Battle of Gettysburg

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Battle of Gettysburg lasted just three days in July 1863, yet it produced more casualties than any battle in American military history up to that point. Between 46,000 and 51,000 soldiers from both sides were killed, wounded, captured, or went missing across those three days in and around a small Pennsylvania town with a population of just 2,400. At the center of this collision stood two armies: Union Major General George Meade's Army of the Potomac and Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, each shaped by months of victories, defeats, and reorganizations that had brought them to this crossroads. How did a secondary skirmish over shoes escalate into the largest battle of the war? Why did Lee, fresh from a stunning victory at Chancellorsville, press an attack that his own corps commander warned could not succeed? And what did it mean, for the nation and for the war, that the Union held?

• 2. Lee's Gamble North

  ›

  After the Confederate victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863, Robert E. Lee faced a strategic problem. The summer campaign season was approaching, and the war-ravaged farms of Northern Virginia could not support another round of campaigning. A second invasion of the North offered a solution. Lee's 72,000-man army could live off the rich Northern farms, relieve pressure on the besieged Confederate garrison at Vicksburg, and potentially threaten Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. If that pressure convinced Northern politicians to negotiate for peace, so much the better.

  On the 3rd of June, Lee's army began moving northward from Fredericksburg. He had reorganized his two large infantry corps into three following the death of Stonewall Jackson, placing Lieutenant General James Longstreet in command of the First Corps, Lieutenant General Richard S. Ewell in command of the Second, and Lieutenant General A.P. Hill in command of the Third. Both Ewell and Hill were new to corps command, having previously reported to Jackson as division commanders.

  A controversial decision shaped the entire campaign before the first shot was fired in Pennsylvania. Lee allowed Major General J.E.B. Stuart to take three of his best cavalry brigades on a wide ride around the Union army's east flank. Stuart's absence proved damaging. Lee entered Pennsylvania with limited intelligence about Union movements, and Stuart's cavalry was not present during the crucial approach to Gettysburg or the first two days of battle. By June 29, Lee's army was strung out in a long arc from Chambersburg, 28 miles northwest of Gettysburg, to Carlisle, 30 miles to the north, reaching toward Harrisburg and Wrightsville on the Susquehanna River.

  Meanwhile, the Union Army was also changing commanders at the worst possible moment. In a dispute over the Harpers Ferry garrison, Major General Joseph Hooker offered his resignation, and President Lincoln and General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck accepted it immediately. They replaced Hooker on the morning of June 28 with Major General George Gordon Meade, then commanding the V Corps. Meade would have just three days to familiarize himself with an army of more than 100,000 men before battle began.

• 3. A Battle Nobody Ordered

  ›

  The engagement at Gettysburg began not as a calculated strike but as a reconnaissance that escaped control. On June 30, Brigadier General J. Johnston Pettigrew led a brigade of North Carolinians toward town in search of supplies, particularly shoes. When his troops spotted Union cavalry under John Buford arriving south of town, Pettigrew turned back without engaging. His division commander, Major General Henry Heth, and A.P. Hill disbelieved that a substantial Union force was nearby, suspecting only Pennsylvania militia. Despite Lee's standing order to avoid a general engagement until the army was concentrated, Hill ordered a significant reconnaissance in force for the following morning.

  Around five in the morning on Wednesday, the 1st of July, two brigades from Heth's division advanced on Gettysburg. Buford had anticipated this move and laid his small cavalry division along three ridges west of town: Herr Ridge, McPherson Ridge, and Seminary Ridge. His troopers fought dismounted, buying time for Union infantry to arrive and occupy the stronger defensive ground south of town. According to lore, the Union soldier to fire the first shot was Lieutenant Marcellus Jones.

  By 7:30 in the morning, three miles west of town, Heth's brigades met the dismounted troopers of Colonel William Gamble's cavalry brigade. The troopers slowed the Confederate advance by firing breech-loading carbines from behind fences and trees. When Major General John F. Reynolds arrived with the vanguard of the I Corps, the battle began to expand rapidly. Reynolds was shot and killed early in the fighting while directing troop placements east of McPherson's Woods. Shelby Foote later wrote that the Union cause lost a man many considered "the best general in the army."

