wow what a crowd you're all the reason it I was almost late because I couldn't find a place to park so so I had no idea people were my where we're interested in this minor skirmish during the the Civil War this is an encore presentation meaning it's a program we've given here before we've been doing these programs long enough now I think this is about this what seventh or eighth year I guess of this series that we've got so many programs now that we thought there's probably people here who even though this talk was originally given about six years ago probably didn't hear it then and maybe would like to hear it now so what I've done since it's the second time I've done this program is I've created a new ending where James Garfield fights at the Battle of Gettysburg and single-handedly wins the battle for the Union so because I work down the street I I need to make this somehow relevant to James Garfield so that's how I'm gonna do it so everything will be the same until the very end where he kind of you know pilots in in a helicopter and saves the saves the day for the union's Gettysburg of course is kind of my favorite battle and it has a very special place to me because one it's my home it's where I grew up and 25 years ago this summer was my first experience working for the National Park Service as a college intern at Gettysburg National Military Park so not only did I did I spend you know a lot of my young years there but I started my Park Service career at Gettysburg as well so if you take issue with anything I have to say today I can assure you that you're wrong and I'm right because I have deep deep experience with Gettysburg so in reality I haven't really you know lived there since I was you know 18 so there may be some things in here that you know I need to bone up on things too so it's been a while since I've spent a lot of time on Gettysburg but it is still my favorite battle and certainly my my favorite place in the world so so I'm going to talk to you a little bit today about the Battle of Gettysburg like any of these talks what you're going to get here is obviously kind of a summary a rather cursory look I mean there are entire books and symposia and and and things like that dedicated just to this one battle so what you're gonna get from me today is really just kind of a summary and then as with any of these talks or anything that we do in the National Park Service what we hope is that you walk out of here maybe with a couple of questions in your own mind of things that are particularly interesting to you that you'd like to find out you know more about whether it's by making a trip to Gettysburg or coming down the street and talking to us at the Garfield property or going upstairs and checking out some books we are in the libraries so there's any number of great books upstairs about this battle about the Civil War about American history so with anything we do we have a strong educational component so we hope that in addition to enjoying the program that you also learn something from it and maybe it sparked some curiosity in your mind as well anyway so let's talk a little bit about the Battle of Gettysburg and with any of these battles they don't exist in a vacuum we have to at least talk a little bit about what's going on prior to the battle beginning and so the battle the roots of the Battle of Gettysburg are really found in the Confederate victory at Chancellorsville which was an early May of 1863 this is probably robert e lee's greatest victory where once again he kind of you know goes against military convention splits his army and manages to beat beat the army of the potomac in what many historians consider kind of his his master his massive his most masterfully fought battle but it comes at a great price to the Confederacy in that price of course other than thousands and thousands of casualties of course is the death of Stonewall Jackson Lee's second Corps commander you all know the story Jackson is scouting positions at night and his own men pickets that are you know out for the Confederate Army mistake him for the enemy and they fire and they kill a number of members of Jackson's party and they severely wounding he is he's he's removed to a hospital they amputate his arm and a few days later about about a week later he dies that is a great blow to the Confederate Army because Jackson is considered to be a very a very aggressive very offensive minded general very much like robert e lee soja Lee and Jackson are really kind of so poco when it comes to how they like to fight and how they want to run this how they want to run this campaign a lot of leaders of the Confederacy after Chancellorsville are now saying that Lee should peel some of his troops off and send them out west send them to Vicksburg Vicksburg is the last major Confederate Bastion on the Mississippi River if the MS if Vicksburg Falls then the Confederacy is basically cut in two and a lot of people are suggesting that Lee sends some of his soldiers to Vicksburg needless to say robert e lee doesn't want to do that he wants to keep the army of the north northern virginia together and he wants to embark on a second invasion of the north you'll recall that the previous invasion of the north happened almost a year before in the early fall of 1862 that resulted in the Battle of Antietam in September of 1862 which was a kind of a tactically was kind of a draw but strategically was a was a Union victory because it forced leader withdraw back into Virginia that's also the battle that gave Abraham Lincoln the victory that he needed to feel like he had enough political capital to issue the Emancipation Proclamation so that was the result of the first invasion of the north Lee feels now is the time after Chancellorsville the Union Army is on its heels now's the time for the Confederate Army to strike again and to invade the north for a second time here's a quote from John Reagan who was the Postmaster General of the Confederacy talking about Lee saying that Lee favored such a campaign because he believed he commanded an invincible army which had been victorious in so many great battles and in all of them against greatly preponderating numbers and resources so Lee had in fact won a number of battles against Union forces where he Lee was greatly outnumbered as I said at Chancellorsville in and other fight at other fights he split his forces which goes against everything he was taught as a cadet at West Point you know 35 or 40 years prior to the Civil War so I think Lee was supremely confident in this army and I think that that perhaps overconfidence maybe caught up to him a little bit at Gettysburg so I think actually i think john reagan's quote here is quite quite accurate i think he lee really did believe that his army could do anything and why shouldn't he believe that after everything they had already accomplished so it really yeah I think we believe that and I also think he probably had good reason to believe that so yeah maybe he was overconfident but he was overconfident with with good reason here are just a couple of great quotes from from southerners talking about their feelings about the northern army of specifically the Army of the Potomac I love the second one they're from private Sam Brewer from the 8th Georgia we have evidently proven ourselves too much for the Yankees to do anything with us and I think they're beginning to feel it at home and this book drives our boys to new action for I really believe our troops generally are more anxious to fight them now than they ever were so lots of great great original quotes here from from Confederates that are talking about this this this sort of confidence that this the Army of Northern Virginia has going into the Gettysburg Campaign the last one there is a quote not by a southerner but by an Englishman Colonel Arthur Fremantle who was a British observer there was still some thought at this point that that Great Britain and perhaps France might actually diplomatically recognize the Confederacy I'm not