Who won the Battle of Gettysburg?
The Union won the Battle of Gettysburg on 1-3 July 1863. Robert E. Lee's second invasion of the North was turned back with about 51,000 combined casualties over three days. It is widely regarded as the turning point of the American Civil War.1
For three days in the summer of 1863, a small crossroads town in Pennsylvania held the fate of a divided nation. Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, and it broke the tide of the Confederacy's war. After it, the South never again mounted a serious invasion of the North.2
Part of The greatest battles of the Civil War · Before: The Battle of Chancellorsville · Next: The Siege of Vicksburg · Key figures: Joshua Chamberlain, John Buford
The battle from both sides
Two perspectivesThe Army of the Potomac under George Meade fought Gettysburg on the defensive, holding a fishhook of high ground, Cemetery Ridge, Culp's Hill and the Round Tops, after the first day's fighting drove it back through the town. On the second day it barely held the flanks, with the stand at Little Round Top becoming famous. On the third it broke the climax of the battle: Pickett's Charge, a mass assault on the center, was cut apart by artillery and rifle fire and repulsed with terrible loss. The victory, alongside the fall of Vicksburg the next day, marked the turning point of the Civil War and ended the Confederacy's last major invasion of the North.
Robert E. Lee brought the Army of Northern Virginia north hoping a victory on Union soil would break Northern will and win foreign recognition. The first day went well, driving Federal troops through Gettysburg, but the Union rallied onto strong high ground. Lee's attacks on the second day battered the flanks without breaking them. On the third, over the doubts of General Longstreet, he ordered a frontal assault on the Union center, Pickett's Charge, which was shattered in the open. Lee withdrew to Virginia having lost more than a third of his army. The defeat, with Vicksburg, turned the war against the South, and the Confederacy never mounted such an offensive again.3
Lee goes north
Fresh from victory at Chancellorsville, the Confederate general Robert E. Lee gambled everything on carrying the war into the North. A win on Union soil, he hoped, might shatter Northern morale and force a negotiated peace; the National Park Service adds that he also meant to ease the pressure on Vicksburg, then under siege in the West.4
He set out on 3 June 1863, using the mountains along the Shenandoah Valley to screen his march. His Army of Northern Virginia, about 75,000 strong by the American Battlefield Trust's count, crossed Maryland into Pennsylvania, while the Union Army of the Potomac followed, under orders to stay between Lee and Washington. On 28 June that army received a new commander, George Meade, just three days before the battle. Lee, meanwhile, was short of news: his cavalry under Jeb Stuart was away on a long ride around the Union army and did not rejoin him until 2 July.5
How many soldiers fought at Gettysburg?
More than 165,000 soldiers fought at Gettysburg, which the National Park Service calls the largest battle ever fought in North America. The American Battlefield Trust counts 93,921 men in Meade's Army of the Potomac and 71,699 in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia; Britannica gives nearly 94,000 and more than 71,000. Meade also held the shorter, inner line.6
Neither army was complete on the first morning. Both were drawn to Gettysburg because several main roads met at the town, and their divisions reached the field one after another. That is why the Confederates could outnumber the Union troops on 1 July and still face a stronger enemy on 2 and 3 July, once the main body of Meade's army had come up during the night.7
Day one: collision
The armies met almost by accident west of the town on the morning of 1 July. A Confederate division under Henry Heth marched on Gettysburg and ran into the dismounted Union cavalry of John Buford, who held it off until Union infantry arrived. General John Reynolds, commanding the Union I Corps, was killed near the McPherson farm early in the fight.8
Through the afternoon more Confederate divisions under A. P. Hill and Richard Ewell joined in; the American Battlefield Trust estimates that about 30,000 Confederates overwhelmed some 20,000 Federals. The outnumbered Union troops were driven back through the streets of Gettysburg, but the survivors rallied on the high ground to the south, on Cemetery Hill and along the ridges beyond. That high ground, shaped like a fishhook, would decide everything.9
Day two: the flanks
On 2 July the two armies faced each other along parallel ridges nearly a mile apart, the Union on Cemetery Ridge and the Confederates on Seminary Ridge. Lee hammered both ends of the Union line. In the afternoon James Longstreet's corps struck the Union left, and the fighting at Devil's Den, Little Round Top, the Wheatfield and the Peach Orchard was among the most desperate of the war. Union commanders, Winfield Hancock among them, used their shorter interior lines to rush reinforcements to each threatened point. That evening Ewell's attacks on East Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill, on the Union right, gained ground but could not be exploited. Battered and bent, the Union fishhook held.11
What happened at Little Round Top?
Little Round Top was the rocky hill at the southern end of the Union line. On 2 July Meade's chief engineer, Gouverneur K. Warren, found it almost undefended as Confederates closed in, and Strong Vincent's brigade was rushed to the summit. At the far left, Joshua Chamberlain's 20th Maine, running out of ammunition, fixed bayonets and charged downhill.13
The Maine men had been fighting the 15th and 47th Alabama, and their charge took the attackers by surprise; the National Park Service credits the regiment's persistence with keeping the whole Union line from being outflanked. Who first gave the order to charge is still debated, but Chamberlain later received the Medal of Honor for the defense of the hill. He was not alone in saving it: according to the American Battlefield Trust, Colonel Patrick O'Rorke's 140th New York filled a gap at the moment Vincent's brigade was about to break.14
Day three: Pickett's Charge
On the morning of 3 July fighting flared again on Culp's Hill, where Union troops took back ground lost the evening before. Lee, convinced that the attacks on both flanks had weakened the Union center, now planned to strike it head on. At about 1 p.m. some 150 Confederate guns opened a bombardment that drew the Union artillery into a duel of nearly two hours, but it failed to break the Union defenses.15
Around 3 p.m. roughly 12,000 to 12,500 men from the divisions of George Pickett, James Johnston Pettigrew and Isaac Trimble, under Longstreet's overall command, stepped out from Seminary Ridge and crossed close to a mile of open ground toward Cemetery Ridge. Pickett's Charge walked into a storm of cannon and rifle fire.16
At the Angle, a bend in the stone wall on the crest, Lewis Armistead led perhaps 250 men over the wall; he was mortally wounded and those with him were killed, wounded or captured. The spot was later called the “high-water mark” of the Confederacy. About half the attackers were killed, wounded or captured: the American Battlefield Trust counts 6,555 Confederate casualties in under an hour, the National Park Service more than 5,000.17
How long did the Battle of Gettysburg last?
