The Battle of Gettysburg lasted just three days — July 1 through July 3, 1863 — but it produced more casualties than any other engagement in the entire American Civil War. Between 46,000 and 51,000 men were killed, wounded, captured, or reported missing across the rolling Pennsylvania farmland. The photographs that survive from those days do not spare the viewer. Dead soldiers lie in fields, in woods, and among rocky outcroppings, left where they fell under a summer sun.
Confederate General Robert E. Lee came north with a clear purpose. After his victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863, he moved his army out of war-torn Virginia and into Pennsylvania. He wanted his men to draw supplies from the fertile Northern farms, and he wanted to pressure President Lincoln into peace negotiations on Confederate terms. The plan began to unravel almost immediately.
Lee had ordered his forces not to engage the enemy until the full Confederate army was assembled. But on July 1, those orders fell apart. Both sides met near Gettysburg with incomplete forces. Confederate troops outnumbered Union soldiers on that first day and pushed them into a defensive position. Union General George Meade, who had only taken command of the Army of the Potomac three days earlier, did not arrive at the battlefield until the end of that first day.
By the second day, Union reinforcements had flooded in. Federal troop strength swelled to 94,000 men against 72,000 Confederates. The Union line stretched from Culp’s Hill down to Cemetery Ridge — a strong, elevated position. Lee rejected the counsel of his second-in-command, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, who advised against attacking the Union where it stood. Lee ordered the assault anyway. Longstreet’s men did not reach their positions until 4 p.m., and the delay cost the Confederates dearly.
One of the fiercest clashes on the second day took place near a boulder-strewn area called Devil’s Den and the rocky hill known as Little Round Top. Confederate forces devoured the Union III Corps in the valley below, but Union General Meade responded by sending over 20,000 men into the gap. Charge after charge was launched and beaten back. Longstreet’s advance finally stalled near Little Round Top, where Union defenders held the high ground.
The fighting at Little Round Top and the surrounding terrain was savage. The area near the rocky hill’s base — known as the “slaughter pen” — saw some of the battle’s most intense close-quarters combat. Union Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a former college professor commanding the 20th Maine Infantry, held Little Round Top against repeated Confederate assaults. He later received the Medal of Honor for his actions there.
On the third day, Lee made his most fateful decision. He ordered a frontal assault on the center of the Union line at Cemetery Ridge. Approximately 12,500 Confederate soldiers under General George Pickett marched across nearly a mile of open ground toward entrenched Union positions. The attack — known as Pickett’s Charge — was destroyed. Union artillery and rifle fire cut into the advancing columns from multiple directions. Two-thirds of Pickett’s men were killed, wounded, or captured.
Artillery dominated all three days of the battle. Historians consider Gettysburg home to the largest artillery bombardments of the entire Civil War. On the third day, Confederate gunners opened a massive barrage intended to knock out Union cannons before Pickett’s Charge. Union artillery commanders held their fire, leading Confederate commanders to believe the guns had been silenced. When Pickett’s men advanced, the Union cannons opened up and tore through them.
The human cost was staggering. Union losses totaled more than 23,000 men — 3,200 killed, 14,500 wounded, and 5,400 captured or missing. Confederate losses exceeded 28,000 — 4,700 killed, 12,700 wounded, and 5,900 captured or missing. Some 8,000 soldiers died outright on the battlefield. With the dead baking under the July heat, burial parties worked as fast as conditions allowed.
Field hospitals were overwhelmed. The number of trained surgeons on both sides numbered only in the dozens. Amputations were the most common surgical procedure, performed rapidly to prevent the spread of infection, but more than one in four patients who underwent amputation died. Operating tables set up near the front lines stayed busy throughout all three days of fighting.
Support organizations worked alongside the military to manage the wounded. The U.S. Sanitary Commission, a private relief agency, set up operations near the battlefield to aid sick and wounded Union soldiers. The U.S. Christian Commission provided additional supplies and services to troops in the field.
After Pickett’s Charge collapsed, Lee pulled his forces back and waited for a Union counterattack that never came. Meade chose not to pursue the retreating Confederate army. President Lincoln was openly disappointed by that decision, believing Meade had missed a chance to destroy Lee’s army entirely. Lee withdrew what remained of his forces back toward Virginia.
Not everyone who fought at Gettysburg was a soldier. John L. Burns, a 69-year-old civilian and veteran of the War of 1812, picked up his musket on the first day of fighting and joined Union troops on the front line. He was wounded three times and survived. His story made national news, and he became one of the most recognized figures associated with the battle.
The photographs taken immediately after the battle show a landscape stripped raw by combat. Trees in the surrounding woods were shattered by shellfire. Fields were strewn with the dead. Sharpshooters who had taken position among the rocks were found where they had been killed, sometimes days after the battle ended.
