Gettysburg - The Third Day

As night fell over the Gettysburg Battlefield, the fighting mostly died down.  Only the cries of the wounded still punctuated the stillness of the night.  On both sides, councils of war took place, Meade and Lee were both determined to stand and fight, but the direction that this battle would take was squarely in Lee's hands.  While Longstreet still counseled a shift in the army's position in order to fight a more defensive battle on ground more favorable to the Confederates, Lee was firm in his commitment to the present positioning.  Lee's initial plan was to renew the attacks on both Federal flanks in the morning, but an early morning Union artillery barrage would result in an early failure of the attacks on Culp's Hill, necessitating a change.  Instead of flank maneuvers, Lee proposed that Longstreet would instead attack the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, where it was believed that the line was the weakest (due to heavy reinforcements shifted to Culp's Hill and the Round Tops).  Once Longstreet's men had broken through, effectively separating the Union Army in half, the Confederates would be able to defeat each half separately.  To accomplish this task, Lee gave Longstreet two divisions from A. P. Hill's Corps, those commanded by Brig. General Pettigrew and Maj. General Trimble, to fight alongside Maj. General George Pickett's division.  As seen on the map, the target of this assault was the Union II Corps, commanded by Maj. General Hancock.  In retrospect, it is often wondered how anyone could have thought that such a charge could have possibly succeeded.  In fact, the ultimate futility of this attack was accurately predicted by Lt. General Longstreet and his criticism of it (and of the commander who ordered it, Lee) would serve to make him persona non grata after the war.

In the Union Council of War, General Meade and officers debated the proposed actions of the Confederates the next day.  Meade for his part correctly predicted that Lee would attempt an assault on the center of the Union line, in particular the area commanded by II Corps' Brig. General John Gibbon.  In fact, with this prediction Meade would have made an excellent fortune teller, the famed Oracle at Delphi could have made a more accurate prognostication, since Gibbon's sector did indeed endure the Confederate attack.  The Union position, with its fortified cover, well-placed artilery and superior high ground posession, was well suited to defend itself against any Confederate assault.

03 July 1883 --- The Great Confederate Assault did not begin auspiciously for the Rebels.  Though Picket's Division had not yet seen action at Gettysburg, all of A. P. Hill's divisions had.  With General Hill in ill health, he did not have a say in which troops were chosen to participate.  This led to some of his corps who had done heavy fighting on 01 July being picked to make the charge over those who had fought only lightly on 01 July and not at all on 02 July.  In addition, the assault on Culp's Hill and a cavlary action in the Union rear by Maj General J. E. B. Stuart (who's absence of the previous days had caused Lee to act blindly) accomplished little and failed to force Meade to divert troops to those areas, further weaking the Union center.  Supporting actions on General Pickett's right by Wilcox and Lang, were late in starting and ended-up occurring after the charge was already in retreat.  However, before the charge could begin Lee planned on using his artilery to soften up the Union center.  This bombardment was the largest of the war and probably one of the loudest manmade sounds every heard, with hundreds of cannons on both sides firing for almost two hours.

Starting at 1:00 p.m., between 150 and 170 Confederate cannons opened up on the Union center.  This barrage caused damage all along the Union line, a shell even exploded near Meade's headquarters, killing an orderly and forcing the general to evacuate his staff and hurting infantry morale.  The Federal artillery chief, Brig. General Henry Hunt, had only about 80 cannons with which to respond (the geographic features of the Union position had limited areas for effective gun placement) but he was soon responding vigorously.  However, despite the numerical superiority of Confederate artilery, they barrage did not have the desired effect.  Most of the shells fired landed well back of the Union lines and did little damage when exploding.  The responsibility for this lies with Confederate gunners who were using unfamiliar fuses with unusual timing as well as with their gullibility.  General Hunt gradually ordered his gunners to cease firing a few at a time, this was done to both conserve ammunition for the attack he knew was now a certainty and to convince the Confederates that the cannons were being destroyed one by one.  This illusions was successful in fooling Colonel Porter Alexander, General Longstreet's artillery chief.  When he noticed the diminishment of Union cannon fire and the fact that he was himself running low on ammunition, Alexander notified his superiors.  It was now or never for Pickett's Charge.  Reluctantly and silently, Longstreet gave Pickett the signal to begin the assault.

   "General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been   with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know, as well as any one, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arrayed for battle can take that position."
        -Alegedly Longstreet to Lee-

Longstreet's reservations about Pickett's Charge is repeatedly used as ammunition by those who see the general as purposefully delaying the attack in order to sabotagueCulp's Hill, were the prime causes of the delay.  Though the fact that an attack was immenent was telegraphed to the Union forces via the massive artilery bombardment that preceeded it.  Powerless to prevent the attack Longstreet eventually acquesced and gave a non-verbal command to Pickett to begin the charge.

At roughly 3:00 p.m., 12,500 Confederate soldiers stepped out from under cover of the ridgeline and began their advance towards Cemetery Ridge. 

A View of Pickett's Charge and the Open Expanse They Had to Cross, with the Union line in the distance

03 July was hot (87 degrees F) and humid and the Confederate advance was less a "charge" and more properly labeled a "parade march".  The men marched deliberately in line, as though on the parade grounds, instructed not to fire or give the Rebel Yell until they were within a few hundred yards of the Union line.  The nine included brigades of:  Pettigrew and Trimble on the left and Pickett on the right, were stretched out over a mile-long front.  Everything seemed to be perfect......until the Union cannon began firing again. 

