A "Copse of Trees" on Cemetery Ridge, is the setting for "Clubs Are Trumps." After two full days of heavy fighting in and around Gettysburg, confederate General Robert E. Lee was embarking on the final action of the famous engagement on the afternoon of July 3, 1863. Some 12,000 Confederate soldiers made their way across the one-mile open field that separated the opposing armies. Despite the frightful casualties for artillery and small arms fire, a small contingent of Confederate soldiers reached their objective, a little clump of oak trees at the center of the Federal Line.

Standing just to the rear of the thin single line of Federal resistance, twenty year old Edmund Rice, the major of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, realized the time to action had arrived. Waiting for his command officer to order the regiment into the frey, Rice spotted General Winfield Scott Hancock gesturing to the breakthrough. Considering Hancock's actions a permission to move forward, Rice order the left wing of the regiment to their feet. Suddenly the rest of the Ninetieth, and the nearby Forty-second New York Infantry followed suit and both commands were quickly moving to seal the penetration. As they neared the southern edge of the copse a roar of shouts passed down the Second Corps line "Clubs are Trump Forwarded the white trefoil." Major Rice's charges stopped the Southern movement into the rear of the Union position on Cemetery Ridge, and tipped the balance in favor the Federal defenders around the famed "Angle" at Gettysburg.

With this counter-attack, the remnant of Pickett's shattered command either surrendered to the Union defenders of died where they stood. The Battle of Gettysburg had come to a close. Unable to field a single fresh division, and with the once might offensive capability of the army now gone. Lee decided to withdraw. The war had turned a crucial corner. While it took two more years to decide the issue, the Civil War had changed in favor of the North.

(Click here to go back)