One hundred and fifty years ago today, tens of thousands of Americans died at a small town in southern Pennsylvania, turning back the brilliant Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg, ending his plan to march on Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C, which would likely have secured foreign recognition for the Confederacy, which would have achieved the Rothschilds’ goal of a divided and indebted American people.
With the 20/20 perfection of historical hindsight, it is common to observe that Gettysburg was the turning point of the war, that the “high water mark” of the Confederacy’s chance for victory can be pinpointed to a low stone wall called “the Angle” where Pickett’s Charge almost breached the Union line. When the breach was quickly filled by reinforcements, and the encroaching rebels killed or captured, the Confederacy’s decline was inevitable, some say, from that moment. Other historians point to a key engagement of the previous day, July 2nd, 1863, when the Confederates assaulted the lightly defended Little Round Top with three successive charges. Had they overrun this small hill, they could have rolled up the Union line with a deadly flank assault, sending the Army of the Potomac in headlong retreat toward Washington, with Robert E. Lee in hot pursuit. A bookish professor-turned-soldier named Joshua Chamberlain commanded the 20th Maine defending Little Round Top, and his men knew they held the fate of the nation in their hands. They repelled charge after charge….and then they ran out of ammunition. And the Confederates attacked once more. And as the rebels advanced uphill, Chamberlain gave the only order left to him – “Fix bayonets! Charge!” The sight of this suicidal attack of bayonet-wielding Yankees charging downhill towards them, sounding a battle-frenzied scream, broke the fabled rebel nerve, and they turned tail and ran.