Battle of Gettysburg
The largest battle ever fought in North America ran for three days in July 1863 and produced some 50,000 casualties. Lee had invaded Pennsylvania to take the war off Virginia's farms, to supply his army from northern country, and to win a victory on Union soil that might bring foreign recognition or a negotiated peace. The armies met by accident at a road junction where a Confederate division was reportedly looking for shoes. The first day went to the Confederates, who drove Union forces back through the town onto the high ground south of it — which is the ground that decided the battle, since the Union line then held a fishhook of hills and ridges with interior lines. The second day was fought at both ends of it: Little Round Top held by the 20th Maine under Chamberlain, who ran out of ammunition and ordered a bayonet charge downhill, and the Peach Orchard and Wheatfield lost and retaken repeatedly. On the third day Lee attacked the centre. Some 12,500 men under Pickett and Pettigrew advanced across a kilometre of open ground under artillery and then rifle fire, reached the wall at a copse of trees, and were destroyed; barely half came back. Lee rode among them saying it was all his fault. He retreated on 4 July, the day Vicksburg surrendered in the west. Lincoln dedicated the cemetery in November in 272 words that took him about two minutes. The battle is usually called the turning point of the war, and the claim needs qualifying. Lee's army fought for nearly two more years and inflicted enormous casualties, and what Gettysburg ended was the possibility of a Confederate victory by invasion rather than the Confederacy itself.
- Year: 1863 CE
- Category: Military
