I was always fascinated with the Civil War. Back in 1961 there was a television series called The Americans which was set during the American Civil War. Dwayne and Darryl Hickman starred as two brothers fighting on opposite sides of the conflict. During this period there were Civil War trading cards that I collected along with baseball cards.
My interest in the Civil War always stayed with me and as an adult, I visited numerous Civil War battlefields. But none had the impact that Gettysburg has.
Gettysburg was the seminal battle of the Civil War. Until Gettysburg, the Confederacy had won the most important battles to date and the Union army had gone through numerous generals who could not match both the courage and military prowess of Robert E. Lee.
On June 3, 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee began the Army of Northern Virginia’s second invasion of the North. Lee’s main objective was to move across the Potomac River and try to separate the Union forces from Washington.
The Union Army led by newly appointed General Meade realizing that Lee was positioning his troops between the Union Army and Washington DC, rushed north to stop Lee from marching unimpeded to Washington. The two armies met at the town of Gettysburg. The Union Army secured the “high ground” around the town putting the confederacy in a weakened strategic position.
Surveying the situation, Lee’s top generals and advisors urged Lee not to fight from a position of weakness. They argued correctly that Gettysburg held neither any strategic or military significance and if Lee’s army marched towards Washington, the Union army would be forced to follow them and then the Confederate army could choose a battlefield more conducive to victory.
But Lee filled with hubris and arrogance and having outsmarted every Union general to date, ignored their advice arguing that the enemy was here, and so this is where we must oppose them. A number of historians felt that if Lee had taken his general’s advice and marched towards Washington, the Confederacy may very well have won the war, such was the importance of Gettysburg.
The battle lasted three days, claiming over 50,000 lives but it was on the second day of the battle, July 2nd, 1863, that the Union Army turned the tide. Colonel Joshua Chamberlain was commander of a Maine regiment that occupied the extreme left flank of the Union Army at a location named Little Round Top. Chamberlain’s troops were spread thin a long a sloping rock wall. If the confederate troops were to take Little Round Top, they would be able to flank the union army and attack them from the rear.
Late in the afternoon of July 2nd, the Confederates swept up the hill towards the Maine regiment. They were repelled but retreated and then advanced a second time. Again repelled, they retreated for a third attempt to take Little Round Top. Exhausted and out of ammunition with the gaps in the Union line growing wider, Chamberlain’s troops were about to be flanked.
It was at this decisive point in the battle that Chamberlain directed his 20th Maine Regiment to “fix bayonets and sweep the hill in a swinging door motion that was arguably the most famous counterattack of the Civil War. The Confederate troops themselves exhausted, were taken by complete surprise and retreated and the Union’s left flank prevailed. Many historians credited Chamberlain and the 20th Maine with saving the Army of the Potomac, winning the Battle of Gettysburg, and setting the South on a long, irreversible path to defeat.
It is late afternoon, July 2nd, 1992, and a friend and I are walking the remains of the rock wall that Chamberlain’s 20th Maine defended the Union Army’s extreme left flank. I am kicking the dead leaves along the wall, when I see what appears to be a small stone. What caught my attention was how round and smooth the stone was. Examining the stone, I turn it over and surprisingly find a series of concentric circles. I showed the stone to my friend, a high school history teacher and military historian and asked him what to make of my find. He examines the piece and concludes that he knows of no stone that has concentric circles on one side. We then showed it to one of parks tour guides who confirmed that what I was holding was a smashed mini-ball probably fired by a confederate soldier that flattened against the rock wall behind which the 20thMaine defended Little Round Top.
That smashed mini-ball is among my most treasured collection of civil war artifacts and just one of the very strange events that I have experienced on Civil War battlefields.
As an aside, Gettysburg is considered one of the most haunted places in America replete with eyewitness accounts of hundreds of paranormal events. In October they do a haunted tour of the town and the battlefield and to this day you can see the mini-ball holes in the buildings in town.
It is worth a visit.
