Richard Wheeler. Witness to Gettysburg. New York: Penguin, 1987. Print.

I had heard about this book and recently had the opportunity to get a hold of a copy. It was worth reading.

It happens that many of the things I have read about the Battle of Gettysburg were written from the perspectives of one person or maybe a handful of people. For example, the book The Killer Angels which inspired the Gettysburg film tells the first day mostly from Buford’s perspective; the second day focuses on the 20th Maine and Joshua Chamberlain; and the third day is mostly from the Confederate perspective, especially Longstreet and Pickett. Other works I have read over the years have been memoirs, so those clearly do not always bring in the big picture. Some of those include Longstreet’s memoirs and the regimental history of the 14th Connecticut.

Witness to Gettysburg gives us the big picture. It actually starts with engagements which led to the battle, so it includes chapters on Brandy Station and Winchester and follows a few other cavalry skirmishes which would lead both armies to Adams County, Pennsylvania.

A good part of the book is quotations from many witnesses: officers and men from both armies, journalists, and numerous civilian inhabitants of Gettysburg. Wheeler does try to tell the complete story. Fighting was often going on simultaneously in different locations. Even after the second day, it appeared that the Confederates might still gain the upper hand. The book is largely based on primary sources and is very effective in telling the story.

From reading Witness to Gettysburg, I have appreciated that Michael Shaara in The Killer Angels (and, thence, the script writers for Gettysburg) many times quotes people directly from the eyewitness accounts. Yes, a lot of times Lee or Hancock really did say those things. (The film takes a few more liberties by having a few fictional or minor characters hear these things that were actually reported by others.)

We are reminded of some interesting episodes. An eighty-year-old Gettysburg resident named John Burns was a veteran of the War of 1812 and Lundy’s Lane (that battle is mentioned in The Scarlet Letter). He grabbed a musket and actually acquitted himself quite well in shooting at the Confederates.

A soldier from Virginia named Wesley Culp was a Gettysburg native who had moved to Virginia and joined Lee’s army when the war started. Not only was he killed in his hometown, but he died trying to take Culp’s Hill, a slope named for his family, “and a stranger thing still that he died while assaulting the hill on behalf of his family’s enemies.” (229)

This reviewer’s one criticism is that Wheeler does not always give the source of his information. There is a bibliography in the back, so we can assume for example that the quotations from Longstreet are from his memoirs or Hancock’s are from the book that his wife would write. However, many we can only guess the source.

One example was especially frustrating to this reader. My father’s family is from Pennsylvania, and one soldier who is quoted is from Pennsylvania and has the same family name as my father’s grandmother and a number of his cousins. It would have been interesting to me to see if there was a family connection with that person, but I have little idea about where to begin to find out.

Having said all that, this book is well worth reading for its detail, its perspective, and for its fair handling of the bloodiest battle in North American history.

Permit me to add one additional side note. Reading this book inspired me to re-watch the Gettysburg movie. It is one of my favorites, and I was looking for a reason anyhow, having just finished teaching a school quarter on literature of the Civil War. The scene at the end of the second day where Longstreet is talking to Hood in the barn which has been converted to a Confederate hospital has an anachronism. The birds chirping in the background are House Sparrows. They are native of Eurasia and were brought over at different times, but there were not any in Pennsylvania until a thousand were imported to Philadelphia in 1869. The other identifiable bird in the film was the Killdeer, a plover which likes to nest in open fields. They would have been likely in the fields of Gettysburg in 1863, at least before the battle, which is when we see and hear one in the movie.