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Gettysberg |  | | | Soldiers Monument at the National Cemetary |
Considered one of the World's best military site to have been preserved and recorded. Gettysberg, PA offers more monuments, statues and markers than there are grains of sand at the beach.
Backdrop Fed up with North Virginia being the ongoing battleground of the Civil War, Robert Lee decides to move his army up north and invade the Union state of Pennsylvania. Spread out in an arc from Chambersburg to Carlile, he is desirous of drawing the Union's Army of the Potomac out of Virginia. They do so positioning themselves in order to prevent the Confederates from marching on Washington, DC or Baltimore Maryland.
Prelude Despite having orders not to engage each other, on January 1st 1863 fighting breaks out while each side tries to jockey for position on the high ground in and around Gettysburg, a small community but of tactical importance because it has roads coming and going to all the adjoining towns. The fighting started north of town at a place called McPherson's Ridge, where Union General John Reynolds is killed early on by a nasty shrapnel canister device delivered from a cannon effectively turning it into a giant shotgun. Despite the confused start to it, by the end of day approximately 50,000 troops had arrived and engaged.
Day 2 Having been chased off the north side, the Union takes up positions on the south side of town while more troops from each side race onto the scene. Heavy fighting and both sides incurring losses around the Wheatfield, Devil's Den, the Peach Orchard and Culps Hill. The Union manages to hold esp. a rocky outcropping known as Little Round Top, with a bayonet charge which secures their flank. the bloody conflict back and forth sports approx 15,000 casualties and both sides fully commit, Confederates attacking, Union in generally more defense positions. By 10:30 pm it finally falls silent with final confederate and Union elements arriving. (Lee's stratagems for the day go awry due to faulty information and planning miscarriages while Meade predicts that Lee's next attack will be on his centre)
Day 3 Lee desires a victory and despite his general's reservations commits troops to take the Union held positions along Cemetery ridge in an action later called Pickets charge. (Stonewall Jackson, now dead no longer able to provide the detailed instructions that had made the Confederates what they were) This proved disastrous for the Confederacy as the Union General in charge, George Meade had his cannon lines not return fire against the Confederate's precursor and generally ineffective cannon fire then lays in wait and opens up with devastating effect on the advancing Confederate lines as they pass through 3/4 of a mile of open terrain.
On July 4th Lee's army begins to withdrawn from Gettysberg and Pennsylvania and retreats back to Virginia, breaking the myth of his invulnerability and no longer able to invade the northern states.
The bloodiest battle of any American engagement and trying to paraphrase it into a few short paragraphs shortchanges the one and many encounters that comprise what could be called the "Battles of Gettysburg". There is a National Military Park with visitor's center, cafe, and tickets for movies, an Eisenhower dedicated area also requiring purchase to access as well as a self guided road tour around the town and outskirts of Gettysburg featuring interpretive narration along the monument studded fields and roadways (many of them honoring the vast array of men who came down from New York). Quite a site, I recommend the self guided road tour.
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