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The Battle of Gettysburg, fought on July 1–3, 1863, was the battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War and is often consideredas the war's turning point. Fought in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the Battle of Gettysburg saw 165,000 Union and Confederate soldiers clash in a three day battle that resulted in more than 51,000 casualties.
On the third day of the battle, 12,5000 Confederate soldiers attacked the center of the Union line in an infantry assault called Pickett's Charge. The charge, led by General Pickett, began at an opening in the trees on Seminary Ridge. It required the Confederate soldiers to walk across more than a mile of open fields and uphill into the face of constant cannon, cannister, grapeshot and musket fire.
Over half the soldiers in Pickett's Charge where wounded or killed in this terrible attack. A few hundred Confederate soldiers reached the copse of trees near The Angle (a corner in a low stone wall) on Cemetery Ridge, the planned target of Pickett's Charge. For a few moments they appeared to break the Union lines, but reinforcements poured in and all Confederates who crossed the stone wall were killed or captured. The surviving soldiers in Pickett's Charge struggled back to the opening in the trees on Seminary Ridge and the rest of the Confederate forces.
Pickett's Charge and represented the farthest point north that Robert E. Lee's forces reached during the Civil War. For this reason the copse of trees is often referred to as the High Water Mark of the Confederacy. In spite of this very momentary success, Pickett's Charge was a disaster for the Confederate forces and ended Robert E. Lee's plan to move his forces north to Harrisburg Pennsylvania and on to Washington DC. While the Civil War continued on for two more years, the Battle of Gettysburg changed the dynamics of the war and General Lee was never truly on the offensive again.
Pickett's Charge was dramatically recreated in the movie Gettysburg. While it isn't historically complete, the movie does show the horrific danger the Confederates faced as they stepped out from the woods on Seminary Ridge.
Today the starting point for Pickett's Charge at the opening in the trees is marked by the Virginia Memorial, topped by a statue of Robert E. Lee on his horse Traveler. A few informational plaques describe the start of the attack, but otherwise the area is remarkably free of memorials or markers. You can walk the route of Pickett's Charge and see the view the Confederate soldiers saw as they attacked The Angle in this ill-fated assault.
