Dead in a Tree at Gettysburg!!! | American Artifact Episode 84

[Music] when you think about the Battle of Gettysburg there are a few iconic spots that probably come to mind places like a little round top or the the wheat field or the peach orchard or Devil's Den or maybe the place that I'm walking through right now which was called the slaughter pin this was the site of of some of the most violent fighting that took place during the Battle of Gettysburg it's situated right between Devil's Den and big round top and today Eric has got one heck of a cool artifact that was sourced from this spot right back here during the Battle of Gettysburg [Music] foreign [Music] right now I have moved to the top of the rocks at Devil's Den and off in the distance you can see where the the right flank of the Confederate line would have set out from on the afternoon of July 2nd this would have been Hood's division in Long Street's first core hood is going to be wounded right off of the bat and you're going to have like benning's Georgians coming up through here and then off on the far right you would have laws Brigade of alabamians and as they are making their way towards the union Left Flank well all these terrain features here are going to kind of break up uh this assault and the far right flank is going to end up kind of diverting right up here over big round top and then here you can see little round top in the distance now again we have other videos that you know go over this this action more in depth so I'm not going to get two in the in the weeds here but right here in between Devil's Den and big round top well right through here this was the slaughter pin and it was named the slaughter pin for good reason anyway we're going to dodge over here and take a look at a few things with a big round top I moved over now to big round top and on July 2nd right through here you would have had like the the fourth Alabama moving through here and the 47th Alabama and on the far right flank of the Confederate line the the 15th Alabama under Colonel Oates uh so a lot of people you know associate you know this area with the fighting that takes place on little round top but there were bullets that were flying through here as well and after the battle there there were things left everywhere there were rifles there was of course unexploded Ordnance and uh one of Eric's ancestors found something pretty interesting right here on big round top I'm standing at the base of big round top in the distance is the slaughter pen and Devil's Den and I'm holding a civil war Enfield bayonet and this is really one of my favorite artifacts because it comes from my ancestors the peppers of Gettysburg and I grew up hearing a story from my grandfather about this bayonet this is one of the few artifacts that he kept in his den most of the items the the Doug items were kept in in the basement but this was in his den because it was special to him too he remembered the story and um the peppers of Gettysburg are known for the house in Ziegler's Grove but during the battle um as they actually lived in uh in Freedom Township which was near the South Cavalry field they were tenant farmers at that time and uh they fled like most people in Gettysburg and when they came back they they found some destruction in their Farm but in the months after the battle they tried to reconstruct their lives the best they could and one of the things that happened probably due to the fences being disturbed during the battle was one of the cows got out and um walked all the way down here now this seems kind of far for me for a for a cow but he was probably my great great grandfather looking for the Lost Cow was probably covering a lot of land I'm sure he got on a horse to try to find this this cow but he was in this this general area big round top and he heard some rustling in the leaves and so that tells me you know it's probably a good indication it was maybe in the fall or or the beginning of the winter with the leaves down and he walked over to where he heard the rustling in the in in the in the leaves and he found this bayonet sticking straight up and uh next to the bayonet he found a skeleton leg and he looked up into the trees and saw a skeleton up in the trees now the leg had fallen off the skeleton Russell deletes at that moment when he was riding up here on his horse looking for his lost cow so um he used this as a as a an indicator to find it again um I don't know if he attached a branch to it or something to as my grandfather said he used this to Mark the Spot too and so they could come back and find it so he brought some people from town and they buried the body and I'm I'm sure you know the bodies varied here somewhere I'm sure it never got recovered but um you know there's there's stories of Sharpshooters going up into trees and stuff like that there's a really neat Harper's Weekly um uh illustration of a of a civil war Sharpshooter up in a tree but what they would do sometimes is take their cartridge box sling and kind of fasten it around the the tree and they were able to fire from a tree um but very interesting story one of my all-time favorites um and this is the bayonet according to my grandfather who heard the story from his grandfather [Music] when I'm standing here on big round top which honestly this is the first time I've been up here but you have to wonder uh what was this guy doing in a tree uh well perhaps he had kind of stayed behind to provide covering fire for some of these other guys that were advancing this direction towards a little round top but uh whatever the case he ended up catching a bullet and died up in a tree right here on big round top we're going to dodge back to the museum now and take a look at a few other things [Music] we're back at the Gettysburg Museum of History and I wanted to show you the type of weapon that would go with the bayonet that we just talked about so this is a civil war Enfield rifle now they were used by both Union and Confederate soldiers we knew that the bayonet was from a Confederate because of the uniform that he had on and this is the Bandit this is an Enfield bayonet and I don't want to put that on the end of this rifle because of the oxidation on there I don't want to scratch it up but the the person who found the skeleton and the bayonet was Fred pepper right here in this photo he's my great great grandfather and this guy right here is Edward pepper he is my great grandfather this is his whole family so a really interesting story with peppers of Gettysburg grew up with this story and certainly one of my all-time favorites [Music] a couple other things to add about the infield if we look here we can get a little bit more detail you can see that this particular rifle was manufactured in 1863 the the infields were a British weapon and there were actually you know Eric mentioned that Union Soldiers use these as well uh during the Civil War the Union sent purchasing agents over to Britain to try and buy up a bunch of these to try and uh really decrease the supply and maybe outspend the Confederates now one way you can tell that are a good indicator of something of a rifle that was Confederate used is if you look right here you'll notice that the rear sight has been removed there was something about the the rear sight that Confederate soldiers just really didn't like so they would peel those things right off but yeah very interesting to uh to see one of these infield rifles and see what the uh the bayonet that was found on big round top would have been matched up with [Music]

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 669,727

Keywords: history, history traveler, civil war, civil war history, civil war artifacts, pawn stars, gettysburg museum of history, erik dorr, american artifact, civil war documentary, math, civil war math, confederacy, battle of gettysburg, gettysburg documentary, alabama

Id: kanbiGVpREo

Length: 10min 6sec (606 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2023