A Thread About "Pickett's Charge" #OTD in 1863

Standing at the center of the Union line at Gettysburg's Cemetery Ridge you can easily imagine the approach of long lines of Virginians and North Carolinians in a final desperate assault. It's the stuff of myth and memory.

We replay the scene over and over even though we know how it all turned out. The Confederate assault briefly crests inside the "Bloody Angle" before it is pushed back. Soldiers cheer on one side while others hobble back to the safety of the trees along present day Confederate Av.

For most visitors to Gettysburg & Civil War buffs that is the end of the story, but there is room to remember one more aspect of the assault--another wave of men that emerges from that tree line that has been lost in this assault, campaign, and the broader Confederate war effort.

Imagine for a moment hundreds of enslaved men emerging from the wood line to meet retreating Confederates. Body servants or camp slaves exposing themselves to the dangers of the battlefield looking for their masters and impressed slaves gathering the wounded...

...for the eventual retreat of the Army of Northern Virginia.

The truth is that Robert E. Lee's army could not have functioned as well as it did without the presence of over 10,000 slaves. It was these men who helped to make the campaign possible, including the kidnapping...

...of upwards of 200 free blacks in south central PA.

Their presence behind the lines in the NC sector helped to make possible their July 3 assault in the direction of the home of a free black family that was forced to flee just a few days earlier. http://cwmemory.com/2017/04/21/that-north-carolinian-is-pointing-at-the-bryan-farm/

In the wake of this failed assault thousands of enslaved men helped to prepare the army for retreat across the swollen Potomac River and back to the safety of Virginia. They carried supplies, drove the wagons, and tended to the wounded.

Ignoring these men obscures the true significance of this campaign and the Union victory.

It obscures the true significance of this campaign and the Union victory. The institution of slavery itself accompanied Lee's army when it invaded the free state of Pennsylvania.

Union victory resulted in pushing Lee's slave catching army out of a free state, but his successful retreat guaranteed that the war would continue. For the thousands of Black men still with the army, it meant that their enslavement & that of their families would continue as well.