Gettysburg Day One: Taking Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill

Abstract

Gettysburg Day One what the next day would bring. Aft er two more days of battle, the Confederate army could not dislodge the Union army and in the end suff ered, quite possibly, its worst tactical defeat yet in the war. Aft er the dramatic victory for the Confederates at the Battle of Chancellorsville in early May 1863, Robert E. Lee, commanding general of the anv, gained approval for another attempt at invading the North. On June 3 Lee stealthily withdrew his army from the Fredericksburg area and took them west and north along the Rappahannock River, over to the Shenandoah Valley, and north through Maryland into Pennsylvania. Slow to react initially, the Union aop followed hard on the Confederate heels. Th e Union army roughly paralleled the Confederate route of marching, ever mindful of keeping themselves between the Confederates and Washington, dc. George G. Meade, newly appointed commanding general of the Union aop, did not know the exact location of Lee’s army. With most of the army concentrated around Fredrick, Maryland, Meade decided to advance his seven infantry and one cavalry corps north along a wide twentyfi ve mile front covering both Washington, dc, and Baltimore. Similarly, Lee had little knowledge of the Union army’s location. He had not heard from his cavalry commander, J. E. B. Stuart, since June 24. Th e primary responsibility for gathering information on enemy locations rested with the cavalry arm. Stuart eff ectively screened the anv’s movement up the Shenandoah and on into Maryland. He then took three of his best brigades on a daring attempt to circle eastward around the Union army. Whether for fame, Th ere is a debate as old as the war that is ongoing even today about whether the Confederates could have captured Cemetery Hill or Culp’s Hill on the fi rst day of battle at Gettysburg. Th e argument implies that had the Confederates achieved this feat, they would have won the battle and possibly turned the tide of the war in their favor. Th is remains one of the giant whatifs of the war, voiced by more than a few veterans and subsequent historians. One famous example comes from Isaac Trimble, an unattached Confederate general at the time who made the spurious claim that he could have pulled it off if given only one good regiment.1 However, by late aft ernoon of that fi rst day, given the condition of the forces immediately available, the lack of intelligence they had on the enemy and terrain, the time left in the day, and the strength of the Union forces, the Confederates had little to no chance of achieving this feat. Th e fi rst day of Gettysburg was a classic meeting engagement. Parts of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia (anv) collided with advance elements of the Union Army of the Potomac (aop) in piecemeal fashion throughout July 1, 1863. By late afternoon the Union forces were badly beaten and retreating from their advance positions. If the Confederates had kept going, the next logical objective for them would have been the key tactical terrain features of Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill on the south and southeast side of the town. Instead, they pulled up short, consolidated their gains, and waited for