General Armistead's Death at the Spangler Farm | History Traveler Episode 145

[Music] when looking at the battle of gettysburg really what interests me just as much as the the military stories are the stories of the people who lived in gettysburg and lived in the general vicinity during the time of the battle these people's lives were completely turned upside down and it's nothing that they ask for i mean it came to them so if you figure over the course of three days between the union and the confederates there were over thirty thousand wounded soldiers thirty thousand this is in a town of twenty four hundred people so essentially every church barn home tons of private property was essentially turned into field hospitals including this place where i am today this is the spangler farm and it is the site where one of the most well-known generals of the battle of gettysburg breathed his last breath [Music] all right so we are heading up here to the spangler farm and i'm always trying to surround myself with people who are smarter than me and the the professional here at the spangler farm is paul simonic paul simonic is with the gettysburg foundation and knows a lot about this place so he's going to kind of walk us through some of the more important aspects of spangler farm this is a farm that was purchased by the spanglers in 1848 at the time they purchased it they had three children their fourth and youngest son bonai was born here after they had purchased a farm it was a lot different than when they bought it uh there was a log barn a log house and over the years they made you know steady improvements uh the original size of the farm was 80 acres uh you can see this beautiful big red pennsylvania bank barn that was built professionally in 1850 1851 the house was built soon thereafter and again the spanglers especially mr spangler was a was a unique combination not only was he a really good farmer but he was a good businessman also to give an example in 1850 according to the census the farm was valued at 2500 by 1860 the value had doubled to five thousand dollars at the time of the battle the 80 acre farm had grown to 166 acres so again mr spangler now ring was a good farmer but he was a great businessman also and this is the site of the union 11th corps field hospital and for about five weeks from july 1st to about august 5th 1900 boys soldiers were treated here both both union and confederate and it's quite a story it really is [Music] so i want to start off talking about the spangler house so this is where george and his wife and his four kids uh would have lived at the time of the battle now at the time the house was a little bit smaller it only went out to right about like here so the the right portion would have been the the original home and then it was added on to later spangler at the time of the battle refused to leave so the union army told him that him and his wife and his four kids which ran from ages 14 to 21 could stay in one room upstairs the rest of it was a field hospital all right i'm gonna head on up here to the barn uh one quick note the the gettysburg foundation acquired this property in 2008 and paul was telling me that whenever they got it like it was in a bad shape like we we almost lost this place and then they did the work to uh get it restored and as a matter of fact they've taken the the original house and have converted it into kind of like a leadership center where different groups can come out and learn some of the the lessons of leadership from the battle of gettysburg so yeah i love it whenever groups do things like that to to preserve restore and also promote lessons in leadership all right we're going to take a look at the barn now [Music] all right so what we're looking at here is the the iconic uh spangler barn and it's on this property and and through this barn that approximately 1900 wounded civil war soldiers would have passed through during the battle of gettysburg and in the days after and again this is all just approximation but approximately 1700 were union and 200 confederate and if we walk up here this uh this overhang is is called a forebay and this is where the surgeons would have been performing amputations they would want to be outside one because of lighting the lighting is much better outside and also with using ether and chloroform to sedate the patients well you don't want to be inside because well you might knock out the wrong people so yeah this this would have been a a grisly scene during the the days of the battle [Music] so this area right here on the left-hand side of the barn at least the way i was facing it is the the wagon shed this is where the confederate soldiers would have been treated and the the reason that they would have been treated here is it's open on two sides and uh you could post guards on on either side it didn't matter if you were union or confederate people got the same treatment really it was more in order of rank than anything else that you were treated [Music] one other quick side note that i want to mention while i'm here in the wagon shed what we're looking at here is not a set of mailboxes uh this is a place where you would keep nails and tools and supplies and everything like that now here's something that that i found exceptionally interesting let's say your wagon needs some work and i don't know maybe you need to to change out the wheels well you don't have a hydraulic jack so what they did is they rigged up let me see if i can find it here they rigged up a pulley system and the rope would go down to right here you would put poles in those holes and then using ropes that were underneath the wagon well get it up into a position where you could do some work on it very interesting now here you might notice a big yellow flag outside the barn during the civil war both sides used flags to designate hospital locations for the union most of the time it was yellow sometimes it was red uh so so both sides if you saw a yellow or red flag you would know that uh that is a treatment center or a hospital of some sort all right um coming around now to the the back side of the barn now whenever ambulances or ambulance wagons whatever you want to call them we're bringing the wounded well this is the first stop right here this is the the threshing floor of the spangler barn so this would be like where uh they would thresh out wheat and different things like that but this would be the first stop for a wounded soldier at uh at this hospital so right here you'll have to use your imagination along with me and picture as many as 500 wounded bleeding groaning soldiers all laid out shoulder to shoulder head to toe on this floor awaiting treatment absolutely unbelievable and here they have a an old replica of what a civil war ambulance might have looked like so this would have been pulled by two horses uh it could have also been used to you know haul ammunition um but the main purpose was to haul wounded men