The Battle of Gettysburg

It is possible, some people would say probable, that the Battle of Gettysburg changed utterly the course of American history. It was a great fight between armies of Americans, for probably a full ninety per cent of the men who fought on the two sides were born native to the American soil. The bravery shown at Gettysburg was of the order which Americans have shown on every field and which reflects credit upon the hardy and heroic ancestry of the men engaged, no matter from what race they may have sprung.

At Gettysburg there was nothing to choose between the valor of the North and the South. The South lost the fight, but it lost it honorably and with the prestige of its soldiery undimmed. The charges made on that field have gone down into history as assaults made under conditions which every man felt might mean death at the end. The defenses made at Gettysburg were of the kind which it takes iron and the blood to make perfect. At Gettysburg Northerners and Southerners replenished their store of respect for their antagonists. The battle marked the high tide of the war between the states. After it the South largely was on the defensive, but its defense was maintained with fortitude and in the face of privations which could not chill the blood of men fighting for what they thought was the right.

The Northern armies were persistent in their attacks through the campaigns which after a few months were started against the objective point, Richmond. Brave men here and brave men there, and after the end came it was the qualities which keep company with bravery which made the soldiers of the North and South so ready to forget and to forgive and to work again for the good of a common country.

The Great Battle of Chancellorsville was fought not long before the opposing Union in Confederate forces met on the field of Gettysburg. Chancellorsville was a Confederate victory. The Southern government believed that the victory should be followed up by an invasion of the North for, according to its reasoning, if an important engagement could be won upon Northern soil the chances of foreign intervention or at least foreign aid to the Southern cause would be fourth coming.

General Robert E. Lee late in the spring of 1863, made his preparations to conduct his campaign Northward into the state of Pennsylvania. He had under his command three corps. General James Longstreet commanding the First, General Richard S. Ewell commanding the Second, and General A.P. Hill commanding the Third in the Union army which afterward confronted Lee at Gettysburg. There were seven corps, but the number of men in each was much less than that in a Confederate corps, the military composition of each being different. The Union corps commanders who under Meade were at Gettysburg were Generals John F. Reynolds, W.S. Hancock, Daniel E. Sickles, George Sykes, John Sedgwick, O.O. Howard and H.W. Slocum.

Forces Almost Evenly Matched
It never has been determined beyond the point of all dispute just how many men were engaged on each side in the battle of Gettysburg. It is known that the armies were very nearly equal in strength. The probabilities that the Confederate force was a few thousand men stronger than the Union force. A difference which when balanced perhaps by the fact that the Union armies at Gettysburg were fighting in defense of their land from invasion, a condition which military men say always adds a subtle something to the fighting quality which is in any man. Some authorities have said that there were 100,000 men in the Confederate forces at Gettysburg to be confronted by 90,000 Union troops. Another authority says that the Confederate force was 84,000 and the Union force 80,000. As it was the armies were pretty nearly equally divided in strength.

In June 1863, General Robert E. Lee began to move northward. Lee concentrated his army at Winchester, VA., and then started for the Potomac River which he crossed to reach the state of Maryland. He fully expected to be followed by General Hooker's army and so General Stuart with a large force of Calvary was ordered by Lee to keep in front of Hooker's army and to check his pursuit of the Confederates if it was attempted.

Late in June the Confederate force reached Hagerstown, in the state of Maryland. It was General Lee's intention to strike Harrisburg, PA., which was a great railroad center and a city where Union armies were recruited and from which all kinds of supplies sent out to the soldiers in the field. While the Southern commander was on his way with a large part of his force to the Pennsylvania capital another part of his command was ordered to make its way into the Susquehanna Valley through the town of Gettysburg and then to turn in its course after destroying railroads and gathering in supplies and to meet the Confederate commander with the main army at Harrisburg.

It was General Jubal A. Early of General Lee's command, who reached Gettysburg after a long hard march on June 26th. From there he went to the town of York and from thence to Wrightsville. At this place he was ordered by General Lee to retrace the steps and to bring his detachment back to a camp near Gettysburg. When Early had obeyed Lee's order and had reached a point near Gettysburg he found the entire Southern force was camped within easy striking distance of the now historic town.