The Battle of Gettysburg lasted three days, from 1 to 3 July 1863. The fighting opened on the morning of 1 July and ended in the afternoon of 3 July with the repulse of Pickett's Charge, an assault that itself lasted about an hour. Lee held his lines through 4 July and began his retreat to Virginia that day.19
- 3 June 1863Lee sets out north from Virginia, screened by the mountains of the Shenandoah Valley.20
- 28 June 1863George Meade takes command of the Army of the Potomac.21
- 1 July 1863The armies collide west of the town; the Union falls back to Cemetery Hill.22
- 2 July 1863Longstreet strikes the Union left at Little Round Top, the Wheatfield and the Peach Orchard; the fishhook holds.23
- 3 July 1863Pickett's Charge fails against Cemetery Ridge.24
- 4 July 1863Lee begins his retreat toward Virginia in the rain.25
- 19 November 1863Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the national cemetery.26
The retreat
Late on the rainy afternoon of 4 July, Lee began pulling his shattered army back toward Virginia with a long train of wagons full of wounded. According to the American Battlefield Trust, floodwaters on the Potomac slowed his escape, yet Meade did not press the pursuit, to Lincoln's deep frustration. Meade did not destroy Lee, and the war ground on for almost two more years, until Lee's surrender at Appomattox on 9 April 1865, but the Confederacy's best chance to win on the offensive had died on that ridge. Such losses were a foretaste of the world wars to come, as our guide to the battles of the industrial age shows.27
How many died at Gettysburg?
Gettysburg cost the two armies more than 50,000 casualties, a figure that counts the killed, wounded, captured and missing, not only the dead. The American Battlefield Trust totals 51,112: 23,049 Union and 28,063 Confederate. About 7,000 men were killed outright, and the National Park Service puts the toll at roughly 10,000 once the mortally wounded are included.28
In the Trust's breakdown the Union lost 3,155 killed, 14,529 wounded and 5,365 missing or captured, and the Confederacy 3,903 killed, 18,735 wounded and 5,425 missing or captured. Britannica's rounded figures are close: about 23,000 Union and more than 28,000 Confederate casualties. Totals differ slightly between historians, which is why the table above gives rounded estimates. The wounded filled churches, public buildings and private homes in a town the Trust puts at about 2,400 residents, and the National Park Service records that more than 20,000 wounded soldiers of both armies passed through Camp Letterman, the tent hospital set up east of the town. The National Park Service counts more than 3,500 Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg in the Soldiers' National Cemetery. That is more than the 3,155 killed in action because the graves also hold men who died of their wounds later: the Trust records that more than 1,200 soldiers died at Camp Letterman alone, and the Union dead buried there were afterwards moved to the national cemetery.29
Why was Gettysburg a turning point?
Gettysburg ended Lee's second invasion of the North and cost him more than a third of his army. On 4 July 1863, the day after Pickett's Charge, Vicksburg surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, giving the Union the Mississippi River. Britannica and the American Battlefield Trust treat the two victories together as the turning point of the war.30
The label is a judgment made with hindsight. The war went on for almost two more years, and Lee's army fought on until Appomattox. But Lee never again led his army into the North, the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson split the Confederacy in two along the Mississippi, and the defeat at Gettysburg dashed Confederate hopes of winning independence by a decisive victory on Northern soil. For how Gettysburg compares with the war's other great clashes, see our guide to the greatest battles of the Civil War.31
The Address
On 19 November 1863 a crowd of about 15,000 gathered for the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery on the battlefield. The main speaker, the orator Edward Everett, spoke for two hours; President Abraham Lincoln, who followed him, spoke for barely two minutes. In 272 words, the Gettysburg Address recast the war as a test of whether a nation “conceived in liberty” could endure, and called for “a new birth of freedom”.32 › Gettysburg Address, 1863
The next day Everett wrote to Lincoln that he wished he had come as close to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as Lincoln had in two minutes. Five manuscript copies of the speech in Lincoln's hand are known, two of them in the Library of Congress. The speech gave the terrible battle a meaning that outlived everyone who fought it.33
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Where was the Battle of Gettysburg fought and what is there today?
The battle was fought in and around Gettysburg, the county seat of Adams County in southern Pennsylvania. Most of the field is now Gettysburg National Military Park, run by the National Park Service. It draws nearly one million visitors a year and includes the Soldiers' National Cemetery, where Lincoln gave his address.35
Preservation began early. According to the park's own history, local citizens formed the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association in 1864; in 1895 its land passed to the federal government, which made the field a national military park, and a commission of Civil War veterans marked the lines of both armies. In 1933 administration of the park passed to the National Park Service. The Park Service says it has since returned major areas of the field to their 1863 appearance, replanting orchards and woodlots and rebuilding fences, so that visitors can read the ground as the soldiers saw it. The cemetery covers 17 acres and closed to new burials in 1972.36
