Peach Orchard Paean

Gettysburg’s Peach Orchard is a new look at the role played by Joseph Sherfy’s 10-acre peach orchard during the Battle of Gettysburg. Boldly, the authors claim that historians have overlooked the Peach Orchard fighting; the orchard’s topographical prominence “heavily influence[d] the Second Day’s fighting”; and it “partially persuaded [Robert E.] Lee to launch the disastrous…‘Pickett’s Charge.’”

This finely researched book offers a stunning tactical narrative, and the authors tell stories beyond the usual “who-killed-whom.” They tell the tale of Sherfy, the orchard’s luckless owner; describe Confederate artillery deployment July 3; narrate the battle’s grisly aftermath; and describe contentious postwar efforts by veterans, historians, enthusiasts, and the National Park Service to preserve both Sherfy’s land and the orchard’s memory. This book is an epic battle narrative—a complicated chronicle featuring gripping tales of tactics, humanity, aftermath, and historical memory.

The book, however, underwhelms concerning its primary conclusions. The authors’ belief that the Peach Orchard fighting has been overlooked is not new. Not only did Union veteran John Bigelow’s 1910 57-page book make the same contention, Eric A. Campbell’s 2008 essay, “The Key to the Entire Situation: The Peach Orchard, July 2, 1863,” preceded the authors’ conclusion by a decade.

Although the authors include Campbell’s essay in the