Trying to Find a Safe Place

Abstract

The morning of July 3 began with a successful attack directed against Confederate positions along what were, formerly, trench lines held by the Twelfth Corps, by brigades from the Sixth and Twelfth Corps that Meade had shuffled back to the Baltimore Pike. But Meade also had concerns about an attack he believed the Confederates would launch against the center of his lines on July 3, and he positioned brigades from the First, Second, Fifth, and Sixth Corps along Cemetery Ridge and in supporting positions nearby to address that probability. Indeed, after a ferocious artillery bombardment, three Confederate divisions attacked the center of Meade’s lines around midafternoon only to be repulsed with heavy losses. Because the artillery bombardment damaged the Leister house, Meade wound up briefly directing the army from temporary headquarters on the Baltimore Pike, although he returned to the center of the army just after the fighting ended.