American History Hit - The Battle of Gettysburg

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

The first three days of July 1863 saw the bloodiest single battle of the American Civil War. This clash between the Unionist and Confederate armies quickly became the stuff of legend.But what actually happened at Gettysburg? Professor Glenn LaFantasie joins Don for this episode to take us through the key figures in the battle, their strategies and whether this really was the turning point of the Civil War.Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Teän Stewart-Murray. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, James Holland, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribeYou can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Around 50 degrees, we are walking with our neighbors, all of us returning from the dedication of a new cemetery that holds the Union dead from the battle here four months ago back in early July. Everybody's walking, not too many are talking. It has been a day to mourn the dead. All around the muddy fields, there are still remnants of the fighting, clothing, discarded shoes, pieces of web, weapons. People have been injured finding things.

The ceremony was held a short spell from town. Edward Everett, the famous orator, spoke for about two hours laying blame at the feet of the Confederacy. No argument there. Some music was played, and then the president, Abe Lincoln himself, rose up and spoke. Only for a couple minutes was all, but it's his words I'm wondering about. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget. what they did here. Can't speak to the first part, but he's sure right about the second. No matter how much we try, the marks of this battle will not leave us anytime soon and may very well never do so. Hello, welcome to American History yet. Nice to have you back. I'm Don Wildman. This week,

160 years ago, July 1st through the 3rd, 1863, one of the most consequential battles in American military history took place within our own borders. In south central Pennsylvania, the Battle of Gettysburg, between forces of the Army of the Potomac under the command of General George Mead and the Army of Northern Virginia, led by Robert E. Lee. The broad strokes of this clash are the familiar stuff of recorded history, legend almost, northernmost incursion by southern forces seeking to bring the conflict to the north. A pivotal battle, the tipping point, an argument can be made.

But it was also undeniably the nadir of the Civil War, still the deadliest battle for any American military endeavor in nearly 250 years of our war. our history. Upwards of some 50,000 casualties dead and wounded, counted between both armies, all in the space of three days, hard to even conceive. This dramatic and dynamic battle continues to be studied and written about, and my guest today is one of those historians who's done a lot of both. Dr. Glenn LaFantasy has published books like Gettysburg Requiem and Twilight at Little Roundtop and is a professor of Civil War History at Western Kentucky University. Glenn, welcome to

American history hit. Nice to have you. Thanks, Don. Nice to be here. Gettysburg is unusual history in so many regards, but I'm particularly taken by the lack of planning behind this epic event. This is a battle that seems to happen spontaneously almost. Why was Lee on this mission to the North in the first place? Well, he had conferred with the Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and they both decided that it would be worthwhile for Lee's army of of Northern Virginia to raid toward the north, take the war out of Virginia and forage throughout Pennsylvania with the idea of first capturing Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, then swinging around and possibly even capturing Washington, D.C.

Wow. The war had happened in the south to this moment, of course, and that takes a big toll on the people. And so I'm sure they were looking for a chance to, as you say, forage, but spend some time up north, not only to send the message to the north, but also to treat their soldiers to new farms and so forth to raid. Yeah, absolutely. And that was very much part of the intent of the invasion of Pennsylvania. What they found was, in fact, farms filled with bounty of food and clear spring water and no devastation from the war. Virginians had become demoralized by the fact that so much of their countryside, so many of their buildings, had been damaged and harmed, that this move northward was like traveling into a paradise of sorts. And that's the way that the Confederate rank and file felt about it as well.

These movements of armies, it's really a different time, of course, transportation-wise, but it's really a different way of fighting war. How many soldiers are we talking about? How big were these armies? Well, potentially at the time, the Army of the Potomac, which was the Union Army, the Northern Army of the East, was about 120,000 effective troops. That means boots on the ground who could do the fighting. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederate forces, amounted to about 90,000. And so there was a difference there clearly in terms of numbers. And yet, in previous battles, Lee had often been outnumbered and yet emerged the victor. So numbers are only relative. They're relative to the generalship of those men who led those armies. It's the logistics that amaze me, you know, moving a city like that from one

