With a year of his political career remaining, Gov. Walz is, unfortunately, determined to do as much damage as he can on his way out.
Today, giving a press conference on the fatal shooting by an ICE agent in Minneapolis yesterday, the governor invoked the experiences of the 1st Minnesota Infantry Regiment at the battle of Gettysburg:
I told the heroic story of the 1st Minnesota in the Spring 2023 issue of our magazine, Thinking Minnesota. On the second day of the battle — July 2nd, 1863, not July 3rd as the governor mistakenly thinks — they played the decisive role in stopping the Confederate attack on the center of the Union line. “The superb gallantry of those men saved our line from being broken,” their Corps commander, Winfield Scott Hancock wrote. “No soldiers, on any field, in this or any other country, ever displayed grander heroism.” “At twilight,” I wrote in 2023, “just 47 men answered the regimental roll call. Of the 262 Minnesotans who charged the Confederates, 215 — 82 percent — were killed or wounded, the most severe losses suffered by a Union regiment in a single engagement during the Civil War.”
But besides getting one of the most hallowed dates in Minnesota’s state history wrong — a poor performance from a former history teacher — the governor’s analogy fails in broader, crucial ways.
First, the 1st Minnesota were fighting on behalf of the federal government. Second, they were fighting against the forces of secessionist states which sought remove themselves from rule by the federal government. If Gov. Walz is serious about his lunatic threats to turn the National Guard loose on federal agents, then, by analogy, he is placing them in the role of the 28th Virginia, the Confederate regiment whose battle flag the 1st Minnesota captured while foiling Pickett’s Charge on July 3rd.
That flag is in the possession of the Minnesota Historical Society. The governor should go and see it sometime.
