Meade Pyramid

A rough-hewn granite pyramid stands 23 feet tall on a 30-square-foot base beside the railroad tracks where Maj. Gen. George G. Meade's Pennsylvania Reserve division punched through the only gap in Stonewall Jackson's Confederate line on December 13, 1862. It was the single Union breakthrough that day. Meade's troops found themselves alone — no support followed — and were forced back. His 3rd Division lost more than 40 percent of its strength: 1,853 men killed, wounded, missing, or captured.

The monument went up in 1898, but not by the victors. The Confederate Memorial Literary Society built it after approaching Virginia railroad executives in 1897 with a proposal to mark significant Civil War sites along their lines. The executives agreed, and the society erected a stone pyramid modeled after the memorial to unknown Confederate dead at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. A memorial to Union courage, erected by Confederate hands, marking the place where the line broke but the battle was already lost.