place to the next and then equipping it for war. It's just this massive undertaking. Lee is on a role at this particular moment, as a matter of fact. He's had multiple victories thus far in the war, but especially most recently, Chancellorsville, just weeks earlier. Big demonstration of his tactical brilliance, as you mentioned. He is now facing a new commander in George Mead,

who suffers from some of the same complications as his predecessors. Let's talk about the northern leadership versus the Southern at this point. Sure. Well, Mead was a very competent general. He had been a division commander in the Army of the Potomac

since its inception. and had rosen to the rank of Major General in that army. He was very deliberate, meaning that he relied on solid planning and was expert at deploying his forces against the enemy. So he was actually one of the stars of the Army of the Potomac, the very reason why he was chosen by Lincoln, Secretary Edwin M. Stanton, who was Secretary of War, why he was chosen to lead the Army of the Potomac.

However, he was appointed to that position only three days before the Battle of Gettysburg. And under those circumstances, Meade did an incredible job of moving, as you say, his city of men in following and trying to locate Robert E. Lee and what the Confederates were up to. It was a great challenge, but Meade met it with a certain amount. out of trepidation as a new commander, but also with resolution that he knew how to fight battles. And if this battle was going to occur in Pennsylvania, means native state, then he was reckoning that he would win this one. How much was it a chosen moment versus coincidence that this was July 4th coming up?

Oh, it's purely coincidence. And yet the battle, as you stated in the intro, was accidental in the sense that neither army really knew where the other was at the particular time when they clashed and first clashed on July 1, 1863. And historians are fond of saying that Lee approached the battle from the north and Mead approached the battle from the south. And that meant that the Army of the Potomac was trying feverishly to find out where Lee and his army was, they really weren't quite sure, but on the morning of July 1st,

both sides found out where each other was. It speaks to the scale of this war that Lee was logistically moving his troops in the Shenandoah Valley. He was using the Appalachian Mountains to cloak himself, and then Meade is out there with the general instruction of stay between Lee and Washington, D.C. And that's how they're moving, right? That's exactly right. And the mountains provide the perfect screen for Lee to make his movements without being detected. This is an age before ready communication, although telegraphs existed, and certainly Mead could take advantage of telegraphs back and forth to Washington, letting the political authorities know where he was and what he was doing. Cavalry was used for reconnaissance purposes. And this is a moment in the life of the Army of the Potomac's cavalry that they had come into their own just less than a month earlier at a battle called Brandy Station in Northern Virginia.

And they had proved quite effective in that battle. And then increasingly, that cavalry was more and more proficient at reconnaissance. It's going to be a whole cast of characters who play their roles in this drama, but Meade and Lee are both in their headquarters miles from the front. And Gettysburg really develops out of a scourbish, right? How apocryful is it that the Southerners under AP Hill and Heath were going for shoes? That's always in the movies, right? Well, yeah.

And it's been a long legend. The fact is that William Heath, in charge of a Confederate division, did say in his after-battle report that he went to Gettysburg looking for shoes because a shoe factory was there. Well, there was no shoe factory in Gettysburg, and the only shoes that there were were on the feet of the people living there. That was a surprise to the Confederates. Probably the nearest shoe factory was in Hanover, Pennsylvania, which is about 30 miles east of Gettysburg. So poor intelligence, that means, led to this notion of, we're going to find shoes for our shoeless Confederates. And that part is true that the Confederate soldiers suffered from tattered uniforms and many of them had no shoes at all.

He is confronted in Gettysburg by Major General John Buford, who slows the advance of Heath's forces long enough for infantry to arrive. So much of the early point of this battle is about grabbing high ground, which Buford has done, right? Yes, and did very effectively. Beaufort, with the help of the 1993 movie, Gettysburg, has emerged a great hero of the battle. Well, Sam Elliott plays him. How can he not? Exactly. And we go around the house, repeating Sam Elliott's line, keep a clear eye. He's slightly overacting in that role, I must say. Slightly. Oh, my gosh. And there's a fondness that's developed word, Sam Elliott, playing Beaufort and overacted. and overacting at the same time.

