Friend to Friend Masonic Memorial, Gettysburg

The Friend to Friend Masonic Memorial is a Gettysburg Battlefield monument depicting the "Armistead-Bingham incident" after Pickett's Charge in which Union Army Captain Henry H. Bingham assisted mortally wounded Confederate Brigadier General Lewis Addison Armistead, both Freemasons. Although Armistead's sword was captured and later returned in 1906, Armistead entrusted other personal effects with Bingham after Armistead was shot twice. En route to a Union field hospital on the Spangler Farm, where he would die two days later, Armistead briefly met Capt. Bingham, and after learning that he was on the staff of General Winfield Scott Hancock, a Freemason as well, he asked Bingham to pass along the items with a message to Hancock. Having been wounded at about the same time, General Hancock, who was a "valued friend" of Armistead's from before the war, when they served together in the Federal army, would not see Armistead before he died. ()