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Battle of Gettysburg

For other uses, see Battle of Gettysburg (disambiguation).

Battle of Gettysburg
Part of the Eastern theater of the American Civil War

The Battle of Gettysburg by Thure de Thulstrup
DateJuly 1–3, 1863
Location
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.
39°48′41″N 77°13′33″W / 39.81139°N 77.22583°W / 39.81139; -77.22583
Result Union victory[1]
Belligerents
United States United States (Union) Confederate States of America Confederate States
Commanders and leaders
George Meade Robert E. Lee
Units involved
Army of the Potomac[2] Army of Northern Virginia[3]
Strength
93,500–104,256[4][5]
360 artillery pieces
36 cavalry regiments		 65,000–75,000,[6] possibly as many as 80,000[7]
270 artillery pieces
9,500 cavalry
Casualties and losses
23,049[8][9]
fewer than 40 flags		 Reported losses: 20,451 (killed: 2,592 wounded: 12,709 missing/captured: 5,150)
Estimates: 23,000–28,000[10][11]
31-55 battle flags
This 1863 oval-shaped map depicts the Gettysburg Battlefield during July 1–3, 1863, showing troop and artillery positions and movements, relief hachures, drainage, roads, railroads, and houses with the names of residents at the time of the Battle of Gettysburg.
This November 1862 Harper's Magazine illustration shows Confederate Army troops escorting captured African American civilians south into slavery. En route to Gettysburg, the Army of Northern Virginia kidnapped between 40 and nearly 60 Black civilians and sent them south into slavery.[12][13]

The Battle of Gettysburg (locally /ˈɡɛtɪsbɜːrɡ/ ⓘ)[14] was a three-day battle in the American Civil War fought between Union and Confederate forces between July 1 and July 3, 1863, in and around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battle, which was won by the Union, is widely considered the Civil War's turning point, ending the Confederacy's aspirations to establish an independent nation. It was the Civil War's bloodiest battle, claiming over 50,000 combined casualties over three days.[15]

In the Battle of Gettysburg, Union Major General George Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, halting Lee's invasion of the north and forcing his retreat.[fn 1][16]

After his success at Chancellorsville in Virginia in May 1863, Lee led his army through the Shenandoah Valley to begin his second invasion of the north, known as the Gettysburg Campaign. With his army in high spirits, Lee intended to shift the focus of the summer campaign from war-ravaged Northern Virginia and hoped to influence northern politicians to give up their prosecution of the war by penetrating as far as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, or even Philadelphia. Prodded by President Abraham Lincoln, Major General Joseph Hooker moved his army in pursuit, but was relieved of command just three days before the battle and replaced by Meade.

Elements of the two armies initially collided at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, as Lee urgently concentrated his forces there, his objective being to engage the Union army and destroy it. Low ridges to the northwest of town were defended initially by a Union cavalry division under Brigadier General John Buford, and soon reinforced with two corps of Union infantry. However, two large Confederate corps assaulted them from the northwest and north, collapsing the hastily developed Union lines, sending the defenders retreating through the streets of the town to the hills just to the south.[17] On the second day of battle, most of both armies had assembled. The Union line was laid out in a defensive formation resembling a fishhook. In the late afternoon of July 2, Lee launched a heavy assault on the Union left flank, and fierce fighting raged at Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, Devil's Den, and the Peach Orchard. On the Union right, Confederate demonstrations escalated into full-scale assaults on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill. All across the battlefield, despite significant losses, the Union defenders held their lines.

On the third day of battle, fighting resumed on Culp's Hill, and cavalry battles raged to the east and south, but the main event was a dramatic infantry assault by around 12,000 Confederates against the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, known as Pickett's Charge. The charge was repelled by Union rifle and artillery fire, at great loss to the Confederate army. Setting out on the Fourth of July, Lee led his army on the torturous retreat from the north. Between 46,000 and 51,000 soldiers from both armies were casualties in the three-day battle, the most costly in US history.

On November 19, President Lincoln used the dedication ceremony for the Gettysburg National Cemetery to honor the fallen Union soldiers and redefine the purpose of the war in his historic Gettysburg Address.

  1. ^ Coddington, p. 573. See the discussion regarding historians' judgment on whether Gettysburg should be considered a decisive victory.
  2. ^ Official Records, Series I, Volume XXVII, Part 1, pages 155–168 Archived July 24, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ Official Records, Series I, Volume XXVII, Part 2, pages 283–291 Archived July 24, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ Official Records, Series I, Volume XXVII, Part 1, page 151 Archived July 24, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ Coddington, p. 673, references the official number of the Union Army forces but says the number could have been in the "neighborhood" of 115,000. Busey and Martin, p. 125: "Engaged strength" at the battle was 93,921. Eicher, p. 503, gives a similar number of 93,500. Sears, p. 539 quotes the official number of just over 104,000 but with reinforcements of another 8,000 men about to arrive.
  6. ^ "Gettysburg Staff Ride" (PDF). army.mil. Retrieved 28 March 2024.
  7. ^ Busey and Martin, p. 260, state that Confederate "engaged strength" at the battle was 71,699; McPherson, p. 648, lists the Confederate strength at the start of the campaign as 75,000, while Eicher, p. 503 gives a lower number of 70,200. Noting that Confederate returns often did not include officers, Coddington, p. 676 states that estimated Confederate strength of 75,000 is "a conservative one". Confederate Captain John Esten Cooke in A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee, New York: D. Appleton, 1871, p. 328, gives the number of the entire Confederate force "at about eighty thousand". Sears, p. 149 states that eyewitnesses observed the Confederate force to be about 100,000 but, although Meade used this in making his battle plans, it was an overcount of about 20 percent.
  8. ^ Official Records, Series I, Volume XXVII, Part 1, page 187 Archived July 24, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ Busey and Martin, p. 125.
  10. ^ Busey and Martin, p. 260, cite 23,231 total (4,708 killed;12,693 wounded;5,830 captured/missing).
    See the section on casualties for a discussion of alternative Confederate casualty estimates, which have been cited as high as 28,000.
  11. ^ Official Records, Series I, Volume XXVII, Part 2, pages 338–346 Archived July 24, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
  12. ^ Wynstra, p. 81
  13. ^ Symonds, pp. 53, 57
  14. ^ Robert D. Quigley, Civil War Spoken Here: A Dictionary of Mispronounced People, Places and Things of the 1860s (Collingswood, NJ: C. W. Historicals, 1993), p. 68. ISBN 0-9637745-0-6.
  15. ^ "Gettysburg" at Battlefields
  16. ^ Rawley, p. 147; Sauers, p. 827; Gallagher, Lee and His Army, p. 83; McPherson, p. 665; Eicher, p. 550. Gallagher and McPherson cite the combination of Gettysburg and Vicksburg as the turning point. Eicher uses the arguably related expression, "High-water mark of the Confederacy".
  17. ^ Eicher, David J. (2001), The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War, New York: Simon & Schuster, pp. 515–517, ISBN 978-0-684-84944-7


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