Gettysburg The Second Day 
July 2, 1863
Slideshow at the bottom of the page.
Driving Directions
Gettysburg, PA
Updated Thursday, July 29, 2010 6:53 PM
Clear | 88°F | High: 92°F
Low: 68°F
Wind: 7 mph
Humidity: 30%
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Friday
81° / 63° | 
Saturday
82° / 66° | 
Sunday
78° / 68° |
Monday
81° / 69° |
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Click on the map for Interactive, Aerial and Birds Eye Views.
Gettysburg Maps
Union
Lt. Gen. George Meade, U. S. Army of the Potomac – Commanding
Confederate
Gen. Robert E. Lee, C. S. Army of Virginia - Commanding
Some notes on the Gettysburg Battlefield
I’m westerner, I learned my hiking and mountaineering in the High Sierras, you say ridge to me and I’m thinking three to five hundred feet high and a couple of hours of hard hiking. The same thing with mountains, they are big and hard to climb. By West Coast standards, Gettysburg is flat. Cemetery Ridge is more of a relative high spot only when compared to some low spot. Little and big Roundtops are bumps on the landscape. The saddle between them scarcely deserves to be called anything at all, maybe a clearing. I always wondered how it was that Oats’ men could put so much pressure on the Twentieth Maine, until I saw the landscape. Chamberlain’s men could only get off one at most two shots before the Confederates were on them, now I wonder how the Twentieth held on at all.
I always thought that the Slaughter Pens and the Devil’s Den was out of sight of Little Roundtop and separated by a farmhouse. I was wrong on both counts. The Slaughter Pens are just a bunch of rocks in the creek bed while the Devil’s Den is a bunch of rock’ that sit on the side of a small hill above the creek. Both are clearly visible from the top of little Roundtop and Union sharpshooters were able to plink away back at their counterparts bellow.
(Tour Stop 8) Little Roundtop from the Devil's Den
Little Roundtop is where Sickles abandoned his position and moved his men out into no mans land. The Slaughter Pens is the marshy area in the middle of the picture.
(Tour Stop 8) Little Roundtop from the Devil's Den
Looking up Little Round top from the Slaughter Pens area.
(Tour Stop 8) Gettysburg from Little Roundtop
The view from Little Roundtop dominates the entire battlefield
(Tour Stop 7) Slaughter Pens and Devil's Den viewed from Little Roundtop
Longstreet formed his attack at the edge of the trees just bellow the skyline
Maybe Sickles thought it would miss his position so he abandoned Little Roundtop an moved his men first down to the Devil's Den then stretched along the ridge into the trees to the Wheat Field and further out to the Peach Orchard
The Sharpshooters Nest on Devils Den, Little Roundtop can be seen through the rocks.
(Tour Stop 9)
(Tour Stop 10) The Wheat Field and the Peach Orchard
(Tour Stop 7) The view of Big Roundtop from Warfield Ridge
(Tour Stop 8) View up Big Roundtop showing the uselessness of the position
(Tour Stop 8) View of the Twentieth Maine’s position from the saddle between Big and Little Roundtop.
Confederate dead on the slops of Little Roundtop.
(Tour Stop 8) View of the saddle from the Twentieth Maine's position not much time to fire
(Tour Stop 8) The top of Little Roundtop Warren still keeps watch over the position
(Tour Stop 11) Sickles fell back to this position now called Biglow's Stand,
here he lost his leg to a canonball and was carried from the field
(Tour Stop 11) Sickles men continued to fall back through Plum Run also called the Valley of Death.
Big Roundtop is in the backround.
(Tour Stop 12) This Monument marks the sacrifice of the First Minnesota,
who’s suicide charge stopped Longstreet's men from breaking the line
and gave Sickle's men time to escape.
This final act closed out the action for the second day.
Gettysburg Afternoon Day 2