The Battle of Gettysburg

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the Battle of Gettysburg which took over a period of three days during July, 1863. It describes how the battle was fought by 75,000 Confederate soldiers under the leadership of General Robert E. Lee and almost 84,000 Union soldiers who came under the command of General George G. Meade. The paper discusses how, with about 51,000 casualties and more than 10,000 soldiers dead, Gettysburg is considered to be one of the most tragic battles of the American history and one that changed the course of the Civil War.

From the Paper:

"As the South fought to gain the higher ground General Lee ordered approximately 12,000 soldiers to march across an open field so that the center of the Federal army could be taken. This seemingly desperate assault was called the 'Pickett' s Charge' and was doomed to failure. The soldiers had more than a mile to cross and by the time the battle ended more than half the Confederate army was killed, wounded or captured. The battle had ended and the Civil War was accepted to be the victory for the North and yet, there was no joy for in the words of Joshua Chamberlain, "In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous space and time suspended, the great doors open to black eternity, the rising across the terrible field of that last enormous, unanswerable question." [Shaara, Foreword 6.]"

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