The Journal of James Edmond Pease: Different Beginning
This is July 1 and G company was ordered to protect the cannons on Little Round Top from enemy forces and to not to surrender at any cost. My commander Lt. Toms told us that tomorrow heavy forces are going to flank us and that reinforcements are coming near at 5:00 p.m. The G Company was ready for any flank that tries to destroy the cannons. G Company was getting ready for the assault that Lee tried to command. The night was peaceful and quiet, but too quiet. I slept peacefully and trying not imagine tomorrow’s assault.
On the second day of battle, most of both armies had assembled. The Union line was laid out in a defensive formation resembling a fishhook. In the late afternoon of July 2, Lee launched a heavy assault on the Union left flank, and fierce fighting raged at Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, Devil's Den, and the Peach Orchard. We couldn’t hold them off for a minute, in till reinforcements came. We were glad that they came. Nobody died in our company just some minor injuries. On the Union right, demonstrations escalated into full-scale assaults on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill. All across the battlefield, despite significant losses, the Union defenders held their lines and even us.
On the third day of battle, July 3, fighting resumed on Culp's Hill, and cavalry battles raged to the east and south, but the main event was a dramatic infantry assault by 12,500 Confederates I think, against the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, as we called Pickett's Charge. The charge was repulsed by Union rifle and artillery fire, at great losses to the Confederate army. Lee led his army on a torturous retreat back to Virginia. Between 46,000 and 51,000 soldiers from both armies were casualties in the three-day battle. That November, President Lincoln used the dedication ceremony for the Gettysburg National Cemetery to honor the fallen Union soldiers and redefine the purpose of the war.
G company...