Hill's men march on Gettysburg for supplies; Buford's cavalry is waiting on the ridges
By the last week of June 1863, Robert E. Lee's army was loose in Pennsylvania, and Washington had a new general trying to catch him. On the morning of July 1, A.P. Hill's troops pushed toward Gettysburg looking for supplies and ran into Union cavalry under John Buford, dug in on the ridges west of town. Buford's dismounted troopers held Herr Ridge, then McPherson Ridge, then Seminary Ridge, trading ground for hours until infantry could arrive. By evening, Winfield Scott Hancock had taken the field and picked the high ground south of town, Cemetery Hill, as the place to make the Union stand.
Gettysburg ended the Confederacy's last serious hope of a battlefield victory persuasive enough to draw European recognition, and it handed Lincoln the ground on which he would redefine the war's purpose four months later at the cemetery dedication. The Army of the Potomac, beaten repeatedly since 1861, finally held. Northern morale, and the Union's credit abroad, turned on those three days.
QWho fired the first shot of the battle, and how is it remembered?
Union Lieutenant Marcellus Jones is credited with firing the opening shot of the battle on the morning of July 1, as Buford's cavalry pickets spotted Confederate infantry approaching along the Chambersburg Pike. Jones later returned to the spot decades after the war and had a granite marker placed there commemorating the exact location. It still stands along the pike today, marking the instant a shoe-hunting reconnaissance turned into the largest battle ever fought in North America.
QWhy was a 69-year-old war veteran fighting as a volunteer at Gettysburg?
John L. Burns, a 69-year-old veteran of the War of 1812, grabbed his old flintlock musket and walked out to join Union soldiers fighting west of town on July 1, despite having no formal military role. He fought alongside a Wisconsin regiment, was wounded multiple times, and survived. His age and unofficial status made him a minor celebrity afterward, and Bret Harte later wrote a poem about him titled 'John Burns of Gettysburg.'
QHow did an exposed salient at the Peach Orchard change the course of July 2?
Union General Daniel Sickles, commanding III Corps, advanced his line forward to higher ground at the Peach Orchard without orders, abandoning his assigned position on Cemetery Ridge and creating a dangerous, unsupported bulge in the Union line. The move drew Confederate attacks that tore through the Wheatfield, Devil's Den, and the orchard itself, some of the bloodiest close fighting of the entire battle. Sickles lost a leg in the fighting but survived, and controversy over his decision followed him for the rest of his life.