sure that was ever really going to happen I think it was probably unlikely because there was so much attention paid to the slavery issue and both England and France had had long since done away with slavery so I'm not sure how realistic that really was but certainly it would have been a boon for the Confederacy had England and France recognized the the Confederacy as a separate nation and Fremantle was a British observer there just to kind of observe and and take his impressions of the Confederate Army back to Great Britain which he eventually did so before Lee embarks on this great Gettysburg campaign he decides to reorganize his army previously he had to really large army Corps the first was commanded by James Longstreet who kind of becomes his right-hand man especially after the death of Jackson then then there was a second Corps that was commanded by Stonewall Jackson Lee decides now that Jackson is is gone and that it's time to reorganize the army a little bit so he basically creates a 3rd Corps and he places that under the command of general ap hill and Hill is kind of a tragic story he gets you know ends up getting killed like a week before the surrender at Appomattox so he came comes that close to surviving the war but dies right at the end there in April of 1865 so you can see how the core the the core were were organized the first core stays under James Longstreet the second core goes to Richard at Richard Ewell who was a actually a pretty impressive soldier for a lot of years he had lost a leg the the previous summer at second Manassas and there was kind of a sense the especially as time went on that he kind of maybe lost a little bit of his fighting spirit along with his with his leg and then the new third Corps under EP Hill so the Army of Northern Virginia is marching towards the Battle of Gettysburg with approximately 70,000 plus troops now what about the Army of the Potomac this is of course the Union Army that is going to fight the Confederacy fight the Army of Northern Virginia Gettysburg at the time that Lee starts making all of his preparations for the Gettysburg Campaign the Army of Northern Virginia or excuse me the Army of the Potomac is commanded by General Joseph Hooker Hooker was the guy that was in charge of the Union Army at Chancellorsville so he's kind of the guy that is bearing the brunt of responsibility for the the Union defeat at Chancellorsville and like a lot of Union Union generals he was really really strong in lower lower positions he was pretty you know a strong division and corps commander but he just sort of seemed to lose a little something when he was placed in command of the entire army and that really showed at at Chancellorsville and so hooker was quite quite embarrassed and and really getting a lot of flack both from the elected officials but also from the the press after the defeat at Chancellorsville so here's the makeup of the Army of the Potomac they have seven infantry Corps one Corps of cavalry and an artillery Artillery Brigade attached to each Corps as well as an artillery reserve so the the Army of the Potomac is marching into the gettysburg campaign with pushed somewhere near ninety four thousand troops so the the armies are quite different in size the Army of Northern Virginia is smaller 70,000 70,000 troops they do have cavalry and artillery as well even though I didn't put that on the screen and then you have the Army of the Potomac the Union Army with almost ninety four thousand troops so Lee first starts his some of his soldiers north in early June and then plans to swing out to the West and go basically around the Army of the Potomac to get up into this is Virginia right here and then up into Maryland and and finally up into into Pennsylvania and then there's a quote there from Steven Woodworth who's a noted historian of the Civil War talking about the route that leap lands to take as he moves his army moves his army north Lee had a couple of reasons for wanting to move north first of all he thought it would put political pressure on the north perhaps to negotiate a settled peace so he was hoping to put some pressure on Abraham Lincoln and put pressure on Union elected on american-us elected officials and then of course as he had wanted to in the previous northern invasion in September of 1862 he also just wanted to give Virginians a little bit of a break get the war out of Virginia for a while get let virginia farmers kind of you know plant some crops and really just give them a break from the constant campaigning and fighting that was going on across their lands so Lee did have a couple of motives for wanting to move north and make this second invasion of the north so prior to gettysburg we actually have a pretty significant battle on june 9th of 1863 this is the Battle of brandy station this is a cavalry fight and it's quite quite vicious and it is actually the largest capitis you know all cavalry battle of the entire war you can see the numbers on the screen there about 10,000 Confederates versus about 7,000 Union cavalry now keep in mind up to this point the Confederate cavalry has literally and figuratively been riding circles around the Union cavalry Union cavalry has been kind of a disappointment to say the least prior to this but it was finally at Brandy Station where the Union cavalry really made a good showing kind of stood up to the Confederate cavalry and and showed that they could in fact fight and that they were starting to to learn their craft and they were becoming a much better a much better and much more professional core of of cavalry which primarily served as as Scouts for for the army as as Lee is moving north and they had this fight at brandy station hooker makes the same suggestion that every other Union General has made up to this point basically in the eastern theater which is oh now is the best time to march on Richmond Union generals were obsessed with capturing Richmond and Abraham Lincoln kept saying I don't care about Richmond I care about Confederate armies in the field because we can capture Richmond but if there are still 100,000 Confederate soldiers marching around out there we haven't really won anything so Lincoln was was kept trying to tell these Jen and Lincoln of course is no military man you know he had a little bit of militia experience but he didn't go to West Point or anything like that but Lincoln is the guy saying we need to fight the armies in the field and defeat them in the field and then Richmond will come and so it was he was frustrated with all of these generals like McClellan like Burnside like hooker who kept obsessing about capturing Richmond and feeling like if we just capture Richmond the war will end there were a number of Union generals who did not feel this way and agreed with Lincoln that we must fight and destroy these armies in the field among them were James Garfield the savior here at the end right and most prominently ulysses s grant grant agreed with Lincoln that Richmond doesn't mean much to us defeating Confederate armies in the field is what we need to do that's how we're gonna win this war but Hooker of course says Lee starts to move north and the Union Army starts to realize that that's what's happening Hooker suggests a march on Richmond and Lincoln is ready to just throw up his hands and kind of be done with the whole thing so he is on June 28th just two days before the Battle of Gettysburg actually starts Lincoln decides once again to make a change in command of the Union Army of the Potomac and this time he appoints General George Gordon Meade who you see in the picture here as the new commander of the Army of the Potomac prior to this Mead was the commander of the fifth Corps again had a great reputation as a corps commander was known as a hard fighter and was a native Pennsylvanian he was born in Philadelphia where he was he was from Philadelphia I think he was actually born in overseas I think was born in Spain actually but but anyway he's and he's a Philadelphian so he's a Pennsylvanian