Latest / In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson / Ghosts of Gettysburg - TPR's In Focus - July 1, 2026

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Ghosts of Gettysburg - TPR's In Focus - July 1, 2026 · In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson

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  Support comes from the Rosa Parks Museum on Troy University's Montgomery campus,
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  located on the spot of Mrs. Parks' historic 1955 arrest, and featuring
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  exhibits that chronicle the history of the Montgomery bus boycott.
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  More information at Troy.edu slash Rosa Parks.
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  From Troy Public Radio, this is In Focus, and I'm Carolyn Hutcheson.
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  Ted Turner made a famous movie about the Battle of Gettysburg.
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  Colonel Bryan Morgan, retired Judge Advocate General of the Alabama National
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  Guard, shares another mystery today about the Ghosts of Gettysburg.
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  Colonel Morgan, welcome back. We have so enjoyed your historical mysteries that
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  we've named you the Radio Detective. Carolyn, always love talking with you.
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  I'll take that, thank you. What have you been looking into lately? Today I'm going
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  to talk about Ted Turner, and particularly Ted Turner's movie,
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  that he, with his wealth, knowledge, power, made in 1993. He based the movie on a
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  book I had to read as part of the military, The Killer Angels, and a lot of
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  your listeners probably read that book. I attended the U.S. Army War College and
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  graduated in 05, and as part of our instruction, we toured Gettysburg. They
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  used it to teach lessons in leadership, professionalism, tactics, ethics, and as we
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  went around the battlefield, you can see all the various monuments, and our
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  faculty advised us, well, you know there's the movie, and we've heard from the urban
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  rumor is that there's some ghosts that appear in that movie, so that's what I
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  started looking into. Well, here we are in that era of the Battle of Gettysburg
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  between the North and the South, July 1st through July 3rd, 1863, so what you
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  discovered, was it related to that time period or the movie's time period? It is
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  all related to the movie. My class rented the movie. We watched it. It's four hours
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  long, and it details each of the days. It was a three-day battle, and he had a
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  stellar cast, and a great director in Ronald Maxwell. He required all of the
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  actors and extras to camp on the battlefield or stay in a motorhome. They
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  were looking for realism, and Turner himself was in the movie. Who did Ted
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  Turner portray? He plays a Colonel Waller Patton. Martin Sheen played Robert E. Lee.
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  Tom Berger played Longstreet, Lee's right-hand man. Jeff Daniels played one
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  of the stars. That's Joshua Chamberlain, a colonel from the Maine military, and
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  then Sam Elliott, with the deep voice, played General John Buford. If you
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  recall, this was Lee's approach into Washington during the war, and he was
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  stopped the first day by Buford. Then the battlefield becomes somewhat a fishhook
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  around the little town of Gettysburg, with the hook around the city and it
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  running due south. On the second day, the Battle of Little Round Top became the
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  action, and there Jeff Daniels portrays Joshua Chamberlain of the 20th Maine as
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  he defends this small mountain that overlooked the whole battlefield, and the
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  Devil's Den. And supposedly, for years, people's cameras would not work around
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  the Devil's Den. You know, they would take pictures, and then they wouldn't work
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  there, but start working later. Daniels and his men, or Chamberlain and his men,
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  fired all of their ammunition until they were out. And then they had, on that
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  second day, a bayonet charge down the hill against the 4th Alabama and the
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  Texans, and that saved the day. You mentioned Little Round Top. Can you tell
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  us more about it? Well, Little Round Top is a smaller mountain surrounded at the
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  base by a lot of rocks, and it was a pivotal land feature for both sides to
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  try to maintain, to control this battle. It was the southern end of the Union
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  line. It was defended by Jeff Daniels portraying Joshua Chamberlain. During the
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  reenactment of the battle, where the Union troops fired all of their
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  ammunition, they conducted a bayonet charge down the hill against the Alabama
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  and the Texas troops. And then in the filming of that scene, one older
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  reenactor offered to give live ammunition to the extras. They knew they
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  shouldn't do that, and they didn't, but they never could identify who he was.
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  Later, some Confederate reenactors saw a campfire up at Little Round Top. They
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  made the hike through the Devil's Den up to the top of Little Round Top, and there
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  was no campfire, but they did have the smell of fire, coffee, and perhaps some
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  bacon being cooked. That's pretty spooky. So what happened on the third day? Now,
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  the third day involved Pickett's Charge, where all 5,000 reenactors were
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  utilized. The southerners were in the tree line to the west of Cemetery Ridge,
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  and the Union reenactors were aligned along Cemetery Ridge. Pickett and the
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  other southerners made the trek uphill to the angle where the major combat took
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  place, and it was a horrendous fight. The southerners almost broke through, but the
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  Union drove them back, so they never pierced the Union line. Pickett's Charge,
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  which so many people died in. Everyone I spoke to after our class watched this
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  movie said, yeah, there were supposed to be 5,000 extras, but there's another
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  several hundred that appear in the movie. They couldn't account for all the extra
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  people. In 1861, a photographer named William Mumler invented spirit
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  photographs. You could actually transpose that into the photo, and what you're
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  talking about now is film. How do you account for all of this? Well, yes, and it
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  was filmed in 1993 by Ted Turner. I have not gotten to the bottom of it. I know
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  that during my time at the War College, that was an urban rumor that more
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  faces appeared in that final scene that were there, along with these other
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  sightings by the reenactors themselves. Did those in the movie ever make a
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  statement to account for this? The reenactors that made it to the top of
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  Little Round Top said that was not part of the script. No one had permission to
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  be up there. There was no evidence of a campfire. They just thought maybe the
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  spirits had had a meeting there. I've seen all of the scenes. Buford stopping
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  Lee as he enters Gettysburg, Chamberlain's defense of Little Round
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  Top, the frontal assault by the Confederate soldiers against the Union
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  soldiers, and it is an epic picture, if you will, and even Ted Turner himself is
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  in that last battle scene, which ends the battle. Lee then returned south, and the
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  Union was preserved. Were you able to locate any comments from any of the
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  cameramen about these anomalies? And I've looked for that. I've not been able to
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  find that. All I've found are these comments from the reenactors that
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  participated themselves. I saw an interview with Maxwell, and he did not
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  talk about that. He more or less talked about Turner's insistence that it be
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  made accurately and that it should be realistic. Along with his money, he did
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  everything he could to see that the movie got made. It was originally going to be a
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  miniseries, but Turner decided to go with a four-hour movie. And the name of it
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  again? Gettysburg. It's based on the book The Killer Angels. So what's your
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  explanation as a result of your investigation? Little Round Top had a
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  campfire that was not authorized, nor was it in any of the movies. Neither was the
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  live ammunition that was offered to the Union troops in the defense of Little
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  Round Top, and no one can quite account for all the extra faces in the final
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  scene with Pickett's Charge. I would caution your listeners, the next time
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  they take a tour of Gettysburg, count the number of people in your tour group and
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  count them at the end and make sure you don't have some additional guests. Well,
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  Colonel Morgan, thank you for that intriguing look at what was going on in
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  that movie about Gettysburg. It is a mystery to me, Carolyn, and as we
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  celebrate our 250th anniversary, I hope we can remember that President Lincoln
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  honored and dedicated that ground in our nation's history, and it would be an
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  indicator that our nation always heals. That was Colonel Bryan Morgan, retired
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  Judge Advocate General of the Alabama National Guard. He'll join us again in
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  the future as he investigates another mystery. Thanks for joining us today for
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  In Focus, which is a podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Carolyn Hutcheson
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  and this is listener-supported Troy Public Radio.