July 1, 1863

        Letters
              Carpenter
              Goddard
              Marvin
             Jane Ely
             Charles Ely

Diaries
Marvin

Newspaper

NYC & Brooklyn
Reports
Company K

1ST Minnesota & 20th Maine

Acknowledgements & Credits
Bibliography
Links

St. Patrick's Day,
March 17, 1863

Company K Roster
1861-1864

User's Guide

With its cloud of skirmishers in advance
with now the sound of a single hot snapping like a whip
     and now an irregular volley,
The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades
     press on,
Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun--the dust-cover'd men,
In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground,
With artillery interspers'd--the wheels rumble, the horses
     sweat
As the army corps advances

Walt Whitman, An Army Corps on the March

The Battle of Gettysburg began when Henry Heth's Corps was marching to Gettysburg to get some shoes. They knew some Union cavalry was in the town but they expected it to be a small party and not John Buford's two Brigades, well placed on Willoughby run and McPherson's Ridge and armed with breech-loaders that had a five to one firing advantage over the Confederate weapons. Buford's objective was to hold his position until John Reynolds and his First Corps could come up to preserve the strategically advantageous position for the Army of the Potomac.

The Second Corps that included the 1st Minnesota and Company K were still on the march to Gettysburg, but they were close enough to hear the sound of the guns and they knew a battle was raging.