When Gen. John Reynolds was killed at McPherson's Ridge, overall field command fell to Gen. Oliver O. Howard of the XI Corps. Howard deployed his three divisions on the open plain north of Gettysburg to guard against Ewell's approaching Confederate corps. The position was dangerously exposed: the flanks rested on nothing and the corps faced two Confederate divisions simultaneously, with Rodes attacking from Oak Ridge to the west and Early's division arriving from the northeast on the York Pike. Howard designated Cemetery Hill as the fallback position and placed a reserve division there, a decision that proved critical to the Union's survival. On the plain north of town, however, the XI Corps was caught in a pincer, flanked on both ends, and collapsed in near-rout, repeating its experience from Chancellorsville just two months earlier. The corps suffered roughly 3,800 casualties.
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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