Confederate forces burned a bridge at nearby Hanover Junction before the battle began, a move intended to slow Union logistics and communication. The destruction of infrastructure around Gettysburg added to the disorder that both sides experienced in the opening hours of the engagement.
On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg for the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, where Union dead had been reinterred. He delivered a short address — just over two minutes long — that would become one of the most quoted speeches in American history. Lincoln stood among thousands of attendees on the dedication grounds, a moment captured in at least one surviving photograph.
The process of recovering and reburying the dead continued long after the ceremony. In 1864, Union soldiers who had died in nearby Hanover, Pennsylvania were exhumed and relocated to the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg. The work of accounting for and honoring the dead stretched across months and years.
Some of the men who fought at Gettysburg were photographed years and even decades later. Private George W. Warner, wounded on July 3, 1863, was photographed again in 1868, five years after the battle. Union color bearer Alex Rogers of the 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry was photographed holding his battle-shredded flag after surviving Gettysburg — he was killed less than a year later at the Battle of the Wilderness on May 5, 1864.
Brigadier General John Buford played a critical role on the battle’s first day. His Union cavalry held Confederate forces in place long enough for infantry reinforcements to arrive and occupy the high ground. Buford was promoted to Major General on his deathbed later that same year, in 1863.
Fifty years after the guns went silent, veterans from both sides returned to Gettysburg for a reunion in July 1913. Old men who had once fired at each other across open fields shook hands on the same ground. The 50th anniversary gathering brought together Union and Confederate survivors — a visible reminder of just how long the war’s survivors had carried the memory of those three days in Pennsylvania.
Did the Confederates carry more ammunition? The Union brigades in the Wheatfield were forced to withdraw within 20-30 minutes because they were out of ammunition. Typically, soldiers were sent out with 60 rounds, and a good soldier could fire three rounds in a minute. However, Anderson/Luffman and Kershaw’s brigades remained viable fighting units long after the 1st and 2nd union units that engaged them had vanished.
How did the Union win the battle of Gettysburg?
According to my understanding, they won the tactical battle through positioning and maneuvering. Does that sound right? During the tactical engagement, did the confederates fail or come close to victory at any point?
You should read “Killer Angels” by Micheal Shaara. By the time you’re done reading this book, you’ll know a lot about Gettysburg. Despite the fact that the Civil War continued for another two years, Gettysburg is generally considered the turning point in the war. For the Confederates, Pickett’s Charge was particularly devastating.
The sheer number of casualties is why we remember it so much, but I have never quite understood its significance. Could a Confederate victory have changed much in the grand scheme of things at Gettysburg? Why is Gettysburg so much more remembered than Shiloh and Antietam if there was nothing at stake?
In my opinion, Gettysburg is more important for what didn’t happen-a smashing Confederate victory on Northern soil-than for what did. Although Lee’s army was badly wounded at Gettysburg, it did not die; indeed, the campaign was a partial Confederate success. He pillaged the Cumberland Valley of Pennsylvania, cleared the Union forces from the Shenandoah, and inflicted such heavy casualties on the main Union army that he transferred two divisions and his best lieutenant to the West and won the Army of Tennessee’s only victory. A full ten months after the battle of Gettysburg, the U.S. did not launch an offensive in the East until Lee’s army had recovered well. As a result, the war did not progress much toward its conclusion. These are some of the reasons I think Gettysburg is remembered so fondly. Lee retreated from Gettysburg on July 4th, the same day Vicksburg surrendered, so the two titanic clashes magnified each other again, magnified again by the auspicious date. “God is on our side,” says Gary Gallagher, after hearing of two great victories on Independence Day. The Spring 61 and Spring 62 campaigns are behind Gettysburg, and the Spring 64 and Spring 65 campaigns are ahead. As the first year when the Union closed with a victory in the east, it appears as if the battle turned a trend around. The battle would not be called ‘the turning point of the Civil War’ if it were as important as people think; it would be the end of the war, as Ed Ayers points out. What didn’t happen was that the US Army of the Potomac was not destroyed in the field; it had already peaks at Gettysburg when losses undermined its performance. The Confederacy could not be defeated until Lee’s army was, and that would not be possible without the Army of the Potomac on the offensive. That year, Pennsylvania and Ohio, two of the most important Union states, voted for Republican governors. It could have strengthened the Democratic faction that considered the war a failure had Harrisburg fallen to the Confederates or the Union army been beaten in the field. Considering that state governors provided volunteers for the war, this could have undermined the U.S.’s ability to fight it. During the New York Draft Riots in 1863, two incendiary measures became law – the Emancipation Proclamation and the first U.S. conscription act; both of those issues came together to cause the New York Draft Riots; they began as an anti-conscription riot, but soon started lynching black people in large numbers in protest of a war to emancipate them, and troops from Gettysburg had to be brought in to pacify the city. During Lincoln’s Gettysburg address (which divided opinion at the time along party lines), he explains why the war is important for future generations. My professor once told me that the Gettysburg Address is often memorized, but rarely read. To understand what the speech is saying, you need the context. Even with all its faults, the United States was one of the world’s only functioning republics during the mid-19th century. A second Bonaparte took the throne after the second Republic collapsed. In 1848, liberal revolutions across Europe were crushed; democracy in Latin American republics was more noticeable. Half the country is trying to split away over an election they lost fair and square in the first modern democratic republic. This will prove to all the elites and autocrats that the masses cannot be trusted to govern themselves if the U.S. lets that happen. That’s what Lincoln means when he says, This nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, is now engaged in a great civil war that tests the endurance of that nation. Historically, Gettysburg has been seen as a trial by fire for the republic handed down by the Founding Fathers because of how the war unfolded after the battle.
