Jim OConnor - What Was the Battle of Gettysburg?

What Was

the Battle of

Gettysburg?

by Jim OConnor
illustrated by John Mantha

Grosset & Dunlap
An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

In memory of Private Charles Spiesberger,
killed in action on Little Round Top,
July 2, 1863JOC

GROSSET & DUNLAP
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Text copyright 2013 by Jim OConnor. Cover and interior illustrations copyright 2013 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012027557

ISBN 978-1-101-61026-8

What Was the Battle
of Gettysburg?

Today, many Americans think the Civil War, or the War between the States, was just about slavery. Twenty-five states in the North fought to end slavery, while eleven states in the South fought just as hard to keep the right to own slaves.

Slavery was certainly the biggest issue of the war. But there were other reasons for the Civil War.

One issue was states rights. That meant how much power each state had over itself. What if states no longer wanted to be part of the United States of America? Did they have the right to break away and start their own country? The South said, Yes, we can do that if we want. The North said, No, were one country, and that is the way it has to stay.

In the years before the war began, many Southern states felt that the antislavery North was threatening their way of life. Cotton was the main industry throughout most of the South. Cotton was grown on farms called plantations. Some plantations were huge. Somerset Place in North Carolina had more than 100,000 acres of land.

Southern cotton growers used slaves as unpaid workers. Large plantations required many slaves to plant, weed, and pick the crops. It was not uncommon for rich cotton growers, called Cotton Kings, to own five hundred slaves.

Slaves belonged to their owners in the same way that horses and cows did. Slaves had no rights. They could not vote. They could not own property. They were sold at auctions. By 1860 there were almost four million slaves living in the South.

In the North, the land was not suitable for growing cotton or tobacco, another big crop in the South. Northern farms were small. More and more people worked in factories and businesses. Although in the early days of the United States some people in the Northern states had owned slaves, slavery had largely died out. By the 1820s, many people in the North thought slavery was horribly wrong. It had to be abolishedor endedeverywhere in the United States.

The Abolitionist Movement grew stronger in the years before the Civil War. A novel called Uncle Toms Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, came out in 1852. It dramatized the harsh life of slaves and sold an amazing 300,000 copies in one year. It won the abolitionists many new followers.

There had always been tension between the North and South. But it was growing much worse.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, it was the last straw for the Southern states. Lincoln was against slavery and did not want it spreading to any new state that came into the Union. He also believed that states did not have the right to secede, or leave, the Union.

But that is just what seven Southern states did in early 1861. They formed the Confederate States of America. Later, four more states also seceded.

Union flag

Confederate flag

On April 12, 1861, Confederate gunners opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The bombardment lasted thirty-four hours and left the fort a pile of rubble. Amazingly, there were no Union casualties. Fort Sumter soon surrendered. The Civil War had begun.

Fort Sumter

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Jefferson Davis

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Jefferson Davis was the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. He was born in Kentucky on June 3, 1808, only about one hundred miles from where Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809.

Davis graduated from West Point. That is the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. Many famous soldiers as well as US presidents have graduated from West Point. Davis served in the United States Army and later became a rich cotton grower in Mississippi. Like all cotton growers, Davis owned slaves. He had at least seventy-four slaves working on his plantation. One named William Jackson worked in Daviss house and later became a spy for the Union during the war.