Decisive Battle of Gettysburg Opened
Wednesday, July 1, 1863
The Battle of Gettysburg, July 1, 2 and 3, 1863, marked the high tide of the Civil War. Here General Robert E. Lee hoped to win a victory which would compel the withdrawal of Union troops from other parts of the country, secure recognition of the Confederacy by foreign Governments, carry panic into the North and furnish supplies for his hungry troops.
Fresh from his brilliant victory at Chancellorsville, he moved north until his van was within sight of Harrisburg, and there, learning that General George G. Meade was in close pursuit, Lee turned his army to meet him, and Gettysburg became the scene of the decisive battle.
The battle of Gettysburg was the bloodiest of the Civil War and the most terrible battle in the world’s history previous to the World’s War, and probably greater than any single action in that gigantic conflict.
The Union losses in the three days’ battle were 23,000, and the Confederate losses were probably as high in killed, wounded, captured and missing, as 29,000.
At Gettysburg was concentrated Lee’s magnificent and confident army of Confederate troops, which had invaded Pennsylvania through the Cumberland Valley, and was then on its way to Philadelphia, and then to Baltimore and Washington. The advance of Ewell’s corps marched as far as Wrightsville, seventy-five miles from Philadelphia, or only four days’ march and had watered their horses in the Susquehanna River. There the mile-long Columbia-Wrightsville bridge was burned to prevent the rebels from crossing the river.
The concentration of his forces at Gettysburg was forced upon General Lee by the rapid movement of General Hooker with the Federal army, who hurried northward, as soon as Washington was uncovered, to intercept the invading host, and so to loosen the grip it had upon the fair valleys, rich with ripe grain and teeming with money, horses, cattle, clothing, shoes and provisions. Curiously, the Southern army came into Gettysburg from the North and the Northern army came in from the South.
Lee’s army was in fine condition and Hooker’s was recently reorganized into a great machine. The two armies were well matched. Each had approximately 80,000 men, including 10,000 cavalry to each; the Union had 327 pieces of artillery, and the Southern army only forty less pieces. The main difference was in commanders, for the Federal army had at Gettysburg, a new and untried commander, General Meade, who only three days before the battle had superseded General Hooker, and had with him two new corps commanders, Sykes and Newton, while the Confederate army under Lee had their able and accomplished Longstreet as well as the competent A. P. Hill and renowned Ewell in command of their three corps.