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November 11, 2006

Gettysburg

Gettysburg is an impressive battlefield. Despite the fact the battle took place west and south of a village of some 2,400 people that has only grown in the intervening 143 years, most of the battlefield belongs to the National Park Service and has been remarkably well-preserved. The Park Service is even clearing away trees to make the battlefield more true to how it looked on July 1-3, 1863, although that process has some ways to go. A few highlights:

This is the stone fence where Colonel Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine defended the Little Round Top. It's a bit different from the movie, unsurprisingly (only a few scenes of the film were shot on the battlefield); the slope is not nearly as steep as you might think, and the regiment took remarkably few casualties considering it withstood repeated assaults from the 15th Alabama before launching a bayonet charge against Colonel Oates' exhausted men, capturing some 400 prisoners and ending the threat to the Federal flank.

Here we look down from the top of Little Round Top into the Devil's Den. General Hood's division managed to take this position and assault the front of Little Round Top, but it was brutal fighting. The small creek running through the Devil's Den is known as Plum Run, but after the battle it was called Bloody Run, for its waters ran red with blood for days.

This is a view of the objective of Pickett's Charge, looking across the fields crossed by the men of Pickett's Division and Pettigrew and Trimble's brigades. On the right is a small copse of trees, surrounded by a fence today, and on the left is Ziegler's Woods. The area as a whole was where Pickett was to break the Federal lines and win the battle for the Army of Northern Virginia, and some of his men did succeed in breaking the lines, but there were no Confederate forces available to follow up the success, and Federal forces were quickly able to seal the gap. 15,000 men charged across this ground, and roughly 7,000 came back.

This is where the charge broke: the bloody angle. Confederate forces under Brigadier General Lewis Armistead got across this stone fence at great cost.

And this is where Brigadier General Armistead was mortally wounded by troops of the Union II Corps under Major General Winfield Hancock. Hancock was wounded in the charge, but remained on the battlefield until his troops turned back Pickett's Charge, at which time he was carried to the hospital. Hancock and Armistead had been best of friends prior to the war.

This is east of Gettysburg, where Major General Jeb Stuart's cavalry attempted to get around the Federals' right flank and strike them in the rear. Federal cavalry of the 2d Cavalry Division under Major General Gregg met them here and fought a long but inconclusive battle. This monument is to the 1st Maryland Cavalry. Note the inscription: "Maryland's Tribute to Her Loyal Sons." There are very few monuments to Confederate units at Gettysburg, whereas there is one to just about every Federal regiment. This is because the battlefield was controlled by veterans of the Army of the Potomac, and they had no interest in permitting their enemies to put up their own monuments. In more recent years, every Southern state was permitted to place a memorial to veterans from their states, and there are a very few regimental memorials for Southern troops, but that's all. Because Maryland had soldiers fighting on both sides, all Maryland memorials we saw noted that the memorial was to her loyal sons, AKA, those who fought for the Union.

Among the units engaged was the 1st Maine Cavalry, a unit near and dear to my heart as one of my ancestors fought with the Maine cavalry (although I've been unable to determine if it was the 1st Maine Cavalry).

This is a shot of the field and barn where the Federal and Confederate cavalry and horse artillery clashed. Much of the fighting centered around the barn in the picture; Federal cavalry fought around the barn's right, Confederates to the left.

This is the National Military Cemetary at Gettysburg at sundown. The small white markers are graves of unknown soldiers. The monument is to one of the regiments who fought at Gettysburg, as the markers extend even into the cemetary (which, of course, wasn't there prior to the battle).

And this is the Lincoln Address Memorial, which commemorates Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address. While Lincoln was not the featured speaker that day (that honor fell to Edward Everett), his speech remains one of the most stirring and memorable explanations of America known.

It was a great day, and I only regret not getting more chances to see the entire battlefield. While we went to just about every spot on the field, we didn't always get out to look around, and there is so much to see that even though I thought we'd seen everything, I can think of several places I hope to visit tomorrow before we leave.

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