Kershaw's South Carolina Brigade at Gettysburg

On the afternoon of July second, eighteen sixty-three, Brigadier General Joseph Kershaw led his South Carolina Brigade across the Emmitsburg Road near this spot, pushing east toward the Union line north of the Rose Farm. Kershaw commanded a South Carolina brigade in McLaws's Division of Longstreet's First Corps, and his attack that day was part of the massive Confederate assault on the Union left flank.

The fighting around the Rose Farm, the Wheatfield, and the Peach Orchard was some of the bloodiest of the entire three-day battle. Kershaw's men drove forward under heavy fire, trading ground back and forth with Union troops in engagements that cost thousands of casualties on both sides. July second at Gettysburg remains one of the most contested afternoons in American military history, and this quiet field was the center of it.