What was the war's bloodiest day? Was it Gettysburg? No. It occurred in September, 1862, at Antietam Creek in Maryland, when 22,700 soldiers died. "[General] Lee "hoped to win decisively...but the Union army prevailed."
Meantime, the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1 through July 3, 1863, was the bloodiest battle of the war. It was the "most famous and most important Civil War Battle... [General Lee] believed his own [rebel] army was invincible..." Potter asserts. But in fact the Confederates suffered an estimated 28,000 casualties (out of 75,000 men in battle) and the Union lost 23,000 out of 88,000 - albeit, the Union won the battle. Doing the math one comes up with around 51,000 deaths on that blood-drenched, corpse-cluttered battlefield.
On July 1 and July 2, 1863, the Confederate army had gotten the best of the fighting, but Friday, July 3, 1863, would be another day, and would end quite differently.
In the book, Pickett's Charge - the Last Attack at Gettysburg, by Earl J. Hess, readers are given an insider look at how the final and decisive battles took place. In Chapter 1, "The Last Attack at Gettysburg," Lt. Frank a. Haskell wakes up after four hours' sleep and hears the "popping of skirmish fire," letting everyone alive know that "another day of bloodshed was needed to decide a winner and perhaps to settle the fate of the nation."
Brig. Gen. John Gibbon was the man who woke Haskell up, and they rode off to see where the skirmishes were taking place; the "ravages of the
"The scattered arms and the ground thickly dotted with the dead."
While Longstreet had hoped to avoid a "frontal assault" and instead, have his divisions sidestep the Federal left and hit them from the side, which would result in "minimal bloodshed," General Lee quickly put the squash on that strategy. He thrust his fist toward the Federal position on Cemetery Ridge, and said, "The enemy is there, and I am going to strike them," according to Hess's book.
Lee believed that his artillery could soften up the Union position and provide a path for his frontal attack to find room to progress decisively. What stood in Lee's way was the fact that Meade's Federals were very deeply entrenched on Little Round Top and Big Round Top - two positions that the rebels had almost taken on day two.
Meantime, while Lee and Longstreet continued their dialog about the strategy to be employed, fighting began; the Federals opened up a fierce artillery barrage, which meant that Ewell, Lee's general on the right, was obliged to fight that good fight even without being able to coordinate his battle with Longstreet. Hess mentions in this chapter that historian William Garrett Piston believes that even though the fight was on in fierce style prior to total unity among the Confederate brass, Lee still might have "implemented his plan" by "promptly ordering Longstreet to throw Pickett, law, and McLaws into a frontal attack against the southern end of Cemetery Ridge."
Doing that may have given Ewell the backup he needed; but the negative fact was that Pickett's division had not yet moved into place, shutting down Lee's hope for a "cooperative attack on both flanks" later on July 3, according to Hess. But still, Lee came up with an alternative plan,
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