In the meantime things were happening elsewhere. General Hooker in command of the Union Army which had been depleted at Chancellorsville had succeeded in out-maneuvering General Stuart in command of Lee's Calvary, had got around Stewart's command in a way to prevent the Southern General from forming a junction with the forces of his Chief Commander. Lee gave over the proposed movement on Harrisburg when he heard of Hooker's approach and brought the different parts of his army together.

Four days before the Gettysburg fight began General Hooker resigned as Commander of the Union Army. Hooker and General Hallock disagreed upon a matter concerning which strategists today say that General Hooker was right. Three days before the battle began, that is June 28, 1863, General George Gordon Meade was named as General Hooker's successor in charge of the Northern Army. General Meade at once went into the field and established his headquarters at a point ten or twelve miles south of the town of Gettysburg.

Armies Meet at Gettysburg
It seems that General Lee on hearing that Stuart had not succeeded in checking the Union Army's advance had made up his mind to turn southward to meet the force of Hooker, or as it turned out the force of Meade. Lee with his force had advanced north beyond Gettysburg, while Mead with his force was south of the town. The fields near the Pennsylvania village had not been picked as a place of battle, but there it was that the two great armies came together and for three days struggled for the mastery.

On the last day of June, the day before the real battle of Gettysburg began, General Reynolds, a corps commander of the Union Army, went forward to feel out the enemy. He reached Gettysburg by nightfall. His corps, the First together with the Third and the Eleventh Infantry Corps with a division of Calvary, composed the Union Army's left wing.

The Fifth Army Corps was sent to Hanover, southeast of Gettysburg, and the Twelfth Corps was immediately south of Gettysburg at a distance of eight or nine miles. This was on June 30th, and the Union forces were fairly well separated, but they were converging and Gettysburg was their objective.

General Reynolds of the Union forces arrived at Gettysburg early on The morning of July 1st. He dispatched a courier to Meade saying that the high ground above Gettysburg was the proper place to meet the enemy. Not long after this message was sent to Meade, General Reynolds who dispatched it was killed. He was on horseback near a patch of woods with his force confronting a large detachment of Confederate troops which was coming toward them. These troops of the enemy were dispersed by the Union batteries and Reynolds was watching the successful solid shot and shrapnel onset when a bullet struck him in the head killing him instantly.

General Abner Doubleday (((parentheses yes the so called creator of baseball parentheses))) succeeded Reynolds in command of the troops at that point of the field. A brigade of Confederates, a Mississippi organization, charged the union forces, broke their organization and succeeded in making prisoners of a large part of a New York regiment. Later these men were recaptured and the Mississippi brigade was driven back, a portion of it surrendering. In the fight on the first day at this point of the field or near it, one Union regiment the 151st Pennsylvania, lost in killed and wounded 337 men out of a total of 446 and a little more than a quarter of an hour's fight.

General Doubleday fell back to Seminary Ridge and extended his line. The forces employed against him here were greater than his own, and after hard fighting Seminary Ridge was given up. The first days battle was in effect and in truth a victory for the Southern arms. On the night of July 1st, General Hancock arrived and succeeded in rallying the Union forces and putting new heart into the men. General Mead on that night ordered the entire army to Gettysburg.

Victory Not Followed Up
For some reason or other perhaps unknown to this day, what was virtually a Confederate victory on the 1st of July was not followed up by General Lee early on the next morning. General Meade therefore succeeded in strengthening his lines and in preparing for the greater conflict. One end of the Union line with some distance east of the Cemetery Hill on Rock Creek, another end was at Round Top, something more than two miles beyond Cemetery Hill to the south. The Confederate line confronting it was somewhat longer.

