Posted on Jul 15, 2017
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On this day in 1863, troops under Confederate General George Pickett begin a massive attack against the center of the Union lines on the climactic third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the largest engagement of the war. For the first two days of the battle, General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had battered George Meade’s Army of the Potomac. The day before Pickett’s Charge, the Confederates had hammered each flank of the Union line but could not break through.
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.
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.
Pickett leads his infamous charge at Gettysburg - Jul 03, 1863 - HISTORY.com
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Thanks for reminding the uninitiated TSgt Joe C. that on July 3, 1863 that CSA Maj Gen George E. Pickett launched an infantry attack across relatively open terrain after an hour long artillery bombardment by 135 CSA cannon. Pickett's was the last fresh division in Army of Northern Virginia, consisted of three Virginia brigades—James L. Kemper's, Richard B. Garnett's, and Lewis A. Armistead's.
Forlorn hope would be an apt description for this division IMHO
Below is a detailed background:
"Title: Pickett's Charge Landscape
The three-day Battle of Gettysburg was the thundering climax of Lee's second invasion of the North in less than a year. A portion of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had stumbled upon a cavalry detachment of Union general George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac near the small Pennsylvania crossroads on July 1. There troops under A. P. Hill and Jubal A. Early routed hastily called-up Union reinforcements and sent them scurrying back through town and onto a fishhook-shaped line of hills to the south and southwest. This first day of fighting resulted in heavy losses for both sides, but it was Lee's best chance for victory and he failed to capitalize on it. By the next day, much of the Army of the Potomac had arrived and Lee's odds were longer. He simultaneously hurled James Longstreet's corps against the Union left and Richard S. Ewell's against the right, on Culp's Hill. In vicious fighting, which included the desperate defense of the rocky hill known as Little Round Top, Union troops held firm, but barely. On July 3, Lee was determined to launch one last attack, this time against the center.
Title: General George E. Pickett
General George E. Pickett
He pinned his hopes on the last fresh division in his army, which consisted of three Virginia brigades—James L. Kemper's, Richard B. Garnett's, and Lewis A. Armistead's—commanded by the long-locked and martial-looking Pickett, a largely untested general who in 1846 had graduated last in his class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. These Virginians would be joined by a division that had been commanded by the now-wounded Henry Heth and was currently the responsibility of James J. Pettigrew. In this division, a North Carolina brigade was led by James K. Marshall, a brigade of Tennessee and Alabama troops by Birkett D. Fry, a brigade of Mississippians by Joseph R. Davis, and a small Virginia brigade by John M. Brockenbrough. In addition, Isaac R. Trimble's division provided two North Carolina brigades, commanded by William L. J. Lowrance and James H. Lane.
Five thousand or so Union troops, mostly from Winfield Scott Hancock's Second Corps, awaited these Confederates behind a low stone fence and atop the shallow, open slopes of Cemetery Ridge. (Men from Norfolk-native John Newton's First Corps were also there.) Lee believed that Meade had critically weakened the center of his line in order to reinforce the flanks the day before, and he entrusted Longstreet with achieving a breakthrough. Longstreet doubted the wisdom of Lee's plan—"I believe it will fail," he told his artillery chief—preferring to send his troops wide around the Union left. In the end, though, Lee's jaw was set.
The Attack
The Confederates amassed approximately 135 cannon and at one o'clock in the afternoon unleashed about an hour-long bombardment of the Union position. The Confederate infantry marched at around two o'clock, emerging from the woods below Seminary Ridge and urged on by Pickett's cry, "Don't forget today that you are from Old Virginia!" According to one Union observer it made for an awesome sight: "None on that crest now need be told that the enemy is advancing," he wrote. "Every eye could see his legions, an overwhelming, resistless tide of an ocean of armed men sweeping upon us! … Right on they move, as with one soul, in perfect order, without impediment of ditch, or wall, or stream, over ridge and slope, through orchard, and meadow, and cornfield, magnificent, grim, irresistible." This tableau later would be frozen into myth.
