Jack

My little cat Annie will die before she eats that new 🤤 food. It’s like a game of chicken and she always wins

🇺🇸 1913 Gettysburg 50th Grand Reunion. Look, it’s Micajah Weiss of Company G, 141st Pennsylvania Infantry! He was honored as the oldest veteran at the reunion. Contemporary reports put his age around 112. Weiss enlisted in August 1862 and served until the end of the war. When asked how many battles he fought in, he simply replied, “Most all of ’em.” He saw action at Gettysburg at the Peach Orchard, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, the Siege of Petersburg, and was present at Appomattox. He reportedly also served in the Mexican War years earlier. He traveled to Gettysburg by automobile with family. He was overcome by the heat during the event but recovered. He lived an exceptionally long and active life as a farmer and lumberman/raftsman on the Delaware River. He never wore glasses, never used tobacco, but enjoyed “a glass of whiskey whenever he felt like it.” He died on September 22, 1914, as the oldest Civil War pensioner in the country at the time.

"To know & love you makes life & death beautiful." Joshua Chamberlain was told he would not survive his wound after his surgery that next morning. He then wrote a final, heartbreaking farewell to his wife, Fanny. It is a beautiful Sunday read. “My darling wife, I am lying mortally wounded the doctors think, but my mind & heart are at peace. Jesus Christ is my all-sufficient savior. I go to him. God bless & keep & comfort you, precious one. You have been a precious wife to me. To know & love you makes life & death beautiful. Cherish the darlings & give my love to all the dear ones. Do not grieve too much for me. We shall all soon meet. Live for the children. Give my dearest love to Father, Mother & Sallie & John. Oh how happy to feel yourself forgiven. God bless you evermore precious precious one. Ever yours, Lawrence.” He signed it using his middle name, Lawrence, which she uniquely called him. He even wrote this letter on a Sunday morning, June 19th, 1864. Upon receiving his letter, Fanny immediately packed her bags and rushed to his bedside. She carefully nursed him back from the brink of death.

🇺🇸 Joshua Chamberlain’s last visit to Gettysburg took place on May 16–17, 1913. It was bittersweet. He traveled to the battlefield to help plan the upcoming 50th Anniversary Great Reunion, but his health was rapidly deteriorating, and he was ultimately unable to attend the event that July. The state of Pennsylvania mailed his commemorative veteran's medal directly to his home. He thanked them with this letter. He passed away less than a year later, in February 1914, at 85 years old. Because his death was caused by an infection from the severe pelvic wound he received at the Battle of Petersburg, historians often call him the last casualty of the Civil War.

🇺🇸 During the surrender at Appomattox, it was Brig. Gen. Joshua Chamberlain who ordered his 5,000 men to ‘carry arms’ as the defeated Confederate Army of Northern Virginia approached. It was a profound sign of honor and mutual respect. Surprised by the gesture, Confederate Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon instantly ordered his troops to return the salute. Gordon, in his memoirs, later praised Chamberlain as one of the knightliest soldiers in the Union Army.

🇺🇸 What makes this story better? Chamberlain shouldn't have even been alive. Less than a year before receiving the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, then Col. Joshua Chamberlain took a Minié ball straight through his pelvis at Petersburg. The bullet shattered bones and severed his bladder and urethra. The injury carried a 90%+ mortality rate. But Chamberlain refused to die. In a field hospital tent, without proper anesthesia, Dr. Abner Shaw spent hours probing the wound. To map the severed urinary pathway, he used a highly experimental procedure. He inserted two long, metal surgical probes into opposite ends of the tract until they clicked together, a method that laid the groundwork for modern urological surgery. The pain was so torturous for Chamberlain that Shaw begged to stop just to let him die in peace. Chamberlain flatly refused and ordered him to keep cutting. Miraculously, he survived. Just 5 months later, he was back in the saddle leading troops in the final campaign of the war. But his wound never truly healed. It left him with an external fistula that leaked urine constantly. He required primitive catheterization and endured severe chronic pain and recurring infections for the rest of his life. He underwent 4 more unsuccessful surgeries in his lifetime (in 1865, 1866, 1883, and 1893) to try and close the wound. All of them failed. Yet, despite all this, he not only came back to the war, he went on to serve 4 terms as Governor of Maine and 12 years as the President of Bowdoin College. Legend.

🇺🇸 How bad was Joshua Chamberlain’s prognosis at Petersburg? In his ONLY on-the-spot battlefield promotion of the entire Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant promoted him to Brigadier General. It was done to honor Chamberlain the day after his wound. The exact same day he wrote his ‘final’ farewell letter to his wife. And it was V Corps Commander Major General Gouverneur K. Warren who rushed the urgent request up the chain of command directly to Grant when he heard of Joshua’s situation. They wanted him to die a General. Grant even wrote about the moment in his memoirs: "I promoted him on the spot, and forwarded a copy of my order to the War Department, asking that my act might be confirmed without any delay. This was done, and at last a gallant and meritorious officer received partial justice at the hands of his government."

Ellen Page (now calling herself Elliot) perfectly illustrates where gender ideology leads: a talented young actress fed into Hollywood’s machine, now paraded as "proof" that biology is optional. This isn’t liberation. It’s confusion, mutilation, and profit for an industry preying on the vulnerable, especially kids. We’re not hateful for saying a woman is a woman. We’re sane. Biology isn’t bigotry, and this delusion destroys lives. Protect our daughters and reject it.