The wide open area the Confederates were marching in made them perfect targets for Union gunners, while the Confederates learned the hard way that their own artillery had not successfully knocked out the oppositions' artillery.  Now, thanks to that earlier barrage, Pettigrew, Trimble and Pickett's divisions had no artillery support, due to both ammunition shortage and Federal batteries that soon commenced to targeting Confederate guns, as well as the infantry.  While the cannon fire from in front of Pickett's Charge was doing its damage, the concealed artillery positions on top of Little Round Top soon began raking the Confederate right flank, while fire from Cemetery Hill hit the left.  As the Confederates came within 400 yards of the Union line, shell and solid shot turned into canister fire, which tore huge swaths in the attacking line, and musket fire.  Eventually, the mile-long line of Rebels turned into one less than half a mile, as gaps appeared in the line.  But the Confederates were still making progress, despite the withering and deadly fire.

Pickett's division was the only one to actually make a significant break through in the Union lines.  At a minor salient, known afterwards as "The Angle" and defended by Cushing's Battery A and the 69th and 71st Pennsylvania, two gaps opened up.  This occurred when the commander of the 71st Pennsylvania ordered his men to retreat after the Confederates came too close to his position.  Adding to Union problems, around this time, General Hancock, who had been displaying himself prominently to the men by remaining on horseback throughout the Confederate bombardment, was wounded by a bullet which struck his saddle and caused shrapnel to become lodged in his inner thigh.  However, he refused to be evacuated to the rear until the battle was settled.

View from the "Angle" portion of Union lines of the field

This "Angle" proved to be the "High Water Mark" of the Confederacy.  Despite the breakthrough by Brig. General Lewis Armistead, Federal forces would eventually beat the Confederates back and reclaim their original defensive lines.  At one gap, the retreat of the 59th New York had left only an independent artillery battery to face the oncoming assault of 2,500 to 3,000 Confederates led by Generals Garnett and Armistead.  Personally assisted by artillery chief Hunt, Captain Cowan had the five guns fire double canister simultaneously.  In front of the Angle the entire Confederate line disappeared.  But there were more serious gaps in the Union line which required help to plug.  The Irishmen of the 69th Pennsylvania and the Zouaves of the 72nd Pennsylvania were brought forward and fought hard, even using their bayonets and fists.  As more and more Federal forces arrived, despite the temporary Confederate seizure of several cannon, the defensive line became impregnable and Rebel troops began to retreat.

General Armistead, seen in this painting leading his men from the front with his hat on the tip of his sword, led his men into the Union lines and was struggling to turn a cannon around when he was shot down.  This High Water Mark has been commemorated in stone on the Gettysburg battlefield, though there is some disagreement over which of the several breakthroughs made by the Confederates actually made the most headway into the Union lines.  It was the deaths of the Confederate high command (Armistead, Garnett and Kemper were all injured) and with it the loss of command and control which helped cause the informal retreat conducted by the Confederate rank and file.  As the Confederates straggled back towards the safety of Seminary Ridge the victorious Federal troops began shouting "Fredericksburg!  Fredericksburg!  Fredericksburg!", in reference to a 1862 Confederate victory, which involved multiple Union assaults against an impregnable Confederate defensive line along Marye's Heights, outside the town of Fredericksburg.

This comparison of Pickett's Charge to the Battle of Fredericksburg, was an apt one. One which the casualty list bares out.  Pickett's Charge was a bloodbath.  While the Union dead numbered around 1,500 killed and wounded, the Confederate casualty rate was over 50%.  The total losses for the attack were at least 6,555, with at least over 1,100 killed outright on the battlefield itself.  The charge was also extremely hard on Confederate officers, Trimble lost a leg, Pettigrew died of his injuries and Garnett and Armistead were killed dead on the field.  In fact, in Pickett's division alone, 26 of 40 field grade officers (those of major through colonel rank) were casualties, and all of his brigade commanders fell that day as well.  In addition, of the 15 regimental commanders, 11 were casualties also.

The casualties were so great that General Pickett, when asked by Lee to ready his division for a Union counterattack, responded with "General Lee, I have no division."  In fact, according to many later accounts after the war, Pickett never forgave Lee for the slaughter of his men at Gettysburg, saying of him, "That man destroyed my division." but perhaps such bitterness is little more than hearsay, as neither Lee nor Pickett ever wrote about it and only General Mosby was witness to an uncomfortable meeting between the two men.  Though why Mosby would chose to fabricate such an event is beyond the understanding of this historian.  Suffice to say, Pickett's division was shattered and so was its commander's career.  Despite any official condemnation from either Lee or Longstreet (though what he could have possibly done differently with no diversionary movements on the Union flanks and inefficient artillery use is also beyond this historian's ken) Pickett's career went into decline.  Though he survived the war,  commanded troops in the several key battles and surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse.


What was the end result of the three days of fighting?  Dead, dead and more dead.  The casualties of these three days combined served to make the Battle of Gettysburg the most deadly confrontation of the entire civil war.  The total casualties from both sides equaled between 46,000 and 51,000, with the Union suffering 23,055 of those and the Confederates suffering around 28,000.  The number of dead and injured were so great that the tiny town of Gettysburg was simply unable to cope with them.  Eventually, the federal government decided to set aside a portion of the land to create a new national cemetery and a few months later, President Lincoln would be invited to speak at a dedication of that cemetery.  Though the dead cared little about what the president said there, but the 272 words in his "Gettysburg Address would become famous and successfully put the sacrifce of the Gettysburg fallen into perspective.