This is in reference to a very old thread, found at this location
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_074.html and relating to the supposed information fortold by the position of the horses hooves on equestrian monuments at Gettysburg.
I would like to enlighten you and hopefully put this to bed for all time. In a newspaper article in the Gettysburg Times dated March 5, 1935, the late National Military Park historian William Storrick said this:
***Your report of the death of Henry K. Bush Brown, the noted sculptor who is represented on the battlefield of Gettysburg by three equestrian statues and the Lincoln speech memorial calls to mind his visit here in 1915 and the pleasure of meeting him on the field when all of his work was visited.
When stopping at the Meade statue, I asked Mr. Brown whether the base of the horses feet had any significant relation to the fate of the rider, as the story has been told that in he case of the Reynolds’ horse, two feet were off the base because Reynolds was killed, the Meade horse and Sedgwick horse have all four feet on the base because they were unhurt.
Mr. Brown took a hearty laugh on hearing it and said, “I never thought of that; my idea was to show in the one case a horse in action and in the other the horses at rest, with no significance whatever as to the fate of the riders.”*
**
I am a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg National Military Park, and I’m sad to say that this myth will NEVER DIE…it had been incorrectly told for decades, even by noted historians and authors. It rests right up there with the myth about shoes being the reason the Confederate Army did battle at Gettysburg (yes, shoes were on the list of items being sought, as were money, foodstuffs, clothing, oats, whiskey, coffee, etc, etc…and not necessarily in that order)! The real reason for the battle is because that’s where the Confederate army ran into the Union army. Go figure.