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12 - The Gettysburg Campaign

from Part I - Major Battles and Campaigns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2019

By
Carol Reardon
Edited by
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Aaron Sheehan-Dean
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
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Summary

The Battle of Gettysburg has inspired a more voluminous literature than any single event in American military history for at least three major reasons. First, after three days of fighting on July 1–3, 1863, General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and Major General George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac lost more than 51,000 dead, wounded, captured, and missing, making Gettysburg the costliest military engagement in North American history. Second, President Abraham Lincoln endowed Gettysburg with special distinction when he visited in November 1863 to dedicate the soldiers’ cemetery and delivered his immortal Gettysburg Address. Finally, Gettysburg gave the Union its first significant victory over General Lee; the subsequent euphoria helped to fix in popular memory – if not in objective history – an enduring image of Gettysburg as the turning point of the Civil War.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the American Civil War , pp. 223 - 245
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Key Works

Boritt, Gabor S. (ed.). The Gettysburg Nobody Knows (New York: Oxford, 1999).Google Scholar
Brown, Kent Masterson. Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics and the Pennsylvania Campaign (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005).Google Scholar
Coco, Gregory A., A Strange and Blighted Land, Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle (reprint edition, Havertown, PA: Savas Beatie, 2017).Google Scholar
Coddington, Edwin B. The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968).Google Scholar
Desjardin, Thomas A. Stand Firm Ye Boys from Maine: The 20th Maine and the Gettysburg Campaign (reprint edition, New York: Oxford, 2009).Google Scholar
Haskell, Frank Aretas. The Battle of Gettysburg (Boston: MOLLUS, Massachusetts Commandery, 1908, but many reprint editions available).Google Scholar
Hess, Earl J. Pickett’s Charge – The Last Attack at Gettysburg (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Hyde, Bill. The Union Generals Speak: The Meade Hearings on the Battle of Gettysburg (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003).Google Scholar
Pfanz, Harry W. Gettysburg – Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993).Google Scholar
Pfanz, Harry W. Gettysburg – The First Day (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001).Google Scholar
Pfanz, Harry W. Gettysburg – The Second Day (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Reardon, Carol. Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Sears, Stephen W. Gettysburg (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003).Google Scholar

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