Gettysburg

We are engaged in a great civil war…

A hundred and fifty years ago, in a field outside of a town in Pennsylvania that most people had never heard of before the fate of a nation would be decided.  Over the past few months General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, would be making advances into the Northern Territory, through Maryland and into Pennsylvania.  There near the town of Gettysburg Lee's Army would clash with General George Meade and the Army of the Potomac.

From these three days we would learn of leaders like Pickett, Chamberlin, Sickles, Sykes, Longstreet, and Ewell. We would also learn about places like Cemetery Ridge, Culp's Hill, the Peach Orchard and Little Round Top. These three days would make, or in some cases break, the careers of military leaders and they would be the ultimate turning point in the American Civil War.

 

I first set foot on this hallowed ground in the summer of 2009, I was ill prepared for the experience that I would have over the next few hours.  I had been to other battle grounds in the past, I had learned about Gettysburg in school, I had seen movies about, and referencing, this battle but none of this would prepare me nor compare to my being here.

Before the fighting broke out, the Union forces were holding the town as General Lee was advancing the Army of Northern Virginia into the heart of Union territory.  After his defeat at the battle of Sharpsburg/Antietam, Lee had regrouped and was continued his tactics of skirmishes into the north and then pulling back to the south, a tactic that he had utilized up to this point.  Lee was now advancing past Maryland and into Pennsylvania.  As his forces moved up and surrounded the town of Gettysburg, General Meade was reinforcing the Union position with his Army of the Potomac.

Prior to the battle Lee was already in a position of disadvantage with the loss of his Lt. General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson about two months prior, thus leaving most of his forces under the command of two of his new "green" Generals, although they were good men and generals combined they were no Stonewall Jackson, The lack of senior leadership and the long distance his supply lines would have to cover would ultimately lead to his defeat.

As the first day progressed into battle, it was little more than skirmishes amongst union forces here and confederate forces there.  With union and confederate units fighting each other around and through the town of Gettysburg.  This would lead Meade to bring his forces back to the high ground of cemetery ridge running south of town ending at round top, creating the formation of the "fish hook", the one thing that would be the saving grace of the Union army.

On the morning of the second day of fighting General Sickles, unhappy with his position on little round top, and thinking that there was high ground with the land at the peach orchard, against orders moved his units down the hillside to the peach orchard.  This move left the 20th Maine, a unit of volunteer soldiers under the command of LTC. Chamberlin defending the side of little round top, a position that would soon have them surrounded if not for the forward thinking of General George Sykes who lead his men to little round top to aide in the defense of that position. After a day of being constantly attacked and ordered to hold their ground on two separate occasions Colonel Chamberlin knew his men were growing restless and short of ammunition.  When the confederates stated their third attempt to take little round top the order was given to fix bayonets, and after the intense fighting Colonel Chamberlin gave the order to attack the confederate forces that were seeking cover in "Devil's Den."  The Men of Maine who had held the line under intense fighting and prevented the Union Army from being routed by confederates now stormed the field of battle.  The story of the 20th Maine is one of heroic sacrifice that would be told for the next 150 years.

On the last day of fighting perhaps the most known action of the battle of Gettysburg would take place, all morning the confederate and union forces would line up their artillery on seminary ridge and cemetery ridge respectively.  About one in the afternoon the two armies would begin firing at each other over a distance of about a mile.  For the next two hours canon fire filled the air until about three PM the smoke was so thick that the armies could not even see the enemy at which they were aiming.  General Meade had his forces stop firing and the confederates believed that they had taken out the Union canons, had 12,500 soldiers step out of the security of the ridge line and began advancing the 3/4 mile distance to the union lines. Once the confederate forces were near General Hancock opened up his second corps and decimated the southern forces as they advanced.  Many of the South’s great leaders were killed in these three days of fierce fighting and General Lee would order a full retreat back down into Virginia, never again advancing his forces into Pennsylvania.

These three days would be one of the most studied battles of the American Civil War, and in fact all of American history, one that showed old families from Virginia battling old families from New York and Maine, little is known about the young men who consecrated that hallowed ground in those three days, but I have had the pleasure to learn of a man, an immigrant from Bavaria, who at the age of 19 left his home in Europe and came to make a new life for himself in Ohio.  His name was Daniel Young, a private in the 107th Ohio infantry, he fought and was wounded at Gettysburg, but he survived he married, had a family.  In the years that followed his first grandson would be named after him, Daniel Young Carman, my great grandfather.  When I learned this about two years ago I knew that the battle of Gettysburg was not some action that had taken place 150 years ago that had no bearing on my life, but instead it was a major conflict in American history that I know that my family, and all of our families, have played a role in.

 

“The world will little note… but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

~~Abraham Lincoln 1863