‘A horrendous battle’: Mark Levin remembers Gettysburg and his father’s timeless book

Mark Levin inherited his love for America and her great founders from his father, Jack E. Levin — a devoted family man, businessman, author, illustrator, and self-taught constitutional historian. Over the course of his life, Jack authored and illustrated several patriotic, historically themed books that became best-sellers on the New York Times list.

His most famous book — “Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address Illustrated” (2010) — featured beautifully hand-painted watercolor-style illustrations of Civil War soldiers, battlefields, period flags, mourning families, and solemn portraits of Lincoln alongside the Great Emancipator's famous speech.

“He thought that Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was so profound,” says Levin of his father. “And it was.”

Reading Lincoln’s iconic address that consecrated the cemetery for the Union soldiers who died in the Battle of Gettysburg, Levin honors both America’s 16th president and his beloved father.

“That was a horrendous battle in Gettysburg, absolutely horrendous — the number of casualties, the number of dead, how quickly it happened,” Levin reflects.

He retells the story of how the two armies literally bumped into each other by accident outside Gettysburg — General Robert E. Lee’s forces pushing north toward Philadelphia, hoping a decisive strike on Union soil would force the North to sue for peace and let the South go, only to suffer a crushing defeat in the massive, unintended three-day battle that turned the tide of the war.

Lincoln, says Levin, “was furious” that Union commander Major General George G. Meade “did not follow Lee's army and destroy it.” He wanted the war to end right then and there.

The Civil War, he reminds us, wasn’t just about the abolition of slavery; it was also about the nation’s survival.

Like his father, who was deeply concerned with “the lack of patriotism and support for the country,” Levin worries about the lack of and distortion of American history education in this country.

“That's why if people don't know history, they just keep talking about, ‘Oh, it was founded by white [supremacists] and nationalists,”’ he sighs. “No — we were founded by great men.”

To hear more of his commentary, watch the video above.

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