Battle of Gettysburg!!!! HELP!!!!PLEASE!!!!?

Question

i have 3 questions

1.What was its significance?
2.Why was this battle initiated?
3.Who initianted this battle?

remember these questions are all about the battle of Gettysburge
and whoever has the most informational and helpful i will give 10 POINTS!!!
Please help i m desprite!!!

Answer 1

The Gettysburg Battle was an accident of two armies bumping into each other. Lee was invading the north without his eyes (Jeb Stuart's Cavalry) and heard from a spy that the Union army was getting close. His orders were to come together near Cashtown or the crossroads of Gettysburg. At the time, the Army of N. Virginia was spreadout from Harrisburg to south of Chambersburg. He had explicit orders not to engage the enemy until the whole army was in the field.

In the fog of war, however, Heth's Rebel Division moved toward Gettysburg looking for shoes. They ran into a cavalry pickett line under Gen. Buford. Heth brought up his whole division and buford held on until the Union Ist Corp came up.

Both sides brought up their armies piecemeal. On July 1, 1863, the Confederates beat back the Union and took control of Gettysburg and Semetary Ridge. Inexplicably, Gen. Ewell did not follow-up the victory with a charge up Culps Hill and Cemetery Hill. The high ground was therefore left in Union hands and the battle may as well have been decided on the 1st day.

Gen Lee was blamed for not giving specific orders to take the high ground ("if at all practicable" he said). Ewell was no Stonewall Jackson, and it showed.

The second day was almost won by the Rebs, with an assault on the Union left up Little Round top and Devil's Den. Two saviors of the day were Governor Warren who rushed troops to the undefended flank at the last moment and Col Chamberlains famous "fix bayonet" charge that stopped Gen. Hoods Texans from taking the flank. For his day at Little Round Top, (Chamberlain won the Cong. Med. of Honor)

The third day was a total blunder on Lee's part for ordering the sure death of proud Viriginians and North Carolinians, as 12,000 rebs attacked over open ground against entrenched infantry and massed artillery (AKA: Pickett's Charge).

The battle was the South's high water mark in the war, from then on they lost the strategic initiative in the war and were henceforth on the retreat.

Answer 2

Significance - It was the last offensive campaign of the war for the South. The final two years of the war would become just a defensive struggle by the South after Gettysburg. Coupled with the fall of Vicksburg that same first week of July in 1863, Gettysburg meant that the South was clearly losing the war. There were few illusions that the South could still win after Gettysburg. Their last hope was to hold on until the North became tired of the losses.
Initiation of the battle - Lees invasion of Pennsylvania in late June 1863 was the main factor. Lee wanted to fight in Northern territory so the people of the North would suffer the ravages of war rather than the people of his beloved Virginia. There was still some hope of help from Britain - though very little hope since the British were against the institution of slavery. There was also hope that the North would negotiate a peace and allow the South to live in peace outside the Union - which is all they wanted in the first place. If the South made the war painful enough, perhaps the North would tire of the struggle and leave them alone to continue slavery as they wished. There is little doubt that slavery was the issue. Those who say the war was fought over "States' Rights" are simply adding a euphemism for the states' rights to have slavery. The battle location itself was just serendipitous. The armies would collide somewhere. Gettysburg was a town where several roads met. Where the roads converged, the armies could concentrate.
Lee's Army of Northern Virgina initiated the battle on July 1st when a column under Henry Heth hit the Northern cavalry force under General Buford west of town. Both armies were close enough to reinforce this initial skirmish. As both armies came up in force, the largest engagement of the civil war developed and lasted for three days.
Added Note RE: the answer of "e fn w" - - this is a terrific description of the 3 day battle BUT - the deaths at Gettysburg totaled just over 7000 - NOT "60,000" or 50,000 as is so often mis-stated even on the history channel. Around 7100 men were killed on the battlefield over the three days. A total of ~ 53,000 were "casualties", but that includes wounded and missing. Some people figure that wounded men died later anyway, but this is not true. Between 80 and 85% of wounded men did survive their wounds. So the total eventual death toll was probably closer to 12 thousand overall in the days and weeks following the battle. Most of the "missing "men would turn up later.
Extra added note - "Tex" is correct about Lee not really wanting the northern people to suffer the ravages of war, but I think he did prefer that his people of Virginia not be subjected to these for another summer. Primary source accounts from soldiers have documented how armies would move through an area like locusts. Supply was commonly a problem for the South. Food would be obtained by the soldiers wherever possible. Fence rails would be consumed for camp fires. Armies have done these things from the beginning of recorded history.

Answer 3

why has everyone thus far failed to mention the fact that the invasion of the north by gen. lee that precipitated the battle of gettysburg was done so in hopes that it would pull grant off of vicksburg? i have never read anything that lee wanted to spread the misery of war to the yankee states. i have read, however, that lee intended to crush the yankee corps pursuing them and then turn on washington d.c. in hopes of ending the war. we all know that it did not work out that way.
the significance of gettysburg was the fact that it was the last invasion of the north by any confederate army. the heath/buford explanation for the beginning of gettysburg (who and why) mentioned by other folks is a good one. lee, and most definitely longstreet, would have preferred other places to fight the yankees. too bad jeb stuart was off gallivanting about the pennsylvanian countryside raising nothing but a fuss.

Answer 4

1. Gettysburg was the last time the Confederacy invaded Northern soil.

2. Because Confederate General Henry Heth wasn't careful not to get involved in engagement.

3. Henry Heth

Answer 5

Open your history book to the index. Look up the Battle of Gettysburg. Open the book to the page listed in the index and read. Easy.

