Battle of Gettysburg

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.

Confederate Brigadier General Wade Hampton, momentarily alone, desperately fends off enemy saber blows in a swirling melee in the farmland south of the York Turnpike at Gettysburg in Don Troiani’s painting, Hampton’s Duel.

“Keep to your Sabers, Men”: J.E.B. Stuart’s Charge at Gettysburg

By Cowan Brew

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

Prisons of the Civil War: An Enduring Controversy

By Michael E. Haskew

The June 19, 1861, editorial in the Charleston Mercury newspaper warned: “War is bloody reality, not butterfly sporting. Read more

The Confederate high tide at Gettysburg broke at the low stone wall known as “the Angle,” where Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York regiments beat back the heroic but doomed assault depicted in this epic painting by Peter F. Rothermel.

Battle of Gettysburg

Pickett’s Charge: “We Gained Nothing But Glory”

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

Hancock the Superb: Winfield Scott Hancock & the Battle of Gettysburg

By John Deppen

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

Spanish loyalist Federico Borrell Garcia is captured at the moment of his death at Cerro Muriano by photographer Robert Capa on September 5, 1936. Capa’s Falling Soldier remains the most controversial war photo in history.

Battle of Gettysburg

The Heroism of Vision: Photographs from the Battlefield

By Al Hemingway

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

The Gettysburg cyclorama shows a badly wounded Alonzo Cushing commanding one of his guns in The Angle.

Battle of Gettysburg

Union Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing

By William E. Welsh

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

J.E.B. Stuart and Kilpatrick Butt Heads at Buckland Mills

By Arnold Blumberg

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

The Creation of the U.S. Sanitary Commission

By Lawrence Weber

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

Rebel Misfire at Gettysburg

By Robert L. Durham

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

Colonel Patrick Kelly at the Battle of Gettysburg

by Joseph G. Bilby

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: Forging a National Identity

by Mike Haskew

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

Robert E. Lee: Confederate Icon

by Mike Haskew

When the Civil War broke out, Robert E. Lee of Virginia was offered command of the Union army. Read more

Battle of Gettysburg

Comparing the Battle of Gettysburg to the Entire Civil War

by Brooke Stoddard

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

John Bell Hood at the Battle of Gettysburg

By Don Williams

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

Lincoln vs. Frémont and His “Hasty Emancipation”

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

Richard Ewell’s Difficult Decision on July 1

By William Welsh

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

Stonewall Jackson's II Corps engaged Brig. Gen. John Gibbon's Iron Brigade in a fierce confrontation at the tiny of hamlet of Groveton.

Battle of Gettysburg

The Gallant 4th Army Regulars at the 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

Robert E. Lee turned to his capable commander, John B. Goron, to conduct the last great Confederate attack to break the Siege of Petersburg.

Battle of Gettysburg

John B. Gordon: Robert E. Lee’s Man for Fort Stedman

by Joseph Lowry

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

ESRI Creates Interactive Map of the 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

Facts About the Battle of Gettysburg

Gettysburg Fact #1: There Were 50,000 Military Casualties, 1 Civilian

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

Battle of Gettysburg

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