1. Point
of
no
return

2. Last chance?
•Confederate General
Robert E. Lee realized
that something needed to
change if the war were to
ever come to an end.

3. Last chance?
• After witnessing the carnage
at Frederickburg, VA in
December, 1862, Lee said “It
is good that war is so
horrible, or we might grow to
like it,” as he watched 12,000
Union soldiers get mowed

4. Last chance?
• At Chancellorsville, VA, 5
months later, Lee again won a
great victory, perhaps his best in
the war, but lost his most
important general, Stonewall
Jackson, when Jackson was
accidentally shot at night by his
own troops.

5. Last chance?
• Lee decided that another
attempt at victory in the North
might help those people who
supported peace in the North
(Copperheads or Peace
Democrats), or would at worst
disrupt the Union war effort.

6. Last chance?
•On July 1, 1863, Lee’s
troops moved toward the
Pennsylvania town of
Gettysburg and
surprisingly met a group
of Union cavalry there.

7. Last chance?
• Even though the cavalry was
quickly reinforced by two Union
corps, two large Confederate
corps joined the battle and forced
the Union troops to Cemetary
Hill on the southern side of the
city, who then set themselves in
a fish hook style formation.

8. Last chance?
• The Confederate troops took
up their position along
Seminary Ridge, so-called
because of the theological
school (now Gettysburg
College) at one end of the
line.

9. Last chance?
• By the second day, July 2,
1863, both great armies
(Confederates = 72,000,
Union = 94,000) had arrived
and most of the fighting took
place on the left end of the
Union line.

10. Last chance?
• The fighting was focused around
a small, rocky hill called Little
Round Top which was being
defended by troops from the 20 th
Maine Regiment under the
leadership of Joshua Lawrence
Chamberlain, a Bowdoin
College professor.

11. Last chance?
• The Confederates charged up
Little Round Top as many as
five times, and each time were
sent back, the last one being
when Chamberlain ordered a
bayonet charge and captured a
large number of the attackers.

12. Sent packing
•By the time the third day
of the battle, July
3, 1863, rolled
around, Lee believed that
the center of the Union
line would be weakest.

13. Sent packing
• He believed the attacks on
both the right and left flanks
the day before had forced
Union leaders to pull troops
out of the center and there was
no way they could have
moved them back in time.

14. Sent packing
•Lee ordered General
George Pickett to lead a
charge of his
Virginians, who had not
been in action the day
before, on the Union

15. Sent packing
• At around 3 PM, after 2 hours
of artillery fire, General
Pickett led 12,500 troops
across ¾ of mile of open field
toward the center of the Union
line, even having to climb
over fences to get there.

16. Sent packing
• The Confederates struggled to
reach the Union position
because of Union artillery, but
were still able to make a slight
break in the Union
lines, before reinforcements
came up and closed it quickly.

17. Sent packing
•Fewer than ½ of the men
who made Pickett’s
Charge returned to the
Confederate lines.

18. Sent packing
• It had been a brutal defeat for
the Confederacy and one, along
with the announcement of the
loss of the city of Vicksburg
on the Mississippi River the
next day, that they would
struggle to recover from.