Title: Thomas Benton Horton
The bombardment had caused terrible noise and substantial damage, but toward the goal of knocking out the Union guns, it had been a failure. As a result, Confederate casualties were high from the start. (The picture-book war faded fast. John Dooley, an officer in the 1st Virginia Regiment, said that once he came under fire, "instead of burning to avenge the insults of our country, families and altars and firesides, the thought is most frequently, Oh, if I could just come out of this charge safely how thankful would I be!") Pickett's men struggled to move to their left and close the four hundred-yard gap that had separated their left flank from Pettigrew's right at the start of the advance. Both flanks would meet opposite what some would later claim to be the agreed-upon target: a corner in the stone wall that came to be known as the Bloody Angle and a "copse" of trees just behind it. In everyone's way, meanwhile, was the sunken Emmitsburg Road, covered on the west by a post-and-rail fence and on the east by post and board.
While many Tennesseans and North Carolinians surged well beyond the road, about half of Pettigrew's men stopped there. In contrast, Pickett's Virginians were fresh troops, not having endured the bloodshed of the previous two days, and they managed to maintain their formation, executing that left oblique under fire and closing with Pettigrew's men near the road. Meanwhile, on the Union side of the stone fence, the 71st Pennsylvania saw the Virginians headed their way and abandoned the Angle, leaving behind two pieces of artillery. The 72nd Pennsylvania rushed to cover the gap from eighty yards behind the line, while the 69th Pennsylvania held on at the wall. When Pickett's men arrived, they halted and exchanged fire with the Pennsylvanians at close range.
Suddenly one of Pickett's brigade leaders, Lewis Armistead, led a hundred Virginians over the wall, exhorting his men, "Come forward, Virginians! Come on, boys, we must give them the cold steel! Who will follow me?" They grabbed the abandoned guns and even wheeled one around, but they couldn't fire it for lack of ammunition. Armistead, whose best friend before the war had been the Union corps commander Hancock, was shot and later died. His fellow brigade commanders James Marshall and Richard Garnett—the latter once court-martialed by Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and conspicuously in search of redemption—also were killed. Pettigrew, Lowrance, Trimble, and Kemper were wounded, and Fry wounded and captured—all in a charge that reached this far but no farther. By day's end, Pickett's casualties, including killed, wounded, and captured, numbered 2,655, or about 42 percent of his men. Pettigrew lost 2,700 men (62 percent) and Trimble 885 (52 percent).
John Imboden recalled Lee saying that evening, "I never saw troops behave more magnificently than Pickett's division of Virginians did today in that grand charge." He then expressed confusion as to why the day had not been won. Still, he told another general that "this has all been my fault." An observer remembered Pickett "weeping bitterly," and John Singleton Mosby later claimed that Pickett blamed Lee for the disaster: "That old man destroyed my division." Some historians are skeptical of this last line, but it holds a prominent place in The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about Gettysburg (1974) and its film adaptation, Gettysburg.
Lee's description of "that grand charge" foreshadowed the way in which Pickett's Charge would be transformed from a disaster to a moment of high glory. "In less than one half century," the historian Carol Reardon has written, "Pickett's Charge became both historical event and emotional touchstone—history and memory—with the demarcation between the two often imperceptible." The symbolic meeting point of history and memory became the Bloody Angle and the trees behind it, a place that in 1870 John B. Bachelder—a painter who turned himself into the unofficial historian of the Gettysburg battle—famously described as "the 'High Water Mark' of the rebellion."
Bachelder also coined the use of "copse" to describe the trees, a brilliant piece of branding according to the historian Thomas A. Desjardin, but it is also faulty history. There is no evidence that the stone fence or the trees behind it played any part in the planning of the charge. In fact, there is no evidence that before 1870, historians or battlefield tourists paid any attention at all to the Bloody Angle or the "copse of trees." Regardless, the idea of a "High Water Mark" served Bachelder's twin purposes of proving that Gettysburg was the war's decisive battle—so he could paint its definitive pictures—and convincing people to visit the battlefield. It also captivated survivors of Pickett's division. By 1870, they were immersed in the postwar ideal of the Lost Cause, wherein the late war had been an honorable fight that failed through no fault of their own. The Bloody Angle served as the glorious climax of that narrative—the moment just before triumph turned into tragedy."
