Confrontation at Gettysburg: A Nation Saved, a Cause Lost
John David Hoptak, The History Press
John David Hoptak puts his cards on the table at the beginning of Confrontation at Gettysburg. “I set out neither to mine new sources nor pave new ground,” he writes. “The intention, instead, is to present a concise narrative of the three-day battle…geared especially toward those who are seeking, perhaps for the first time, a solid understanding of this momentous fight.” A longtime interpretive park ranger, Hoptak has years of experience in educating battlefield trampers. His expertise comes through loud and clear in his energetic prose, combining narrative and analysis in a book that enlightens novices without boring more experienced readers.
The chapter on the first day’s “meeting engagement,” for example, capitalizes on Hoptak’s familiarity with the rolling terrain surrounding the little Pennsylvania town. Excellent maps, strategically placed through the text, help readers gain an appreciation for the role that topography played throughout the engagement.
The Union commanders quickly ascertained the best positions for troop deployment, but General Robert E. Lee—denied the help of his cavalry commander, Maj. Gen. Jeb Stuart, who was engaged in a romp around the Union army—remained unsure of the terrain and the dispositions of the Army of the Potomac until the ball was opened.
For all intents and purposes, the battle was decided in three hours of desperate fighting on the afternoon of July 2. At a wheatfield, a peach orchard and a bolder-strewn hillock on the far left of the Union lines, uncommon valor became a common virtue. At the other end of the battlefield, 1,300 valiant New Yorkers held off three times their number of graybacks, and hand-to-hand fighting in the moonlight failed to break the Union lines at the top of George Meade’s Cemetery Hill fishhook.
Nevertheless, Lee believed he had come close to “delivering a crushing, knock-out punch.” That night, Hoptak relates, Lee, “without meeting any of his corps commanders, without a good understanding of the condition of his various commands, and perhaps still with only a vague understanding of the strength of the Union positions,” decided to continue the fight the next day.
The events of July 3, and the significance of the Confederate loss that day, have long since become part of the American heritage. Britain’s Winston Churchill once remarked, “Great battles change the entire course of events, create new standards of values, new moods, in armies and in nations.” After reading John Hoptak’s authoritative chronicle, there is no doubt that Gettysburg was such a battle.
Originally published in the June 2013 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.
