Quick History: The Battle of Gettysburg
- In This Quick Guide:
- Day One: July 1, 1863
- Day Two: Union Holds the High Ground
- Day Three: Massive Assault
- The Aftermath
The Battle of Gettysburg—July 1–3, 1863—was not only one of the most important battles in the Civil War, it was the certain beginning of the certain end of the Confederate States of America.
Day One: July 1, 1863
When Brig. Gen. John Buford of the Union army reached Gettysburg, he immediately grasped the importance of holding the high ground called McPherson’s Ridge, just west of town.
Buford’s dismounted cavalry held off the first waves of Heth’s and William Pender’s Confederate infantry divisions while General John Reynolds’s I Corps and Gen. O.O. Howard’s XI Corps rushed to reinforce Buford. Reynolds’s troops began to arrive by 10:30, but by this time the Confederates were massing and had built up superior strength. Reynolds took personal command of the celebrated 1,800-man “Iron Brigade” in McPherson’s Woods, to the west of the ridge. Within minutes, the gallant major general fell from his horse with a wound in his neck. He died instantly.
The Union Loses Ground
When O.O. Howard and his XI Corps arrived, shortly before noon, the situation had become terribly confused. Union forces were repeatedly pushed back, only to rally and counterattack, but when Howard, who assumed overall command in the field following the death of Reynolds, tried to join a division commanded by Major General Carl Schurz to the beleaguered brigades of I Corps, the units failed to meet. This gave the combined Confederate units under Generals Robert Rodes, Jubal Early, and A.P. Hill the ability to drive the Federals off McPherson’s Ridge and their other positions west and north of Gettysburg. The Union soldiers retreated into the town, fighting hand-to-hand near Pennsylvania College and, ultimately, retreating southeast of the town down the Baltimore Pike. Meade, not yet on the field, sent his most trusted subordinate—General Winfield Scott Hancock—to take charge of the battered defense.
The End of the First Day
The first day’s fighting ended in a Southern victory, but the battle was not over. The high ground of McPherson’s Ridge was lost to the Union, but a rout of the Federal forces had been stemmed on other high ground: East Cemetery Hill, Cemetery Ridge, and Culp’s Hill, running from due south to southeast of town. The Confederates occupied some high ground, too: Oak Hill, northwest of town, and Seminary Ridge, due west of Gettysburg.
Day Two: Union Holds the High Ground
Dawn of July 2 found Confederate General Robert E. Lee exhausted and sick with the diarrhea, a common ailment in the field of battle. (Some historians believe that Lee, a chronic sufferer from heart disease, had actually sustained a mild heart attack.) But, sick or not, his mood was bold, and he met with his corps commanders to give detailed orders for an offensive he hoped would crush the enemy army.
The Union’s Fishhook Attack
The second day of battle started with the Union line deployed in a giant, upside-down fishhook. The hook’s barb was just south of Culp’s Hill, its turn was at Cemetery Hill, and the end of its shaft at two hills, well to the south of town, known as Little Round Top and Big Round Top. Lee directed Lt. General James Longstreet to take his First Corps and attack the Union left, the shaft of the fishhook running along Cemetery Ridge and terminating at the Little and Big Round Tops. Lee was northwest of the fishhook, where the curve met the shaft. Lt. General Richard S. Ewell, to the north and northeast, above the curve of the fishhook, was to be prepared to swing down and smash the Union’s right.
A Break for the Union
Battles begin with plans and require much skill and courage to maneuver and fight, but, in the end, they are also subject to random chance. Just before Maj. Gen. John Bell Hood’s men attacked Maj. Gen. Daniel Sickles’ Union troops, Brig. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren, Meade’s chief engineer, noticed that Little Round Top was undefended, save for a few signalmen. Warren realized in an instant that Hood’s division would seize that high ground and thereby be in position to crush the Union’s flank, traveling right up the shaft of the Federal fishhook.
Warren’s staff officers hurriedly rounded up a brigade led by Col. Strong Vincent and sent it to occupy Little Round Top. Vincent was soon fatally wounded in the action. A brigade under Brig. Gen. Stephen Weed also fought Hood, and at the extreme south end of the Union flank was the 20th Maine, a battle-battered regiment, commanded by Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.