It is impossible in a brief sketch of this battle to give the names of the brigade and regimental commanders and the names of the regiments which were engaged on both sides in this great battle. Meade, Hancock, Howard, Slocum and Sickles with their men were confronting Lee, Longstreet, Hill, Ewell and the other great commanders of the South with their men. The line of battle with the spaces in between the different commands was nearly ten miles. It was the Confederate General's intention to attack at the extreme right and left and at the center simultaneously. It was to be General Longstreet's duty to turn the left flank of the Union Army and to "break it." Longstreet's intended movement was discovered in time to have it met valiantly. The battle of the second day really began with Longstreet's advance. The Southern General did not succeed in the plan which he had formed to get by Big Round Top and to attack the Third Corps from a position of vantage in the rear. General Sickles defended Roundtop and Longstreet could not take it.

When one visits the battlefield of Gettysburg he can trace the course of battle of the second day where it raged at Round Top. Peach Orchard, Cemetery Hill, Culp's Hill and what is known as the Devils Den. the tide of battle ebbed and flowed. Little Round Top was saved from capture by the timely arrival of a brigade commanded by General Weed that dragged the guns of a United States regular battery up to the summit by hand.

At the end of the second day's fight it was found that the Southern Army had failed to break the left flank of the opposing forces, that it had failed to capture Round Top and that the right flank of the Northern Army, although vigorously attacked, had not been broken. There was a tremendous loss of life on both sides and while in general the day had gone favorably to the Northern cause, Gettysburg was still a drawn battle.

Charge of General Pickett
It was on July 3rd, the third and last day of the great battle of Gettysburg that Pickett's men made their charge Which has gone into history as one of the most heroic assaults of all time. It was forlorn hope, but it was grasped and the men of George Edward Pickett, Confederate soldier, went loyally and with full hearts to their death across a shrapnel and rifle swept field.

When the third day's fighting opened it began with an artillery duel, hundreds of guns belching forth shot and death from the batteries of both contending forces. It is said that this was the greatest duel engaged in by field pieces during the four years of the war between the states.

The Union guns at one time ceased firing and it is said that the Southern Commander thought they had been silenced and then it was that Longstreet's men made an assault and Pickett's men made their charge. The former general's objective was Big Top, but his forces were driven back. Pickett formed his division in brigade columns and they moved directly across the fields over flat ground. They had no cover and they had no sooner come into effective range than they were met by such a storm of shot as never before swept over a fuel battle.

They went on and on, and on closing in their depleted ranks and moving steadily forward to their death. Those of Pickett's men who reached their destination had a short hand-to-hand encounter with the northern soldiers. It was soon over and Pickett's charge, glorious for all time in history, was a failure in that which it attempted to do, but was a success as helping to show the heroism of American soldiers.

The losses at Gettysburg On both sides were enormous. The Union army lost Generals Zook, Farnsworth, Weed and Reynolds, killed; while Graham, Barnes, Gibbon, Warren, Doubleday, Barlow, Sickles, Butterfield and Hancock were wounded. The total casualties killed, wounded, captured or missing on the Union side numbered nearly 24,000 men. On the Confederate side Generals Semmes, Pender, Garnet, Armistead and Barksdale were killed, and Generals Kemper, Kimbal, Hood, Heth, Johnson and Trimble were wounded. The entire Confederate loss is estimated to have been nearly 30,000 men.

The third day's fight at Gettysburg was a victory for northern arms, but it was a hard won fight and the conflict reflects Luster today upon the North and the South. Lee led his army back southward, later to confront Grant in the campaigns which finally ended at Appomattox.

Forces Engaged and Losses
The forces engaged that the battle Gettysburg were:
 Confederate - - according to official accounts the Army of Northern Virginia on the 21st of May, numbered 74,468. The detachments which joined numbered 6400, making 80,868. Deducting the detachments left in Virginia - Jenkin's brigade, Pickett's division of 2300. Corse's brigade, Pickett's division of 1700; detachments from Second Corps in Calvary of 1300 -- in all 5300 -- leaves and aggregate of 75,568.
 Union -- according to the reports of the 30th of June and making allowance for detachments that joined in the interim in time to take part in the battle, the grand aggregate was 100,000 officers and men.