by Ralph Peters
Now the army’s scheme of defense was in jeopardy, all the careful planning squandered by one fool politician in uniform who had advanced an entire corps to the most amateurishly chosen position Meade could recall or conjure. All of Meade’s faith in an engineer’s precise approach to the battlefield seemed laughable now. And bitter.
It galled him to think how much more smoothly things must be going for Lee, who appeared to have granted himself the time for careful preparations, whose subordinates never displayed such bald incompetence. Sickles had advanced into a trap of his own devising, and Lee would not let such an opening pass.
Meade was forced to take Lee’s blows where Sickles had tugged the army. The fool had to be supported, or else his corps would be butchered on the cheap. And the roar of the artillery duel suggested that Lee’s main attack would come on the left, after all, worsening an awful situation. Even now, though, Meade needed to make certain that this great ruckus was not a mere diversion, that Lee’s hardest blow would not hit the Union right and the Baltimore Pike in the end.
It was a devil of a fix.
Struggling with his mount, Meade shouted to Sickles: “You’ll need more artillery. Call on the reserve, on Hunt. And God help you.”
Sickles began to reply, but the nearby detonation of a shell sent Meade’s horse into a panic. The creature careened from the orchard, with its rider fighting to steer it away from the Confederates. The horse bucked and rose, attempting to cast the unfamiliar master from its back. It required Meade’s last ounce of horsemanship just to remain in the saddle.
Flanked by artillery bursts, aides and staff men galloped after him, but could not close upon the maddened horse. Meade feared a stumble that would throw him hard, a humiliating way to end his command.
At last, he succeeded in turning the mount toward the Third Corps’ rear. He loosened the reins and let the creature run out its vigor and dread.
It was what the animal needed.
As Meade drew up by a barn buttressed with stones, the better horsemen from headquarters swarmed around him.
“George,” Meade called to his son, “get Old Baldy, damn it. And tell Pleasanton to send an orderly to fetch this worthless beast before I shoot it. Where’s Hunt?”
“He went to call up more batteries, sir.”
“Good.” Meade stroked the horse, trying to still it completely. Hot horseflesh quivered wet under his hand. He would have preferred to punish the animal, to hurt it. As he would have loved to punish Daniel Sickles. But Meade was learning to do a great many distasteful things out of necessity.
He turned to a courier. “Find General Sykes. Tell him the Fifth Corps must come up on the left, he’s to move each brigade the instant it’s ready to march.”
The captain saluted and spurred his horse, launching clods of barnyard waste behind him. Meade shielded his face and switched his attention to another aide. “Go to the Sixth Corps headquarters. Find out which units are already on the field. Tell General Sedgwick to be prepared to move to the left, on order. Report back here as fast as you can ride.”
As the second officer galloped toward the rear, an approaching rider in blue lashed his horse like a desperate jockey. Meade recognized one of Warren’s men, a youthful engineer.
The boy pulled up sharply, gasping, and saluted. “General Warren’s compliments, sir. The small round hill is unoccupied. Except for the signalers, there isn’t a man on it. And the Rebels are on the move, you can see them from up there, they’re coming on. It looks like they’re aiming right toward those hills. General Warren believes it’ll take a division to hold the high ground.”
Meade didn’t have a division. He didn’t even have a spare brigade on hand, not one available regiment. Not yet. Reinforcements soon would be on the way. But “soon” was not “now.”
The near fields and groves were bare of Union troops, save the usual stragglers where Birney’s division had passed, marching to their fate on Sickles’ order. On the right, in the middle distance, Humphreys’ men went forward handsomely, faces to the late-afternoon sun, heading toward the Emmitsburg road to spread across the vast gap Sickles had opened.
“Major Ludlow,” Meade called to a trusted staff man, “ride over to General Humphreys. He’s to wheel his division to the left rear immediately and move double-quick to occupy that first hill.”
“The local people call it ‘Little Round Top,’” Warren’s man put in.
“I don’t care what it’s called,” Meade snapped. “I just don’t want to lose it.”
Ludlow turned his horse to his task even as he threw Meade a salute.
One risk weighed against the other now. The great gap in the line on Sickles’ right was an urgent matter. But the menace to the hill was even graver. He was robbing Peter to pay Paul, unsure if all of his actions were in vain.
The artillery bombardment had grown more intense. It could only mean that the Rebels had brought up more guns. Probably upon realizing how vulnerable Sickles was. How many pieces did Lee have available? Enough to deliver an equal cannonade on the Union right? Or was this the main attack?
Soon the troops in gray and brown would emerge from the far trees. And he would have to place his bet. Indecision was an enemy, too.
Meade’s craving for sleep had faded to the feel of a mild hangover. The pulse of battle quickened all his nerves and sharpened his senses. He did a mental count of the units he might draw from other corps to deepen his left, calculating how long it should take each to march up and go in.
Hunt rode up. The chief of artillery was alone. Meade understood. Hunt had already dispatched the last member of his field staff to get the reserve guns moving. For an instant, Meade imagined that he heard batteries racing forward, but knew that bordered on a hallucination. The guns could not come up so quickly. Not even guns that Henry Hunt had positioned.
