[timpad]

50,000 Americans dead or wounded in three days.

 

May God bless those who give up all their tomorrows for our today. Past, present and future.

[MikefromOhio]

yeah the battle really illustrated to all that the Napoleonic school of warfare was completely and suicidally outdated.

All were heroes in their respective rights, but the guy who won the battle was Gen. John Buford. Had he not held the heights until Gen. Reynolds showed up on 1 July, the battle would have turned out very differently...

[timpad]

 

"Well, it is all over now. The battle is lost, and many of us are prisoners, many are dead, many wounded, bleeding and dying. Your Soldier lives and mourns and but for you, my darling, he would rather, a million times rather, be back there with his dead, to sleep for all time in an unknown grave."

Major General George Pickett, CSA, to his fiancée, July 4, 1863

[dakine]

Uh-oh....War Between the States/War of Northern Aggression/Civil War thread breaking out...

[muir_redwoods]

This charge was, arguably, the point where the 19th century ended and the twentieth began. I have heard it and dismissed it as a legend but it has been said that the Union soldiers actually cried as they fired into the defenseless Confederate ranks because the carnage was so great.

I am humbled by the history of this conflict and the men on both sides who died.

[RightWhale]

Gettysburg was a very small battlefield. An intense, and accidental, battle. Pickett should have swung around to the left through town and rolled up the ridgeline. Hindsight.