and he's again coming from a Corps command like a lot of these other generals had done so a lot of people are just saying you know who can keep up with all these these these generals you know they come and go so fast you can keep up with them so here's here's me talking about at 3 a.m. on the 28th he was aroused from sleep by an officer entering his tent waking me up saying he's come to bring me trouble he then handed me a communication to read which I found was an order relieving hooker from the command and assigning it to me and then of course this great Meade quote I've been tried and condemned without a hearing and I suppose I shall have to go to the execution now the good news for me is he actually acquits himself very well as commander of the Army of the Potomac and he remains in command of this army for the rest of the war now once ulysses s grant comes to the east in the spring of 1864 to take over full command of all Union forces he makes his headquarters with Meade so really you could almost say grant becomes the de-facto commander of the Army of the Potomac but in fact me does command the Army of the Potomac for the next two years until the war ends so Meade as Meade is far more successful commanding this army than anybody had been up to that point so here's the situation on June 28th as Meade takes command of the Army of the Potomac Lee has got his entire army in Pennsylvania so the entire Confederate Army shown here in red is is is in Pennsylvania he's waiting for information from the cavalry from Jeb Stewart he hasn't heard anything from Stewart in days so he's a little concerned about where Stewart is and doesn't really know fully the position of the Union Army at that point and so he's waiting to find out what he can about the position of the Union Army from Stewart he issued orders On June 28th telling Richard Ewell the commander of the second Corps to move on Harrisburg which is the capital right up here soyou'll is supposed to move on the capital which is Harrisburg up here today and in the car that's you know 40 or 45 minute drive from Gettysburg Longstreet then would move the next morning up to support you around Harrisburg and then Hill was supposed to move to the east and cross the river below Harrisburg so real they're really not intending at this point to fight at Gettysburg they're really trying to make a move towards Harrisburg and then had they gotten to Harrisburg probably would have turned to the east and then marched on towards Philadelphia but in fact they never actually made it that far so on June 29th Lee learns that hooker has been relieved of command and now Meade is the commander of the Army of the Potomac and so as you can see from this quote Lee has much more respect for me than he did for hooker Meade will commit no blunder in my front and if I make one he will make haste to take advantage of it so here's Lee showing some some respect for his new adversary Lee now receives word that the entire army the Potomac is north of the Potomac River and so Lee now orders his army to concentrate at Gettysburg so he's trying to get his whole army together and then make a decision about what to do next so on June 30th Henry heft sends who's a division commander in in a Confederate division commander sends a brigade under Johnston Pettigrew ahead to scout near Gettysburg again this is where the whole Confederate Army is supposed to supposed to link up Pettigrew gets in towards Gettysburg and then realizes that there are Union troops in Gettysburg and most of Pettigrew's officers feel like these Union troops are militia nothing really to worry about but in fact they're actually Union cavalry real Union cavalry not militia these are actual Union cavalry from the Army the Potomac commanded by this guy General John Buford and Buford is one of the kind of unsung Union heroes of the Battle of Gettysburg and Buford unfortunately doesn't live very long after this battle he dies of illness not of wounds but he didn't live another 50 years like a lot of guys and get to right his own story and you know go on the lecture circuit or anything like that but Buford is a really really important important union officer in this battle so it's it's it's Buford's troops that that are actually in Gettysburg on the evening of June 30th when Pettigrew starts to move his starts to move his troops into Gettysburg so what's so important about Gettysburg why does Buford realize that it's very important for the Union to hold Gettysburg it's not shoes as you may have read in in in in some books many many years ago it's really the fact that Gettysburg has all of these roads coming into it so it's a great place for an army to concentrate and obviously robert e lee knows that too from looking at a map these are you know professional soldiers who've gone to West Point and been then been professional officers for you know thirty and forty years in some cases this is a critical critical place because of all the roads coming in so there's lots of different entry ways into this town so that's why Lee wants to concentrate his army there because it's easy to get to and Buford also can look at the same map and say we don't want the Confederacy to capture this town because it's so easy for them to get more and more troops into the area so it's the roads it's the junk it's the road junctures really that you know I've heard it described as kind of like if you look at it from above kind of like this it's like spokes on a wheel excuse me so that's why that's why Gettysburg is so important so Buford has seen these Confederates coming in on the moor on the evening of June 30th and so he tells as he tells his subordinates they're gonna have a fight in the morning and they need to be ready to fight and they need to be ready to hold this town until the Union infantry shows up the cavalry is much smaller than the infantry there aren't as many there aren't as many troops in the cavalry as there are in the infantry so Buford knows he's going to need to hold Gettysburg as long as he can to give the infantry time to move up so on the beginning of the the first day of the battle July 1st Hef's Henry Hef's division of the third quarter here's ap Hill the commander of the 3rd Corps this is Henry hef who was a Virginian a division commander in Hills core begins marching in from the west into gettysburg they're trying to clear those pesky militia out of gettysburg and of course they're looking for any supplies and get their hands on two perhaps shoes also so shoes may play a role here it certainly was not the reason that the battle was fought as some people have have argued in the past but in fact supplies you know the Confederacy is always looking for supplies as they they march through through towns so the first contact is around 7:30 in the morning between Hef's troops and Buford's cavalry Minh Buford has already sent messages back to to John Reynolds who's the commander of the Union 1st Corps telling Reynolds you need to get to Gettysburg immediately there are Confederates in my front and they are coming and again Buford knows he has a lot fewer soldiers than then then the Confederates do because he's a cavalry man now having to fight dismounted and guess what that means it means every third or fourth guy doesn't get the fight because he's got to hold the horses so that the it's it's hard for confetti or for a cavalry to fight dismounted because it takes you know maybe 1/4 of their strength away for guys who can't fight now Buford's troops some of them were also armed with new weapons the Spencer reap repeating rifles so they could fire a lot faster but they still had far fewer troops and they were losing a good number of their men to try to to try to hold on to the horses so Buford's got about twenty eight hundred men cavalry men with again with about every fourth guy not fighting and he's he's going up against about seventy five hundred men from heth's division Confederate infantry so half again is marching into Gettysburg thinking that these are these