Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was the site of the Union victory in the decisive battle of the American Civil War, July 1-3, 1863. Gettysburg was the culmination of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s second invasion of the North with his Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Lee attacked Union positions at Culp’s Hill, Cemetery Hill, Cemetery Ridge, and Little Round Top, among others, at Gettysburg and failed to break the defensive “fishhook” line along the high ground held by Union General George Meade’s Army of the Potomac. Pickett’s Charge on July 3 at Gettysburg is sometimes referred to as the “high water mark” of the Confederacy.
Battle of Gettysburg
On East Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg National Military Park, an equestrian statue of Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock stands facing west toward the Evergreen Cemetery gatehouse. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
On the morning of February 23, 1945, on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima, a 40-man patrol gathered at the 5th Marine Division headquarters for their final briefing with battalion commander Lt. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
One of the smoothbore cannons in Captain Merritt B. Miller’s Third Company of the Washington Artillery deployed west of Emmitsburg Road just south of the town of Gettysburg fired a single round at 1:07 p.m. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
For the Federal government at Washington, D.C., the news from Tennessee was grim in late September 1863. The Union Army of the Cumberland, under Maj. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
In the spring of 1861, a group of influential northern men and women, led by Unitarian minister Henry Whitney Bellows and social reformer Dorothea Dix, met in New York City to discuss the formation of a sanitary commission, modeled after the British Sanitary Commission established during the Crimean War, to provide relief to sick and wounded soldiers in the Union Army. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
An angry gloom hung like dust over the 6,000 Confederate cavalrymen trooping up the York Turnpike in the early dawn of July 3, 1863. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
The June 19, 1861, editorial in the Charleston Mercury newspaper warned: “War is bloody reality, not butterfly sporting. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
The men of Brig. Gen. Alfred Iverson’s North Carolina brigade, four regiments strong, marched forward as if on parade, their rifles at the right shoulder, as they went into battle on the first day at Gettysburg. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
By Eric Niderost
July 3, 1863, dawned clear and bright, the warm sun promising even greater heat to come. By noon, temperatures were already in the low 90s, a typically hot and humid summer day in southern Pennsylvania. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
Colonel Patrick Kelly, who led the Irish Brigade into the Wheatfield on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, was born in Castle Hackett, County Galway, in 1821. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
The American Civil War was the tragic culmination of divergent perspectives on the proper conduct of the government of the United States and socio-economic issues that had been frequently at the forefront of American political life for decades. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
When the Civil War broke out, Robert E. Lee of Virginia was offered command of the Union army. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
The occasion was, for the North, inauspicious. In the Battle of First Manassas, the Federals were routed, humiliated, and almost utterly crushed. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
Ward’s Union Brigade faced some of the most formidable troops in General Robert E. Lee’s army on the afternoon of July 2. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
As the early days of the American Civil War were unfolding and the destiny of the republic was being contested on the battlefield, President Abraham Lincoln was engaged in a no less perilous type of battle. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
The Confederate II Corps commander was as bruised and tired as the troops in his command by the late afternoon of July 1 at the strategic Pennsylvania crossroads town of Gettysburg. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
When the American Civil War erupted in April 1861, the 10 companies of the 4th U.S. Infantry were spread along the West Coast from Puget Sound to the Gulf of California in various small, far-flung garrisons. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
In selecting a leader for the attack on Fort Stedman, Robert E. Lee could scarcely have chosen a better commander than Maj. Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
The British Joint Services Command and Staff College defines the “fog of war” as “the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations.” Read more
Battle of Gettysburg
Despite roughly 50,000 casualties reported on both sides during the Battle of Gettysburg, there was only one reported civilian casualty: Mary Wade, a seamstress, was hit by a stray bullet while making bread in her kitchen. Read more
