It may seem as if all we cover here at Lies Agreed Upon are Germans and the Civil War, but the calendar is providing us with events too good to pass up. That Thursday at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 1863 is in our opinion the turning point of the war, and thus the turning point in the history of the United States. While the Confederacy would see its high water mark the next afternoon on Cemetery Ridge, the action on the second day of America's bloodiest battle paved the way for the climactic victory on the third.
Robert E. Lee must have been disappointed on the morning of July 2, 1863; still confident, but disappointed nonetheless. Riding high on a string of victories, the Army of Northern Virginia's invasion of the North was supposed to produce the kind of decisive battle that would force the North to sue for peace. In light of this, Lee ordered his commanders not to fully engage the enemy until the entire army could be concentrated on ground of his choosing. Therefore, when General Henry Heath skirmished Federal Cavalry at a small crossroads town in Pennsylvania, it derailed Lee's plans.
Yet like all successful generals, Lee's flexibility must have made him believe a victory was at hand. After committing two of his Corps to an attack on the Union left on July 1, Lee called on General James Longstreet's corps to roll up the Federal flank the next day. These assaults, which Longstreet wanted to delay, changed the course of the war.
Seeing Longstreet moving to his left, General Daniel Sickles of the Union III Corps moved his entire command out in front of the rest of the Federal line. This not only exposed the Army of the Potamac's flank, but the move also hung Sickles' men out to dry. The heaviest fighting in this sector was in a small peach orchard, where blood ran red over the pink peachtree petals that littered the ground.
With the Union flank thus exposed, the V Corps was moved into the line behind Sickles' men. After pushing through the Peach Orchard, Longstreet's men moved further around to the left, into a rocky bottom overlooked by two small hills. Known to the locals as Devil's Den, the area was covered in piles of rocks that made perfect fighting positions. A pitched fight back and forth resulted in heavy losses on both sides, and after the battle the dead lay among the boulders.
These exposed positions on the left flank were anchored by the two hills to the rear, one round and wooded, the smaller bald and flat faced. It was the smaller, Little Round Top, that became the extreme end of the Federal line, and it was up the smaller wave after wave of Confederate assaults came. The regiment responsible for protecting the flank, the 20th Maine commanded by Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, fought off each attack. Unable to retreat lest the flank cave, low on ammunition and thus unable to hold their position, the 20th executed an unlikely bayonet charge that broke the point of the Southern spear and ended their push on the left.
With the Confederate chances for victory lengthened by Longstreet's failure to turn the flank, the stage was set for General George Pickett's desperate charge (big surprise: another frontal assault) across open ground the next afternoon. When that assault failed, so too had the invasion of the North. Lee was forced to retreat, and the initiative swung to the Union. The Army of Northern Virginia would live to fight another day, but thereafter it would be the Federal forces that would do the pursuing, eventually chasing Lee to Appomattox.
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