Answer 6

1) Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863, was a decisive defeat of the Confederacy and of Confederate General Robert E. Lee by the Union army. If Lee instead had been once again victorious, a decisive Confederate victory at Gettysburg would have had the potential to destroy the American union to the likely detriment of subsequent human history.

Lee had become almost legendary for his military skills despite the near disaster for the Confederacy of his first invasion of the North, which also resulted in Lee's defeat at Antietam on September 17, 1862, the bloodiest day in American history.

Several times, Lee had bested superior Union forces. With Union forces gaining overwhelming ascendancy in the West, Lee recognized that the Confederacy needed soon a decisive victory in the East in order to secure a victory in the war, and that such a war-winning victory could only be had on northern soil.

The victory at Gettysburg, combined with Union General Ulysses .S. Grant's capture of Vicksburg in the same week, reinvigorated the Union war effort. By preserving the Union and the Union's main army -- the "Army of the Potomac" -- Gettysburg also set the stage for Grant's assumption of the command of all Union armies and for Grant's continental war of attrition that eventually resulted in the defeat of the Confederacy.

After Gettysburg, it became clear to the South that the smaller Army of Northern Virginia, the main army of the Confederacy, couldn't sustain major operations in the North, eliminating southern hopes of forcing a Union capitulation by conquest.

There were subsequent Confederate offensives in the war (the Valley Campaigns of 1864, John Bell Hood's invasion of Tennessee in 1864), but never with the size and elan of the invasion by Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the summer of 1863, and never with the same potential to secure a Confederate victory. These subsequent Confederate offensives always were defeated eventually by superior Union forces and arguably superior Union commanders, a decisive change from the pre-Gettysburg Confederate campaigns.

Also, Gettysburg was the bloodiest three days in American history, despite the fact that the population of the U.S. was less than 40 million at the time. Estimates are that 6,000-7,000 individuals were killed and another 35,000-40,000 were wounded or missing. The impact of this human loss arguably was over 15 times as great as 9/11, as measured just by the number of dead, and was felt in virtually every community in the North and South.

The terrible human toll of Gettysburg opened a gaping wound in the nation's psyche, that appropriately was given meaning by one of the greatest funeral orations in history -- President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (see links below):

"The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it [the Gettysburg battlefiedl] far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Lincoln's address not only honored the sacrifice at Gettysburg, but arguably defined the national political ideal for all time.

Some say it's ironic that the fame of Lincoln's words have eclipsed the memory of the battle itself, despite Lincoln's assertion in the address that "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."

Such an observation fails to grasp the significance of the Union victory at Gettysburg and its consequences to the future of the United States and therefore to all of humanity.

As Lincoln was well aware, a decisive Confederate victory at Gettysburg might have ended the war, as Lee's victorious army might have struck at Washington, D.C., or even Philadelphia or New York City. Union political will, always more tenuous than the Union's military potential, might have collapsed if Lee had been victorious at Gettysburg.

A Union defeat at Gettysburg therefore might have resulted in the dissolution of the United States into two at least initially hostile nations, one of them founded on enslavement and ethnic superiority, the other cowered by defeat.

There no longer would have been a single continental democracy with the growing potential to influence world affairs. Just consider whether a Confederacy would have opposed a similarly minded Nazi regime in World War II.

Not only might a defeat at Gettysburg have resulted in the demise of the United States as a unified, continental power, but North America might have been plunged into a European-like military posture with large standing armies, armed territorial disputes, and fortified borders, all at great human and material cost.

And the future of the North American inhabitants and of all humanity might have been much more harsh and less dedicated to the principles of universal freedom espoused by Lincoln and his Union supporters.

Long after most persons remember the Battle of Gettysburg, the reality will remain that on those three hot summer days of great valor and sacrifice in the Pennsylvania countryside of July 1863, the world's first continental democracy survived a moment of great peril and was allowed to continue its growth into hopefully an eternal force of good in the world. Lincoln viscerally understood the magnitude of this victory -- his government of, by, and for the people, had passed this great test and could continue its struggle for survival. "The last best, hope of earth," as Lincoln put it in his 1862 annual message to Congress, still lived. So as long as the United States was remembered, Lincoln must have thought, so would by implication the victory at Gettysburg.


2) The battle was initiated as the result of the Confederate invasion of the North with the hope of destroying the Union's eastern army and securing a victory that would have resulted in the independence of the Confederacy.

3) The battlefield was largely selected by chance rather than by design, but it was Robert E. Lee's desire for a decisive victory that clearly initiated the large-scale battle. Lee realized that he had a chance to destroy the Union army in detail as the Union's forces were not arriving at Gettysburg within sufficient time to support one another against the assembled Confederate forces. If Lee had given more clear commands on the first day of the battle to sustain his attack, he might have won his great battle.

Instead, the Union army was given the chance to bring together its more considerable strength and secure advantageous ground.

Lee could have declined to pursue the battle on the second and third days, and famously was advised to do so by General James Longstreet, one of Lee's main field commanders. However, Lee didn't think that the aggressive mindset of his army nor his limited military stores would allow him successfully to disengage and obtain his desired decisive victory under more favorable circumstances. So Lee risked all at Gettysburg, and maintained the offensive during the battle despite having the much smaller of the two armies. Gettysburg was Lee's battle to win or lose.