After the
victory at Chancellorsville
(May, 1863), General Robert E. Lee decided
on attempt a second invasion of the North. When Lee heard from his
scouts that Major General George Meade
was planning to make a stand at Pipe Creek in Maryland, he decided
to attack him before he reached his defensive positions.
The Confederate Army and the Union
Army reached Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on 2nd July. Richard
Ewell took Culp's Hill but was beaten off at Cemetery Hill. George
Meade counterattacked the next morning and retook Culp's Hill.
Robert E. Lee now ordered James Jeb
Stuart, Amrose Hill, George
Pickett and James Longstreet
with 15,000 men to attack the main Union forces. Winfield
S. Hancock drove them back and the Confederate
Army suffered heavy casualties.
By the 5th July, Robert E. Lee decided
to cross the Potomac and retreat south. George
Meade decided not to follow him. Both sides suffered heavy losses
with Confederate Army losing 28,063 men
and the Union Army 23,049.
A photograph
of dead members of the 24th Michigan
Infantry at Gettysburg by Timothy O'Sullivan
(July, 1863)
(1)
James Jeb Stuart
report on John
Singleton Mosby
during the Gettysburg Campaign (15th June, 1863)
Major Mosby, with his usual daring,
penetrated the enemy's lines and caught a staff-officer of General
Hooker - bearer of despatches to General Pleasanton, commanding United
States cavalry near Aldie. These despatches disclosed the fact that
Hooker was looking to Aldie with solicitude, and that Pleasanton,
with infantry and cavalry, occupied the place; and that a reconnaissance
in force of cavalry was meditated toward Warrenton and Culpeper. I
immediately despatched to General Hampton, who was coming by way of
Warrenton from the direction of Beverly Ford, this intelligence, and
directed him to meet this advance at Warrenton. The captured despatches
also gave the entire number of divisions, from which we could estimate
the approximate strength of the enemy's army. I therefore concluded
in no event to attack with cavalry alone the enemy at Aldie.
(2)
George E. Pickett, letter to his wife
after the Battle of Gettysburg (6th July, 1863)
The sacrifice of life on that bloodsoaked field on the fatal 3rd
was too awful for the heralding of victory, even for our victorious
foe, who, I think, believe as we do, that it decided the fate of our
cause. No words can picture the anguish of that roll call - the breathless
waits between the responses. The "Here" of those who, by
God's mercy, had miraculously escaped the awful rain of shot and shell
with a sob - a gasp - a knew - for the unanswered name of his comrade
called before his.
Even now I can hear them cheering as I gave the order, "Forward"!
I can feel their faith and trust in me and their love for our cause.
I can feel the thrill of their joyous voices as they called out all
along the line, "We'll follow you, Master George. We'll follow
you, we'll follow you." Oh, how faithfully they kept their word,
following me on, on to their death, and I, believing in the promised
support, led them on, on, on.
Oh, God! I can't write you a love letter today, my Sallie, for, with
my great love for you and my gratitude to God for sparing my life
to devote to you, comes the overpowering thought of those whose lives
were sacrificed - of the brokenhearted widows and mothers and orphans.
The moans of my wounded boys, the sight of the dead, upturned faces
flood my soul with grief; and here am I, whom they trusted, whom they
followed, leaving them on the field of carnage.
(3)
Carl
Schurz served under General George
Meade at the battle of Gettysburg.
He wrote about the battle in his autobiography published in
1906.
To look after the wounded of my command,
I visited the places where the surgeons were at work. At Bull Run,
I had seen only a very small scale what I was now to behold. At Gettysburg
the wounded - many thousands of them - were carried to the farmsteads
behind our lines. The houses, the barns, the sheds, and the open barnyards
were crowded with moaning and wailing human beings, and still an unceasing
procession of stretchers and ambulances was coming in from all sides
to augment the number of the sufferers.
A heavy rain set in during the day - the usual rain after a battle
- and large numbers had to remain unprotected in the open, there being
no room left under roof. I saw long rows of men lying under the eaves
of the buildings, the water pouring down upon their bodies in streams.
