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Оглавление16 July 1863
The field of battle is due north of Washington, at Gettysburg, little more than fifty miles from the seat of the Federal Government. To the north and west of this locality the bulk of the Confederate army appears to have been found at last. Roughly speaking, both armies have described a circle from the Rappahannock, General LEE moving on the larger curve to his present position, and General MEADE on a smaller one, keeping closer to Washington itself as his centre. The battle, or the series of battles, commenced on the 1st of July. A corps of the Federal army, entering Gettysburg on the eastern side of the town, passed through, and encountered a part of the Confederate force, under General HILL, to the west of it. The Confederates were coming from the direction of Chambersburg, a town a few miles to the west of the spot where the armies came upon each other. The engagement commenced immediately, and for two hours the Federal General REYNOLDS held his ground. He was then reinforced by General HOWARD, but both were evidently outnumbered. They had met a portion of the Confederate troops superior to their own. They were outflanked on the right, and were contending with this difficulty when General EWELL came up with a force which was an army in itself, as it is estimated at no less than 25,000 men. The Confederates opened a cross fire of artillery which is described by the Federal reports as “destructive”, turned both flanks, and, REYNOLDS’S corps giving way, HOWARD could not hold his ground, and both fell back to a position south of Gettysburg – that is, retreated. General REYNOLDS was killed, General PAUL also fell, and the Federal loss in this engagement they state to have been 4,500 men, with an “immense number of officers.”
The battle was renewed in the afternoon of the 2nd, south of Gettysburg, the two corps repulsed on the previous day having fallen back on the main body of the Federal force. Of the second day’s engagement the Government have published portions of General MEADE’S report. He states that the Confederates, “after one of the most severe conflicts of the war, were repulsed at all points.” It seems to have been principally an engagement of artillery, the hostile batteries firing, on one point, at the distance of two miles. The day of the 2nd was not decisive. The fighting was stopped by the close of night, and each army occupied nearly the same ground as when the battle commenced. General MEADE thought he perceived indications that LEE was retiring, but a reconnaissance discovered that he was still “in force” on the field. There is no report, official or other, later than the night of the 3rd. The whole result, therefore, appears to be that the Federals in the second engagement did not recover the ground they had lost in the first. But the conflict must have been, as General MEADE describes it, severe.
Following the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States in 1860, on a platform to abolish slavery, seven states in the South – the economy of which depended largely on slave labour – seceded from the Union. By the time that the Civil War began in 1861, the Confederates commanded support in 11 states.
General Robert E. Lee invaded Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863 to shift the focus of the war to the North. He encountered the Union forces under the newly appointed General George Meade at Gettysburg on 1 July. The climax of three days of fighting came with the repulse of Pickett’s Charge against the centre of the Union line atop Cemetery Ridge.
Both sides suffered about 20,000 casualties in what proved to be the bloodiest, and the decisive, battle of the conflict. Lee was forced to retreat southwards and the Confederacy was eventually defeated two years later.