And he has this soliloquy. He punches his chest and all the dust goes flying. You know, it's just remarkable. But fans of the movies say, man, this is great. Yeah, you can't overact Gettysburg, right? He manages to grab the seminary, the Lutheran Seminary there, which has a nice little tower so he can watch this. I don't know how much time he actually spent up in that tower,

but certainly in that movie he does. It becomes the anchor point for the majority. the first day for sure. When does it become clear that this is more than a skirmish? When does it become a definite battle? It becomes clear very early in the battle that two armies are confronting one another, not just small elements or units of those armies, but there's such a force behind the Confederate attack once it develops that actually the Confederates are coming from the West to the east toward Gettysburg, but they're also coming from the north to the south to rendezvous at Gettysburg, or at least nearby in Cache Town,

closer to the mountains. In any event, Beaufort knew and truly knew, and we know this from his dispatches, that he had Lee's army in front of him, and that's a big deal. As you say, they've been looking for each other, and Lee is generally heading towards the north to Harrisburg, but suddenly he realizes that he can now find the north right there. And so he pulls back Hewle, he sends out word, and that's when things start to consolidate for the South, moving on there. At the same time Reynolds has come up, he's the infantry that Beaufort was waiting for, and this is when really things start to get hot. Yes, indeed.

And Beaufort held, as you indicated, long enough for Reynolds' first Corps of the Army of the Potomac to arrive. Unfortunately, very soon after the engagement of that first core, John Reynolds was killed, shot in the head. And that removed critical man in a leadership position of the Army of the Potomac, giving something of an advantage to the attacking Confederates. Very tragic. Reynolds was known to be a great leader. He was on his way up, wasn't he? He was one of the best soldiers, one of the best officers in the Army of the Potomac. He easily could have been chosen as commander of the Army of the Potomac rather than meet. But Reynolds actually turned it down. An offer was made to him.

But he turned down the command of the Army of the Potomac. Mead was a second choice. That's how competent Reynolds was. And had he lived, you know, he probably would have risen to very formidable heights as a Union General. There's a lot of circumstances about this battle that are phenomenally epic, but not the least of which is the personalities involved and the humanity behind all of this stuff. But let's account for the conditions of the conflict here. It is hot. It is early July, southern Pennsylvania, sweltering hot and humid in wool uniforms.

Ugh, unthinkable. The terrain is hilly in the town developed. We're not in the middle of nowhere. Gettysburg is a hub of commerce and a new road has been laid. There is significant civilian population. This is rare that large force battles happen so close to a town. But this is largely a consequence of circumstance, really. Yes.

And yet Gettysburg is a very strategic. location. It has 10 major roads that run into Gettysburg at this point in 1863. And as you indicated, the railroad had arrived in the late 1850s to Gettysburg. In fact, Gettysburg was a terminus connecting Gettysburg to the east, all points east. And so it was a strategic place. And for a battle to be accidentally fought in a place that proved to be of high strategic significance is very unusual in the Civil War. It's too short a podcast to go through all the events of this three-day battle, but let's try to get the high points, no pun intended. Day one really is about holding that ground and sort of securing some sort of position. But these lines are going to go back and forth throughout these long days of battle.

They just fight all day long, don't they? They do, and they even fight into the night. So the fighting was intense, it was brutal, it was bloody. What happened was that the Confederates were successful in pushing the Union Army off of Seminary Ridge, back through the town of Gettysburg, so that there was urban fighting, fighting in the streets, and the Union Army ended up on two high hills that were very close to the town of Gettysburg, the borough of Gettysburg. And those hills were Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill.

With that occupation and being able to hold that position on the night of July 1st, when Major General Winfield Scott Hancock arrives, he's the highest in command on the night of July 1st and the early morning of July 2nd. he extends the line into what has become the famous fish hook. Right. Of the barb being the two-hills cemetery and Culp's Hill and the shank of the hook running down toward the base of another prominent hill, little roundtop.

