Gettysburg interactive panorama: East Cemetery Hill

Click here for battlefield panoramas from Antietam, Cedar Mountain, Chickamauga, Gettysburg, Harris Farm, Manassas, Malvern Hill, Salem Church,  Spotsylvania Courthouse and more.


                   South slope of East Cemetery Hill photographed from near Stevens Knoll.

Major Allen Brady took over the
 17th Connecticut  at Gettysburg after
 its commanding officer was killed.
 This image shows him in 1861, when he
 was an officer in the 3rd Connecticut.
(Photo courtesy Dale Call)

If you're a Civil War buff and have $16,000 to spare, you may want to pick up this 17th Connecticut regimental field report from the Battle of Gettysburg as well as sundry other related post-war documents in The New York Times Store, which features "rare and newsworthy items." Written on July 4, 1863 by Major Allen G. Brady of the 17th Connecticut, it details in military language the regiment's retreat into Gettysburg on the first day of the battle and its stand with the rest of the XI Corps at East Cemetery Hill the next day.

In layman's terms, the 17th Connecticut got the tar knocked out of it on the July 1, 1863 at Blocher's Knoll (now Barlow's Knoll), where its commander, Lt. Colonel Douglas Fowler, was decapitated by artillery fire or gunfire as he sat astride his white horse. Brady succeeded Fowler as commander of the 17th Connecticut, which retreated pell-mell through town and re-formed near East Cemetery Hill, where it was part of a desperate stand by the Union army.

On the evening of July 2, the XI Corps held off North Carolina and Louisiana troops that sought to take strategic high ground at Cemetery Hill. In his field report, Brady referenced his wounding in the right shoulder blade by a shell fragment. Last week, I shot a panorama of East Cemetery Hill from near Stevens Knoll as well as a photo of the nearby 17th Connecticut monument, one of two monuments to the regiment at Gettysburg.

17th Connecticut monument on Wainwright Avenue at Gettysburg. Another monument to the
 regiment is at Barlow's Knoll, where the 17th Connecticut was routed on July 1, 1863.