Originally aired on June 30, 1995 - In part 44 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson discusses one of two battles of July 1863 that turned the tide of the War and marked the Confederacy for defeat: the Battle of Gettysburg.
#44 – Gettysburg
In the first week of July, 1863, the Union won two victories that clearly turned the tide of the Civil War and doomed the Confederacy to defeat. Today we look at one of those campaigns. It took place at a small southern Pennsylvania town called Gettysburg.
Robert E. Lee had led his army northward in late June. This second invasion by the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia was one of desperation. The resources of the South were becoming thin; a hard blow on Union soil – one that might convince the North to sue for peace – seemed the logical move to Lee, who was fresh from his spectacular victory in May at Chancellorsville.
Lee’s army that third spring of the war numbered about 75,000 men. Yet that large figure was deceiving. Most of those soldiers were ill-equipped and underfed; fully half of them were barefooted. In addition, the command levels were shaky: 2 of 3 corps commanders were new to the job. So were 4 of 12 division leaders and a third of the brigadier generals. Worse, Lee by then had developed a dangerous frame of mind. He was convinced that his army was invincible – that able led, it could not be beaten. So the Southern force struck through Maryland into Pennsylvania.
The Union army gave pursuit, but under a new commander. On June 28, Abraham Lincoln named General George G. Meade to head the North’s largest force. Meade looked like a clergyman or a college professor: tall, thin, slightly stooped, with the eyes of a Basset hound. He possessed an awful temper, over which he had no control. But Meade was a wholly admirable man, void of undermining ambition. With 90,000 soldiers behind him, he moved into Pennsylvania to confront Lee.
By accident, the two forces on July 1 collided at Gettysburg. Its 2,000 citizens fled for cover as close to 170,000 soldiers engaged in three days of intense combat. Chambersburg Pike, McPherson’s Ridge, Seminary Ridge, Iverson’s Pit – all were sites associated with the first day’s fight. On July 2, other names became bathed in blood: Little Round Top, Culp’s Hill, Cemetery Ridge, Devil’s Den, the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard.
None of Lee’s chief lieutenants served him well at Gettysburg. Perhaps it was not the presence of those officers as much as it was the absence of the dead “Stonewall” Jackson that was the issue. Lee himself was physically ailing throughout the battle, nursing both a heart condition and the debilitation of chronic diarrhea. Across the way, George Meade and his men were fighting desperately to stand fast in the face of one Confederate attack after another.
The climax of Gettysburg came on Friday afternoon, July 3, when Lee ordered the Virginia division of George E. Pickett and the North Carolina division of Johnston Pettigrew to attack the center of the Union line. The ensuing Pickett-Pettigrew Charge was a disaster. Of 12,000 confederates who took part, more than 7,000 were killed, wounded, or captured. Every Southern unit in that assault suffered at least 50% casualties. All 13 of Pickett’s colonels were killed or wounded.
Total losses in the battle of Gettysburg were 49,000 men. A full one-third of Lee’s army had ceased to exist. The general led his survivors southward in defeat. Among other things, the setback at Gettysburg forever knocked the offensive power from the Confederate army. A defensive war would be its lot thereafter.
For the Union army, it had won its first smashing success. The ranks were thinner, but the Billy Yanks were wiser than they had been before. They understood that while a great thing had been done, they had done it themselves. At Gettysburg they had fought with the highest pitch of inspiration – an inspiration that had come from within themselves.
After Gettysburg, both armies began a long, slow but inexorable journey to another little town. It was called Appomattox.