Late that evening, the Army of Northern Virginia began preparations for the long, sad march back to Virginia, which began in dreary, wet weather on July 5. By the following evening, the last Confederates who could had left the Gettysburg area with the Army of the Potomac soon to follow in close pursuit. The retreat was especially agonizing for the wounded, packed into ambulances and wagons that bumped and rocked over rough mountain roads to the rain-swollen Potomac River. Meade followed Lee with caution, finally cornering the Army of Northern Virginia near Williamsport, Maryland. By the time Meade was set to attack, Lee had slipped over the Potomac River and engineers cut away ropes holding the pontoon bridges in place. The Confederate army was safely back in Virginia. The Gettysburg Campaign was over but the agony of the battle was still being felt in Pennsylvania. Details of Union soldiers and Confederate prisoners spent nearly two weeks combing the battlefield, interring the remains of approximately 5,500 officers and men from both armies. Gardens became graveyards as hundreds of wounded soldiers succumbed to their injuries in field hospitals scattered throughout the county. Though the exact number will never be known, the best estimate of those killed and mortally wounded in the Battle of Gettysburg numbered well over 10,000. Additionally, the armies left behind approximately 22,000 wounded Union and Confederate soldiers. Churches, barns, and private homes were filled with injured men treated by a contingent of surgeons, including a number of Confederate surgeons who voluntarily remained behind when their army left. Gettysburg civilians pitched in to help the injured and dying. Women especially bore the burden and did all they could to help nurse the wounded, provide food, clothing, water, and anything that could benefit the men in need.
Union captives of Lee's army were offered immediate parole, a surprise to many but reasonable. Lee offered to immediately trade paroled prisoners with Meade as the Confederate commander and his subordinates did not want to be burdened with columns of prisoners clogging up the roads and having troops appointed to guard them. General Meade refused stating that such proceedings were not under his jurisdiction, so Lee was left with no choice but to march nearly 4,000 prisoners to Virginia. Though some Union soldiers took the parole, most refused. "We knew that we might be a burden to the rebels and slow them down," wrote one Union captive after the war. Other veterans remembered the hardships of the march with very little food and guards prodding the men along with bayonets. Once over the Potomac River, the prisoners were sent to Richmond where many were imprisoned on Belle Isle in the James River or sent to prison camps elsewhere in the south. Though prisoners of both armies had a chance to be paroled and exchanged as was the custom since 1861, many of the men captured at Gettysburg would never return to their armies. Suspension of the exchange system in 1864 combined with disease, exposure, and poor food in the prison camps contributed to the deaths of many. Some sat out the rest of the war as prisoners and were not freed until long after the cessation of hostilities. It took months if not years for the people of Gettysburg to recover from the toll the battle had taken on their lives. Many never recovered. The families who left their homes to escape the fighting returned to find their livelihoods destroyed. Fields were trampled, livestock destroyed, orchards ruined, fences torn to pieces, their homes and barns filled with wounded men. Floors, walls, tables and chairs were stained with blood where the surgeon's saw and probe had done their work. Food stores were decimated. Graves were in every corner of their yards, gardens and fields, the air foul with the odor of death mixed with the stench of human and animal waste. The battlefield itself was a dangerous place for many months afterward as unexploded ordnance remained on the surface or just below ground and more than one Adams County resident was seriously injured or killed while handling artillery shells. Among the latter was the tragic death of Gettysburg teenager James Culp as recounted in the Adams Sentinel of September 14, 1863: "A terrible accident occurred on Wednesday evening, in the opening of a shell found on the battlefield, resulting in the death of James M. Culp, an interesting son of Mr. Daniel Culp, of this place. The deceased had opened a number of shells without accident, but when at work upon another, near the Cemetery grounds, the shell exploded, fearfully lacerating his hands and legs, and a piece entering his abdomen. The body was immediately carried to the residence of his afflicted parents on Baltimore Street - death relieved the sufferer in an hour or so. He was in his 17th year." Farmers began to rebuild even before the last wounded soldier was removed from their buildings. Homes and churches in Gettysburg were slowly emptied of wounded, the floors swept and walls scrubbed clean. Fences and buildings were repaired. Orchards and crops re-planted. Graves began to disappear from the fields as re-interments took place, or a new growth of grass covered the earthen scar only marked by a simple wooden headboard. Life began to return to