are local militia they're gonna be easy to push aside he does not expect a very tenacious and and and stubborn defense of McPherson's Ridge by Buford and this is this is Oak Ridge here and so this is kind of the McPherson's Ridge area right here so you can see where Buford has his troops aligned and then these red guys are the Confederates coming in trying to push trying to push Buford off of McPherson's Ridge so Buford holds for as long as he can which in this case is a couple of hours and then finally around 9:30 the general Reynolds shows up with the first core and that's a great great feeling for Buford and his men because they are running out of ammunition they're running out of men and so they're glad to see the inventory because now here comes Reynolds with a with a huge infantry Corps of probably you know maybe what 10 or 20,000 men so Buford now can start withdrawing his men off of McPherson's Ridge and let the Union infantry deploy in there and make that fight Reynolds sends word back to me the new commander of the army the enemy are advancing in strong force but I will fight them inch by inch and if driven into the town I will barricade the streets and hold them back as long as possible this is John Reynolds right here another West pointer another highly regarded soldier who in fact was at one point offered the command of the Army of the Potomac and turned it down because he said he could not command the army and fight the politicians in Washington at the same time so Reynolds actually is a very highly regarded soldier and like Meade he's a Pennsylvanian he's from Lancaster which is only maybe an hour and a half or two hours from Gettysburg and of course Meade or I mean rather Reynolds is killed Reynolds is killed not long after the first quarter arrives he's actually sort of placing his men where he wants him and he's shot in the head and falls off his horse and dies this is the monument where around the spot where Reynolds was killed at Gettysburg and then Abner Doubleday who did not invent baseball is the guy who takes over command of the first Corps after Reynolds is killed by about 11 o'clock a lull has kind of settled over the field you know Reynolds is dead at this point he's gotten his men deployed there's been some pretty sharp fighting between the the infantry but now there's kind of a lull settling they've both taken heavy casualties this is when ap Hill shows up and and starts trying to figure out what to do and eventually orders a renewed attack Hill had already reached out to you'll send a message to Ewell telling Ewell to not go to Harrisburg turn around and come back south and and march towards Gettysburg and so now the second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia is approaching Gettysburg as well as is the Union 11th Corps so we have another Corps the Union infantry making its way towards Gettysburg at this point this is Oliver Howard who was the commander of the 11th Corps the 11th Corps had a pretty pretty poor reputation at this point because they had borne the brunt of an unexpected Confederate attack at Chancellorsville and they were surprised and they had you know sort of retreated very quickly and so even though a lot of the the soldiers in the 11th Corps were actually German immigrants but for some reason they started the rest of the Union Army started calling them the Flying Dutchman after this this this retreat this rather inglorious retreat at Chancellorsville they weren't Dutch they were German but they called him the Flying Dutchman I guess that makes that sounds better than the flying Germans I don't know but at any rate Howard of course is obviously very concerned about his own reputation and about his course reputation and you can't really tell much in this but if you look here closely you can see Howard has already given quite a bit to the Union cause in the form of losing an arm in battle about a year before so Howard has already given quite a bit Howard would go on after the war to be the the first head of the Freedmen's Bureau the agency that was created to kind of start trying to get former slaves engrained into into society so Howard actually because he's a senior officer when he arrives on the scene he takes command from Doubleday so now for a while Howard is in command and you can see how confusing this is getting with all of these different general you know from from Buford to Reynolds to Doubleday to Howard it's getting very confusing and that I think really is a good metaphor for just from war in general and certainly for for this battle but Howard decides he's gonna they're gonna hold McPherson's Ridge he's going to maintain Reynolds positions and he leaves one division and this is a very very important point leaves one division on Cemetery Hill which is a prominent rise south of town and that's going to become very very important later on around 2 o'clock General Lee arrives still hoping to concentrate his army at Gettysburg not necessarily fight an engagement here the first elements of eul's course start arriving from the north around 2:30 and they run smack-dab into Howard's core so now we have two additional core the Union 11th and the Confederate second now fighting each other and this is this is you'll score up here so this is where we have places like Barlow's Knoll and and some of those if you've been to Gettysburg or you know this battle at all this is where some of these these places become famous oak ridge Barlow's and all that kind of that kind of stuff by about mid to late afternoon the Union troops are now starting to realize that they are being beaten and they're starting to withdraw back through the town so all of the fighting thus far has been out here kind of north and west of the town here's the town proper and you can see all these roads coming in so now Union forces are going to start to withdraw back into into Betty's burg Union forces are retreating back through town here Cemetery Hill remember that division that Howard left on Cemetery Hill this is going to basically become the center of the Union line it's a critically important position and thankfully you know you Howard was smart enough to leave one division there he probably could have left more but hindsight's always 20/20 so Union forces retreat back through Gettysburg there's actually house-to-house fighting in the town urban urban warfare as we would call it today as these Union forces are retreating back through town and then this guy shows up Winfield Scott Hancock he's the commander of the second Corps probably the most famous and arguably the best Union Corps commander of the entire Civil War he arrives on the scene and even though he's junior to oliver Howard he has written directions from Meade to take command so now Hancock is in charge of the entire Union Army something else fun a little another fun fact about Hancock he ran for president in 1880 guess who beat him that's right James Garfield but Hancock Hancock arrives on the field takes command from Howard and now Hancock is the one really responsible for trying to carve out a union position and he realizes you know pretty easy pretty early on that Cemetery Hill is critical to hold and so he's gonna he's going to make that sort of the the center of the Union line and so the Union line is going to extend down this way towards Little Round Top and then also up here around towards Culp's Hill you've heard of the famous fishhook that's the fishhook and I think we'll be able to see that in a future map so at the end of the first day generally advises general Ewell again who's coming here from the north to push on through town and if practicable sees Cemetery Hill so attack Cemetery Hill push Union forces off Cemetery Hill and take that hill if practicable and you'll eventually decides it's not practicable it's late his men have been fighting all day they need to eat they need water for a lot of very legitimate reasons I think you'll decides it's not practicable now we can do it tomorrow we'll do it first thing in the