GETTYSBURG

May 1 - 4, 1863 - The Union Army of the Potomac under General "Fighting Joe" Hooker is defeated by Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle of Chancellorsville west of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Confederate General Stonewall Jackson is mortally wounded by his own soldiers during a night reconnaisance. Each side lost more than 10,000. Hooker withdrew to his line north of the Rappahannock. June 3 - Lee, with 75,000 Confederates, slips away from the Union Army and heads northwest, launching his second invasion of the North.

June 16 - Lee's advance units enter Maryland.

June 23 - Confederate cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart begins his second 'ride around the enemy'. He will be out of touch with Lee until the second day of Gettysburg. Lee is effectively 'blind' during the week leading to the battle.

June 24 - The Army of Northern Virginia has crossed the Potomic west of Harpers Ferry and strikes northeast through Maryland into Pennsylvania.

June 27 - 1 P.M. - Hooker send a telegram to Washington resigning command of the Army of the Potomac. At 3 A.M. the 28th a courier arrives -- General George G. Meade is appointed as commander.

June 29 - Major cities in the North such as Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Baltimore and even New York are in an uproar over the threat of attack from General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The Union Army of the Potomac is marching to intercept Lee who learns of the move from the scout Harrison. Lee orders the army to consolidate on Cashtown, eight miles to the west of Gettysburg.

June 30 - A Confederate infantry brigade of A. P Hill's Corps headed toward Gettysburg, PA searching for a rumored supply of shoes. The Confederate commander spotted a long column of Federal cavalry heading toward the town and, mindful of his instructions not to bring on a battle until the entire army was at hand, withdrew his brigade. Two Union Cavalry brigades under General John Buford enter Gettysburg. Buford predicts, accurately, that "They will attack you in the morning and they will come booming -- skirmishers three deep. You will have to fight like the devil until supports arrive."

Wednesday, July 1 - 8 A.M. - Two divisions of Confederates headed back to Gettysburg. They run into Buford's Federal cavalry west of the town at Willoughby Run and the skirmish began. Events would quickly escalate. Lee rushed 25,000 men to the scene. The Union had less than 20,000. Reynold's Federal I Corps begins to arrive at 10 A.M., just in the nick of time. Directing his men into battle, Reynolds is killed by a rebel sniper.

July 1 - 2:30 P.M. - Lee arrives on the battlefield just in time to witness his converging units drive the Federals to the rear. The Federals were pushed back through Gettysburg and regrouped south of the town along the high ground near the cemetery. At 4:30 P.M. Lee ordered Confederate General R.S. Ewell to seize the high ground from the battle weary Federals but Ewell hesitated to attack. The Union troops have a chance to dig in along Cemetery Ridge and bring in more reinforcements and their artillery.

4:00 P.M. - Hancock arrives at the battlefield to assume command of I Corps. He orders the fortification of the line from Culp's Hill through Cemetery Ridge to Little Round Top. Little Round Top is not occupied in any strength however -- only some signal men are on the hill for most of the next day. There are too few Union soldiers on the battlefield and they are exausted from the first day's fighting -- but more are arriving every hour.

5:30 P.M. - Confederate General James Longstreet argues that Lee should move east between the Union Army and Washington and build a defensive position. Lee overrules him. "No," he said. "The enemy is there, and I'm going to attack him there.... They are there in position, and I am going to whip them or they are going to whip me. "

9:30 P.M - Meade orders all Union forces to converge on Gettysburg -- Seven corps in all, more than 80,000 troops.

Thursday, July 2 - 1 A.M. - Meade and his staff ride through the moonlit night the twelve miles to Gettysburg, arriving at 3 A.M. just as Lee, across the way, is rising from a three hour nap and having breakfast in the dark.

9 A. M. - Lee has worked out the overall plan for the attack that day. Gen. Longstreet was ordered by Lee to attack at the left of the Union line. Meanwhile Ewell was to threaten the other end of the line on Culp's Hill. But, when Lee returned to headquarters at 11 A.M. Longstreet had still not moved into position. Lee ordered him to move forward but Longstreet was too slow in getting his troops into position and didn't attack until 4 p.m. giving the Union Army even more time to strengthen its position.

3:00 P.M. - Union General Sickles advances his Corps a half a mile or more in front of the main line into the Peach Orchard and smack in the line of Longstreet's attack. Some of the most bitter fighting of the Civil War now erupted at places that are part of American military folklore -- the Peach Orchard, Devil's Den, the Wheat Field and Little Round Top. J.E.B. Stuart at long last reports to Lee. "General Stuart, where have you been?" Lee asked. "I have not heard a word from you in days, and you are the eyes and ears of my army."

4:00 P.M. - Just as Longstreet's attack finally gets underway an officer on Meade's staff inspects Little Round Top. Meade at last orders Union troops to the unoccupied hill. A brigade of Sykes Corps, including 20th Maine, arrive on the heights barely fifteen minutes before the Texans and Alabamians came howling up the slope. The fighting was especially heavy on the far left of the line where the 20th Maine, under a former minister and college professor Joshua Chamberlain, opposed the 15th Alabama. Under no less than five charges "the edge of the fight swayed back and forward like a wave." Losses were heavy on both sides, particularly among Federal officers. One recalled later that "The blood stood in puddles in some places on the rocks." Finally, exausted and nearly out of amunition, Chamberlain led his men in a bayonet attack that drove the Confederates from the hill.