all right so anyway after awaiting uh treatment here once they made space down below uh well soldiers would get moved down to the lower level real quick before we go down they have a couple of maps here that kind of give you a lay of the land and a sense of space for where we are so here is the town of gettysburg and we are right there where that red dot is at and then if you look at the battle on july 2nd again here's the town of gettysburg here's that famous uh fish hook formation and you can see right there where that kind of orangish red dot is uh is again where where the field hospital is at and on day three whenever there was that famous artillery barrage from the confederates uh preceding pickett's charge there there were overshots that landed right here around the spangler farm there's accounts of soldiers talking about you know lying in the barn and and watching the uh the artillery explode uh here on the farm now look at this here is some of the great work that the gettysburg foundation is doing this is what the spangler barn looked like before they got possession of the property and of course this is what it looks like now here was the old smoke house and then here's a a restoration or rather a reproduction and then here is the summer kitchen which will hit later and then this is what the summer kitchen looks like now but simply amazing work that they have done to to save this historic place and uh all of the floor up here on this level is original to the barn all right we're gonna go ahead and go downstairs now [Laughter] [Music] okay coming down into the lower level now and this would have been the next stop for a wounded soldier after his uh initial stop on the upper level and man i do want to point out just the engineering and craftsmanship in this barn it really is impressive so for example right here we're looking at a a root cellar so this is something that would have stayed around 50 degrees year round but man i i love the the stone work and everything in this place but anyway this this would have been a stop right before surgery [Music] okay jd as i said we're in a stable now and this is where the triage patients waited for the surgeons to get to them contrary to a lot of myths uh civil war medicine was better than we've been led to believe there was a triage system that was put in place by dr jonathan letterman who was the chief surgeon for the 11th corps of the union army so again this is where the patients waited when the surgeons were able to get to them they did whatever procedure was necessary and let's be honest the most common procedure was amputation if somebody was wounded in the main body part or maybe even in the head to be honest their chances of survival were not that good but again i always like to point out to people the surgeons did the very best they could with what they had and what they knew so here they're showing what a civil war operating table might have looked like and of course it's just a barn door on a couple of saw horses and then they also have a couple of lanterns because there would have been surgeries going on 24 hours a day if possible you figure 1900 men coming through here there's not going to be a lot of time for these surgeons to rest hard to imagine what what those guys went through and then after they would be treated here well then it would be outside to the surgeons [Music] okay now whenever i was on the upper level i mentioned that that there could have been 500 soldiers all lined up along the floor awaiting treatment so we're down below that floor now think about this you have 500 soldiers up above you all of them are wounded in some way all of them are bleeding so whenever you came down to this level well there would be blood dripping from the floor and onto the patients below i mean this was just a ghastly scene here in this barn [Music] all right so that was a little bit of the hospital there at the barn and uh on july the 4th there was a heavy rain that came through and and basically turned this into a muddy swamp and then in in the weeks and days following uh they ended up getting medical supplies up here and tents so you can imagine in this field behind me this would have been like a small tent city filled with the the wounded who were recovering and you know awaiting transfer out of this area now what i haven't mentioned yet is that there is a very well-known confederate general who came to the spangler farm if you've watched the movie gettysburg you know the story of lou armistead who was a brigade commander under general george pickett was wounded on the third day of the battle during pickett's charge and he was treated right here in the summer kitchen and this is where lou armistead breathed his last breath [Music] all right well right here in this very room is where confederate general lou armistead had his final moments and whenever he died it it really shocked everyone because everyone thought that he was gonna live uh with the the wounds that he had uh he was 44 years old he had had i guess kind of a a rough time in life i think he had lost two wives if i'm not mistaken but yeah right here in this very room was uh was the last place that lou armstead was before he moved on to the next life so the area that i'm walking out into right now during the 1860s would have been an orchard for the spangler family and this is the location where 190 union soldiers and 20 confederates were buried so this became a burial ground for the men who died on this place you might ask why would you bury soldiers in the orchard why not take them out in the field well you don't plow an orchard and the graves were fairly shallow so those three days in july in 1863 completely changed the life of this family as did as it did for many families here around gettysburg i'm so thankful for the gettysburg foundation and uh people like the the robert kinsley family who the leadership center is named after uh for for doing the work of preserving and restoring history so that people like me can come out and uh learn a little bit more about our past thoroughly enjoyed myself today and uh and learned a lot if you're ever in gettysburg definitely come to to the spangler farm because it's going to give you a a greater appreciation and a more full view of the battle of gettysburg but for now we're heading off to the next place [Music] you

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 294,150

Keywords: history, history traveler, history underground, gettysburg, battle of gettysburg, gettysburg movie, gettyburg documentary, george meade, general meade, leadership, civil war, civil war documentary, pickett's charge, longstreet's assault, confederates gettysburg, pickett's charge gettysburg, pickett's charge documentary, spangler farm, civil war hospital, haunted gettysburg, general armistead, lew armistead, lewis armistead

Id: 6s5oGhrUCA8

Length: 20min 19sec (1219 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 07 2021