Tag Archives: Gettysburg

The coachloads pulling up outside Gettysburg’s Visitor Center really shouldn’t be there. The Battle of Gettysburg wasn’t desired by either side. Yet between 1 and 3 July 1863, two armies intent on tiptoeing round each other were cornered into the bloodiest single skirmish of the American Civil War.

IT IS a fast 60-mile drive from Washington Dulles airport to the Gettysburg battlefield, a sobering reminder of how close the Confederate army of General Lee came to the Northern capital. ‘What if’ scenarios haunt any major battle and none more so that Gettysburg, where the fighting swung back and forth for three days.