morning and of course that's that is one of the great debates about this battle would things have been different had Stonewall Jackson been there who knows it's all speculation Jackson was very aggressive at times but Jackson also had a case of what they called the SLOS sometimes to where he didn't move as quickly as Lee wanted him to so even though there's this cult around Stonewall Jackson now that he was you know this you know this perfect Confederate General it's not the case I have no idea what Jackson would have done nobody does would he have performed differently or better than Ewell I don't know but for whatever reason Yul decides we are not going to make that attack tonight we're gonna do it tomorrow here are the casualties for the first day about 6,000 Confederates 22% or so of those engaged in about 38% of Federals roughly 9,000 of of those engaged on the first day so here is you can kind of start to see where the fishhook is coming from now here wrapped around Culp's Hill and then coming all the way down the Little Round Top although this is more of a an overview of the July 2nd so imagine that this line here which is the 3rd Corps under sickles is actually back here where it was supposed to be and then the fishhook looks a little more complete so at the end of the first daily and Longstreet meet and andly basically says if the enemy is still there in the morning I'm going to attack him Longstreet disagrees Longstreet is kind of a something of an anomaly at this in this area and that he wants to fight defensive battles he likes to find a strong position and just wait for the enemy to attack him that is not the way Robert Ely fights robert e lee is aggressive he's an offensive general longstreet is starting to develop all of these thoughts about defensive warfare and and so you know they're going to be like oil and water at this at this particular battle so you'll does not attack long lee is it plans to attack in the morning but overnight from july 1st to July 2nd all of these Union Corps are just marching marching marching towards Gettysburg so meat arrives during the night has a council of war and decides yes we're going to stay here it's a good position we're gonna stick it out and we're gonna continue to fight this battle so for day two the second day of the battle July 2nd of 1863 Lee's plan is to make a very concentrated assault down here on the Union left so that's his plan he's gonna make a demonstration here on the right around Culp's Hill to try to sort of keep the Union guessing about where the actual attack is coming but the real attack is gonna be down here on the Union left he's got long streets entire Corps up these are troops that for the most part we're not engaged on the first day so they're fresh they've been fed they've had water they're ready to go over here we have eul's Corps who was heavily engaged on the first day they're going to be the demonstrators making kind of a feint if you will of a fake attack or not as not as strong an attack as they probably could make really just to keep the Union guessing about where the actual attack is going to be these are to be coordinated so the demonstration here on the Union right and the actual attack here on the Union left are supposed to take place at the same time that does not happen Longstreet continues to argue with Lee about not making this attack about fighting a defensive battle and Lee continues to let Longstreet say his piece and then say we're not going to do it that way we're going to attack now because Longstreet doesn't agree with the battle plan that day he really kind of drags his feet getting his troops in place and starting to make this attack these attacks these coordinated attacks were supposed to take place hours and hours before they actually did here's the here's almost yeah sorry here's the famous Union fishhook here kind of again sickles is out of place here and I'll explain why in a second the extreme Union right is around here on Culp's Hill the extreme Union left is supposed to be down here on Little Round Top so this is a line that's maybe a three to four miles or so long that's the Union line here's Longstreet where Longstreet's going to attack on on the second and then here's you'll wear you'll is gonna make his demonstration on the second as well so the Union left is the third Corps and the Union right is the gonna be that's see that's Slocum so that's what the 12th 12th Corps Longstreet drags his feet he doesn't coordinate with you all very well and the attacks do not take place until much much later than they're supposed to Lee one of these attacks sometime in the morning they don't actually start until late afternoon so Longstreet really kind of dragged his feet on this and he does this again the next day and I'll talk about that when we get to July 3rd in my view at least he does this again on the next day too because he doesn't agree with the battle plan on July 3rd either and again I think he he kind of maybe pouts a little bit because he doesn't want to make this attack but anyway let's we'll talk about that when we get to the 3rd so here's excuse me here's Dan sickles sickles is the commander of the Union 3rd Corps he is not a West pointer he is a political general as they say he was a congressman before the or before the war he's most famous for being the first American ever acquitted of murder using the temporary insanity defense he found out his wife was having an affair and he he killed the man that she was having the affair with and he used the temporary insanity defense his lawyer was Edwin Stanton who was Secretary of War at this point under Abraham Lincoln and he was acquitted due to temporary insanity oh and by the way the guy he killed was the son of Francis Scott Key so anyway what an interesting guy what a scoundrel interesting guy anyway he's commanding the Union Third Corps sickles is supposed to be in this line right here so he's supposed to be linked up with Hancock second Corps right here and his line is supposed to extend to Little Round Top he doesn't excuse me doesn't like this position this position and he's looking through his his field glasses and he's seeing places like the wheat field and the peach orchard and they're reminding him of a place called Hazel Grove which was at at Chancellorsville where Confederate artillery had been able to take this Hazel Grove and had just decimated his core with artillery fire so he wants to move his Corps forward to avoid another situation like what he experienced at Chancellorsville in his mind it makes sense you don't have to be a West pointer or have a PhD in military tactics in theory to look at this map and realize it really doesn't make a lot of sense because what he does when he moves his Corps forward is he creates a break in the line here what we call a salient so he create you know and this is something that the Confederacy very much is aware of and very much wants to wants to exploit and it's poor troops through that salient and get around and take the flank of the Union left take the Union left flank so sickles requests permission from Meade several times on the morning of July 2nd to make this shift to move his troops up Meade keeps saying no that's ridiculous why would you want to do that look at the map and finally sickles just says the heck with it he's a political general he doesn't he's you know he's not concerned about a career in the army after the war he just says the heck with it and does it anyway so he moves an entire Corps of about maybe 10,000 fifteen thousand men forward with no orders to do so an interesting interesting development here so here's Longstreet so Longstreet when he finally gets his his his troops in place and makes this attack which begins around 4:30 in the afternoon it was supposed to begin at you know 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning Longstreet is expecting to walk across these fields and basically strike the Union left in place where he expects it to be so you can imagine the Confederacy