Gettysburg Battle with Maps | History with Maps: American Civil War | Strategy | Pickett's Charge

the summer of 1863 is the third summer of the American Civil War and in the eastern theater it is not going very well for the United States the midpoint between the capital of the United States Washington DC and the capital of the Confederacy Richmond Virginia is Fredericksburg Virginia and Fredericksburg Virginia and its vicinity have been the site of several battles and each time the south is able to best the north after a crushing victory at Chancellorsville Virginia near Fredericksburg Virginia in 1863 robert e lee decides a daring plan he is going to invade the north he moves his army into the Shenandoah Valley and progresses up through Virginia through Maryland and into Pennsylvania General Meade of the United States Army then chases robert e lee north and the two armies will meet at gettysburg and it will be a climactic battle of the Civil War Gettysburg today just like in the 19th century is a small rural town in south-central Pennsylvania and the first day of the battle July 1st 1863 will happen northwest of towns we will zoom into that area Union cavalry under Buford will spot Confederate forces approaching down the Chambersburg pike here highlighted in white a coming from the northwest down the Chambersburg Pike is Henry Heath's Infantry Division the first element of AP Hill's Corps of the Confederate Army and they're gonna see Buford's cavalry on McPherson's Ridge and they're going to attack thinking that this is just cavalry by the time of the Civil War cavalry are not meant to fight pitched battles they are really Scouts and so Heath is pretty confident that he can dislodge Buford for McPherson's Ridge however Buford puts up a fight and he puts up a fight long enough for the first elements of the Union Army to start arriving from the south and this is general Reynolds Corps and now unfortunately general Reynolds has killed shortly after arriving on the battlefield and he is replaced by Doubleday however the Union Army is starting to arrive and they are taking positions on McPherson's Ridge now Oak Hill is going to become significant in the afternoon of the first day Yul's Corps is arriving from the north roads division of you'll score is going to occupy Oak Hill Howard is going to arrive with his Union Corps and shirts as division is there to attempt to bolster the Union right flank however it's not going to be enough to do some heavy fighting back and forth and Early's division is also going to arrive from the north and it's going to be too much for the north to hold back so you'll score is really going to strike hard in the afternoon and the the Union right is going to collapse seminary Ridge is going to fall and the Union soldiers are going to retreat through Gettysburg retreat south through town so zooming out the during the first day the south had attacked from the north and northwest and the Union Army the first elements of it had held off the Confederate attacks for several hours before in the late afternoon being pushed back through Gettysburg and to ground south and southeast of town from now on the battle is going to be concentrated to the south and southeast of the town of Gettysburg by the evening of the first day the major land marks of the rest of the battle are being occupied and fortified these are Culp's Hill Cemetery Hill the Lutheran seminary and the seminary Ridge that runs south of the seminary and it's important to know that Cemetery Hill is different than seminary Ridge they sort of sound similar and it's easy to get confused then North is going to be occupied on Cemetery Hill and Cemetery Ridge the South is going to be occupied on seminary Ridge [Music] so through the night and in the early morning the armies had arrived mostly the north held Culp's Hill Cemetery Hill and Cemetery Ridge the South held the town of Gettysburg seminary Ridge in Benner's Hill now to the south to the far south there is Little Round Top and big round top that are conspicuously empty now robert e lee has a plan he's going to try to repeat his victory at Chancellorsville he divides his army by sending Longstreet's Corps south and Longstreet is going to move and meander behind ridges and through woods so that he is undetected and he is going to appear at the far south of the Union Army line Lee's plan is to send Longstreet's Corps up the Emmitsburg Road to strike Cemetery Hill from behind and once Longstreet is engaged Ewell will strike Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill from the north now for whatever reason sickles moves his Union Corps off Cemetery Ridge and he moves it into the peach orchard and the weed field and the Confederate Army arrives on the southern flank of the Union Army and they don't know why he's done that they didn't expect him to see to see him there and they also noticed that both of the round tops Little Round Top and big big round top are still unoccupied and this is not going to go unnoticed by Longstreet's divisional commander hood who is going to make a run for it so we'll zoom in to get a closer look the Emmitsburg Road is in white and in blue is Cemetery Ridge and Cemetery Ridge terminates with the Little Round Top and big round top so hoods division of Longstreet's Corps initiates the attack on the afternoon of July 2nd they go for big Round Top Devil's