Battle of Gettysburg, third day, rocks opposite Little Round top Hill, July 1863

Battle of Gettysburg, third day, rocks opposite Little Round top Hill, July 1863. Albumen print from the album assembled by John Downes Rochfort. Rochfort visited all the major American Civil War sites in 1867 and some of the photographs he purchased en route have since become some of that war's best known images. Up to this time war had been portrayed as a series of heroic tableaux; these photographs revealed its realities for the first time. Gettysburg was the decisive battle of the war. General Robert E Lee's Confederate army fought the Union army of the Potomac under General Meade for the first three days of July 1863. The Union army lost 23,000 men and the Confederates 25,000, marking the end of Lee's planned invasion of the north. Little Round Top Hill saw some of the fiercest fighting of the battle. ©SSPL/National Media Museum