This was intentional or did it just sort of evolve that they created this formation? It evolved, but there is an intention behind it, especially for, for West Pointers, what in the Civil War was sought by establishing a defensive line was to have that defensive line in such an arrangement where what's called interior lines would help the defending army. And those interior lines meant that from the barb of the fish hook to the end of the shank of that formation, it was only a short distance. It was approximately a mile and a half. And that meant troops could be moved from one end to the other of the line or into the center very, very quickly. Whereas Lee's offensive line is in the shape of a semicircle,

and it means that his movement of troops has to travel five miles in order to get from one flank to the other. And this is a significant disadvantage for the Confederates and a great advantage for the Army of the Potomac. And Lee is trained at West Point, just like his adversaries. He would recognize this formation, wouldn't he? Let's talk about Lee a bit. After the first day, he's kind of got them where he wants them. There is another factor involved in Lee's logistics, if you will.

There is a huge anti-war movement in the North at this point. Two years into this war, it hasn't gone particularly well for the North. They thought this would be over very quickly. it's anything but he's up here in the north, kind of trying to tip the balance in that favor. He wants to get the north to the negotiating table, doesn't he? Yes, he does. And it's a really remarkable piece of psychological warfare that we might not attribute to 150-plus years ago, that there could be such sophistication that Lee and Jefferson Davis were really seeking this psychological effect to

make the union public, the people of the North, war weary. And especially since, well, now they're even invading our Union states like Pennsylvania, this they hoped would demoralize the North and put incredible political pressure on Lincoln. And for Lincoln to acknowledge that it was time to sit down at a negotiating table and talk about peace. That's what the Confederates were really after. But it wouldn't have convinced Joshua Chamberlain played by Jeff Daniels. I have seen this movie approximately 150 times. No, I'm exaggerating.

But nevertheless, many, many times. And every time Jeff Daniels yells out bayonets, there's a chill that runs down my spine. And I have a Civil War bayonet as part of my meager Civil War artifact collection. I'm always tempted to run and get it. There you go. By day two, a very bloody day of fighting, the union is at Cemetery Hill, and it's not looking good for them. They've got to sort of break out of this, don't they? Meanwhile, on comes Long Street, AP Hill. All these different forces are consolidating in this one point. Yes, and consolidation of forces in the Civil War is a very important goal for commanders of those armies,

is to concentrate their forces as much as possible. Mead is a little concerned that despite his advantage of interior lines, his line is actually stretched very far. Lee far more concerned about how far his lines are stretched. But it's concentration of force that makes all the difference. And one of the elements that throws a curveball, as we would say today, into everything, is that while Mead has the... this protection of interior lines, one of his corps commanders, Daniel Sickles, Major General

in charge of the Third Corps, moves his men forward without any orders, without any explanation whatsoever before the Confederates launched their attack. And in doing so, he creates the situation that makes it far easier for the Confederates to attack the Union Line, because now the Union line is in shambles. And Sickle has done this without orders from General Meade, and General Meade is livid, rides out to Sickles and says, what are you doing? You can't possibly, I have thought this was a good move. And at that point, the Confederate attack happens. So any comment that Mead could make at this point was too late, and the battle rolled forward from all of this. It's one of the most amazing things about the Gettysburg battle, which makes visiting the battlefield so important and so

interesting because there are so many different episodes happening, so many smaller combat struggles that are happening in all kinds of terrain. You've got the woods over there, the railroad cut over here. Everyone's trying to outflank each other. It's really fascinating game of risk, I guess, like how are you going to move around your troops to win the moment, let alone the battle? The terrain is good, as they say in the movie, lovely ground, which for the Union. It definitely was. But the terrain is just phenomenally bad for a battle this size between two armies this size. And what I mean by that is there are portions of the battlefield that look from certain points where you can stand today that look like they're just flat fields when actually

there are swales in those fields. You can't see them if you're standing on the ground and just looking toward the enemy, you can't see all of the obstructions like the rocky boulders, huge boulders, the size of houses at a place called Devil's Den. And also the prominent hill of Little Roundtop strewn with boulders and not the greatest place to try to gain the upper hand, gain the high ground, which is what the Confederates are trying to do, push that union line off the high ground that they hold. To Mead's credit, despite the blunder of Sickles and his third corps, to Mead's credit, he's able to hold everything together

and retain the high ground on July 2nd. By the time Darkness falls, what has been accomplished by both sides on the second day? Well, it's pretty much even by the night of the second day. Mead calls the Council of War, which Army commanders don't like to do because it makes them seem weak in the public eye that they have to rely on the advice of their officers. But in this case, Mead is smart in calling that Council of War because he's tempted actually to withdraw from Gettysburg and find better ground that he can defend. But during this Council of War, his core commanders, his division commanders, make it clear, No, we should not move.