7:00 P.M. - General Ewell attacked the Union line from the north and east at Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill. Since Meade had been shifting units to meet the threat on the left and center, Ewell's attack had a chance for success. Despite fierce fighting at close range, the final Confederate attack of that second day was repulsed as the battlefield slipped into the uneasy quiet of darkness. The Federals had lost some ground during the Rebel onslaughts but still held a strong defensive position along Cemetery Ridge.

10:30 P.M. - As the day's fighting came to an end Lee decided to gamble to win the Battle of Gettysburg and in effect win the Civil War. He would attack the next day at the center of the Union line along Cemetery Ridge where it would be least expected. Lee thought the battered Union soldiers were nearly beaten and would collapse under one final push. His plan for tomorrow completed, Lee finally retired for some sleep at midnight. At the same time Meade's council of war with his Corps commanders was breaking up. The Federals would fight it out where they stood.

Friday, July 3, about 3:45 A.M. - Lee's timetable was undermined as Union cannons pounded the Rebels holding a lodgement at the lower end of Culp's Hill to drive them from the trenches. The Rebels did not withdraw, but instead attacked the Federals around 8 A.M. Thus began a vicious three hour struggle with the Rebels charging time after time up the hill only to be beaten back. The Federals finally counter attacked and drove the Rebels off the hill and east across Rock Creek. Around 11 A.M. the fighting on Culp's Hill stopped.

Throughout the morning and early afternoon amid 90E° heat and stifling humidity the Rebels moved into position in the woods opposite Cemetery Ridge for the coming charge. Some Union troops were moved away from Cemetery Ridge on Meade's orders because he thought Lee would attack again in the south. At the conference the night before, Meade had correctly predicted Lee would attack the center, but now thought otherwise. He had left only 5,700 infantrymen stretched out along the half-mile front to initially face the 12,500 man Rebel charge centered on the fresh troops of General George Pickett's Virginians.

1:07 P.M. - 140 Confederate cannons -- the greatest concentration of artillery ever assembled for one purpose in North America -- opened fire on the Union position at the center of Cemetery Ridge. It was "indescribably grand. All the batteries were soon covered with smoke, through which the flames were incessant, whilst the air seemed filled with shells, whose sharp exlosions, with the hurtling of their fragments, formed a running accompaniment to the deep roar of the guns." On the recieving end, it was "the most infernal pandemonium it has ever been my fortune to look upon." Amid all this, Union General Hancock, his orderly displaying the Corps guidon, slowly rode the full length of the line under the hail of shells. His men cheered him lustily from behind whatever cover they had found.

Around 2:45 P.M. the Federal artillery slowed their return fire, then ceased, to conserve ammunition and to fool the Rebels into thinking the cannons were knocked out. The ruse worked.

3:00 P.M. - "Up,men, and to your posts! Don't forget today that you are from Old Virginia!" yelled Pickett as the Rebels formed an orderly line that stretched a mile from flank to flank. In deliberate silence and with military pageantry, they slowly headed toward the Union Army a mile away on Cemetery Ridge. Within minutes, the Federal artillery was back in action, tearing great gaps in the Confederate line. The Rebels advanced at about a hundred yards a minute and, as they got within closer range, Federal cannons switched to using grapeshot, a shell containing iron balls that flew apart when fired. The Federal Infantry ripped into the Rebels with deadly accurate rifle volleys killing many and wounding more. The fierce battle raged for an hour with much brutal hand to hand fighting, shooting at close range and stabbing with bayonets. For a brief moment, the Rebels nearly had their chosen objective, a small clump of oak trees atop Cemetery Ridge. Some of the attackers had made a small penetration there and just to the south, a Mississippi regiment managed to take it's colors to within arms reach of the Union line. A North Carolina sergeant and color-bearer actually stepped over the wall -- the only two of that entire regiment to make it that far. But Union reinforcements and regrouped Union infantry units swarmed in and opened fire on the Rebel ranks.

4:00 P.M. - The battered, outnumbered Rebels finally began to give way and this great human wave that had been Pickett's Charge began to recede, leaving 7,500 men lying on the field of battle. The Union troops chanted "Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg" in a taunt reminding the Confederates of the failed Federal charge at Fredericksburg, VA the previous winter. As the tattered survivors reached the Confederate line Lee rode out to meet them. He took all the blame for the failed attack and rallied and reassured them. "All this has been my fault. It is I who have lost this fight, and you must help me out the best way you can."

Saturday, July 4 - Confederate wounded were loaded aboard wagons to begin the journey back toward the South in a long slow withdrawal of the army back to Virginia. Union commander Meade, out of fatigue and caution, did not immediately pursue Lee.

July 10 - Meade pins Lee in his defensive works along the crossing point on the rain-swollen Potomac, but does not immediately attack him. By July 14, the Army of Northern Virginia is back across the river. Meade crossed on July 17 - 19.

August 4 - Both armies are back at the original starting point where the campaign had begun sixty days before.

November 19 - President Lincoln went to the battlefield to dedicate it as a military cemetery. Confederate causalities in dead, wounded and missing were 28,000 out of 75,000. Union casualties were 23,000 out of 88,000. It was the most costly battle ever fought in the United States. For the remainder of the war the South will not have the strength to mount another offensive into the North.

Home

Webmaster:  boballey@comcast.net