Perhaps the Most famous battle of the Civil War took place at Gettysburg, PA, July 1 to July 3, 1863. At the end of the battle, the union’s Army of the Potomac had successfully repelled the second invasion of the North by the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Verginia. Several months later, President Lincoln went to Gettysburg to speak at the dedication of the cemetery for the Union war dead. Speaking of “new birth of freedom,” he delivered one of the most memorable speeches in U.S. history.
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln spoke at the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The orator of the day was Edward Everett, a famed speaker, former senator, and candidate for vice president in 1860. Lincoln received a late invitation to make "a few appropriate remarks." Lincoln's brief Gettysburg address became a cornerstone of American expression of the nation's ideals, mission, and patriotism.
On the first three days of July 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee, had fought the Army of the Potomac, the principal northern army, to which General George G. Meade had been assigned command only four days earlier. In early May, Lee had won a smashing victory at Chancellorsville, Virginia, over a Union force approximately twice as large, and then had boldly determined to carry the war to the enemy by invading Pennsylvania. Drawn into an offensive battle at Gettysburg, Lee attacked both wings of the Union army before launching an attack on the center in the third day of fighting. That assault, led by Major General George E. Pickett, had approached success before Union forces rallied. The three-day battle cost the North 17,684 men killed and wounded; the South lost 22,638. The failure of Pickett's charge, sometimes labeled the high-water mark of the Confederacy, compelled Lee to withdraw from Pennsylvania.