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Sunday, July 06, 2003

One hundred and forty years ago this week, in the stultifying heat of the summer of 1863, Gettysburg was a sleepy little farming town of 2,500 residents in southern Pennsylvania.

Tales of Battle Daniel Appleby: One of the few men of Bucktail Company to survive, he kept an impeccable journal of his war experiences Richard Stoddert Ewell: Decision to delay attack haunted Confederate commander all his life Amos Humiston: Union sergeant died as the battle began, holding a picture of his children Warren W. Jordan: Union rifleman from Erie County never recovered from injuries suffered at Little Round Top Henry D. McDaniel: Wounded Georgia POW became governor and lived to be 89 A Gettysburg chronology Stories by Post-Gazette staff writers Cindi Lash, Mark Roth and Milan Simonich

But it had one feature that would make it the accidental site of the largest and bloodiest battle of the Civil War.

As a county seat, it was a hub for roads leading into it from around the compass. When Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee decided to concentrate his 75,000-man Army of Northern Virginia so it could face the 90,000-man Army of the Potomac, headed by Gen. George E. Meade, those converging roads brought the two armies together for three horrific days of fighting on July 1-3.

Today, we tell the story of that battle through the experiences of five men: a Confederate general who had already lost a leg and whose actions at Gettysburg would be criticized for the rest of his life and beyond; a Union infantryman who would eventually go deaf from the gunfire he lived through at Gettysburg; a Confederate commander who would one day become a progressive governor of Georgia; another Union infantryman who would survive the war, only to die 40 years later in a freak accident; and a Union soldier who became a celebrity months after his death because of a single photograph found clutched in his hands.

After the three days of fighting, which culminated in the suicidal assault by Confederate troops known as Pickett's Charge, more than 51,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or missing on both sides. The war would drag on for another two years, but in this once quiet town, the Confederacy's ultimate defeat was ensured.