Why did Gettysburg overshadow Vicksburg, which was fought almost simultaneously?
Both events turned the tide of the war in the Union’s favor in the Eastern and Western theaters. A three-day pitched battle at Gettysburg, however, ended with Lee’s frontal assault on the Union center (Pickett’s charge), which ended with the Union defeating the largest invasion of the North. Until he made the frontal assault, Lee could have won the battle, and if the Confederacy had won, the war would have been dramatically different. Because Vicksburg ended with a whimper instead of a bang, it was less emphasized. Vicksburg surrendered after its defenders literally starved to death and died from disease after the bisection of the Confederacy and control of the Mississipi river was a huge strategic victory. By that point, Grant had already been fighting in the area for months, so the news was not as dramatic, since Vicksburg had already fallen by then. From the North’s perspective, Vicksburg was far away, being deep in the South. Gettysburg, on the other hand, was in Pennsylvannia and much closer to the “home front” for the North. Additionally, Lee had never been decisively defeated in a major battle up until this point. Although he was turned back at Antietam last fall, the battle was considered indecisive or a draw. Union confidence was restored at Gettysburg, and the myth of Lee’s invincibility was shattered.
Aside from being the largest battle in terms of casualties, the Battle of Gettsyburg ended the Confederate invasion of Northern States. If there are any historians in this thread, did the popularity after the war of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address affect the way we view the Battle of Gettysburg? Does that contribute in any significant way to our reverence for that battle?
Gettysburg was not only the most costly battle in American history, but also the most deadly.
Does it have to do with the fact that both sides are counted?
Okinawa and the Bulge suffered heavier casualties, and Normandy, depending on whether you count it as one battle or multiple battles, suffered more than double the casualties.
Lincoln and the Capitol had to be evacuated or surrendered if Lee managed to march on the Capitol, making Gettysburg a do-or-die battle. Especially if they are capitol cities, important cities are always a major strategic threat.
During the Civil War and after, the Army of Northern Virginia has dominated history, Confederate military policy, and popular memory when it comes to the Army of Northern Virginia. A particular criticism of Shelby Foote was his harsh comments about Lee (stating he was marching the wrong way in 1863) as well as the later historians who tended to focus too heavily on the eastern theater. With the exception of Shiloh, western battles are often largely forgotten. My argument is that Vicksburg played a far greater role in ending the war than Gettysburg. Lee was soundly defeated at Gettysburg, but the overall strategic situation didn’t change much. Meade failed to collapse on Lee following the battle, and Lee’s fall was largely the result of maneuvers between the two generals. The opening of the Mississippi as a federal highway and the splitting of the Confederacy were the direct results of Vicksburg, which witnessed far more Confederate casualties. I believe the western theater doesn’t fit into the mythos of the lost cause or the notion that the CSA wasn’t won until mid-1863. Popular memory and history have traditionally favored Confederate history, especially in the early to mid-20th century, and the western theater was at odds with it.
Those who take a harsh view of Grant definitely seem to focus too narrowly on his Virginia campaigns, his most brilliant victories were almost certainly in the west, although with the exception of Albert Sidney Johnson, against weaker commanders than in the Virginia theater.
Vicksburg was a big deal because the Union gained control of the Mississippi, but New Orleans had already been captured, so Vicksburg wasn’t as significant as it could have been. Lee’s offensive into the North ended at Gettysburg. As most of the war was fought in the South, the Union was less affected on the homefront, keeping the war popular enough for Lincoln to win reelection. After Gettysburg, the South could have moved on to the major cities of the northeast and caused some serious problems for the Union.