gettysburg/vicksburg

GETTYSBURG

     On July 1, 1863, Union cavalry troops under the leadership of General Buford accidentally encountered an advancing unit of the Army of Northern Virginia. In short order, every Confederate and Union division in the area converged on the small Pennsylvannia town of Gettysburg. By morning, 65,000 Confederate troops under the command of General Robert E. Lee faced 85,000 Federal troops commanded by General George Meade, who had been granted his new position only five days earlier by President Abraham Lincoln. So began the greatest battle ever fought on the North American continent. By the time the battle was over, 51,000 of the troops that had been engaged in battle were either dead or wounded. Northern casualties numbered upwards of 23,000. Southern losses numbered more than 28,000. At the end of the first day the Union troops had been pushed through the town and took up a defensive position south of the town in the area known as Culps Hill and Cemetary Hill.
     July 2, 1863 . The Confederate armies attack the left and right flanks of the union line. At Little Round Top their advance is repulsed by a regiment, the 20th Maine under the leadership of Colonel Joshua Chamberlain. The fighting was so fierce and the defense so vital that Chamberlain would later receive the Congressional Medal of honor for his valor. Meanwhile, similar battles with similar acts of bravery were taking place at places named Big Round Top, Cemetary Ridge, the Peach Orchard, Devil's Den and Seminary Ridge.
     July 3, 1863 . After two days of battle, General Lee believed the Union defenses had been softenened up sufficiently and proposed a frontal assault upon the center of the Federal line. Others, including second in command, General James Longstreet, had their doubts.
     The attack began with a massive artillery barrage from the Confederate side. The Union batteries replied, and matched them in fury for nearly an hour, at which point they stopped, to conserve shells. The Confederate assault continued for another hour. At three o'clock on this fateful day three divisions under the leadership of General George Pickett emerged from the shelter of the woods and advanced toward the center of the Union lines.

    More than half a mile their front extends...man touching man, rank touching rank...
    their red flags wave, their horsemen gallop up and down, the arms of (thirteen)
    thousand men, barrel and bayonet gleam in the sun, a sloping forest of flashing
    steel. Right on they move, as with one soul, in perfect order, without impediment
    of ditch, or wall, or stream, over ridge and slope, through orchard and meadow,
    and cornfield, magnificent, grim, irresistible.   - a Union officer

When it was done, half of the Confederate troops that had emerged from the woods, and crossed the field, (6500 men in all) had been killed, wounded, or captured. All fifteen regimental commanders had been hit, so had sixteen of seventeen field officers, three brigadier generals and eight colonels. When General Lee, reeling from the defeat, instructed Pickett to rally his returning division for the anticipated counterattack. General Pickett retorted. "General Lee, I have no division now."
July4, 1863 .The Army of Northern Virginia vacates the field under a summer rainshower. Never again would they threaten the union so seriously. Josiah Gorgas a Confederate official wrote. "Yesterday we rode on the pinnacle of success. Today, absolute ruin seems to be our portion. The Confederacy totters to its' destruction. A Union soldier exulted, "Was ever the Nation's Birthday celebrated in such a way before?"

Click on: Seige of Vicksburg