: "He's buried here in Gainesville, you know", and I got the feeling Newt had gone out to Alta Vista and visited the site where Longstreet is buried.

So, Newt has written a novel centered on the Battle of Gettysburg, and I would suggest you need to be careful about when you start reading it. It is one of those books that if you start it, you aren't going to want to put it down till you finish it.

This is Gordon Sawyer, from a window on historic Green Street.

http://accesswdun.com/article/2003/6/176910