It did rain during the night, but by morning (4-16)
the skies were clear and the air was warm.
We had a pancake breakfast at the KOA, then headed off to
Gettysburg to spend the day at the National
Military Park.
The morning’s first stop was the Visitor Center,
which has an Electric Map presentation that every visitor to
Gettysburg should see before taking the driving tour of the
battlefield. The
colored lights on the map provide a great overview of troop
locations and movements during the three-day battle.
The Visitor Center also houses a terrific museum of Civil
War stories, equipment, uniforms and artifacts including a number
of pieces of furniture with bullet holes from the fighting that
took place here.
We then spent the entire afternoon, with a break for
lunch, driving and walking around the battlefield. I had never been here before, but I was quite familiar with
names of places that I would see on this day: Little Round
Top,
Devil’s Den, Peach Orchard and the open fields of Pickett’s
Charge.
The battle of Gettysburg took place July 1–3, 1863
and climaxed General Lee’s second attempt to invade the north.
Following his victory at Chancellorsville in June, Lee had
moved his Army of Northern Virginia westward through the Blue
Ridge Mountains, then north into Maryland and Pennsylvania.
They were following the Union Army of the Potomac under
General Joseph Hooker, but Lee didn’t quite know his
adversary’s whereabouts. The
two armies came into contact by chance at Gettysburg on June 30
setting the stage for the largest and deadliest battle to ever
take place on American soil.
On the morning of July 1, Confederate troops opened
the battle by attacking Union troops on McPherson Ridge west of
town. The Federal
forces held their ground until late afternoon when they were
finally forced back to Cemetery Hill just south of town.
During the night, the Federal lines were reinforced as
Union commander General George Meade arrived in Gettysburg with
the bulk of his army.
| Click on thumbnails to
see full photographs.
Peach Orchard
Wheatfield
Devil's Den
Little Round Top
Pickett's Charge
|
By the following morning the armies were lined up in
two sweeping arcs nearly a mile apart – Union forces of
96,693 men on Cemetery Ridge and Confederate forces of
70,136 men on Seminary Ridge.
Lee initiated the battle by ordering an attack on
both Union flanks. On
the Union left flank (south), James Longstreet’s attack
resulted in furious fighting at the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield and Devil’s Den. Union
forces were driven back all along the left flank, but
managed to hold the strategically important hill known as
Little Round Top. This happened only because Meade’s Chief Engineer,
Brigadier General Gouverneur K. Warren, alerted Union
officers to the Confederate threat and brought Federal
reinforcements to defend the hill (literally minutes
before the rebel troops arrived at the base).
On the Union right flank (north), Richard S.
Ewell’s Confederate troops managed to capture a portion
of Culp’s Hill, but were repulsed elsewhere.
General Meade met with his staff officers during the
evening and concluded that Lee would probably attack the
center of his line the following day.
Despite having been pushed back during each of the
first two days of the battle, Meade was determined to stay
and fight the following day.
On July 3, Ewell renewed his attack on Culp’s Hill
while Lee turned his attention to the center of the Union
line. In the
afternoon his artillery opened a bombardment of the
Federal lines on Cemetery Ridge and Cemetery Hill.
Union forces answered with their own artillery and
for two hours the armies blasted away at each other.
The cannons made a lot of noise, but did little to
soften up the Union lines.
Lee then sent 12,000 Confederate troops across open
fields toward the center of the Federal lines in an attack
known as “Pickett’s Charge.”
The 7000 Union soldiers massed around the Copse of
Trees, The Angle and the Brian Barn repulsed their charge,
however, with artillery, rifles and hand-to-hand combat.
This biggest moment in the biggest battle of the
war had gone to the Federal forces. As Lee’s troops staggered back to their lines, Lee rode out
to meet them, comfort them and tell them “It’s all my
fault.” |
The following day, Lee began a slow retreat across
Pennsylvania and Maryland and back into Virginia. His army had suffered very heavy losses and his remaining
troops were physically and spiritually exhausted.
The Civil War would drag on for two more years, but never
again would Lee attempt a major offensive against Union forces.
| Click on thumbnails
to view full photographs.
|
When the two great armies marched away from
Gettysburg, they left behind more than 51,000 soldiers who had
been killed, wounded or were missing in battle.
Two weeks later when Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin
visited Gettysburg, wounded and dying soldiers were crowded into
nearly every building in town.
Most of the dead soldiers had been hastily buried in
inadequate graves and some had not been buried at all.
The situation so distressed the Governor that he
commissioned a local attorney, David Wills, to purchase land for a
proper burial ground for the dead Union soldiers.
Within four months, reinterment began on 17 acres that were
to become Gettysburg National Cemetery.
On November 19, 1863, dignitaries gathered in
Gettysburg to dedicate this ground as a National Cemetery.
The principal speaker was Edward Everett, the best orator
of his day, and he delivered a well-received two-hour oration,
“rich in historical detail and classical allusion.” President Abraham Lincoln, who had been asked to make “a
few appropriate remarks,” followed Everett at the podium. Lincoln’s Gettysburg
Address consisted of just 272 words and took about two minutes
to deliver. The
President stepped down from the podium believing that the audience
hadn’t much cared for his remarks, when in fact they were
standing in stunned silence. His masterful speech had managed in so few words to provide
meaning to the sacrifice of the dead and inspiration to the
living.
|
Sarah, Nick and I took the 18-mile self-guided auto
tour around the battlefield.
The brochure says it takes about three hours, but we spent
about five as we stopped the car a lot and took short hikes to
read signs, view statues, look-over parts of the battlefield and
tour the cemetery. We
had a great time.
Click on Bicyclist to see more
Gettysburg Photos: 
The only negative about Gettysburg is what can best
be described as the “god-awful observation tower” that rises
behind the cemetery. It
was built a number of years ago as a private enterprise and was
highly controversial from the start.
Someone has made a lot of money from it, but it really 'uglifies' the whole battlefield.
I made sure all day that none of my photographs included
the tower, but it “got to me” anyway and I just had to express
my feelings toward it at the end of the day.
An interesting coincidence regarding the battle at
Gettysburg is that the very day General Lee accepted defeat here
and began his retreat to Virginia (July 4, 1863), the Confederates
also surrendered Vicksburg to General Ulysses S. Grant following a
two-month siege.
(Great
Adventures to Scenic Places)
