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Winona 1851-1861 Road to Gettysburg July 1, 1863 July 2, 1863 July 3, 1863 July 4, 1863 Letters NYC & Brooklyn Acknowledgements & Credits |
The cold passes reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares.. A river amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army's feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it, the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills. Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895) 1.
This old map from Charles Carleton Coffin's The Boys of '61 (1884) depicts the convergence of the Union Army Corps on Gettysburg. Company K was in Gibbon's Division of the Second Corp under the command of Gen Winfield Scott Hancock. The First Regiment started marching from their camp near Falmouth, Virginia toward Gettysburg on June 15th. Matthew Marvin's diary (on the Company K page) reveals that preparations were underway earlier and that they had made a false start on the 14th. Marvin's diaries detail Company K's participation in this difficult march. Company K marched on 11 of the next fourteen days, averaging about 14 miles per day. On two days they made extended marches, 30 miles on June 15th and 31 miles on June 29th. The packs they carried weighed 40 to 50 pounds. Two letters from Charles Goddard to his mother are also on the Company K page. |
