On the Road with Uncle Bob

A trip to Gettysburg inspired by Bruce Catton's book "The Final Fury"

The battle of Gettysburg, fought on July 1st, 2nd and 3rd 1863, was an epic three-day struggle between two opposing armies that resulted in a victory by the Union forces, led by General George Gordon Meade, over the Confederate forces, lead by General Robert E. Lee. At the end of the third day, there were 51,000 casualties - men listed as killed, wounded, missing or captured - on both sides: 28,000 Confederate casualties; 23,000 Union casualties. This was the battle that turned the tide in the Civil War.

Most Americans today probably do not understand that General Lee had no illusions that the Confederate armies could win the war against the Union forces. He and most of the leaders of the Confederacy understood that the North had too many resources and the Confederacy too few. Lee's objective was to beat the Union army in one great battle somewhere in Pennsylvania. Such a victory by Lee's army would leave the way open for Lee and his army to march on Washington and Baltimore. If he could capture those two cities, or even capture one and threaten the other, it was quite possible that the northern states, already disheartened after having suffered several crushing defeats, would sue for peace and recognize the right of the southern states to secede from the Union.

Such an outcome was not guaranteed, however. The Union forces, under Grant, had won victories in the West and were threatening Vicksburg on the Mississippi River at the moment Lee crossed his army into Pennsylvania. But Lee felt that this was the South's best chance for a successful outcome.

The genesis of this trip to Gettysburg was a conversation Uncle Bob (Bob Kearney) and I had over the summer. I mentioned I had been to the Gettysburg battlefield three times and he expressed an interest in seeing it for himself. So, on a Friday in early October (October 8, 2010), we set off. This was not a vacation as such, but an educational pilgrimage.  I was to be the mentor and Uncle Bob my student.

The trip down was uneventful, about a seven hour drive.  We arrived about 5:30 PM.  My Chief of Staff (Ellie) had booked us into a Quality Inn about 24 miles outside Gettysburg.  Just as "an army marches on its' stomach" (a quote from Napoleon), so too do pilgrims.  So the first order of business was to get a meal.  Since even pilgrims have to unwind on occasion, drinks were ordered.  I ordered a Jameson on the rocks with a Sam Adams chaser.  I like Sam Adams perhaps because of my love of history.  I like Jameson perhaps because of my Mother's Irish heritage.  Or perhaps I just like the taste of alcohol.  Uncle Bob is a man of more exotic tastes.  Straight whiskey and beer wouldn't do for him.  He ordered a Southern Comfort Manhattan with sweet vermouth and a twist of lemon over dirty ice.  His second drink was a vodka Manhattan straight up with green olives.  Drinking with Bob makes me feel so inferior.  While we waited for the meal we made our plans for the following day and discussed other topics as well, though my memory is somewhat hazy regarding the details of the conversation. 

The meal, by the way, was delicious.  The evening ended with Uncle Bob guiding me to our room where I promptly went to bed and slept like an innocent babe.  Bob, who had not had as much to drink, did not sleep well.  This just confirms my theory that sinners are not always punished in this world and virtue is not always rewarded.  Such is life.

The next morning we began our tour of the battlefield.  First we went along the length of Seminary Ridge.  That was the position occupied by the Confederates on July 1st and held for the next two days.  Opposite the Confederate army, approximately eight tenths of a mile away and running parallel to it, was Cemetery Ridge, occupied by the Union army.  Both ridges were low, not very elevated, and ran north to south.  At the northern end of Cemetery Ridge was Cemetery Hill and Culps Hill, both held by Union  forces.  At the southern end of Cemetery Ridge, was Little Round Top, wooded on three sides but rocky and bare on the top and bare and steep on the western side, which was the side facing the Confederate army.  Union forces occupied Little Round Top, which was the left flank or the southern extreme end of the Union position. 

It is not the purpose of this report to go into the details of the battle, but I will focus on the final Confederate assault on the Union position referred to by historians as "Picketts Charge."  On July 3rd, late in the afternoon after a heavy cannonade by about 140 Confederate guns, between 12 and 15 thousand Confederate soldiers stepped out of the woods along Seminary Ridge, forming a line approximately a mile in width, and proceeded to walk in good order across open fields the eight tenths of a mile distance toward the Union position on Cemetery Ridge.  The cannon fell silent as the Confederate brigades, lined up in double and triple ranks, moved forward, walking upright in a steady and unhurried pace in plain sight of the Union forces.  As the Confederates moved closer to the Union lines, Union cannons began to fire a lethal barrage of shot and canister that tore great holes in their ranks.  Still they came forward in a remarkable display of courage and determination perhaps unequaled in modern warfare.  There was nowhere to hide; there was nowhere to seek cover.  As they came within a hundred yards of the Union position, they broke into a run as they charged the Union line with bayonets fixed.  For a brief moment a hundred or more Confederate soldiers breached the center of the Union line but they were soon surrounded and killed, wounded, or captured.  The Confederate assault had been repulsed and, with it, Lee's chance for a great victory had been lost. 

The next day, July 4th, both sides held their positions, waiting for the other side to attack.  Both sides had suffered terrible losses and neither side felt strong enough to attack the other.  The night of July 4th, Lee gathered together his battered army and began the long retreat back to Virginia. 

The war would drag on for two more years before Lee would finally surrender at Appomattox Court House.  In all, more than 600,000 Americans, North and South, would lose their lives in the costliest war in U.S. history. 

Though there were other peripheral issues, the war was, in essence, a struggle over slavery; specifically the extension of slavery into the unsettled territories.  As President Barack Obama has succinctly put it, slavery is our Nation's "original sin."  In order to create our new Nation, the Founding Fathers agreed to accept the existence of slavery as an institution in the states where it then existed.  It was a necessary compromise, they felt, in order for a united government to be formed among the thirteen original states.  In this they were undoubtedly correct.  But in accepting something that was evil in its essence, the framers of our Constitution put off on a future generation a day of reckoning when the debt incurred by this compromise would become due.  Slavery ended with the end of the Civil War, but segregation continued for another hundred years.  We have made progress as a society, especially in the last forty years.  But we have more to do. 

We are still paying off the debt that we as a Nation incurred as a result of our acceptance of slavery in our Constitution.  Let us hope that someday that debt might be repaid in full.