The Unfettered Curmudgeon

july 4, Independence Day 1863 Retreat and blame at gettysburg "This has been all my fault," Lee admitted about his failed July 3 assault at Gettysburg, adding that "it is a sad, sad day for us." General James Longstreet and General George Pickett were in silent agreement. A torrential rain fell over Gettysburg on the 4 th of July, as it seems often happens after a great battle, washing away much of the blood at Devil’s Den, The Peach Orchard, Little Round Top, Cemetery Hill, and the vast field of battle stretching from Cemetery Ridge westward to Seminary Ridge, leaching into the soil to forever hallow that ground, while the bloating bodies of the thousands of dead waited to be moved from where they lay to some slightly better resting place. The stench was horrendous, compounded by the bodies of some 1,800 horses and mules that had been killed. Not much happened that day. It was time for both sides to take stock of the situation, to lick ...

July 3, 1863 ...GETTYSBURG, THE LAST DAY The night of July 2 nd settled over Gettysburg but the smoke of battle hung in the air as though it were a shroud for the thousands of dead and wounded who lie on the field of battle. Some suffered in silence, others called out for their wives or their mothers, while others moaned plaintively for someone to come and end their misery. On the eastern slope of Cemetery Ridge, Commanding General George Meade held a “council of war” in his headquarters building, a tiny two-room farmhouse belonging to the Widow Leister. By the light of a single oil lantern, the Union generals analyzed the battles of the last two days and then discussed what was to be done the next day, July 3 rd , if Robert E. Lee decided to attack again. Meade anticipated another attack. He knew Lee had committed himself despite the lack of any decisive victory. Given the heavy casualties his side had suffered, the decision was made to stay on the defensive; furthermore...

JULY 2, 1863…GETTYSBURG DAY TWO General Longstreet Robert E. Lee’s most trusted soldier and his second in command, his “old war horse,” Lieutenant General James Longstreet, known affectionately to his troops as “Old Pete,” and to his friends simply as “Pete,” arrived at Gettysburg ahead of his 1 st Corps, still on the march, just in time to witness the end of the first day’s fighting. Unlike the jubilant Confederate troops at the scene of the action, he was not pleased at all. As he looked through his field glasses he could see the Yanks digging in on the high hills south of the town, in the better positon of the high ground, supported by a wall of artillery arrayed all along the hilltops along Cemetery Ridge. Unlike “Stonewall” Jackson, killed just that past May at Chancellorsville, Longstreet was a somber man, having lost three of his children, all under the age of six, during one week of a scarlet fever outbreak in January of 1862. With his knowledge of modern warfa...

JULY 1, 1863... GETTYSBURG DAY ONE Wednesday morning, July 1, 1863, one hundred and fifty five years ago today, began with a gentle rain as the eastern sky began to lighten just slightly; yet, as the sun rose in the sky everyone knew that it would be a typical hot and humid summer day in southern Pennsylvania. General Henry Heth, as promised, rose early and headed towards Gettysburg from Cashtown, eight miles away just as the sun poked above the horizon. In spite of his certainty that only a small number of Pennsylvania militia lay ahead of him, the same militia that had turned General J. Johnston Pettigrew around the previous day, his corps commander, General Ambrose Powell (A.P.) Hill sent not just one brigade as he had done the previous day, but rather Henry Heth’s entire division plus most of his corps artillery plus another division commanded by Major General Dorsey Pender for support: a total of 14,000 men. That was two-thirds of his 3 rd Corps, sent on what was basicall...