Today as we look back on the events of July 1863, we know the battle at Gettysburg was the turning point of the Civil War. The news that Ulysses S. Grant had captured Vicksburg on the Mississippi River and divided the South in two, added to the word of Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg, would eventually lead to the Confederacy’s downfall. But for those living then, there was no such knowledge.

Most of the Jersey troops who fought at Gettysburg were involved with Gen. George G. Meade’s pursuit of Robert E.