The Battle of Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), fought in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was the battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War and is often described as the war's turning point.
Union Major General George Gordon Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending Lee's invasion of the North.
Sterile words... for such a place. The American Civil War was replete with irony, tragedy, drama and odd wrinkles of fate. Gettysburg has its share of all these things. The stories from the war and the battle are numerous and complicated; and far beyond my abilities to tell properly.
Hungry, dusty, and tired, Confederate soldiers matched east along the Chambersburg Pike intending to raid Gettysburg of ...shoes. Many of these soldiers had marched largely barefoot for hundreds of miles.
The view west towards Cashtown along the Chambersburg Pike. The Rebels marched across these fields when the fighting broke out on July 1st.
Gettysburg was (and is) at the intersection of ten major roads radiating outward from the center of town like spokes of a wagon wheel. To the north, rebels that had been to Heidlersburg, Carlisle, and across the Susquehanna river from Harrisburg hurried south to join the growing battle at Gettysburg.
The Eternal Flame monument is on Oak Hill, on the north-western end of the battlefield - the scene of savage fighting on the first day of the battle.
Overcome by superior numbers (and perhaps bad generalship), the Union forces fled in disorder at the end of the first day eastward, back into and through the town to reform on Cemetery Ridge. The white church cupola you can see in the right-center of the picture was used by both sides to view the battlefield. It is located on Seminary Ridge.
From Seminary Ridge, on July 2nd, Robert E. Lee decided to attack the southern end of the Union line. The two hills you see to the right of James are Little and Big Round Top (from left to right) and are about 3 miles from this vista. These hills and the fields directly in front of them saw the brunt of the second day of vicious fighting.
On the third day of fighting, General Lee ordered Pickett's Virginia division of Longstreet's First Corps, plus six brigades from Hill's Corps, in an attack on the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge.
Around 3 p.m., the cannon fire subsided, and 12,500 Southern soldiers stepped from the ridgeline and advanced the three-quarters of a mile (1,200 m) to Cemetery Ridge in what is known to history as "Pickett's Charge".
Their target was the clump of trees to the right of the "portly" guy's head in the picture.
General Lee was on Traveler, his trusty horse, about 300 yards to the right of where I took this picture. There is a very nice statue of him there now.
Most of the soldiers involved in Pickett's Charge never made it to that clump of trees in the face of overwhelming cannon fire.
The Pennsylvania MonumentMajor General Meade (his father was a Philadelphian), General Reynolds (Lancaster, PA), and General Winfield Scott Hancock (Norristown, PA) are all from Pennsylvania and all of them had a prominent role at Gettysburg.
The two armies had suffered between 46,000 and 51,000 casualties. Union casualties were 23,055 (3,155 killed, 14,531 wounded, 5,369 captured or missing). Confederate casualties are more difficult to estimate but were about 23,231 (4,708 killed, 12,693 wounded, 5,830 captured or missing).
Many of the wounded would die within months of the battle from infection.
Karla, James and I drove somberly away from Gettysburg up the Susquehanna River into the north-central region of Pennsylvania. I was profoundly moved by all the history I absorbed in two short days. Alice Kay and her husband Terri were a very welcome sight at the end of a long day of driving and sightseeing. Dinner tasted really good that night.
