On the 150th Anniversary of Gettysburg - Civil War Animated Maps

150 years ago the Conferderate and Union armies fought the Battle of Gettysburg. Often described as the turning point in the American Civil War, the battle not only saw the largest number of casualties of the entire war, the defeat of Lee's army effectively ended the invasion of the north.

Check out these fantastic animated maps of the major battles of the American Civil War from the Civil war Trust.


Battle of Gettysburg Animated Map

Battle of Antietam

Battle of Bull Run

Fort Sumter

Battle of Fredericksburg

Battle of Shiloh

Battle of Vicksburg

It was of course at on the site of the battle, some four and a half months later, that President Lincoln delivered one of the best known speeches in American history - the Gettysburg Address - at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetary:

"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 battlefield 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."