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Pickett_s_Charge
: COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen C. Maj William W. "Bill" Price Capt Seid Waddell Capt Tom Brown CPT Gabe Snell 1stSgt Eugene Harless SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SFC William Farrell SSgt Robert Marx SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Robert Ruck SP5 Mark Kuzinski SrA Christopher Wright SGT Robert George SPC (Join to see) MSG Andrew WhiteSGT Michael Thorin SP5 Dave (Shotgun) Shockley
Forlorn hope would be an apt description for this division IMHO
Below is a detailed background:
"Title: Pickett's Charge Landscape
The three-day Battle of Gettysburg was the thundering climax of Lee's second invasion of the North in less than a year. A portion of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had stumbled upon a cavalry detachment of Union general George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac near the small Pennsylvania crossroads on July 1. There troops under A. P. Hill and Jubal A. Early routed hastily called-up Union reinforcements and sent them scurrying back through town and onto a fishhook-shaped line of hills to the south and southwest. This first day of fighting resulted in heavy losses for both sides, but it was Lee's best chance for victory and he failed to capitalize on it. By the next day, much of the Army of the Potomac had arrived and Lee's odds were longer. He simultaneously hurled James Longstreet's corps against the Union left and Richard S. Ewell's against the right, on Culp's Hill. In vicious fighting, which included the desperate defense of the rocky hill known as Little Round Top, Union troops held firm, but barely. On July 3, Lee was determined to launch one last attack, this time against the center.
Title: General George E. Pickett
General George E. Pickett
He pinned his hopes on the last fresh division in his army, which consisted of three Virginia brigades—James L. Kemper's, Richard B. Garnett's, and Lewis A. Armistead's—commanded by the long-locked and martial-looking Pickett, a largely untested general who in 1846 had graduated last in his class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. These Virginians would be joined by a division that had been commanded by the now-wounded Henry Heth and was currently the responsibility of James J. Pettigrew. In this division, a North Carolina brigade was led by James K. Marshall, a brigade of Tennessee and Alabama troops by Birkett D. Fry, a brigade of Mississippians by Joseph R. Davis, and a small Virginia brigade by John M. Brockenbrough. In addition, Isaac R. Trimble's division provided two North Carolina brigades, commanded by William L. J. Lowrance and James H. Lane.
Five thousand or so Union troops, mostly from Winfield Scott Hancock's Second Corps, awaited these Confederates behind a low stone fence and atop the shallow, open slopes of Cemetery Ridge. (Men from Norfolk-native John Newton's First Corps were also there.) Lee believed that Meade had critically weakened the center of his line in order to reinforce the flanks the day before, and he entrusted Longstreet with achieving a breakthrough. Longstreet doubted the wisdom of Lee's plan—"I believe it will fail," he told his artillery chief—preferring to send his troops wide around the Union left. In the end, though, Lee's jaw was set.
The Attack
The Confederates amassed approximately 135 cannon and at one o'clock in the afternoon unleashed about an hour-long bombardment of the Union position. The Confederate infantry marched at around two o'clock, emerging from the woods below Seminary Ridge and urged on by Pickett's cry, "Don't forget today that you are from Old Virginia!" According to one Union observer it made for an awesome sight: "None on that crest now need be told that the enemy is advancing," he wrote. "Every eye could see his legions, an overwhelming, resistless tide of an ocean of armed men sweeping upon us! … Right on they move, as with one soul, in perfect order, without impediment of ditch, or wall, or stream, over ridge and slope, through orchard, and meadow, and cornfield, magnificent, grim, irresistible." This tableau later would be frozen into myth.
Title: Thomas Benton Horton
The bombardment had caused terrible noise and substantial damage, but toward the goal of knocking out the Union guns, it had been a failure. As a result, Confederate casualties were high from the start. (The picture-book war faded fast. John Dooley, an officer in the 1st Virginia Regiment, said that once he came under fire, "instead of burning to avenge the insults of our country, families and altars and firesides, the thought is most frequently, Oh, if I could just come out of this charge safely how thankful would I be!") Pickett's men struggled to move to their left and close the four hundred-yard gap that had separated their left flank from Pettigrew's right at the start of the advance. Both flanks would meet opposite what some would later claim to be the agreed-upon target: a corner in the stone wall that came to be known as the Bloody Angle and a "copse" of trees just behind it. In everyone's way, meanwhile, was the sunken Emmitsburg Road, covered on the west by a post-and-rail fence and on the east by post and board.