some sense of normalcy after a while but the town of Gettysburg would never be the same again as visitors and the curious wandered through the borough streets and tramped through the fields where the fighting had been at its worst. For some youths in town, it was an opportunity to make money as a guide to the battlefield, a profession at which several flourished. The war had come home to the civilians of Gettysburg and for many it was an experience they never forgot. For one resident named Daniel Skelly, the scenes of those three days were still vivid many years afterward when he wrote a memoir of his experiences, as did many others. In the aftermath of this great campaign, soldiers were quick to write friends and family to let them know that they were safe and who had been lost. The nation mourned the loss of so many from northern and southern homes. The southern fighting spirit was not broken, but the results of the battle told heavily on the soldiers in Lee's army. "Well Lucious," wrote Corporal Jacob Click, 5th Virginia Cavalry, "the army all have crossed back to this side of Potomac. The army crossed over on last monday night and tuesday morning. I tell you there was a many a poor soldier killed in Maryland and Pennsylvania and there was no end to the wounded. I think we got the worst end of the barg[a]in this time..." The National Cemetery
Soon after the close of the battle, Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin visited the battlefield. Curtin was appalled at what he saw- destroyed fences and farms, homes full of injured men, graves of the fallen in every conceivable portion of the field. Heavy rains had washed away the earth from some of the more shallow graves, exposing hands, arms and legs that stuck out of the ground like "the devil's own planting... a harvest of death." The governor was not the only Pennsylvanian upset by these conditions. Several patriotic citizens of Adams County undertook efforts to establish a proper burial site for the Union dead, many of whom lay in unmarked graves where they would soon be forgotten. An enthusiastic Governor Curtin agreed that the state of Pennsylvania would provide funds to establish the cemetery and help finance reburials of an estimated 3,600 bodies. Leading the effort for the state was David Wills, a Gettysburg lawyer who arranged for the purchase of land on Cemetery Hill and improvements of the property. Most fittingly, the "Soldiers National Cemetery" was established on a part of the battlefield. Landscape architect William Saunders was hired to design the cemetery and his plan was heralded for its simplicity and equality. Re-interments began that fall. Union dead were removed from temporary graves and re-buried in state plots in the cemetery, a final resting place for the defenders of the Union cause. The cemetery was dedicated on November 19, 1863 and was the occasion of President Lincoln's highly regarded Gettysburg Address. His two-minute address is known today as one of the greatest speeches of his presidential career and in American history.
With the end of the Gettysburg Campaign in mid-July, a stalemate ensued in the east while Union efforts shifted to the west. Vicksburg fell to Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant on July 4, 1863. With the Mississippi River in Union control and the southern coast blockaded by the US Navy, the Confederacy was surrounded. New Union attempts to invade Georgia that fall resulted in the Battle of Chickamauga and the eventual siege of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The siege was broken at the Battle of Lookout Mountain, also known as "The Battle Above The Clouds". In Virginia, the two armies maneuvered and probed throughout the fall months, with few positive results for either side. An exasperated President Lincoln looked to his victorious western commander to bring some of that decisive leadership to the armies in the east. The president had long been searching for a commander with the resolve to fight the battle to a decisive close and he found this officer in Ulysses Simpson Grant. In 1864, General Grant was given command of all Union forces in the field and he chose to accompany The Army of the Potomac into the Wilderness of Virginia for a final showdown with Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. To coincide with this new drive toward Richmond, Grant ordered armies in the south and west to initiate drives of their own straight into the deep south. The war lasted another long, bloody year, until April 9, 1865 when it finally came to an end in the parlor of Wilmer McLean at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Though the years of conflict were over, many more would pass before the United States was again at peace and fully reunited. What had torn it asunder in 1861 was finally laid to rest and the "new birth of freedom" of which President Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg became a reality. This landmark battle was recognized for its importance to the Union cause and the pursuit of a final resolution to the issues which had divided the states. This nation was never the same after Gettysburg.
| The Battle Begins | "A most terrible day..." | "I will strike him there." | The Last Full Measure |
National Park Service
Author: John Heiser, GETT |