  The Iron Brigade under Brigadier General Solomon Meredith scored a notable early success south of the Chambersburg Pike, capturing several hundred men including General Archer himself. North of the pike, Davis achieved a temporary success against Brigadier General Lysander Cutler's brigade but was repelled with heavy losses near an unfinished railroad cut. As the afternoon wore on, the Confederate pressure increased. The 26th North Carolina, the largest regiment in Lee's army with 839 men, left the first day's fight with around 212 men remaining.

  By early afternoon, two divisions of Ewell's Second Corps had turned south toward Gettysburg rather than continuing toward Cashtown. Their arrival threatened to outflank the Union I and XI Corps. General Early's troops overran the division of Brigadier General Francis C. Barlow, who had advanced his men to a salient position on Blocher's Knoll, north of town. Barlow was wounded and captured. Union lines collapsed on both the north and west, and the retreating soldiers flooded back through the streets of Gettysburg toward the hills to the south.

  At Cemetery Hill, Major General Winfield S. Hancock, dispatched by Meade to assess the field, surveyed the ground and told Howard, "I think this the strongest position by nature upon which to fight a battle that I ever saw." Lee grasped the same truth. He sent orders to Ewell that Cemetery Hill be taken "if practicable." Ewell, accustomed to the peremptory commands of Stonewall Jackson, judged the assault impracticable and did not attempt it. Historians have long considered this one of the great missed opportunities of the battle. The first day alone ranked as the 23rd largest battle of the war by number of troops engaged.

• 4. The Fishhook Holds

  ›

  By the morning of July 2, the Union line stretched in a shape popularly described as a fishhook: from Culp's Hill southeast of town, northwest to Cemetery Hill, then south for nearly two miles along Cemetery Ridge, ending just north of Little Round Top. The Confederate line paralleled it about a mile to the west on Seminary Ridge, running nearly five miles in total. The Union's interior lines gave Meade a critical advantage in shifting troops.

  Lee's plan for the second day called for Longstreet's First Corps to attack the Union left while Ewell demonstrated against the right. The plan ran into trouble almost immediately. Longstreet's divisions completed long marches but did not launch their attacks until just after four in the afternoon and five in the afternoon, respectively. Before they arrived, Major General Daniel Sickles made an unauthorized decision that would shape the entire afternoon's fighting. Dissatisfied with his assigned position on Cemetery Ridge, Sickles advanced his III Corps westward toward higher ground centered on the Sherfy farm's Peach Orchard, creating a dangerous salient along the Emmitsburg Road.

  When Meade discovered what Sickles had done, a Confederate attack was already imminent and a retreat would have been disastrous. Meade was forced to send 20,000 reinforcements from multiple corps. What followed was some of the most savage fighting of the entire war. McLaws's division drove into the thinly stretched III Corps across the Wheatfield and overwhelmed them at the Peach Orchard. Hood's division moved more to the east than intended, attacking Devil's Den and Little Round Top. The III Corps was virtually destroyed as a combat unit, and Sickles's leg was amputated after a cannonball shattered it.

  The defense of Little Round Top became one of the most celebrated moments of the Civil War. Meade's chief engineer, Brigadier General Gouverneur K. Warren, recognized the hill's importance and dispatched Colonel Strong Vincent's brigade, an artillery battery, and the 140th New York to occupy it mere minutes before Hood's troops arrived. At the hill's southern slope, Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain ordered a bayonet charge by the 20th Maine that repelled repeated assaults by Law's brigade and propelled Chamberlain into lasting prominence after the war.

  On the Union right, Ewell's artillery barrage, involving 32 guns alongside A.P. Hill's 55, had little effect at extreme range. When Ewell finally ordered infantry attacks, Harry T. Hays's and Isaac E. Avery's brigades struck the XI Corps positions on East Cemetery Hill with ferocity. Avery was wounded early, but Confederate troops actually reached the crest of the hill and entered Union breastworks, capturing one or two batteries. Without support on the flank, Hays withdrew. Meanwhile, Brigadier General George S. Greene held Culp's Hill with a brigade of New Yorkers behind strong, newly constructed defensive works, staving off Johnson's division despite most of the XII Corps having been sent to reinforce the left. At the end of July 2, despite incurring enormous losses, the Union lines held.

