![]() ![]() The invasion would allow the Confederates to live off the bounty of the rich Northern farms while giving war-ravaged Virginia a much-needed rest. Such a move would upset the Union's plans for the summer campaigning season and possibly reduce the pressure on the besieged Confederate garrison at Vicksburg. Lee decided upon a second invasion of the North (the first was the unsuccessful Maryland campaign of September 1862, which ended in the bloody Battle of Antietam). Shortly after the Army of Northern Virginia won a major victory over the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Chancellorsville (April 30 – May 6, 1863), General Robert E. On November 19, President Lincoln used the dedication ceremony for the Gettysburg National Cemetery to honor the fallen Union soldiers and redefine the purpose of the war in his historic Gettysburg Address. Between 46,000 and 51,000 soldiers from both armies were casualties in the three-day battle, the most costly in US history. Lee led his army on a torturous retreat back to Virginia. The charge was repelled by Union rifle and artillery fire, at great loss to the Confederate army. On the third day of battle, fighting resumed on Culp's Hill, and cavalry battles raged to the east and south, but the main event was a dramatic infantry assault by around 12,000 Confederates against the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, known as Pickett's Charge. All across the battlefield, despite significant losses, the Union defenders held their lines. On the Union right, Confederate demonstrations escalated into full-scale assaults on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill. In the late afternoon of July 2, Lee launched a heavy assault on the Union left flank, and fierce fighting raged at Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, Devil's Den, and the Peach Orchard. ![]() The Union line was laid out in a defensive formation resembling a fishhook. On the second day of battle, most of both armies had assembled. However, two large Confederate corps assaulted them from the northwest and north, collapsing the hastily developed Union lines, sending the defenders retreating through the streets of the town to the hills just to the south. ![]() ![]() Low ridges to the northwest of town were defended initially by a Union cavalry division under Brigadier General John Buford, and soon reinforced with two corps of Union infantry. Prodded by President Abraham Lincoln, Major General Joseph Hooker moved his army in pursuit, but was relieved of command just three days before the battle and replaced by Meade.Įlements of the two armies initially collided at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, as Lee urgently concentrated his forces there, his objective being to engage the Union army and destroy it. With his army in high spirits, Lee intended to shift the focus of the summer campaign from war-ravaged northern Virginia and hoped to influence Northern politicians to give up their prosecution of the war by penetrating as far as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, or even Philadelphia. Īfter his success at Chancellorsville in Virginia in May 1863, Lee led his army through the Shenandoah Valley to begin his second invasion of the North-the Gettysburg Campaign. The battle involved the largest number of casualties of the entire war and is often described as the war's turning point, due to the Union's decisive victory and its almost simultaneous concurrence with the victorious conclusion of the Siege of Vicksburg. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, halting Lee's invasion of the North and forcing his retreat. In the Battle of Gettysburg, Union Major General George Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate General Robert E. The Battle of Gettysburg ( locally / ˈ ɡ ɛ t ɪ s b ɜːr ɡ/ ( listen)) was a major battle in the American Civil War fought by Union and Confederate forces between July 1 and July 3, 1863, in and around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. En route to Gettysburg, the Army of Northern Virginia kidnapped between 40 and nearly 60 Black civilians and sent them south into slavery. This November 1862 Harper's Magazine illustration shows Confederate Army troops escorting captured African American civilians south into slavery. This 1863 oval-shaped map depicts the Gettysburg Battlefield during July 1–3, 1863, showing troop and artillery positions and movements, relief hachures, drainage, roads, railroads, and houses with the names of residents at the time of the Battle of Gettysburg. ![]()
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