Pickett's Charge
A lone cannon and the field of Pickett's Charge. The Copse of Trees (focal point of the charge) is the right-most cluster of trees on the ridge, "The Angle" is marked by the single tree to the left of the Copse of Trees.
Posted on 07/03/2007 8:51:36 AM PDT by yankeedame
A lone cannon and the field of Pickett's Charge. The Copse of Trees (focal point of the charge) is the right-most cluster of trees on the ridge, "The Angle" is marked by the single tree to the left of the Copse of Trees.
Pickett's Charge was a disastrous infantry assault ordered by Confederate General Robert E. Lee against Maj. Gen. George G. Meade's Union positions on Cemetery Ridge, on July 3, 1863, the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Its futility was predicted by the charge's commander, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, and it was arguably an avoidable mistake from which the Southern war effort never fully recovered psychologically. The farthest point reached by the attack has been nicknamed the high-water mark of the Confederacy.
After Confederate attacks on both Union flanks had failed the day and night before, Lee determined to strike the Union center on the third day. On the night of July 2, General Hancock correctly predicted at a council of war that Lee would try an attack on his lines in the center the following morning.
The infantry assault was preceded by a massive artillery bombardment that was meant to soften up the Union defense and silence its artillery, but it was largely ineffective. Approximately 12,500 men in nine infantry brigades advanced over open fields for three quarters of a mile under heavy Union artillery and rifle fire. Although some Confederates were able to breach the stone wall that shielded many of the Union defenders, they could not maintain their hold and were repulsed with over 50% casualties, ending the battle and Lee's campaign into Pennsylvania.
Cemetery (sic) Ridge
Aftermath
Pickett's Charge was a bloodbath. While the Union lost about 1,500 killed and wounded, the Confederate casualty rate was over 50%....
Command losses were also horrendous. Pickett's three brigade commanders and all thirteen of his regimental commanders were casualties.... Kemper was wounded, and Garnett and Armistead did not survive....falling near "The Angle" at what is now considered the High Water Mark of the Confederacy.
As soldiers straggled back to the Confederate lines along Seminary Ridge, Lee... tried to rally his center, telling returning soldiers and Gen. Wilcox that the failure was "all my fault."
General Pickett was inconsolable...and never forgave Lee for ordering the charge. When Lee told Pickett to rally his division for the defense, Pickett allegedly replied, "General Lee, I have no division."
...When asked, years afterward, why his charge at Gettysburg failed, General Pickett said: "I've always thought the Yankees had something to do with it."
"Taking Battery A"
General Lewis A. Armistead
Pickett's Charge - July 3, 1863
Pickett's Charge -- Into the Jaws of Hell
General Pickett at Gettysburg-- July 3, 1863
===================
Quotes from the 1993 movie
[Buford's cavalry has sighted the Rebel army]
Gen. Buford: Meade will come in slowly, cautiously, new to command... And then, after Lee's army is entrenched behind nice fat rocks, Meade will attack finally, if he can coordinate the army. He'll attack right up that rocky slope, and up that gorgeous field of fire. And we will charge valiantly, and be butchered valiantly. And afterwards men in tall hats and gold watch fobs will thump their chest and say what a brave charge it was. Devin, I've led a soldier's life, and I've never seen anything as brutally clear as this.
------------------
Lt. Gen. James Longstreet: You know what's gonna happen? I'll tell you what's gonna happen. Troops are now forming behind the line of trees. When they come out, they'll be under enemy long-range artillery fire. Solid shot. Percussion. Every gun they have. Troops will come out under fire with more than a mile to walk. And still, within the open field, among the range of aimed muskets. They'll be slowed by that fence out there, and the formation - what's left of it - will begin to come apart. When they cross that road, they'll be under short-range artillery. Canister fire. Thousands of little bits of shrapnel wiping the holes in the lines. If they get to the wall without breaking up, there won't be many left. A mathematical equation... But maybe, just maybe, our own artillery will break up their defenses. There's always that hope.
[sighs]
Quotes from the movie "Gettysburg"
ping
“Give’m Cold Steel boys!”
Quotes from the 1993 movie
Gettysburg
General Pickett (To General Lee): "My men. My men. What have you done to my men?"
In what way? I can honor the dead, but I'm glad the assault failed.
I hear that.
From the irony of the South doing the very thing that they had defeated the North doing time and again, from Armistead's acknowledged dislike of the war overall to his steadfast dedication to fighting for Virginina, to Armistead attacking into the teeth of the defenses of his best friend, General Winfield Scott Hancock, whom he fought beside in the Mexican American War. Both were wounded. It was thought Armistead might live...but he died two days later.
Hancock lived to fight on, survive the war, preside over militarily reconstruction in Louisiana and Texas, and narrowly lose the Presideny in 1880 to Garfiled.
My wife and youngest son and I traveled to Gettysburg in 1999 and had these pictures and photos from the scene.
Artists depcition of the fighting at the Bloody Angle.
My ten year old son (now almost eighteen) at a cannon behind the actual bloody angle in 1999.
Artists depiction of Armistead's breakthrough.
Me standing at the spot where Armistead was mortally wounded, at the crest of the wave of the high tide of the confederacy.
A video of Pickett's Charge on youtube
No, that's total casualties. Union deaths were about thirty-two hundred. Confederate are estimated between 2500-4500. In fact, for the Union side only, the casualties (deaths and injured) are about the same as the past four years of Iraq.
Casualty is defined as killed, wounded, missing, and captured.
It is one of the most painful failures in military history that this lesson was not learned by the European observers, whose successors sent men on equally suicidal advances in the open under both artillery and machine gun fire fully a half-century later in the Somme and elsewhere. Other lessons from the U.S. Civil War were, from the employment of railroads in troop transport to the advantage of repeating firearms. Frontal charges against fixed positions, however - that one wasn't.
Per Wikipedia
Possibly Custer's finest hour in the Civil War was just east of Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. In conjunction with Pickett's Charge to the west, Robert E. Lee dispatched Stuart's cavalry on a mission into the rear of the Union Army. Custer encountered the Union cavalry division of David McM. Gregg, directly in the path of Stuart's horsemen. He convinced Gregg to allow him to stay and fight, while his own division was stationed to the south out of the action. At East Cavalry Field, hours of charges and hand-to-hand combat ensued. Custer led a mounted charge of the 1st Michigan Cavalry, breaking the back of the Confederate assault, foiling Lee's plan. Custer's brigade lost 257 men at Gettysburg, the highest loss of any Union cavalry brigade.[4]
The battle reenactment is this weekend
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