As 1863 began, the Union Army of the Potomac found itself in a general malaise. Its failed attempt at another push towards Richmond, known as the “Mud March,” had served as the nail in the coffin of army commander Ambrose E Burnside. When Joseph Hooker took his place as commander of the Army of the Potomac, the changes he implemented helped boost the morale and confidence of his troops. But Hooker squandered that goodwill by bungling the Chancellorsville Campaign, in the early days of May 1863. While many believed that drunkenness or the artillery round that knocked him out for a short time were the probable causes of such bungling, Hooker himself told Major General Abner Doubleday, while on the road to Gettysburg,  “I was not hurt by a shell and I was not drunk. For once I lost confidence in Hooker, and that is all there was to it.”  

 

After Chancellorsville, while Hooker was looking for ways to redeem himself, Robert E. Lee was setting the wheels in motion for his second invasion of the north. 

 

Meanwhile, every day citizens in a bustling country town called Gettysburg, were going about their daily business while reading about the war in any or all of the town’s three newspapers. War had not left them untouched, however. They had sent their ablest young men off to fight for the Union cause and constant threats of invasion had plagued them since they first sent their local militia, the “Gettysburg Independent Blues”, to fight to preserve the Union, in 1861. By the Fourth of July of 1863, this small town of 2400 would be left with the daunting tasking of cleaning up the carnage and healing many times their number in wounded who wore both blue and gray.  

 

By mid-June, two great armies, totaling somewhere around 150,000 men, with tens of thousands of horses and mules, miles of wagons and, in one of those armies, human beings that were owned by other human beings, marched north into Pennsylvania. 

On the last day of June, a Tuesday, the lead elements of these two armies would be poised for the commencement of the greatest, bloodiest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere, but very few had any notion of that as they closed their eyes to sleep that night.

 

CREDITS

Written, narrated and produced by Matt Callery

Narration Directed by Pearle Shannon

Historical figures voiced by: Bradley Lee, Keith Harvey, Brayden Border, Bob Steenstra, John Heckman (The Tattooed Historian), Keith Harvey, Dave Wilson and Ray Chancellor. 

Historical consultation by Licensed Battlefield Guides Bob Steenstra, Tim Smith and Lewis Trott with additional help from John Hoptak, Matt Atkinson, and Ken Rich.

Music by Dusty Lee Elmer, Sarah Larsen and Danny Stewart, Cody Tinnin, The California Consolidated Drum Band and the Federal City Brass Band/26th North Carolina Band

Addressing Gettysburg's Theme Song, "Bear Waltz" written by Sarah Larsen and Performed by Sarah Larsen and Danny Stewart

Sound Effect Recording by Tyler DeWitt

Assistant Researcher- Robin Weir

 

SOURCES:

The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command, Edwin B. Coddington

Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage, Noah Andre Trudeau

Lee’s Cavalrymen, Edward G. Longacre

Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, Abner Doubleday

Gettysburg: The Confederate High Tide, Champ Clark/Time-Life Books

The Life and Campaigns of Major-General J. E. B. Stuart : Commander … Henry B.  McClellan. 

Days of Uncertainty and Dread by Gerald R Bennet

Firestorm at Gettysburg: Civilian Voices by Jim Slade and John Alexander

Lincoln by David Herbert Donald

“The Devil’s to Pay”: John Buford at Gettysburg. A History and Walking Tour by Eric J Wittenberg

Confederate General William Dorsey Pender: The Hope of Glory By Brian Steel Wills

https://www.americanheritage.com/destruction-fighting-joe-hooker-0

https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2013/spring/gettysburg.pdf

https://www.armywarcollege.edu/history.cfm

https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=ach