Most of the operating tables were placed in the open where the light
was best, some of them partially protected against the rain by tarpaulins
or blankets stretched upon poles. There stood the surgeons, their
sleeves rolled up to the elbows, their bare arms as well as their
linen aprons smeared with blood, their knives not seldom held between
their teeth, while they were helping a patient on or off the table,
or had their hands otherwise occupied; around them pools of blood
and amputated arms or legs in heaps, sometimes more than man-high.
Antiseptic methods were still unknown at that time. As a wounded man
was lifted on the table, often shrieking with pain as the attendants
handled him, the surgeon quickly examined the wound and resolved upon
cutting off the injured limb. Some ether was administered and the
body put in position in a moment. The surgeon snatched his knife from
between his teeth, where it had been while his hands were busy, wiped
it rapidly once or twice across his blood-stained apron, and the cutting
began. The operation accomplished, the surgeon would look around with
a deep sigh, and then - "Next!"
(4)
Walt
Whitman was in Washington
when news was published about the battle at Gettysburg
(4th July, 1863)
As I went down the Avenue, saw a big flaring placard on the
bulletin board of a newspaper office, announcing "Glorious Victory
for the Union Army!" Meade had fought Lee at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,
yesterday and the day before, and repulsed him most signally, taken
3,000 prisoners.
I walked on to Armory Hospital - took along with me several bottles
of blackberry and cherry syrup, good and strong, but innocent. Went
through several of the wards, announced to the soldiers the news from
Meade, and gave them all a good drink of the syrups with ice water.
Meanwhile the Washington bells are ringing their sundown peals for
Fourth of July, and the usual fusillades of boys' pistols, crackers,
and guns.
(5)
General Oliver Howard
took part in the battle of Gettysburg. In his autobiography Howard
wrote about his feelings after the battle had finished.
It is sometimes said to me that writing and speaking upon
the events of war may have a deleterious influence upon youth. I can
conceive of two reasons of such a warning - one, that a soldier by
his enthusiasm may, even unconsciously, infuse into his writing and
speech the war spirit, and thus incite strong desires in younger minds
for similar excitements and deeds; and secondly, a soldier deeply
affected as he must have been in our great struggle for national existence,
may not take sufficient pains in his accounts of historic incidents
to allay any spirit of animosity or dissension what may still exist.
But with regard to the first, I think there is need of a faithful
portraiture of what we may call the after-battle, a panorama which
shows with fidelity the fields covered with dead men and horses; and
the wounded, numerous and helpless, stretched on the ground in masses,
each waiting his turn; the rough hospitals with hay and straw for
bedding, saturated with blood and wet with the rain; horses torn into
fragments; every species of property ruthlessly demolished or destroyed
- these, which we cannot well exaggerate, and such as these, cry out
against the horrors, the hateful ravages, and the countless because
of war. They show plainly to our children that war, with its embodied
woes and furies, must be avoided, except as the last appeal for existence,
or for the rights which are more valuable than life itself.
When I dwell on the scenes on July 4th and 5th at Gettysburg, the
pictures exhibiting Meade's men and Lee's though now shadowy from
time, are still full of terrible groupings and revolting lineaments.
There is a lively energy, an emulous activity, an exhilarating buoyancy
of spirit in all the preparations for an expected battle, and these
feelings are intensified into an increased ardor during the conflict;
but it is another thing to see our comrades there upon the ground
with their darkened faces and swollen forms; another thing to watch
the countenances of friends and companions but lately in the bloom
of health, now disfigured, torn, and writhing in death; and not less
affecting to a sensitive heart to behold the multitude of strangers
prone and weak, pierced with wounds, or showing broken limbs and every
sign of suppressed suffering, waiting for hours and hours for a relief
which is long coming - the relief of the surgeon's knife or of death.
As to the second reason, any feeling of personal resentment towards
the late Confederates I would not counsel or cherish. Our countrymen
- large numbers of them - combined and fought us hard for a cause.
They failed and we succeeded; so that, in an honest desire for reconcilement,
I would be the more careful, even in the use of terms, to convey no
hatred or reproach for the past. Such are my real convictions, and
certainly the intention in all my efforts is not to anger and separate,
but to pacify and unite.
(6)
Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
(19th November, 1863)
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this
continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in
a great civil war testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived
and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield
of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting
place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in
a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot
hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled
here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but
it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It
is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion,
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in
vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom
and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall
not perish from this earth.
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