While many Tennesseans and North Carolinians surged well beyond the road, about half of Pettigrew's men stopped there. In contrast, Pickett's Virginians were fresh troops, not having endured the bloodshed of the previous two days, and they managed to maintain their formation, executing that left oblique under fire and closing with Pettigrew's men near the road. Meanwhile, on the Union side of the stone fence, the 71st Pennsylvania saw the Virginians headed their way and abandoned the Angle, leaving behind two pieces of artillery. The 72nd Pennsylvania rushed to cover the gap from eighty yards behind the line, while the 69th Pennsylvania held on at the wall. When Pickett's men arrived, they halted and exchanged fire with the Pennsylvanians at close range.
Suddenly one of Pickett's brigade leaders, Lewis Armistead, led a hundred Virginians over the wall, exhorting his men, "Come forward, Virginians! Come on, boys, we must give them the cold steel! Who will follow me?" They grabbed the abandoned guns and even wheeled one around, but they couldn't fire it for lack of ammunition. Armistead, whose best friend before the war had been the Union corps commander Hancock, was shot and later died. His fellow brigade commanders James Marshall and Richard Garnett—the latter once court-martialed by Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and conspicuously in search of redemption—also were killed. Pettigrew, Lowrance, Trimble, and Kemper were wounded, and Fry wounded and captured—all in a charge that reached this far but no farther. By day's end, Pickett's casualties, including killed, wounded, and captured, numbered 2,655, or about 42 percent of his men. Pettigrew lost 2,700 men (62 percent) and Trimble 885 (52 percent).
John Imboden recalled Lee saying that evening, "I never saw troops behave more magnificently than Pickett's division of Virginians did today in that grand charge." He then expressed confusion as to why the day had not been won. Still, he told another general that "this has all been my fault." An observer remembered Pickett "weeping bitterly," and John Singleton Mosby later claimed that Pickett blamed Lee for the disaster: "That old man destroyed my division." Some historians are skeptical of this last line, but it holds a prominent place in The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about Gettysburg (1974) and its film adaptation, Gettysburg.
Lee's description of "that grand charge" foreshadowed the way in which Pickett's Charge would be transformed from a disaster to a moment of high glory. "In less than one half century," the historian Carol Reardon has written, "Pickett's Charge became both historical event and emotional touchstone—history and memory—with the demarcation between the two often imperceptible." The symbolic meeting point of history and memory became the Bloody Angle and the trees behind it, a place that in 1870 John B. Bachelder—a painter who turned himself into the unofficial historian of the Gettysburg battle—famously described as "the 'High Water Mark' of the rebellion."
Bachelder also coined the use of "copse" to describe the trees, a brilliant piece of branding according to the historian Thomas A. Desjardin, but it is also faulty history. There is no evidence that the stone fence or the trees behind it played any part in the planning of the charge. In fact, there is no evidence that before 1870, historians or battlefield tourists paid any attention at all to the Bloody Angle or the "copse of trees." Regardless, the idea of a "High Water Mark" served Bachelder's twin purposes of proving that Gettysburg was the war's decisive battle—so he could paint its definitive pictures—and convincing people to visit the battlefield. It also captivated survivors of Pickett's division. By 1870, they were immersed in the postwar ideal of the Lost Cause, wherein the late war had been an honorable fight that failed through no fault of their own. The Bloody Angle served as the glorious climax of that narrative—the moment just before triumph turned into tragedy."
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Pickett_s_Charge
: COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen C. Maj William W. "Bill" Price Capt Seid Waddell Capt Tom Brown CPT Gabe Snell 1stSgt Eugene Harless SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SFC William Farrell SSgt Robert Marx SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Robert Ruck SP5 Mark Kuzinski SrA Christopher Wright SGT Robert George SPC (Join to see) MSG Andrew WhiteSGT Michael Thorin SP5 Dave (Shotgun) Shockley
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TSgt Joe C. Thanks for sharing Joe - I can;t believe I'm the first person to read this hsitorical update. Have a good Sunday!
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Would have been more accurate to call it Longstreet's charge. Pettigrew's and Anderson's Divisions also took part and suffered heavily. Perhaps the name of the charge was due to the way it was reported in the Richmond Va Newspaper.
Understandably they focused on the participation on Virginia troops
Understandably they focused on the participation on Virginia troops
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