The battle of East Cemetery Hill during the American Civil War was a military engagement on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, in which an attack of the Confederacy's Louisiana Tigers Brigade and a brigade led by Colonel Robert Hoke was repelled by the forces of Colonel Andrew L. Harris and Colonel Leopold von Gilsa of the XI Corps (Union Army), plus reinforcements. The site is on Cemetery Hill's east-northeast slope, east of the summit of the Baltimore Pike.
Confederate General Robert E. Lee assigned Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell's Second Corps to launch a demonstration against the Union right to distract the Army of the Potomac during Longstreet's attack to the south-southwest (Hood's Assault, McLaws' Assault, and Anderson's assault). Ewell was to exploit any success his demonstration might achieve by following up with a full-scale attack at his discretion. Preceded by a 4 p.m. artillery barrage from Benner Hill, the demonstration's infantry attack commenced with Johnson's Assault on Culp's Hill. The Union artillery lunettes on East Cemetery Hill provided protection from the barrage, and the counterbattery fire on Ewell's 4 batteries forced them to withdraw with heavy casualties (e.g., Major Joseph W. Latimer).
After the Confederates attacked Culp's Hill at about 7 p.m. and as dusk fell around 7:30 p.m., Ewell sent two brigades from the division of Jubal A. Early against East Cemetery Hill from the east, and he alerted the division of Maj. Gen. Robert E. Rodes to prepare a follow-up assault against Cemetery Hill proper from the northwest. The two brigades from Early's division were commanded by Brig. Gen. Harry T. Hays: his own Louisiana Tigers Brigade and Hoke's Brigade, the latter commanded by Colonel Isaac E. Avery. They stepped off from a line parallel to Winebrenner's Run southeast of town. Hays commanded five Louisiana regiments, which together numbered only about 1,200 officers and men. Avery had three North Carolina regiments totaling 900.
The 2 Union brigades of 650 and 500 officers and men. Harris' brigade was at a low stone wall on the northern end of the hill and wrapped around the base of the hill onto Brickyard Lane (now Wainwright Av). Von Gilsa's brigade was scattered along the lane as well as on the hill. Two regiments, the 41st New York and the 33rd Massachusetts, were stationed in Culp's Meadow beyond Brickyard Lane in expectation of an attack by Johnson's division. More westerly on the hill were the divisions of Maj. Gens. Adolph von Steinwehr and Carl Schurz. Colonel Charles S. Wainwright, nominally of the I Corps, commanded the artillery batteries on the hill and on Steven's Knoll. The relatively steep slope of East Cemetery Hill made artillery fire difficult to direct against infantry because the gun barrels could not be depressed sufficiently, but they did their best with canister and double canister fire.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
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