• 5. Pickett's Charge

  ›

  Longstreet's memoir records the clearest warning about what July 3 would bring. He told Lee there were not enough men to assault the strong Union center, that the attack would be repulsed, and that a Union counterattack could place Confederate forces between Lee's army and the Potomac River. He stated it would take a minimum of thirty thousand men to succeed, and noted that only about thirteen thousand men remained in the selected divisions after two days of fighting. Lee's reply, as Longstreet recorded it, was that fifteen thousand men could do the job. Longstreet wrote that he answered: "the fifteen thousand men who could make successful assault over that field had never been arrayed for battle."

  Around one in the afternoon on July 3, between 150 and 170 Confederate guns opened what was probably the largest artillery bombardment of the war. Brigadier General Henry Jackson Hunt, commanding the Army of the Potomac's artillery, held fire for about fifteen minutes before roughly 80 Union cannons responded. Confederate artillery ammunition was running critically low, and the cannonade did not significantly damage the Union position. Hunt had also conserved ammunition specifically for the infantry assault he correctly anticipated.

  Around three in the afternoon, the cannon fire subsided. Between 10,500 and 12,500 Confederate soldiers stepped off Seminary Ridge and advanced three-quarters of a mile toward Cemetery Ridge. As they crossed the open ground, flanking artillery fire from Cemetery Hill and Little Round Top tore into their ranks, followed by musket and canister fire from Hancock's II Corps. The Union line wavered and broke briefly at a spot called the Angle in a low stone fence, just north of a copse of trees. The farthest Confederate advance, by Brigadier General Lewis A. Armistead's brigade, is remembered as the "high-water mark of the Confederacy." Armistead ordered his men to turn two captured cannons against Union troops, then discovered the guns were out of ammunition. He was mortally wounded shortly afterward. Nearly half of the Confederate attackers did not return to their own lines. Pickett's division lost about two-thirds of its men, and all three of his brigadiers were killed or wounded.

  The same afternoon, Stuart's cavalry division moved to guard the Confederate left flank and exploit any success Pickett might achieve. About three miles northeast of Gettysburg, Stuart's forces collided with Brigadier General David McMurtrie Gregg's division and Custer's brigade. The fight evolved into what witnesses described as "a wild melee of swinging sabers and blazing pistols and carbines." The 5th Michigan Cavalry Regiment, armed with Spencer repeating rifles, played a notable role. The engagement ended in a standoff, but Gregg and Custer prevented Stuart from reaching the rear of Union infantry.

• 6. Aftermath and Reckoning

  ›

  On the Fourth of July, Vicksburg surrendered to Major General Ulysses S. Grant some 920 miles away, costing the Confederacy an additional 30,000 men along with their arms and stores. Lee's battered army remained on the battlefield's west side, hoping Meade would attack. Meade declined. The town of Gettysburg, with its 2,400 residents, found itself responsible for 14,000 wounded Union troops and 8,000 Confederate prisoners. Nearly 8,000 soldiers had been killed outright, their bodies lying in the summer heat. More than 3,000 horse carcasses were burned in piles south of town.

  The news of the Union victory produced an immediate burst of Northern enthusiasm. A headline in The Philadelphia Inquirer proclaimed, "Victory! Waterloo Eclipsed!" New York diarist George Templeton Strong wrote that "the charm of Robert E. Lee's invincibility is broken." That enthusiasm faded when the public realized Lee's army had escaped destruction and the war would continue. Lincoln complained to his Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, that "Our army held the war in the hollow of their hand and they would not close it!"

  Lee's escape was a prolonged ordeal. Brigadier General John D. Imboden led a seventeen-mile-long wagon train of wounded men and supplies through Cashtown and Greencastle to Williamsport, Maryland. Rainy weather had swollen the Potomac River and a pontoon bridge at Falling Waters had been destroyed, trapping Lee's army north of the river for days. Meade's infantry did not fully pursue until July 7. A new pontoon bridge was eventually constructed at Falling Waters, and Confederate forces began crossing after dark on July 13. The campaign ended with the Battle of Manassas Gap on July 23.

  In the Confederate capital, Vice President Alexander Stephens had been approaching Union lines at Norfolk under a flag of truce during the battle's final hours, possibly carrying informal peace overtures. After learning of the Gettysburg results, Lincoln refused Stephens's request to pass through the lines. In London, Henry Adams, whose father served as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, wrote that "all idea of intervention is at an end."

