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This place was a small town in July 1863, situated at the crossroads of a network of byways. But that summer, that advantageous location became Gettysburg’s curse, as all roads led to the largest battle ever fought on American soil.

INTO BATTLE

For General Robert E. Lee and his Confederate Army, the first steps toward Gettysburg started in June. Lee and his troops crossed the Potomac and began to march toward the Susquehanna River, with thoughts that a victory in the North would erode the Union’s will to continue the fight.

Lee’s Army encountered General George Meade’s Union Army of the Potomac in Gettysburg on July 1st. For three days, the armies clashed in a titanic battle. More than 165,000 soldiers overran the ridges, creeks and farm fields of the region and the streets and houses of Gettysburg itself.

THE BATTLE

The fighting began north of Gettysburg, raged through the town, and then concentrated in the famous fishhook anchored on Culp’s Hill, Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top. On July 1st and 2nd, the Union Army met a series of fierce assaults from Lee’s Confederates. On the morning of July 3rd, heavy skirmishing continued near the center of the Union army’s battle line at Ziegler's Grove and along Cemetery Ridge. The skirmishing ended in the early afternoon, when an artillery duel between 250 Confederate and Union cannons drove the skirmishers to the ground, covering the battlefield with smoke and deafening thunder for 90 long minutes.

After the cannonade, Lee ordered his infantry to attack. He hoped that his artillery barrage had decimated the Union artillery and demoralized its infantry – but the fact was that neither had occurred. As more than 14,000 Confederate troops advanced across the field toward Cemetery Ridge, a deluge of artillery shot and shell raked their lines. As a result, the left wing of the attacking column was staggering, even before it could scale the double wall of rail fencing that enclosed Emmitsburg Road. Many of those who scaled the fence were shot down in the road. Those who still moved on toward the ridge advanced under a hail of fire. Those who survived to reach the Union defense works fell or were captured in the melee that ensued at the Angle, near the Copse of Trees. Thus, Pickett’s Charge ended with Confederate losses of more than 50 percent.

AFTERMATH

The three days of fighting had changed the battle’s participants and the town of Gettysburg forever. More than 51,000 casualties (killed, mortally wounded, wounded and captured) had been inflicted along the streets and in the fields of Gettysburg. The extensive losses suffered by Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia proved impossible for the war-stressed economy of the Confederacy to replace.

On July 4th, as smoke still lingered on the battlefield at Gettysburg, the besieged city of Vicksburg, Mississippi surrendered, restoring Union control of the Mississippi River. Twenty-one months later, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, signaling the end of the Civil War.

 
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