Gettysburg II.

9-20-19 SHORT HILLS: We’re back in NJ, and I’ve had a chance to edit the pix of the battlefield. The Gettysburg National Military Park is huge and looks today a lot like it looked then, farmland, pasture, orchards, fences and stonewalls. Many of the original houses and buildings have been preserved or restored. It is very beautiful.

The Park surrounds the town of Gettysburg, and it’s dotted with stone monuments and bronze statues to all the combatants—states, military forces, generals, other officers, individuals. Cannons are everywhere and in the positions that they would have been in. Our guide, John Archer, took us to the different sites in the park in chronological order from July 1-3, 1863. He showed us the positions of the armies as they arrived on site and and maneuvered for advantageous positions.

We saw Seminary Ridge, the Peach Orchard, Little Roundtop and Cemetery Hill. We stood where the Army of the Potomac was on Cemetery Hill and looked across the fields, fences and walls to the woods about a mile away from which Lee’s men under the command of Longstreet and Pickett began their attack on July 3 known as Pickett’s Charge. A few of the Confederate 12,500 men reached the Union lines, but were driven back. Lee’s forces suffered losses of 50% dead, wounded or captured. They were cut down by cannon barrage and rifle fire. The bodies littered the fields.

On July 4, 1863, Grant took Vicksburg on the Mississippi, cutting the South in two. Those victories for the North marked the beginning of the end for the CSA.


The garden at our B&B where we had breakfast before going to battle.

The Park area surrounds the town and looks like farmland as it did in 1863. There are many of these fences as well as split rail fences.

Cows in the shade on a hot day.

Little round top where Joshua Chamberlain led defenders in a bayonet charge when their ammunition was exhausted. The rocks are volcanic.

Many, many monuments commemorate states, divisions, brigades, generals and individuals. The big one is to honor Pennsylvania.

General Meade was the Union commander at Gettysburg.

Cannons are everywhere. These are in the Union position that opposed Pickett's Charge.

Pickett's and Longstreet's troops came from those woods on Seminary Ridge about a mile away and walked across the fields and climbed over the fences, 12,500 started and a few reached that stone wall in the foreground before being repulsed. More than 6,000 Rebels were killed, wounded or captured. Imagine what those fields looked like littered with the dead and wounded. That monument marks the high-water mark of the Confederacy, literally and figuratively. The next day on the Mississippi, Grant took Vicksburg and cut the South in two.