Devils Den, Little Round Top, and the Wheatfield | Animated Battle Map

Comments · 109

• TH

  @thenebbish7709 · 3 years ago

  I am in York, 30 miles to the west.    While I do enjoy the videos of the Battlefield Trust, an animated video like this makes it so much easier to see and understand all the movements.

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• ER

  @ericbentz4597 · 3 years ago

  It's amazing how quickly this fight devolved into chaos. Thank you for making it more understandable.

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• G.

  @g.sergiusfidenas6650 · 3 years ago

  Of the Union commanders seen here besides Weed and Vincent these actions also cost the lives of Gen. Ward, Col. Edward Cross and Col. Patrick O'Rorke of the 140th New York. Cross was a particularly colorful character who went to battle wearing a red bandana to lead his men but at Gettysburg he wore a black one as he told his commander, Gen. Hancock, he had foreseen his own death thus the color of mourning was more appropriate.

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• ZA

  @zach7193 · 3 years ago

  Well, this was something.  Great.  The movie Gettysburg focuses on the 2nd day of the battle with Chamberlain's 20th Maine.  Devil's Den is mentioned and seen.  The Wheatfield, no.  Civil War Combat series does show what happened on the 2nd day of the battle of Gettysburg.  Mostly, the Wheatfield, Little Round Top, and Culp's Hill.  Happy 4th of July.

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• WM

  @wmschooley1234 · 3 years ago

  Dr. Wilder: Excellent. Simply an excellent presentation; it’s clear, concise, precise and accurate. Respectfully, W.S.

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• NA

  @nathanappleby5342 · 3 years ago

  I never knew there was fighting on Little Round Top later in the evening on the second day and other details I didn't know before. This video was well done!

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• DE

  @decimated550 · 2 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5e_dlPwO4&amp;t=536">8:56</a> tilton&apos;s Brigade retreats faster than a missile. It goes zoom right back! 😅

• MI

  @mikesuggs1642 · 3 years ago

  Not a lot of attention has been placed on the Devils den, that was a Hell of fight. The Texans cut though everything that was in front of them.

• AV

  @avnrulz8587 · 3 years ago

  My oldest son and his wife visited Gettysburg this weekend, all the way from Sacramento.

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• PA

  @PatrickHickey-m3n · 4 months ago

  General Daniel Sickles had understandable--if not correct--reasons for moving the 10,500 men of his Third Corps forward to the exposed high ground at the Peach Orchard on the second day of Gettysburg: he feared a repeat of the disaster he experienced at the second day of the Battle of Chancellorsville two months earlier. &nbsp;There, Sickles&apos; &nbsp;Third Corps held the key high ground crowned by Hazel Grove. &nbsp;Sickles--the only remaining non-West Pointer evidently considered competent enough to retain command of a corps in the Army of the Potomac--was ordered under protest to vacate it by his panicky army commander, General &quot;Fighting Joe&quot; Hooker. &nbsp;Once Sickles left Hazel Grove, the Confederates placed artillery there and, as Sickles predicted, Confederate guns started sweeping the Union lines. One cannonball stunned the already demoralized General Hooker. Hooker ordered a retreat over the protest of his generals. &nbsp;Despite losing his leg on July 2, Sickles insisted on traveling to Washington by ambulance and train and he was the first one to tell Lincoln in person about the battle on July 5 when news of the victory came in by telegraph (Sickles not-so-subtly hinted to the President his Corps had won the battle despite General Meade&apos;s interference). The survivors of the decimated Third Corps shared Sickles&apos; belief that their sacrifice saved the battle; a sizeable majority later signed a petition in the fall of 1863 requesting Sickles be restored as their commander once he recovered. &nbsp;Longstreet--self-serving or not--later agreed with this assessment, saying that Sickles&apos; ill-advised advance actually derailed the Confederates&apos; best chance for victory by disrupting his attack that day (Longstreet committed about 21,000 men to that ultimately unsuccessful attack on July 2; in contrast, Pickett&apos;s Charge the next day involved only 12,000 Confederates). Longstreet and Sickles became friends after the war, and newspapers snidely reported on a drunken Atlanta pub crawl the two took one evening on a Saint Patrick&apos;s Day. &nbsp;By the way, Sickles was the first American to win both the Medal of Honor and the highest class (Grand Cross) of the French Legion of Honor. He received the latter for supposedly talking Bismarck out of annexing the French fortress town of Belfort--after a boozy weekend--after the Franco-Prussian War. &nbsp;A library in Belfort is named after Sickles.

• CA

  @carolbell8008 · 3 years ago (edited)

  What a fantastic battle! And beautifully narrated, thank you kind Sir.

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• TH

  @TheKilo0123 · 3 years ago

  Always spellbound by your description and graphics of the battle... Ty!

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