Battlefield Landmarks - South and West

Early in the evening of the 1st, after reports from the field indicated that the enemy intended to support the attack with his whole army and that the position was favorable, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, U.S.A., commander of the Army of the Potomac, ordered all the corps to concentrate at Gettysburg and determined to give battle there. On July 2, Big Round Top marked the extreme left flank of the Union line, and Union troops seized it that evening, though by then it had little strategic value. Little Round Top was the scene of heavy fighting that afternoon when Longstreet's Confederate First Corps tried to turn the Union left flank on Cemetery Ridge; it also held one of six Union signal stations on the three-mile-long battlefield, and its rocky crest gave unobstructed views of the field. Near the center of the 2nd and 3rd days' fighting stands the Pennsylvania Memorial, Gettysburg National Park's largest monument, bearing on bronze tablets the names of 34,530 Pennsylvania soldiers who took part in the battle. Gettysburg National Cemetery, established one month after the battle, contains the remains of 3,512 soldiers killed at Gettysburg and was dedicated on November 19, 1863; the tombstones visible from here are in the older Evergreen Cemetery just in front of it. The Lutheran Theological Seminary, founded in 1826 as the oldest Lutheran seminary in the United States, had lookouts from both armies in its cupola during the battle, served as a hospital, and stands just beyond McPherson Ridge, where the battle opened on July 1.

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania · United States