surprised when they see that this entire Union Corps has moved forward so this is an opportunity for the Confederacy if they can exploit this salient again they can pour right through and then just then just decimate the Union line in detail from the left flank on down the line this is John Bell hood who was division commander in Longstreet's Corps hood insists to Longstreet that this battle plan is suicide and he begs for permission to go around to basically go around the third Corps strike up over the round tops and then come down the Union line that way he appeals to Longstreet about this several times and Longstreet says the commanding general wants it done this way this is how we're gonna do it because Longstreet's already made this argument to Lee at least a couple of times hood is now making the same argument to Longstreet and Longstreet has no choice but to say those aren't the orders here's a just a few a few look at a few spots this is the this is the wheat field which you see right here and then I'm sorry this is the peach orchard I mean and this is the wheat field down here so these are down in this area here so these are right in the thick of where sickles troops are now that they've made this kind of crazy move forward so this kind of shows you the attack again sickles moving the Corps forward and then Longstreet's Corps attacking here along the Emmitsburg Road striking the 3rd Corps at the peach orchard Rose Farm Devil's Den places like that here's William Barksdale a Mississippian who was also a politician had been a senator prior to the war and this is this is Barksdale here leading the charge around the rose farm he is killed he's mortally wounded and then dies a couple of days later making a very impressive charge across the the rose farm here or the or the Trostle farm I came from or which one but anyway tell my wife I died fighting at my post so so this brings us to Little Round Top which is supposed to be the left flank of the Union Army and it would have been had sickles not made this this kind of crazy move two to the front with his entire third Corps this is the front side of Round Top so basically this side of Little Round Top right here so governor Kay Warren this guy right here is the chief engineer he's a brigadier general he's the chief engineer of the Union Army he is basically scouting positions once the the once the battle has started at this point Meade is aware that sickles has moved his whole Corps it's too late to move them back because the Confederate attack has started so warrant is out here basically just scouting positions goes up on to Round Top and realizes there is not other than a couple of Signal Corps guys you know communication communicators with flags they didn't have you know iPhones or anything to text each other the the battle plan in 1863 Warren is the guy who really sounds the alarm that we've got to get troops up on this on this Little Round Top immediately because at this point it looks like Longstreet is going to break through sickles line and is going to be able to sweep right up onto Little Round Top and again if they can get artillery up onto Little Round Top its high ground they're gonna be able to drop artillery all the way down the Union line so Warren this is the statue of Warren on Little Round Top Warren is the guy is one of the the heroes of Little Round Top that makes a you know basically puts out a plea for any troops that are in the area to please come to Little Round Top and start preparing a defense of this hill because it's a critical critical position and this is the guy that gets that that gets that message strong Vincent who's a colonel in the fifth Corps this is the fifth course commanded by George Sykes it had been commanded by George Meade up until a few days ago so he's commanding the the fifth Sykes is the fifth corps commander so strong Vinson who's a young you know late twenties Pennsylvanian from Erie as a lawyer by trade had gone to Harvard he had he he's the guy that sort of minused intercepts this message from warren and says he will take his brigade which is only four regiments even at full strength that's about four thousand troops but when you consider that none of these regiments are at full strength you know he's probably taking maybe 2,000 or 2,500 troops up to Little Round Top to to try to defend the hill until more Union soldiers can get up there so here's how Vincent deploys his brigade on Little Round Top the 20th Maine right here is the extreme the extreme left and then it goes to the 83rd Pennsylvania the 44th New York and the 16th Michigan and then this is another another Brigade here that eventually gets up to the hill so this is as I say okay so here you go thirteen hundred and fifty men he's got in a brigade which should be about four thousand men but because of previous battles because of disease because of guys being on furloughs he's got you know not even 1400 men to defend this entire Hill so this is how he deploys his soldiers 20th Maine 83rd PA 44th New York 16th Michigan to try to defend Little Round Top and here are the Confederates that are going to once they kind of break through the third Corps are going to try to make this attack on Little Round Top so Vincent gets his Brigade in in line on the hill and they hadn't been there more than a few minutes before the Confederates start you know they've now sort of broken through sickles line sickles has been severely wounded you know he gets his legs gets gets severely injured by a shell fragment ends up losing his leg which he then sends to Washington and occasionally visits in a museum for the rest of his life telling you this guy is something they should make a movie about him so this is you know a very dramatic image of a Vincent here kind of putting his men in line and you can see Confederates are starting to make their way up the hill on came the enemy running and yelling like fiends and that's a quote from the 83rd Pennsylvania and then of course we have good old Joshua Chamberlain who becomes one of the best-known Union soldiers of the entire Civil War this is a his letter that he wrote to the governor of Maine a year before offering to - to do whatever he could for the Union cause in the Union Army I've always been interested in military matters and what I do not know in that line I know how to learn he reminds me a lot of James Garfield in that you know they're both professors they're both very intelligent and they both just have this this strong desire to serve and they both know that they can bury themselves in books and try to learn strategy and tactics and things like that so I don't know that they ever actually met although Chamberlain did some Garfield a letter once when Garfield was president about two weeks before Garfield was shot but I don't know that they ever actually met but I like to think that they probably would have would have liked each other a lot because they were very similar in a lot of ways so opposing the 20th Maine on the Union left was the primarily the 15th Alabama the 47th Alabama as well the 15th Alabama was commanded by this guy Colonel William C Oates he had about 650 troops or so his men had just gotten to the field when they were when they were given the order to attack Little Round Top they hadn't even had a chance to get water yet they'd been marching all day to get there it was high it was in you know it was in the 90s they're wearing these hot uniforms so he had just dispatched men out to fill up the canteens when they got the order to advance and so they were going into battle definitely definitely at a disadvantage not only because they hadn't had water but because they were having to attack uphill strong Vinson is one of the casualties that young harvard-trained lawyer brigade commander that took his brigade up there voluntarily he's one of the casualties here this is a marker that marks the spot where he was mortally wounded during this fight on Little Round Top and as he said after he was hit this is the fourth or