Gettysburg Battlefield

Why It Matters

In July 1863, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac collided at a small Pennsylvania crossroads town. What followed was three days of slaughter that would determine the course of American history. The fighting was apocalyptic: Pickett's Charge sent 12,500 Confederate soldiers across open ground into Union artillery; the Wheatfield changed hands six times in a single afternoon; Little Round Top saw hand-to-hand combat among the boulders. When the smoke cleared, the Confederacy had suffered a defeat from which it would never recover. The carnage was so immense that the town of 2,400 residents was left to deal with 22,000 wounded soldiers and 8,000 unburied corpses. Four months later, President Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery. Today, the battlefield's 6,000 acres of monuments, memorials, and preserved terrain make it the most visited Civil War site in America—and, many believe, one of its most haunted.