Posted on 07/03/2005 6:53:20 AM PDT by timpad
Now, on July 3, Lee decided to attack the Union center, stationed on Cemetery Ridge, after making another unsuccessful attempt on the Union right flank at Culp's Hill in the morning. The majority of the force consisted of Pickett's division, but there were other units represented among the 15,000 attackers.
After a long Confederate artillery bombardment, the Rebel force moved through the open field and up the slight rise of Cemetery Ridge. But by the time they reached the Union line, the attack had been broken into many small units, and they were unable to penetrate the Yankee center.
The failed attack effectively ended the battle of Gettysburg. On July 4, Lee began to withdraw his forces to Virginia. The casualties for both armies were staggering. Lee lost 28,000 of his 75,000 soldiers, and Union losses stood at over 22,000. It was the last time Lee threatened Northern territory.
well the group that is in right now seems to be letting the fighting be done by the fighters.
From personal experience, what they what done in DC is given to the Generals and then they are told to get it done by whatever means they need to accomplish it. As it should be.
Nice to find this thread. I just day-tripped to Gettysburg yesterday, and I'm terribly sorry that I didn't stay overnight and continue today. I doubt that I would've found a room- the place was a zoo and pretty much fully booked up, but I am confident that I could have found something within a half-hour drive.
It was my second time there, and I still haven't seen everything that I wanted to see. There was some kind of big re-enactment of Pickett's Charge, but it didn't take place on the orginial ground. There is a 're-enactment area' somewhere nearby that I haven't found yet.
I sure hope so Mike and I have a feeling they are. I don't want some idiotic Robert MacNamara type coming back years later for atonement from the vets and the American people over the mistakes made in Viet Nam. God bless all those boys who had to fight 2 enemies......the Viet Cong AND WDC!
I dont think that will happen either....
Riley, one day I am determined to go to Gettysburg and one day I will.......*~*.
Indeed. And had not Buford's cavalry had repeating rifles, they wouldn't have been able to hold off that many confederates with only a couple of brigades. As usual, the Civil War anticipated by 50 years the lessons learned by the Europeans in WWI.
Lee was apparently prone to letting his ambitions overrule his good sense at times, and Gettysburg was one of them.
IMO, war between North and South was inevitable, even had the secession been allowed. The South needed/wanted to expand slavery westward and northward, and the North wanted to prevent its spread. This was the underlying pressure for the Sectional Crises, not to mention the secessions themselves.
The antagonism would probably only have escalated had the Confederacy succeeded in becoming its own country, though the war itself would probably have started in the West. The real joker in the deck would have been Britain: would they have been willing to openly support an unambiguously independent South? Probably so, and the North couldn't allow that, for a number of reasons.
The North had a lot more at stake than just "preserving the Union."
Just drop it, will ya?
Under advisement....
yes it did....
many MILLIONS died in Europe learning what the Americans did in 1863....
It was definitely an interesting time....
wholly preventable I believe, but probably inevitable....
What? No "duly noted"? *~*
I've been trying to.
I must disagree... Pickett's order were to strike the center of the Union line on Cemetary Ridge, as a soldier he was not afforded any other option. Besides, Lee had failed to succeed on either flank, July 1 and 2.
As he stated to Longstreet when the general argued a frontal assault, "...the enemy is there and that is where I plan to attack him...".
May I offer this correction: Ewell failed to seize Culp's Hill.
That was General Dwight Eisenhower's considered opinion.
You can offer anything you want...
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