Lee's probably going to attack in the morning, and we still have the advantage of the high ground. To give this ground up would put us in grave danger of losing this battle overall. Glenn, the achievement for the Union forces is that they've held their own. They created this formation, which allowed them to hold back so much of the forces of the South. By the time nightfalls, both sides have reason to feel satisfied. but it remains to be seen what's going to happen on the fateful third day. I'll be right back after this short break with the final day of battle at Gettysburg.

Glenn, this is a three-day battle. Day three is when it all gets decided. At sunrise on day three, where are both sides at? Well, both sides are actually holding pretty much the same configuration of their lines facing one another. The only difference is that the Confederates on July 2nd were able on their left flank to move that end of the line slightly forward so that they're occupying Devil's Den, which is situated below Little Roundtop, which through the efforts of Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Main and several other regiments, that hill was held for the Union forces. So the situation, though, is pretty much the same, and the stretch of the lines facing one another was pretty much the same. What really would become a determining factor is what Lee would decide to do, as opposed to Mead, having followed the advice of his counsel of war, Mead is holding his lines. And that's the situation on the early morning of July 3rd. But Lee is confident that he can take the day at this point. How's he going to do that?

Well, he's going to do that because his reconnaissance, which is slightly faulty, has told him that the union center of the line along Cemetery Ridge is actually very weak and consists of only 5,000 soldiers. And his idea is to create a frontal attack on the union center, overwhelmed them with Confederate troops amounting to roughly 12,000 men and break the union line in the center. He is very confident. He's overconfident, in fact. What happens? Well, what happens is that under the general direction of Lieutenant General James Longstreet, Pickett's Division of Longstreet's Corps is assigned the major part of the battle that will take place.

the advance that will take place. And two other divisions from Hills Corps, second Corps, are added to Longstreet's forces to make an attack on the Union Center. There are doubts among many of the Confederate officers that this attack is going to be successful. First of all, the West Pointers, as we have mentioned, know about interior lines.

Longstreet's particularly worried about those interior lines where, even though it seems very weak in the center of the union line, Mead can move troops from any location. And in fact, Mead has in his back pocket, so to speak, the entire sixth corps is standing in reserve. An entire Army Corps that exists of over 20,000 men, is resting behind in the shadow of the hills of Big Roundtop and Little Roundtop. Wow, wow. And the Confederates don't know this. They don't have the reconnaissance to know that an entire core has a potential of helping Mead to reinforce the center of the union lines. How long after this does Pickett's Charge take place?

Well, what happens first is the Confederate artillery, hoping, in fact, to break the lines even before an infantry attack, assemble all of their cannon, all of their artillery, and focus it on the center of the Union line at a particular place where there's still a grove of trees, a copse of trees, as it's called, in the immediate center of the Army of the Potomac. And all of the artillery is aimed there to drive away even the small force that Lee thinks

is defending that line, and that's a prelude to an infantry attack. Now that bombardment that becomes an artillery duel between Confederates and Union artillery, lasts for approximately two hours. It might have only been an hour in duration, but guns were firing at least for a couple of hours. Longstreet knows, looking through his binoculars, No union troops have fled Cemetery Ridge or that area near the copse of trees. And he's very concerned about that.

Well, he was right in being concerned. What he didn't know and what none of the Confederates knew was that their artillery was firing too high. The artillery shells were landing behind the union line, generally in plowed fields, or Mead's headquarters happened to get hit, but with no damage to personnel. Mead wasn't there at the time. Nevertheless, the Confederate artillery fired too high. And meanwhile, Henry Hunt, the commander of the Union artillery, had reserved his cannon fire and limited it

because he knew that an infantry attack would surely follow, this huge bombardment of cannon. That's when Longstreet, despite the fact that the union forces hadn't moved, and he also doesn't know that they're being reinforced quickly by Mead using his interior lines, that Longstreet orders Pickett to advance. And thus creates the moment of the famous Pickett's Charge. And this is the famous Pickett's Charge. General Pickett is instructed to take his division and hit the center of those lines, of the union lines.

