Autumn in the Slaughter Pen

Gettysburg
The Second Day

Autumn in the Slaughter Pen

This boulder-filled valley at the base of Big Round Top in the Devil’s Den area was known as the Slaughter Pen after the battle.

CW2499

 

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Colonel W. F. Perry, commanding the 44th Alabama: “Large rocks, from six to fifteen feet high, are thrown together in confusion over a large area, and yet so disposed as to leave everywhere among them winding passages carpeted with moss. Many of its recesses are never visited by the sunshine, and a cavernous coolness pervades the air within it. . . . I shouted the order, ‘Forward!’ and started for the rocks. The response was a bound, a yell, and a rush, and in ten seconds my men were pouring into the Den, and the enemy were escaping from the opposite side.  A few prisoners were taken. Two soldiers of the Fourth Maine Regiment surrendered to me in person at the edge of the rocks as my line overtook and passed me.” -- from Perry’s description of the fighting in this area, in The War between the Union and the Confederacy and its Lost Opportunities, by William C. Oates of the 15th Alabama, page 228

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Fine Art Photography of Civil War Battlefields by Dan Jenkins