Chamberlain and Little Round Top
Chamberlain was not a professional soldier. A professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin College, he took a sabbatical in 1862 intending to study in Europe, but joined the Union army instead. Now, with his regiment at less than half strength—under 500 men, including some mutinous soldiers who had been put under his guard—he held off attack after attack from a superior force of Alabama troops. His ammunition was all but exhausted, a circumstance that would have prompted just about anyone else to surrender, but, realizing the grave importance of holding his position and preventing the Confederates from turning the Union flank, he led a fierce downhill charge, exclusively using bayonets, with which he scattered and defeated the rebels. This defeat was one of the most extraordinary achievement in the battle.
Sickles and Devil’s Den
The Confederates still held Devil’s Den, below Little Round Top, and fired on the reinforced defenders of that hill from behind boulders. Action was hot, too, in the Peach Orchard and Wheatfield, to the northwest of Little Round Top. Sickles, who was assigned to Cemetery ridge, didn’t like his position and moved his corps—without orders—to a better position half a mile to the west, on the higher ground near the Peach Orchard. In the Wheatfield, no fewer than six Confederate attacks were met by six Union counter-attacks, leaving casualties and corpses thicker than any wheat harvest.
Sickles’s impulsive advance might have meant Union defeat, but Longstreet was never able to coordinate his attacks to decisive effect, and Meade as well as Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, now leading II and III Corps, repaired Sickles’s error by skillfully redeploying forces as needed to check each major Confederate attempt at a breakthrough.
The End of the Second Day
At sundown, the Confederates attacked Cemetery, East Cemetery, and Culp’s Hills. The Federals held on to all their positions except at Culp’s Hill, but then counter-attacked there at 4:30 on the morning of July 3 and, after seven hours of fighting, turned back the Confederates.
Day Three: Massive Assault
As July 2 melted into July 3, the Union army continued to hold its high ground, but, as Robert E. Lee saw it, tenuously. For Lee, it was a tempting situation. He had won significant victories on the 1st, and while he had failed to crush the Union army on the 2nd, he believed that he had worn it down sufficiently to destroy it on the 3rd.
As Lee saw it, he had been repulsed on July 2, repeatedly, but each time just barely. He now proposed an all-out attack. Longstreet protested the plan, but Lee insisted that too much blood had been invested to withdraw now.
Meade’s forces had hardly been idle during the night and early morning. In addition to retaking Culp’s Hill, they greatly improved their defenses and positioned final reinforcements, bracing for the attack.
Pickett’s Charge
The massive assault Lee had in mind was destined to be perhaps the single most celebrated operation of the war. By noon, they were arrayed: disciplined veteran soldiers perfectly aligned in battle ranks across an open field, facing the Union soldiers dug in on Cemetery Ridge a mile away. In preparation for the operation that came to be called “Pickett’s Charge,” 150 Confederate cannon pounded the ridge, only to be answered by equally devastating fire from Union artillery. Such a duel of cannon was unprecedented in war up to this time.
At 1:45 in the afternoon, 12,500 Confederates, in closely formed ranks, advanced. The Union artillerists replaced their solid ammunition with canister, shot consisting of iron balls packed into cans, which burst apart, spraying the field of fire with hundreds of deadly projectiles.
Still, the Confederates men advanced. When they were close enough, the Union infantry, from cover and from the high ground, opened up with musket fire.
Two of Pickett’s three brigadier generals were cut down in the charge, and the third was gravely wounded. All 15 regimental commanders engaged were killed or wounded. At a place called the Angle, 150 men led by Brig. Gen. Lewis Armistead actually succeeded in raising the Confederate colors above Cemetery Ridge, but they were soon killed or captured. Of the 12,500 soldiers who charged Cemetery Ridge, only 5,000 survived.
The Aftermath
The Battle of Gettysburg had the largest number of casualties in the Civil War—between 46,000 and 51,000 soldiers from both armies were killed, wounded, captured, or missing. More than 8,000 men died on the field of battle. The Union listed 23,055 casualties (3,155 killed, 14,531 wounded, 5,369 captured or missing), and it is estimated that the Confederates had 23,231 casualties (4,708 killed, 12,693 wounded, 5,830 captured or missing). In addition, Gen. Lee had nearly one-third of his general officers killed, wounded, or captured.
That November, President Lincoln gave his most stirring speech, the Gettysburg Address, at the dedication ceremony for the Gettysburg National Cemetery, in which he said: “… From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
From The Complete Idiot’s Guide to The Civil War, Second Edition, by Alan Axelrod, Ph.D.
