Virtual Trivia

Question 3: Seeing the Elephant

April 3, 2021

1887 print based on the painting called Hancock at Gettysbug by Thure de Thulstrup. Shows Major General Winfield S. Hancock riding along the Union lines prior to Pickett's Charge. From the Library of Congress.

The soldiers of the Connecticut 17th Regiment were seven months into their service and had yet to "see the elephant." What did this phrase, used by Civil War soldiers, refer to?

  1. Back-up troops marching in to relieve them
  2. The bounty checks they were promised
  3. Seeing the Colonel of the CT 17th, William Noble
  4. Actual combat experience
    5.
 

The phrase “to see the elephant” was common at least as early as the gold rushers of 1849, who appropriated the term from veterans of the Mexican War and used it as a metaphor to describe the remarkable and exotic sights they encountered as they crossed the Continent.

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