Battle of Gettysburg

Background

After his victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863, Robert E. Lee took the Army of Northern Virginia north through the Shenandoah Valley into Maryland and Pennsylvania. He hoped to feed his army on northern farms, draw the Union army away from Virginia, and win a victory on northern soil that might weaken the North's will to continue the American Civil War. The Army of the Potomac followed, and on 28 June its new commander, George Gordon Meade, took over. Gettysburg, a small town where ten roads met, drew both armies together almost by accident.

The Battle

On the morning of 1 July, John Buford's Union cavalry division met Confederate infantry west of town and held McPherson's Ridge until the Union I Corps arrived; its commander, John Reynolds, was killed soon after. By afternoon more Confederate divisions had arrived from the north and west, and the Union I and XI Corps were driven back through the town to Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill, a strong position that the Confederates did not attack that evening. Overnight both armies concentrated. The Union line formed a fishhook from Culp's Hill along Cemetery Ridge to the Round Tops. On 2 July Lee sent James Longstreet's corps against the Union left. The fighting in the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard and Devil's Den was some of the bloodiest of the war, and on Little Round Top the 20th Maine under Joshua Chamberlain held the extreme left of the Union line with a bayonet charge. Confederate attacks on Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill that evening also failed. On 3 July, after a morning of fighting on Culp's Hill, Lee opened a bombardment of the Union center with about 150 guns, and then sent about 12,500 men from the divisions of George Pickett, James Pettigrew and Isaac Trimble across nearly a mile of open fields against Cemetery Ridge. Union artillery and infantry fire destroyed the attack; barely half the men returned. East of town, Union cavalry including George Custer's Michigan brigade stopped J. E. B. Stuart's Confederate cavalry.

Weapons

Most infantry on both sides carried rifle-muskets, the Union Springfield Model 1861 and the imported British Enfield, firing the Minié Ball. The Napoleon 12-Pounder was the commonest field gun; its canister did terrible damage to Pickett's Charge. Buford's troopers fought with breech-loading carbines, including the Sharps Rifle in carbine form, and cavalry carried the Model 1860 Light Cavalry Saber and the Colt 1851 Navy Revolver.

Aftermath

The three days cost about 23,000 Union and 23,000 to 28,000 Confederate casualties, killed, wounded, captured and missing, the most of any battle of the war. Lee retreated to Virginia on 4 July, the same day Vicksburg surrendered to Grant. The Confederacy never again invaded the North. On 19 November 1863 Abraham Lincoln dedicated the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg with his Gettysburg Address, and the battlefield is now a national military park.