  Lee offered his resignation to President Davis on August 8; Davis rejected it immediately. Lee wrote to his wife that the army had returned "rather sooner than I had originally contemplated, but having accomplished what I proposed on leaving the Rappahannock." He told Major John Seddon, brother of the Confederate secretary of war, "Sir, we did whip them at Gettysburg, and it will be seen for the next six months that that army will be as quiet as a sucking dove."

  On November 19, Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg to speak at the dedication of Soldiers' National Cemetery. His address was 271 words. It has endured as one of the most famous speeches in American history, and it reframed the purpose of the war itself.

• 7. Commands Under Scrutiny

  ›

  Before Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee had compiled an extraordinary record: stunning victories at the Seven Days, the Northern Virginia Campaign, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, almost always against larger forces. Only the Maryland Campaign, ending in the tactically inconclusive Battle of Antietam, had fallen short. Historians have spent generations examining how that winning streak ended so dramatically in Pennsylvania.

  Lee himself accepted a portion of the blame, writing to President Davis: "No blame can be attached to the army for its failure to accomplish what was projected by me, nor should it be censured for the unreasonable expectations of the public. I am alone to blame, in perhaps expecting too much of its prowess and valor." War correspondent Peter W. Alexander had observed during the battle that Lee appeared to act "under the impression that his troops were able to carry any position however formidable."

  James Longstreet bore the harshest criticism from Lost Cause writers, not least because he publicly criticized Lee in his postwar writings and became a Republican after the war. His critics accused him of attacking far later than Lee intended on July 2, wasting the chance to strike before Union positions were consolidated. The alternative view holds that Lee was in close contact with Longstreet and agreed to the delays.

  Ewell's failure to seize the high ground on the afternoon of July 1 has been universally criticized. Lee's orders gave him discretion to act "if practicable," and many historians have speculated that Stonewall Jackson, had he survived Chancellorsville, would have seized Culp's Hill aggressively, making Cemetery Hill indefensible. Ewell and Hill were both new to corps command and had been accustomed to the highly specific orders Jackson translated from Lee's general directives.

  Lee's own health was also a factor. He had been diagnosed with pericarditis by his staff physicians in March 1863, though modern doctors believe he had in fact suffered a heart attack. His heart troubles would eventually lead to his death in 1870. As for George Meade, Lee himself had predicted before the battle that Meade "would commit no blunders on my front and if I make one... will make haste to take advantage of it." Historian Stephen Sears later wrote, "The fact of the matter is that George G. Meade, unexpectedly and against all odds, thoroughly outgeneraled Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg." Meade's own experience after the battle was less triumphant. His political enemies, including Daniel E. Sickles, accused him before Congress of planning to retreat. Lincoln and other politicians criticized his pursuit of Lee as half-hearted. Meade was embittered by the experience, even as subordinates like Hancock, Warren, and Hunt defended him in print.

• 8. Memory and Ground

  ›

  At the 50th anniversary reunion in 1913, an estimated 50,000 veterans attended according to a 1938 Army Medical report, though historian Carol Reardon writes that only a few more than 7,000 Confederate veterans were among them, most from Virginia and North Carolina. Some veterans re-enacted Pickett's Charge in a spirit of reconciliation, meeting at a stone wall on Cemetery Ridge for a ceremonial mass handshake. By the 75th anniversary in 1938, the numbers had dwindled to 1,333 Union veterans and 479 Confederate veterans.

  The battlefield itself has required sustained effort to protect. Many historically significant locations lie outside the boundaries of Gettysburg National Military Park, leaving them vulnerable to development. Two proposals to open a casino at Gettysburg were defeated, in 2006 and again in 2011, when public pressure led the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board to reject the gambling proposal near East Cavalry Field. The American Battlefield Trust purchased 95 acres at the former Gettysburg Country Club site and transferred it to the Department of the Interior in 2011.

  In 2015, the Trust made one of its most expensive single acquisitions: $6 million for a four-acre parcel that included the stone house Lee used as his headquarters during the battle. A motel, restaurant, and other buildings on the site were demolished to restore the headquarters to its wartime appearance, and the site opened to the public in October 2016. The 72 Medals of Honor awarded for the Gettysburg Campaign reflect the battle's lasting weight in American military culture; the most recent was posthumously awarded to Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing in 2014, more than 150 years after the fighting ended.