fifth time they've at me and they have hit me at last and he did end up dying a few days later and and he was actually promoted to Brigadier General after after his death here's again here's a little round top here's Vincent's Brigade with the 20th Maine here on the on the far left and then this shows you all of the units that were attacking Little Round Top again primarily the 15th and then also the 47th Alabama going up on that left flank fighting against the against the 20th Maine Oates actually made the argument that they should forget Little Round Top and they should take big round top but big round top was a lot more wooded and it was a lot more steep so getting artillery up there would have been much more difficult so the orders are take Little Round Top so Oates and the the Alabamans this is the Alabama Monument at Gettysburg oats and the Alabamans maiden several attacks on the 20th Maine but they just could not quite break through Chamberlain extends his line several times he's you know he's filling holes wherever he can it's a very very close run thing but eventually the 20th Maine survives they they're low on ammunition and they know that the Confederates are going to be charging again so one way or the other they eventually make a bayonet charge down the hill they're you know if you see the movie you know Chamberlain makes this great you know sort of very dramatic orders to fix bayonets and all this it seems to me it happened a much more organically it was just kind of a we're out of ammunition and here they come and and you know there were already some Union troops moving forward to pick up wounded and it just kind of became a charge and Chamberlain later admitted yeah he never really gave a specific order to charge but at any rate they did sweep the Alabamans off the field and basically preserved the Union left and that's basically the end of the second day there's they're still fighting over on Culp's Hill in the evening on the Union right and if I was going to redo this talk I probably would put more information in about Culp's Hill because the Union right doesn't get enough enough attention but again this is a summary so this is the the the cemetery gatehouse at Gettysburg this is still their Cemetery Hill was called Cemetery Hill because there was guess what a cemetery there it was a town cemetery but and right next to that is what eventually became the National Cemetery where Lincoln gives the Gettysburg Address so at this point at the end of the second day Confederates have been have been repulsed trying to take the Union Center and now on the second day they've been repulsed trying to take the Union left the Union successfully defends its battle line on the second and so now robert e lee has to decide what is he gonna do on July 3rd here are the casualties for Day two about ten thousand Federals and about 6800 Confederate casualties so and keep in mind of course the the Federals have far more troops at Gettysburg so these these numbers are are very high on both sides so Lee decides that he's tried to he's tried to take the Union line you know at all different points the the right at Culp's Hill the left at Little Round Top and they've held that Union line has held there's got to be a weakness there somewhere it just stands to reason that it's weak somewhere if it's not on the ends it's got to be in the middle so Lee decides and here's where maybe that little bit of overconfidence I think starts to come into play Lee decides that a massive frontal assault on the Union Center is going to be the plan of attack for July 3rd because this line has to be weak somewhere it must be the middle so he proposes a frontal assault of about 15,000 Confederate troops against the Union Center and once again Longstreet says I don't agree it's my opinion that no 15,000 men ever made can take that position and of course Longstreet we know now again I said it already hindsight's always 20/20 we know Longstreet's right but Lee again believes in this army they've done everything he's ever asked them to do he has no reason to think that they can't do this so as I said at the beginning yeah he's probably overconfident but I think he's overconfident for good reason Lee orders the attack that's gonna be the battle plan for July 3rd and then we have lovely George Pickett Pickett's division of Virginians as fresh they arrive on the night of the 2nd they've not been engaged in the yet so this is going to be kind of the spearhead of that of that attack on July 3rd that's why we all know it as Pickett's Charge the the the technical term is technically correct term is Longstreet's assault but knowing how long Street felt about this attack I don't think he probably would mind if he were here today that it's gone down in history as Pickett's Charge because he wanted nothing to do with it he thought it was a terrible idea but here's the plan this is Pickett's Charge this is Longstreet's assault this massive line of you know Confederate troops that's a mile wide about 15,000 troops are going to basically line up and they are going to march across a mile of open ground and they are going to attack the Union Center simple as that it's not really a complicated battle plan at all he wants again once coordinated attacks he wants Ewell to make a demonstration on the on the Union right at summit or at Culp's Hill to kind of draw off attention from the center that gets spoiled because the Union actually attacks Ewell on Culp's Hill in the dark very early in the morning of July 3rd Lee also wants a massive artillery barrage to basically soften up the Union line prior to sending the troops across the the field in what's now known as s Pickett's Charge so who were these guys making this charge Pickett's division they were all Virginians there were other divisions commanded by Trimble and Pettigrew tremble and Pettigrew had troops from North Carolina Tennessee Alabama and in Mississippi so a Trimble was actually I believe from Maryland he was a secessionist from Maryland Pettigrew was from North Carolina so again this massive artillery barrage is supposed to precede the attack that's supposed to soften up the Union lines here's Edward Porter Alexander who was the Confederate artillery chief and in charge of the barrage the candidate in the center presented one of the most magnificent battle scenes witnessed during the war looking up the valley towards Gettysburg the hills on either side were capped with crowns of flame and smoke as 300 guns about equally divided between the two ridges of did their iron hail upon each other there I vomited - their iron Cael that's a great great term unfortunately for the Confederacy though the barrage while very loud and very fantastic to watch was basically ineffectual they they really didn't soften up that Union line as much as they'd hoped a lot of the shots were or two were long you know went over Union the union's Union troops heads so when the Confederates finally stepped off and started making that massive assault across a mile of open ground they had almost full strength Union artillery firing at them before they even got within musket range so here's a good look at from the Confederate battle line you know it's hard to tell in a photo but you know this is almost a mile over here to this this monument over here so this has kind of gives you a sense of what that open ground looked like that these troops had to march across and here's the here's the map again showing you where they where they were coming from there's this what they call the cops-- of trees which supposedly Lee or Longstreet pointed at and said that's your objective just to kind of have something a landmark for the Confederate officers to try to shoot for and as you can see that is basically dead center of the Union the Union battle line so at about two o'clock nine brigades stepped off and their line was over a mile wide Union artillery was again not very much affected by the the barrage and still was still largely intact and really did a did a did a a