Battle of Gettysburg
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863) was generally considered to be the turning point of the American Civil War.
Shortly after Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia won a smashing victory over the Federal Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Chancellorsville (May 1-3, 1863), Lee decided upon a second invasion of the North. Such a move would upset Federal plans for the summer campaigning season and possibly relieve the beseiged Confederate garrison at Vicksburg, and it would allow the Confederates to live off the bounty of the rich northern farms while giving war-raveged Virginia a much needed rest. Also, Lee's 75,000-man army could threaten Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington and give voice to the growing peace movement in the North.
Thus, on June 3 Lee's army began to shift northward from Fredericksburg, Virginia. In order to attain more efficiency in his commands, Lee had pared down his two large corps into three new corps. James Longstreet retained command of his First Corps; and Lee selected two good division commanders to head the remaining corps: Richard S. Ewell was given the Second Corps, replacing "Stonewall" Jackson, who had been slain at Chancellorsville; and Ambrose Powell Hill commanded the new Third Corps.
The Federal Army of the Potomac, under the colorful Joseph Hooker, consisted of seven corps of infantry and artillery, a cavalry corps under Alfred Pleasonton, and an artillery reserve, for a combined strength of more than 90,000 men.
The first major action of the campaign took place on June 9 between the opposing cavalry forces at Brandy Station, near Culpeper, Virginia. The Confederate cavalry under "J.E.B." Stuart was nearly bested by the Federal horsemen, but Stuart eventually prevailed. However, this battle, the largest cavalry engagement of the war, proved that the Union horse soldier was equal to his Southern counterpart.
By mid-June, the Army of Northern Virginia was poised to cross the Potomac and enter Maryland. After gobbling up the Federal garrisons at Winchester and Martinsburg, Ewell's Second Corps began crossing the river on June 15. Hill's and Longstreet's corps followed on June 24-25. Hooker's army pursued, keeping between the U.S. Capital and Lee's army. The Federals crossed the Potomac on June 25-27.
Meanwhile, in a controversial move, Lee allowed J.E.B. Stuart to take a portion of the army's cavalry and ride around the Union army. However, Lee's orders gave Stuart much latitude, and both generals are to blame for the long absence of Stuart's cavalry, as well as for the failure to assign a more active role to the cavalry left with the army. By June 29, Lee's army was strung out in an arc from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, twenty-eight miles NW of Gettysburg, to Carlisle, thirty miles north of Gettysburg, to near Harrisburg and Wrightsville on the Susquehanna River.
In a dispute over the use of the Harpers Ferry garrison, Hooker offered his resignation, and Abraham Lincoln and General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck, who were looking for an excuse to shelve Hooker, immediately accepted the resignation. They replaced him on June 27-28 with Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade, commander of the Fifth Corps.
When, on June 29, Lee learned that the Army of the Potomac had crossed its namesake river, he ordered a concentration of his forces around Cashtown, located at the eastern base of South Mountain and eight miles west of Gettysburg.
On June 30, while part of Hill's Third Corps was in Cashtown, one of Hill's brigades, North Carolinians under J. Johnston Pettigrew, ventured toward Gettysburg to look for supplies, including shoes. And thus the myth of the Battle of Gettysburg being caused by shoe-hunting Confederates stumbling upon the Yankees. This is in fact not true. There was no shoe factory in town; there was no large supply of shoes. Pettigrew and his superiors should have known that, four days earlier, part of Jubal A. Early's division of the Second Corps had marched through Gettysburg on its way to York and Wrightsville. Any valuable supplies, including shoes, would have been taken by these troops. Even had Early's passage through town on the 26th not been common knowledge, Hill's troops would have no reason to believe that there was a large supply of shoes in Gettysburg. In his memoirs, Henry Heth, whose division started the battle on July 1, claimed that he heard of a large supply of shoes in town. From whom could he have heard this? Likely Heth used the shoe excuse to absolve himself of the blame for prematurely instigating a battle that General Lee wanted to fight only when the army was concentrated.
When Pettigrew's troops approached Gettysburg on June 30, they noticed Federal cavalry under John Buford west of town, and Pettigrew wisely returned to Cashtown. When Pettigrew told Hill and Henry Heth, his division commander, about what he had seen, neither general believed that there was a substantial Federal force in or near the town. In fact, Hill reportedly said that he hoped the Federal army was there, because that's where he wanted it to be. Hill determined to mount a reconnaissance in force the following morning to determine the size and strength of the enemy force in his front. Thus, around 5 a.m. on Wednesday, July 1, Hill's troops advanced to Gettysburg on the Chambersburg Pike looking for a fight, not for shoes.