his response, we hope is true, is an amazing line. General, I have no division. It had been decimated. Nonetheless, 12,000 go over across a mile wide of open field, and they are hit hard. This is a fateful moment, isn't it? It is a fateful moment. And people who visit Gettysburg today can stand either at the Virginia Memorial on Seminary Ridge or the copse of trees on cemetery ridge and wonder to themselves,

and this is the modern perspective, how could Lee have ordered such a frontal assault knowing that his men would be simply cut down? Well, what modern folks don't understand is that Lee was following the old rule, the old military rule, of concentrating his forces, against the line he thought was weaker in numbers. And so that alone explains why Lee orders Longstreet to order Pickett to go forward in this famous charge. And as Pickett's division and as the other two divisions from Hills Corps advance across this open field,

they are indeed cut down, not only by Union artillery firing canister, which is like a long tin can filled with golf ball size metal cylinders. It's just cutting down the Confederate forces as they advance. But also artillery up on Little Roundtop is able to create what's called Infilad Fire. They're hitting the ends of Pickett's line as they pass across the range of the Union artillery on Little Roundtop. I mean, this is pure hell. This is a crossfire that is something to be avoided, not only in the Civil War, but in any battle that takes place. You don't want this kind of fire happening to your troops when there's no protection.

It's just an open field. Only one Confederate brigade only for a moment reaches the top of the ridge. It's afterwards referred to as the high watermark of the Confederacy. Of 12,000 who go across over half do not return. There's a loss of 23 battle flags. This is the moment that eventually leads sides to withdrawal on July 4th. Strangely, that day, that national holiday for America, it's amazingly epic, poetic justice in a way, isn't it?

Yeah, and to Americans, particularly Northerners, at the time, this all seems as though God had created these circumstances. And it was even more inflated in the minds of Northerners that the deity must have been behind all of this, because on July 4th, in the Western Theater of the War, Ulysses S. Grant accepts the surrender of an entire Confederate Army at Vicksburg. So between Lee's withdrawal on July 4th from Pennsylvania, or the beginning of his withdrawal from Pennsylvania,

there's also the factor of the defeat of the Confederate Fourth, forces at Vicksburg. The numbers are devastating. The North estimated 28,000 casualties, 23 casually to Confederates, all told about 50,000 over the three days. There's two more years of war after this. Do you see this as the tipping point of the whole war, or is it a more gradual process? Well, it's easy for historians or any Americans, anyone at all, to see Gettysburg as a turning

point in the war, because we have that advantage. of hindsight. But at the time, it didn't seem that way. And in fact, Lee writes his report of the entire campaign and says it was successful, that they achieved what they wanted to do, which was a raid, and it was a devastating raid into the North. And he thinks that everything went fine, or at least that's how he writes it down on paper. I don't think Lee knew. I don't think thought that everything was fine. I think he knew as the good general that he was, was that he had suffered a devastating defeat. Those Confederates who fell at Gettysburg could not be replaced. There was no one else to join the Confederate forces. They had already

instituted a draft of men in the South. The North had as well. But the North had the advantage. of calling on more soldiers of age, young men, in other words, who could fight. We don't pay enough attention to Vicksburg as its pivotal point as well, and the emergence of Grant and his philosophy of war coming into play after that point. It's various pieces in this chess game being played. Extraordinary story. The operative word in this tale is the word, meanwhile, because there's so much happening at the same time in the Civil War, never mind at Gettysburg. Thank you, Professor LaFanasi for guiding

us through this. I really am grateful, and I hope I meet you again at another point in the Civil War. Well, I'd like that very much, and thank you so much for having me. This has been a delightful conversation for me, and I hope it has been for you as well. Thank you, sir. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit, so glad you could join us. If you enjoyed this conversation, please let us know. We thrive on your feedback and your reviews, five stars preferably. And check out the ever-growing list of back episodes of more American History hit. Episodes drop twice weekly, Mondays, and Thursdays.

I'm Don Wildman, and I'll see you next time. This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sound.