very effective job of creating havoc in the Confederate battle lines so they were going up not only against the Union artillery but there were fences everywhere along these farm roads - especially the Emmitsburg Road so the Confederates had to stop and actually try to either knock down or take down the fences as all of this artillery and then once they got closer especially along the Emmitsburg Road here must get fired - from thousands of Union troops so it was I mean we look at it now and say this was a suicide mission but again Lee you know Lee was confident in his in his men so Union artillery on in the center here on Cemetery Hill right there was pouring into the the flanks that the left flank of the Confederate line and then from Little Round Top which had been held the day before into the into the right flank of the Confederate lines so it was it was it was a bloodbath basically as the Confederates advanced to within say four to five hundred yards the Union switched from regular shot to canister fire canister as basically turns a cannon into a huge shotgun it's filled it's just a can filled with metal like ball bearings and when it is discharged out of the the end of the of the artillery piece the can you know shreds and and it the balls just spread out so it becomes a giant shotgun and so you can imagine what that did to this mass of infantry marching forward this is a rendition of Alonzo Cushing who was a lieutenant in charge of a battery right at the Union Center who fought quite valiantly and was killed and then just about what five or six years ago was awarded the Medal of Honor after fifty years of people trying to get it for him so this Confederate or this this Union artillery you know canister fire turned these these artillery pieces into big shotguns and then once they got to within say 300 yards or so then Union troops were able to actually shoot at them with muskets as well so now they're dealing with not only the southerners are dealing not only with artillery but with musket fire as well and of course we all know what happened it was not a successful attack this is a quote from the 8th Ohio Lieutenant Colonel Franklin Sawyer they meaning the southerners were at once enveloped in a dense cloud of smoke and dust arms heads blankets guns and knapsacks were thrown and tossed into the air a man a moan went up from the field distinctly to be heard amidst the storm of battle so war is not pretty folks you know it's not glorious it's it's not attractive it's dirty and it's bloody and it's horrible and there probably are people in this room who know that and so when you think about you know arms and heads and you know legs and all this stuff just being blown off and just being you know sent all over the place it's it's a pretty horrid horrible sight on the Confederate right where Pickett's division was he had three brigade commanders this is James Kemper he was severely wounded this is Richard Garnett he was killed and then this is Lewis Armistead Armistead is the guy who famously made it through into the Union lines and kind of you know supposedly put his hand on a Union Canyon cannon and was then immediately shot and and went down and died a couple of days later Armistead and Hancock who was in charge of the Union Center had been good very good friends before the war and so there's this great irony that you know we hear about it being a war of brothers and all this and here are two guys who served together in the in the the pre-war army and we're very very good friends and now you know here's Armistead assaulting Hancock's line at at Gettysburg so Pickett's charges is repulsed obviously it's not successful the Confederates take over 50% casualties in about 45 minutes so it's a it's a it's a bloodbath as I said before losses you know they lost almost 7,000 men making this attack about 1100 of them just killed outright on the field over 4,000 wounded and many of those wounded were also captured as well and then there were other troops who were not wounded but we're we're captured that they made it actually made it into the Union line but but we're we're captured soon after and a union reports show that almost 38 hundreds others were were captured during the battle and here's a depiction of Lee on Traveler on the of the famous horse traveler watching the the remnants of his army come back as after this after this attack has failed and supposedly is saying it's all my fault it's all my fault so we begin Lee orders a retreat this is the end of the three days of battle at Gettysburg Lee orders a retreat he wants his army to cross back over the river and go back into Virginia to safety and here's where even though he commands this the the Army of the Potomac for the rest of the war Meade kind of drops the ball he does not pursue Lee and that makes Abraham Lincoln very unhappy so Lee is Lincoln feels that Lee is on the ropes and now's the time to attack and finish off the Army of Northern Virginia once and for all Meade of course his command men who've been fighting for their lives for three days and says they they need they need some time to rest and to refit and so so Lincoln's very unhappy with me Lee escapes and of course you all know we have two more years of of war so here's the total casualties or these are estimates of course almost 23,000 Union casualties about 24% of the union force almost 20 almost 20 you can see that these these figures are actually very close to almost 23,000 Confederate casualties but for the Confederacy that's almost 10 percent more of their force that it falls to casualty to being casualties than in the Union force because the Confederate force is so much smaller so we have depending on which source you're looking at somewhere between 45 and 50 or 51 thousand casualties over the course of three days 39 percent total of the troops engaged and that makes this the bloodiest battle of the entire Civil War the very next day July 4th as Lee is preparing to withdraw ulysses s grant out west takes Vicksburg you'll recall from the very beginning of this talk four or five days ago it seems probably to some of you there were some Confederates that wanted to lead to send troops to Vicksburg to try to defend Vicksburg you didn't do that he made this attack this this northern invasion instead and the the result of that is that the Confederacy loses Vicksburg on the 4th of July the day after the Union defeat or the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg and then of course we have the creation of the National Cemetery system and of course we have Abraham Lincoln coming to Gettysburg on November 19th about five months after the battle this is the only known confirmed photo of Lincoln at Gettysburg he's kind of looking down it looks like there may be reviewing his speech before he gets up and of course it's people are in motion here obviously so it's not a great photo but we've confirmed that that is Lincoln and then of course we have the Gettysburg Address and this is where Lincoln in you know two minutes or so very masterfully redefines what the war is really all about the Emancipation Proclamation has been in effect now for almost a year but this is where he kind of puts it into words what this what this fight is really really all about we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth and it's really that new birth of freedom where he taught where he's referring to the fact that you know America needs to live up to what it what it has promised it needs to live up to that for everybody not just for white male property owners but for for everybody and so that's what this war is all about the Emancipation Proclamation made the war about more than just saving the Union it made the war about making the Union better not putting the Union back together as it was before but making it better and this is the Gettysburg Address is where Lincoln really I think articulated that for the nation so now if you have questions I will try to answer any questions that you may have sure [Applause] you
