Civil War Journal - Who were the soldiers at Gettysburg?

As a licensed battlefield guide, I suggest various perspectives and interpretations about the battlefield. Over the next few issues, I invite you to think about the battlefield in some obvious and perhaps some not so obvious ways.

Immediately confronting visitors are the 1,300 granite, marble and bronze monuments and markers found on the 6,000 acres of Gettysburg National Military Park. They represent the 160,000 northern Union and southern Confederate soldiers who fought in the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1-3, 1863. The survivors of the largest battle in the western hemisphere—and one of the bloodiest battles in American history—erected many of the monuments.

Short by modern standards, wiry, young and battle-hardened, the average soldier’s age at Gettysburg was 25; the most common age was 19. The average height was 5’8” and weight was about 140 pounds. However, there were men as old as 80 and as young as 12 in both armies. Approximately 75 percent of the Confederates were yeoman farmers from all 11 Confederate states and Maryland. Almost half of the men from the North were farmers, but many were also city dwellers, employed as mechanics, clerks, businessmen, laborers and factory workers. Every occupation and social class was represented in both armies. The typical soldier was paid $13 a month and most received enlistment bonuses up to $300.

Most were citizen soldiers who volunteered for the armies in 1861-62. Many of the men who fought at Gettysburg were veterans of previous battles, such as Antietam and Chancellorsville. The professional soldiers tended to be high-ranking officers who graduated from military schools, such as the United States Military Academy and the Virginia Military Institute. Most of the soldiers were born in the United States, but there were large percentages of foreign-born soldiers— particularly from Germany and Ireland—in the Union army.

During the three weeks before the Battle of Gettysburg, many of the men walked 20 to 30 miles a day. Some of the men’s shoes gave out in the 150-mile march from central Virginia. They were hot, tired, dirty and hungry and, in some cases, infected with lice. The temperature during the battle ranged from 78 to 87 degrees.

Many of the men wore wool uniforms in mid-summer, and some carried up to 40 pounds of equipment, including a pack, blanket roll, canteen, extra clothing, a nine-pound musket-rifle and a cartridge box filled with ammunition. The typical weapon, a Springfield or Enfield single-shot, muzzle-loaded rifle, could fire a one-ounce lead bullet called a Minie Ball about 1,000 yards with an accuracy of 300 yards, inflicting ghastly, bone-shattering wounds. A veteran soldier could fire the rifle two to three times per minute. The rifle would often be tipped with a bayonet, a sharp knife attached to the end of the rifle for close-quarters combat. Very few wounds resulted from the bayonet. Typically, the opposing armies would line up shoulder–to-shoulder in two lines and shoot at each other at a range of 300 yards or closer. More than seven million bullets were fired during the three-day battle. Ninety percent of the wounds came from rifle fire at close range. Approximately 35,000 men were killed and wounded by the heavy gunfire.

Why were these men fighting? What made these Americans fight for four long years and risk life and limb? In general terms, the Southerners fought to create a new nation called the Confederate States of America. The Northerners fought to keep the country together and eliminate slavery. However, the typical soldier enlisted for a wide range of personal motives, whether it was a desire for adventure, peer or family pressure to enlist, patriotism, honor and a sense of duty to his hometown, to either preserve or abolish slavery or even for a steady paycheck provided by the military.

As you tour the battlefield, look at the monuments closely. They can tell you a lot about the soldiers and their experiences on those three days in July 146 years ago.
We will return to the many interpretations of the monuments in future issues. For more on the monuments and men at Gettysburg, I recommend Gettysburg: Stories of Men and Monuments as Told by Battlefield Guides, The Association of Licensed Battlefield Guides, 1988.

Jim Martin serves as a licensed battlefield guide at Gettysburg. These guides are independent contractors licensed and supervised by the National Park Service as historical interpreters of the Battle of Gettysburg. To book a battlefield tour, call the Gettysburg Foundation at 877-874-2478 or 717-334-2436.

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