Den and the wheat field Oh in hoods man crest big round top they can look down on Little Round Top and see it as unoccupied except for a few men who are waving flags and so the the detachment of hoods division races down big round top and scales little round top and as they're scaling up they are fired on as it turns out the man who was waving the flags on Little Round Top was the engineer governor Warren who was signaling that they needed men on Little Round Top now and so there was a mad scramble to get some regiments on top a Little Round Top before the Confederates got there with just minutes to spare the Union Army gets some regiments on top of Little Round Top and holds off the Confederates on their extreme left flank and this is where Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain is 20th Maine and you can see them here is the extreme left the extreme left of the extreme left of the Union Army and they are able to hold off the Confederates from Little Round Top now while the battle for Little Round Top is raging simultaneously to the west as Devils Dan below Little Round Top and in this tangled mess of boulders there is very intense hand-to-hand combat and the Confederates are actually able to flush the Union Army out of there now while hood is engaged on Little Round Top and Devil's Den McLaws is going to move out and strike the wheat field and the peach orchard and this is going to be some of the heaviest back-and-forth fighting it's going to be hours of intense firing in the wheat field is going to switch hands multiple times and it's going to be essentially a drain that's going to suck down entire regiments and brigades now north of the peach orchard Humphreys division is breaking and brigade of Confederates under Wilcox's attacking and they are actually going to be piercing right for Cemetery Ridge Hancock sees how desperate the situation is he has already sent in a significant portion of his Corps to back up sickles in the peach orchard in the wheat field however he sees the Confederates attacking right up to Cemetery Ridge and he doesn't have anybody to stop them right now except for one regiment of minnesotans the first Minnesota and he needs five minutes to get significant reinforcements up to Cemetery Ridge before the the Confederates essentially have a stronghold in the center of the Union Army and the first Minnesota is essentially going to be a sacrificial lamb and they are going to buy the five minutes so this one regiment rushes against an entire Confederate Brigade and it essentially evaporates however the first Minnesota does provide Hancock with what he wanted and that was five minutes to get reinforcements onto Cemetery Ridge now it is worth noting that just north Wilcox one Confederate Brigade rights Brigade actually did succeed in getting on top of Cemetery Ridge however they didn't have any support so they did have to withdraw so at the end of the day sickles core was destroyed essentially in the battle Hancock on Cemetery Ridge did not panic and he was able to reinforce sickles and hold the high ground he held Little Round Top and Cemetery Ridge the Confederates did succeed in taking the Devil's Den the wheat field in the peach Richard however the Confederates did not succeed in striking up the Emmitsburg Road and attacking Cemetery Hill so as long Street is attacking the Union left flank you'll is going to attack the Union Army on its right flank so the battle on the second day will continue on the Union right flank into the evening and we'll zoom in to the to the center point of this part of the battle which is Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill you'll has two divisions ready for this attack on the Union right he's going to move Johnston's division into attack Culp's Hill and early is going to be sent in to attack Cemetery Hill now Hayes's Brigade is actually going to crest Cemetery Hill and again Hancock is going to be the one to see that there is a real problem happening and just as Hancock had seen and plugged in holes on the southern flank of the Union Army earlier in the day he is going to identify this problem he's gonna send carols Brigade up and he is going to plug in that hole and push Hayes out the extreme right of the Union Army on Culp's Hill is going to mirror some of the activity on the extreme left of the Union Army at Little Round Top just as Joshua Chamberlain had held off the Confederates on the extreme left at Little Round Top so will Brigadier General George Greene hold off the Confederates on the extreme right at Culp's Hill Greene is an engineer by profession and he has developed a whole system of entrenchments that will hold off a larger Confederate force and the fighting will continue for many hours and we'll go past sundown we'll go into the darkness but the Union will hold Culp's Hill after a long series of fighting the second day of the battle is thus highlighted by Longstreet's attack on the Union left flank and Ewell attack on the Union right flank while neither attack succeeded in removing the Union from the high ground there are two glimmers of hope for robert e lee one is that Wright's brigade north of the peach orchard did in fact make it all the way to Cemetery Ridge and they actually did scale Cemetery Ridge and then also Hayes Brigade actually did momentarily reach Cemetery Hill the third day of the battle the last