Gettysburg - Gettysburg visitor guide showing a virtual tour of 'Gettysburg' linked to an interactive map with local and travel information. 360° panoramas from Pennsylvania.

Gettysburg is the name of a borough and town in Adams County, Pennsylvania. The area is most famous for the Battle of Gettysburg which took place here July 1 to July 3, 1863, during the American Civil War. Before 1736 the land was used by the Iroquois Indians, but was then brought by the William Penn family, who were mostly Scots-Irish who had fled Northern Ireland. At that time the area was known March Creek. The oldest western building in Gettysburg is the Dobbin House Tavern built in 1776. The town of Gettysburg grew up around the tavern in the following decades.

Battle of Gettysburg

The Battle of Gettysburg is one of the things the area is most famous for. This battle took place between July 1 and July 3, 1863, during the American Civil War. It was one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war, had the highest number of casualties and is often considered to be the turning point of the war. The Battle of Gettysburg involved the Union Army of the Potomac, led by Major General George Gordon Meade and the Confederate's Army of Northern Virginia, led by General Robert E Lee. The Union forces occupied the high ground and had superior numbers (93,921 men verses the Confederate's 71,699 men). By the end of the battle both sides had lost roughly the same number of men, but the Confederate Army had been broken and this effectively ended the invasion of the North by their forces. The Battle of Gettysburg left some 8,000 men and 3,000 horses dead, with a further 27,000 wounded. Both sides also each reported about 5,500 men missing or captured.

The Battle of Gettysburg is today remembered by the Gettysburg National Cemetery and Gettysburg National Military Park. Both these sites are maintained by the U.S. National Park Service as two of the nation's most revered historical landmarks.

Gettysburg Address

Following the Battle of Gettysburg, President Abaraham Lincoln gave what many consider to be his most important speech - the Gettysburg Address. This is presented in full below:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.