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199 five the NatuRe oF GettysbuRG Environmental History and the Civil War in late sPring 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, Confederate General Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia on a bold expedition out of the South and onto northern terrain. Somewhere in the Pennsylvania countryside, Lee hoped to defeat the Army of the Potomac in battle, thereby convincing the Union that it should abandon its objective of keeping the nation, North and South, whole. He had great confidence in his force of some seventy thousand men. Their morale—their fighting spirit—was high; for two years, they had bested their more numerous, betterequipped opponents in nearly every contest of arms. They adamantly believed in their cause: to preserve both slavery and liberty and to defend self-government and the Confederate nation. Their resolve was remarkable given their circumstances. Food shortage had shriveled the fat from their bodies, making them lean and gaunt. Diseases had swept through their ranks. Many had no shoes. For a sizable number, joining the army required them to neglect farms and families, and some believed that military service had become undemocratic , a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” No wonder, then, that a few became discouraged and deserted their comrades. But most did not. Tough, resilient men, they pressed on despite the hardships and the bitterness, following their officers along rough roads, across swift rivers, and through mountain passes.1 Pursuing them, searching for them, was the Army of the Potomac, under the generalship first of Joseph Hooker and then of George Gordon Meade. Their objective was to blunt Lee’s offensive, turn him and his men back, and 200 the NatuRe oF GettysbuRG thus weaken if not destroy the Confederacy’s dream of independence. They had a capable if as yet unsuccessful army. Despite its defeats in Virginia, it was a numerically superior force of about ninety thousand battle-hardened soldiers, and it had ample food, shoes, and other supplies. Like the Rebels, the men who filled its ranks had powerful motivations for fighting, including the desire to destroy slavery, protect liberty, and ensure the survival of a single American republic. They had problems, to be sure. The setbacks in Virginia had been disheartening . Hooker’s inept pursuit of Lee frustrated Abraham Lincoln, leading the president to place Meade in charge. The “blood money” that men could pay to defer a draft call or hire a substitute to take their place in the army sparked class resentment. Diseases, too, had takentheirtoll. But throughitalltheArmy of the Potomac remained undaunted, and as its men passed from Virginia and Maryland into Pennsylvania, their spirits rose and their resolve deepened. On July 1, west and north of Gettysburg, the two armies confronted each other. The initial fighting drove the Army of the Potomac into a defensive position along a series of hills and gentle ridges south of the town. There, crouching below rock walls that separated farm fields, hunkered behind breastworks of log, rock, and soil, it endured a massive Confederate assault that went on for two days. The fighting was a reversal of what had happened earlier in Virginia. At Fredericksburg in 1862, the Army of the Potomac had attacked a well-protected enemy occupying high ground. At Gettysburg the tables turned—now it was the Army of Northern Virginia that advanced uphill, exposed, in the face of terrible fire from a foe that had the advantage of elevation and cover. Lee’s men went forward bravely, their eerie, distinctive battle cry, the Rebel yell, rising from their ranks. Several times they tried to divide, flank, encircle, and disperse the enemy. On July 3, Lee mobilized his forces in a final all-out charge against the center of the Union line. From then on, people remembered Gettysburg as the “high tide of the Confederacy,” the greatest and most important battle in the Civil War and perhaps in American history.2 A stunning moment when the clash of titanic forces decided the shape of the future, Gettysburg had all the makings of a national epic. The Army of Northern Virginia’s long march out of the South, its fateful meeting with the Army of the Potomac in the beautiful Pennsylvania countryside, the awesome power and destructiveness of the fighting, the climactic Rebel charge, and the shiftingmomentumofthewargavethebattleenormoushistoricandemotional significance. Gettysburg’s epic quality, however, did not derive from the collision of Union and Confederate armies alone. Implicit in the massive struggle...

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