day of the battle will begin where the second day ended so we'll zoom in to the Union right flank to Culp's Hill Union General Meade is going to actually beat Robert II lead to the punch before 4:00 in the morning Slocum's corps is going to reinforce Culp's Hill and the Union Army is going to drive out Johnston's rebel rebel division from the vicinity of Culp's Hill before lunchtime the major action of the 3rd day will now Center to the southwest of Culp's Hill along Cemetery Ridge so we'll zoom out in many ways robert e lee's planned for the 3rd day is very similar to his plan from the day before he is going to essentially attempt a strike up the Emmetsburg road to attack Cemetery Hill however his plan does not include an attack on Culp's Hill because that was already repulsed by Slocum's Corps just like on the second day robert e lee is going to have Longstreet strike up from the south up the Emmetsburg road to attack Cemetery Hill now Longstreet had misgivings about the second day and he had outright about this day's attack he told generally I have been a soldier all my life I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples by squads companies regiments divisions and armies and should know as well as anyone what soldiers can do it is my opinion that no 15,000 men ever arrayed for battle can take that position however Robert Ely was determined to take the fight to the Union here now Longstreet's freshest division is Pickett's division so Pickett will be striking from the southwest to Cemetery Hill and the other division that's going to be involved in this is Pettigrew's division now Pettigrew has replaced Heath as a divisional commander because Heath was badly wounded on the first days fighting and that's actually quite a metaphor for the division as a whole because that division had been in in a pretty heavy fight on the first day before the infantry attack begins there's going to be a heavy bombardment of Cemetery Ridge from Confederate guns going from the peach orchard in the south all the way up seminary Ridge shortly after 1 o'clock p.m. some 143 Confederate artillery pieces open up firing on Cemetery Ridge [Music] Union artillery counter fires there is so much artillery firing that the whole valley between Cemetery Ridge and seminary Ridge is filled with smoke Union General Meade has a plan he knows he has strong ground and he wants robert e lee to attack the Union artillery men hunt follow suit and he purposely silences his artillery the ruse by the Union artillery manhunt appeared to work shortly after the Union guns fell silent Pickett and Pettigrew mustered from their hiding spots behind ridges and in woods and began the the almost one-mile walk across open ground to Cemetery Ridge however as soon as the infantry began their march Union guns from Little Round Top and Cemetery Hill began bombarding them we will now zoom into the open ground that became Pickett's Charge seminary Ridge is lined in red Cemetery Ridge is lined in blue the Emmitsburg Road goes right up the middle in white to the northeast is Ziegler's Grove and right in the middle of the field is a house called Kaduri house the angle is in black and the clump of trees is next to the angle now the Union infantry are waiting on Cemetery Ridge the left flank is standards Vermont Brigade and the extreme right flank is the 8th Ohio and some of the officers present are Hayes Hancock Gibbon and Doubleday its division is going to be moving in from the southwest and Pettigrew's division is going to be coming directly from the West the brigade commanders and Pickett's division are garnet Kemper and Armistead and in Pettigrew's division there's Marshall fried lane and Lawrence there are additional brigades that will come in support the attackers are going to be receiving long-range artillery and then once they get to the Emmitsburg Road they're going to be getting hit very hard with short-range artillery to the far north the 8th Ohio will send Pettigrew's left flank running Pickett's division is going to swing up the Emmetsburg road towards the angle however they are going to be hit on the right flank by standards for menthe brigade Garnett and Armistead's brigades are going to throw themselves over the Stonewall at the angle so they actually do make it to the Union lines on Cemetery Ridge however they are now engulfed and hand-to-hand fighting at the center of the Union line and they will surrender on mass at other points in the line only a few Confederates make it and the Yankees at some points hold their fire out of admiration of the 11,000 Confederates that participated at Pickett's Charge almost half of them did not return back to seminary Ridge so on the third day the Union Army pushed the rebels out of the Culp's Hill area and they also defended Cemetery Ridge from a frontal attack both sides sustained over 20,000 casualties in three days it was the biggest battle of the Civil War and some would say was the turning [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Jeffrey the Librarian

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Keywords: american civil war battles, gettysburgh, battle of gettysburgh, battle of gettysburg, little round top, culps hill, big round top, wrights brigade, picketts charge, civil war maps, gettysburg battlefield maps

Id: Km7fIGYMbuQ

Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 03 2020