On this Date - July 4 1863 -  161 years ago -  the Army of Northern Virginia began a slow retreat - in a soaking rain storm -   from a Battle that they lost  at a small cross-roads town in Pennsylvania.  The Main part of this battle was fought by over a combined 165,000 troops , across July 1 , 2, and 3 - with the Final Days assault on Union positions costing Lee's army heavy casualties from which they would never recover. Even though the  war continued for nearly 2 more years and cost thousands of more lives, the Confederate Army never again would venture as far North as a few of its troops did on July 3rd. The High water mark - as some say - was a place that would come to be called "The Angle" at a group of  trees and stone walls  on Cemetery Hill.    Brigadier General Lewis A. Armistead breached the Union position with a few men , but they were quickly overwhelmed and Armistead himself mortally wounded - he would die on July 5th of infections from the bullet wounds.  That assault on Cemetery Hill  by 12,500 confederates - you know as "Picketts charge" - even though there were many troops and commanders  under Lee's  - General Longstreet's troops that made the charge. After the war Pickett fled to Canada to avoid discussing his part in the assault. The Charge was a miscalculation by Lee as he thought that the Northern army was weakened to the point that the Confederate troops could overcome them even if they - the Confederates  - had about a mile of  open ground to cover to get to Cemetery Hill and the North held the high ground and had superior Cannons, rifles and reinforcements, . Picketts charge was a bloodbath - the North lost approx 1500 men, but the South lost 6,000 of the 12,500 that stepped out from the woods to begin the charge. 

The battle that  started on July 1 . when elements of the two armies collided at Gettysburg as Lee urgently concentrated his forces there (even though Lee had given the command that they were to NOT engage the Union troops till he had his entire army poised outside Gettysburg) . His objective being to engage the Union army and destroy it. Low ridges to the northwest of town were defended initially by a Union cavalry division under Brig. Gen. John Buford, and soon reinforced with two corps of Union infantry. However, two large Confederate corps assaulted them from the northwest and north, collapsing the hastily developed Union lines, sending the defenders retreating through the streets of town to the hills just to the south.

On the second day of battle, most of both armies had assembled. The Union line was laid out in a defensive formation resembling a fishhook from Culp's hill south to Little Round top . In the late afternoon of July 2, Lee launched a heavy assault on the Union left flank, and fierce fighting raged at Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, Devil's Den, and the Peach Orchard. On the Union right, Confederate demonstrations escalated into full-scale assaults on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill. All across the battlefield, despite significant losses, the Union defenders under General George Meade  held their lines.

On the third day of battle, fighting resumed on Culp's Hill, and cavalry battles raged to the east and south, but the main event was that dramatic infantry assault by the  Confederates against the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, known as Pickett's Charge. The charge was repulsed by Union rifle and artillery fire, at great loss to the Confederate army.

On July 4  - Lee   led his army on that  torturous retreat back to Virginia.  51,000 soldiers from both armies were casualties in the three-day battle, the most costly in US history.

The fighting across those 3 days left the Town of Gettysburg with over 50,000 casualties. This was a town of about 2400 people that after the battle had every building - homes, barns, taverns,  Everything -  was turned into hospitals to care for the wounded. Free Blacks from the south were used to bury and then in some cases rebury the dead. The Union dead were buried in a wheel pattern in a spot of land that was to be a New Union cemetery.  They were buried with their divisions in that area. and today the Center of that is the Soldiers Monument - in the approx location that Lincoln gave the Gettsyburg address in November of that same year. 

a picture of part of the  Battlefield today - you can see a few monuments in the background.  There are over 1300 Monuments at Gettysburg, If you have never been it's amazing to see - to look from Cemetery hill down to the wooded area where Pickett's charge started , to Culp's Hill, Devils Den, down to Little Round top.... 

The Monument that stands at the Angle