Gettysburg

The three-day battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, at the beginning of July 1863, is the most important in all of American history. It could be the subject of an entire course, featuring military strategy, enormous human tragedy, and endless debates about why it happened and whether the outcome could have been different. Its location is only about a two-hour drive from our class and is a "must see" stop for tourists. Lincoln himself traveled there to deliver the most famous speech in American history later in 1863: the Gettysburg address.

The Union and Confederate armies collided on a farmer's field. The Union side (the "Army of the Potomac" in this case) had 83,289 men; the Confederate Soldiers (the "Army of Northern Virginia") totaled 75,054 men. It was a chance encounter in which neither side expected the other side to have as many troops as it did. Both sides fought ferociously expecting the other side to cut and run. From just three days of fighting, the results were very grim: 10,000 soldiers killed, 30,000 wounded, and another 10,000 captured or missing; more Confederate soldiers were killed and wounded than Union soldiers (the opposite was true for most other battles).

Confederate General Robert E. Lee commanded the southern troops, and he hoped to push through Gettysburg and then march on D.C. itself by attacking from the north. Up until this time General Lee, who had been first in his class at West Point, had never lost a battle. He planned his strategy with expert precision, utilizing three different points of assault to break the Union line in order to defeat them. General George Meade led the Union troops. In contrast with General Lee's military brilliance, General Meade made his major decision based on a majority vote of his subordinates! But some of those subordinates were brilliant themselves.

At dawn, General Lee started by firing cannons from the largest cannonade assembled in history to this date. But the Union troops were closer than he thought, and the cannon balls sailed harmlessly over their heads to explode behind them. It was the first of many mishaps for the South. General Lee sent a massive cavalry of 5,000 men to outflank the Union soldiers, but upon meeting a small amount of resistance (led by Union commander George Custer, who became notorious later in history), the southern cavalry retreated rather than fighting on.

The Union held two key positions which can be visited today: Little Round Top, which was the crucial high ground on the left flank of the Union forces, and Culp's Hill, which protected the Union's right side. General Lee's forces repeatedly tried to take those small hills, and repeatedly failed amid devastating casualties.

The most tragic engagement of all occurred on the third day: General Lee ordered his General George Pickett to lead his 15,000 men into a massive frontal assault against the Union forces, the largest direct attack in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Pickett knew it was a mistake and told Lee so, but Lee insisted. The Union forces slaughtered the charging soldiers; 60% of them were killed, wounded or captured, and the remainder, including Pickett himself, fled to safety. General Lee then had to retreat to Virginia, and the Union had won the most important battle of the war. This was the turning point in favor of the North.

Four months later, in November 1863, President Lincoln took a train ride out to Gettysburg to honor the dead. It was then a massive cemetery. Lincoln found faith as he prepared his remarks. Though not in the early drafts of his speech for that commemoration, while on the train Lincoln inserted in his own handwriting the phrase "under God" after the reference to "one Nation," so that his speech would refer to "one Nation, under God."^[14]

President Lincoln then delivered his "Gettysburg Address" at the farm-turned-battlefield-turned-cemetery. Lincoln's short speech remains the most famous in all of American history. It ends with the immortal words "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."