Gettysburg Battlefield Tour

Day two of our Pennsylvania adventure found us in Gettysburg. Our hotel was right across the street from a portion of the battlefield. It was kind of cool to wake up and look out the window to see it. We arrived in Gettysburg late the night before and didn't really see much because it was dark. We had to shift our minds from seeing sites related to the American Revolution to the American Civil War.

Right next to our hotel was General Lee's Headquarters Museum, which is housed in the original building that Confederate General Robert E Lee stayed in and planned out their strategy for this battle. The house was owned by a widow named Mrs. Mary Thompson at the time General Lee moved in. She didn't like that her house was invaded by rebels and stayed in the house while they were there. During the battle she hid in the basement and then helped care for some of the wounded. The house is now a museum and showcases Civil War relics such as the desk and chairs used by Gen. Lee, clothing, guns, an amputation kit, and an American Flag, etc. They have wooden shutters that hung on the house during the battle, sporting multiple bullet holes.

Kris arranged for us to have a personal tour guide who drove our car around the battlefield while explaining what happened where and answering all of our questions. It was a great experience and I learned a lot. The guide's name was Dan Rathert (easy to remember) and he is retired and works as a tour guide because he loves doing it.

The Parks Service has maintained the battlefield to look like it did in July of 1863. If there were fences then, there are fences now. There are trees where there were trees and open fields where there were fields.

The first stop we made was on Oak Hill near the Eternal Light Peace Memorial erected for the 75th anniversary of the battle. It was dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Battle of Gettysburg occurred on July 1-3, 1863 and was the bloodiest battle of the entire Civil War. There were 88,000 Union soldiers and 75,000 Confederate soldiers that took part in the battle. It's estimated that 46,000-51,000 total casualties, meaning dead, captured, wounded, and missing, occurred during this battle. I can't even imagine what that must have been like.

The memorial overlooks a wide open field with the town of Gettysburg to the left and a crescent of mountains (they looked more like hills to me, but I grew up in the West with the Rocky Mountains) to the right. The Union soldiers held the town of Gettysburg and the Confederate soldiers came from the mountains on the right. Our tour guide had a binder with him in which he had drawn out the layout of the armies and their movements so we could see it. Then he would point out landmarks that corresponded with his drawings so that we could see exactly how it happened. It was an awesome experience to be able to see what happened where and understand what the terrain was like.

If you look closely in the picture above, you can see a stone barn with two white additions, one on each side. The guide explained that cannon placed where we were standing could accurately hit that barn. The fighting on the first day of the battle occurred in the field pictured above.

When the veterans of the Civil war began to age, they came back and erected stone memorials, markers and monuments, marking where each division of troops were positioned and when so that the battle could be remembered. There are cannons placed where cannon lines were set up. It makes visualizing what happened much easier.

I never realized how big of an area the Battle of Gettysburg covered. Our guide said that it was 10 square miles. It took the armies hours to reposition troops. This was all in July and many of the soldiers didn't have access to water and died of dehydration.

We stopped for a moment to see Virginia's monument on the battlefield. General Lee is depicted sitting on a horse at the monuments top. There were 19,000 men from Virginia that fought at Gettysburg.

We drove to the top of Little Round Top and got out of the car to see the view. This hill was occupied by Union soldiers who had to repeatedly fight off attacks to hold their ground. The backside of the hill is covered with trees and rocks and is quite steep. Union soldiers had to pull cannon weighing 1,000 pounds or more up that hill by hand. Heavy fighting occurred in this area on the second day of the battle.

 

The view from the top of Little Round Top is spectacular. There is a field to the right of this picture that is known as the Wheatfield or Bloody Wheatfield. The field is 20 acres and over 4,000 men died there on the second day of battle. The guide said that you could walk across that field and never touch the ground because of all the bodies lying there afterwards. 

The area at the bottom right of the hill where the rocks are is known as Devil's Den, where Union sharpshooters were stationed. Confederate soldiers captured Devil's Den, killing over 800 Union soldiers.

This stone wall is a portion of the wall built by Union soldiers as a defense on the hill.

The weather was gorgeous while we were there. The mountains in the distance behind us were where the Confederate troops came from to join the battle.

We got to seed Pennsylvania's Memorial on the battlefield, by far the largest one. It commemorates the more than 34,000 Pennsylvania soldiers who fought at Gettysburg.

We stopped at the sight where the Union line, under the command of General George F. Meade, was located on Cemetery Hill. This is where the confederate assault known as Pickett's Charge took place on day three, the last day, of the battle. Three-quarters of a mile down this field 12,500 Confederate soldiers stood waiting to make their last move under command of Gen. Lee. In hopes of intimidating the Union to back down and destroying some of the Union's cannon and defenses, the Confederates shot off all of the cannons continually for two hours.

Then the infantry were ordered to march towards the Union army and then charge the Union lines once they were within a few hundred yards. The Confederate cannon fire didn't have its intended affect, and the Union soldiers opened fire on the Confederates as they came "charging up the field." The Confederates lost (killed, wounded, captured) over 50% of the men in that charge while the Union only lost about 1,500.

The square marker in the lower right of the picture above marks the point at which Confederate soldiers from North Carolina reached before being killed by double shot cannon. They were ten paces away from the wall.

A statue of Gen. George Meade on a horse sits across the road from the Union lines at Pickett's Charge. You can also see some examples of the memorials that are set up all over the battlefield.

General Lee told his surviving soldiers and leaders that the failure of Pickett's Charge was all his fault, and they readied themselves for a counterattack from the Union army. After Pickett's Charge, both armies where exhausted and battered. On July 4th, the armies called an informal truce.

It was a really amazing experience to stand on one of the actual battlefields of the American Civil War. You get a greater sense of what happened where and can actually see the obstacles they had to work around. It was a surreal experience and one that I won't ever forget. If you ever find yourself in Pennsylvania, I would definitely recommend a tour of Gettysburg.