Gettysburg

My wife, Lynne, recently traveled to Washington D.C. to accept a national award from Head Start on behalf of Treehouse Children’s Museum and I was able to go with her. On one of our free days we decided to take a bus tour to Gettysburg National Military Park. As an amateur historian with an interest in the causes and effects of war, I was eager to go. On April 9, 2015 it will be 150 years since Lee surrendered to Grant to end the war. The battle of Gettysburg, oddly enough, had it roots in the battle of Chancellorsville, which occurred two months earlier. It was there that General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia inflicted a major defeat on the Union Army of the Potomac. Lee however, lost his best commander, General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson and almost a quarter of his army. Short on supplies, Lee decided on a bold move, invade the north and live off the rich countryside of Pennsylvania. He also hoped to destroy the Union Army and pressure the Northern government to consider a peace settlement. Swinging up north through Pennsylvania and behind the Blue Ridge Mountains, some of the troops eventually turned southeast looking for more supplies in the small crossroads town of Gettysburg. The Union cavalry got there first, it was July 1, 1863. Recognizing that the rolling fields and hills around the town offered excellent ground to fight on, the cavalry engaged the confederate columns northwest of Gettysburg. After a several hours-long fight they retreated to positions southeast of the town at Cemetery Hill. The cavalry had delayed the southern forces long enough to for the Union Army to begin to arrive with enough men to hold the positions there. Some 15,000 men had been killed, wounded or captured on the first day. (Below, union positions northwest of Gettysburg).

General Lee was unsure of what forces he faced and his second-in-command urged Lee to find a better place in which to engage the Union forces but Lee decided to stay. On the second day he began moving some of his forces south to get around the Union flanks where he found that the Union army was over-extended and attacked them at what was called the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield and Devils Den. The southern troops succeeded in driving the union forces back to positions along Cemetery Ridge. At the southern end of the Union line there was a small hill called Little Round Top, both sides recognized that from this position they could control the southern part of the battlefield. In a race to reach the top, the Union soldiers beat the Confederates by only a few minutes. The Union forces defended this hill from repeated attacks by Lee’s troops and the union held strong, this was to have a dire effect on the third day of battle for the Confederates. By the end of the second day of battle, some further 19,000 men had been killed, wounded, or captured. (A rough, pieced together overall view from Little Round Top. Spring has not started in Pennsylvania in these photos).