Every Pennsylvania boy makes the trip to Gettysburg at least once in his life. It's a pilgrimage. The battle was the largest on land ever fought in North America. The battlefield truly is hallowed ground. My parents took me and my youngest brother when I was about ten, I guess. I remember nothing of it. Then I went back as an adult twelve years ago. Driving into town you see all these signs, this site next right; that one next left. The battlefield is immense.
The town of Gettysburg lies in flat-ish country.
Despite features with names like Little Round Top, Big Round Top, Cemetery Ridge, etc. you can't
go to an overlook and take it all in, the battlefield is too immense for
anything of the sort even if there was a vantage point. Nor can you
even take any part of it in--as there is no vantage point.
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This photograph is captioned by Wikipedia "Gettysburg Battlefield." "Wow, look at that," you go, wondering what the hell you are looking at. It could be Passchendaele on a dry day.
You have to be at ground-level at your favorite part, which for almost everyone of course, is the field of Pickett's Charge on July 3. I looked at that field from our'n position and I looked at that field from their'n position. I stood right at the edge of the woods just as Pickett's Confederates did and walked that whole damned field (everyone does) just as they did, all three-quarters mile of it, and I tell you, no lie, I sobbed. I don't know what Robert E. Lee was smoking to think that any body of troops could survive it. James Longstreet didn't know either. Bruce Catton agreed with Longstreet: "The thing could not be done." Shelby Foote said "Gettysburg was the price the South paid for R. E. Lee." It was a butcher's bill! It reminded me of the field the U.S. troops had to cross to get to the base of Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg (which my great-great grandfather did cross under slave-state fire (he was killed within 20 feet of the crest)). As it did Catton:
Hancock's position actually was almost as strong as the famous Confederate position along Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg...
It occurred to the U.S. gunners also who, as the Rebels began their advance shouted, "Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!" Didn't occur to Gen. Lee though.
Honestly, I don't know where Lee's head was, it was as if he had a brain transplant from Burnside. It was also as if Lee's brain was transplanted into Gen. George Meade's head for Meade, like Lee with McClellan and Hooker, read Lee's mind the night before. "He's going to hit us right in the center." (Meade deserves the genius medal for that (but he never got it)). Because he had tried the flanks. (?) Because the center was the strongest part of the Federal front. (??). Because the Federal center had its best fighters. (???) It was like Lee got bored and wanted to play Olympic War with a degree of difficulty built in. He took the silver medal.
Okay, enough from me. This must have been amazing to see and hear and it started all of a sudden, like a TV show. Here's Catton:
...Lee had assembled an immense rank of guns, 130 of them or more...These guns would pound the Yankee line with the heaviest bombardment ever seen in North America, and after they had softened it the infantry would charge.
...
Somewhere around the middle of the day the noise of battle died and there was a queer, nerve-testing silence. On the far slope of Cemetery Ridge, Meade and some of his officers sat in an open field and had lunch, and Meade got off a quick note to Halleck, carefully timing it at 12:30 P.M.: "At the present moment all is quiet." ...At last, from a fence corner at the edge of the woods, Longstreet wrote a note and gave it to a courier, the courier cantered out to the guns and gave the note to Colonel J.B. Walton, Longstreet's chief of artillery, two shots were fired as a signal...and then the bank of guns exploded in a sudden, enormous blast of fire...
The time was 1:07 p.m. (just after the commercials.)
No one in either army had ever lived through anything like this bombardment. The weight of sound was obliterating...
James McPherson wrote that the sound of the guns was heard in Pittsburgh, 185 miles to the west. Musta been something.
Anyhow, it failed. Similar to the 133rd Pennsylvania at Fredericksburg, a few men making the assault actually touched the stone wall at Gettysburg. That was the High Water Mark of the Confederacy.