It was going to be an evening of sweating through each minute.
“Henry…,” Meade called, “can you save that damned fool Sickles?”
Hunt shook his head. “I’ve got plenty of guns on the way. But they can’t hold without infantry.”
“How much time can you give me?”
Hunt considered the question for a few seconds. “An hour. At most. Probably less. Depending on how Lee comes on.”
An errant shell furrowed the dirt in a field between the farmstead and Sickles’ threatened orchard.
“Any sense of how many guns they’ve massed?”
This time, it was Hunt’s horse that shied. “At least a full corps’ complement. Maybe more.”
“Main attack, would you say?”
“It certainly isn’t negligible.” Hunt’s expression grew fierce. “Sickles doesn’t have half enough men up to hold that orchard. He’s got Birney covering damned near a mile of front with his division, and on wretched ground that doesn’t hang together. I can’t employ artillery back in those woods, and we’re probably going to lose some guns up here.”
Meade understood the shame to an artilleryman of losing a gun, let alone full batteries. But nothing could be done. The cannoneers would have to redeem Sickles’ error with bravery, blood, and bronze, with powder and steel.
Time. He needed time.
Leaving the lane that led to the orchard, the first reserve battery to arrive clambered into the high fields, crushing virgin grain. Whips flared and struck, but the cannonade’s waves drowned the cries of man and beast.
How much more time would Lee give him? Before the Rebel yell announced the crisis? Mounted on a horse lathered to failing, another courier materialized. Meade didn’t recognize this one.
“Sir … General Warren has a brigade from the Fifth Corps going into position on Little Round Top.”
“Whose brigade?” Meade asked. The Fifth was his old corps and, to him, the best in the army.
“Colonel Vincent’s, sir.”
Meade nodded. “Vincent will do.”
“Any message for General Warren, sir?”
“Tell him to ho
ld that hill. No matter the cost.” He waved over the captain of his bodyguard. “Have one of your men switch mounts with this man. Before that horse dies and falls on him.”
Displeased, as any cavalry officer would be, the captain saluted and got on with the business. Meade noted, though, that the captain did not turn over the finest horseflesh in the 6th Pennsylvania.
Meade summoned his last available aide. “Ride to General Humphreys. My orders to him are countermanded. He’s to reverse direction and extend General Sickles’ line along the road, in accordance with his earlier instructions. Now go, man.”
Humph’s piss would boil at the seesaw orders. Meade imagined his old acquaintance cursing his incompetence. It couldn’t be helped. The situation had changed. With Vincent deploying on the round hill and the Fifth Corps coming on, it was now more important to strengthen Sickles’ line, to close at least a portion of the gap that had opened between his corps and Hancock back on the ridge.
The situation was appalling. Brigades and regiments would need to join the line piecemeal, as they arrived, reducing their effectiveness and making a muddle of every command arrangement. It wasn’t the way Meade wanted to fight a battle. But Lee and Sickles between them had forced his hand.
Grimly, Meade told himself that the Confederate plan was doubtless running like clockwork. Lee’s veterans would never succumb to the confusion plaguing the Army of the Potomac. The thought filled Meade with rage. And determination.
Let Lee come. Meade was determined to fight it out, to give as good as he got. Lee was not about to gain another easy victory, Sickles or no Sickles. Meade intended to make him pay for every foot of ground.
The Confederate barrage slackened, then stopped abruptly. Freshly arrived Union batteries sent their shells into the smoke, but the Rebel gunners resisted the urge to reply.
Meade understood. They were coming. Then he heard a distant Rebel yell.
* * *
By the time Longstreet got back to McLaws, the division commander was in an argument just short of blows with Billy Barksdale, the Mississippi politician who commanded one of Laff’s two lead brigades. Kershaw, the other brigade commander fronting the division, stood off to the side, arms folded, as if deciding whom to wager on.
Barksdale was a strange bird. He could speechify like Calhoun or Clay, or blaspheme like a stevedore. Most men fought because they wanted to win the war and go home. Barksdale didn’t seem to mind much how long things continued, as long as he could go on killing Yankees. His hatred had a spice to it that heated his Mississippi soldiers, too. Barksdale’s attacks weren’t elegant, and he sat a horse as if it were a mule, but he went where you pointed him and got there when you needed him to do so. Once Barksdale was unleashed, the Yankees were going to stop him only by killing him and most of those marching with him. And they might have to do it twice.
Spying Longstreet, Barksdale turned from his division commander and strutted up. Without a by-your-leave, he started in railing at the man who outranked him by two stars.
“Damn me to Hell, Longstreet, why are my boys sitting here holding their peckers? With the goddamned nigger-loving Yankee artillery thumping on ’em?” The Mississippian shook his head in disgust. “I wish you’d let me go in, General. My boys could take those batteries in five minutes.”
From the middle distance, the clamor of Hood striking the Union flank underscored the brigade commander’s urgency.
“You just wait a little.” Longstreet slipped from the saddle, rump aching. “We’re all going in presently.”
Barksdale was a beefy man with pale hair thin as a baby’s. Once clipped short, the wispy tufts had grown out to form a halo around his raw-meat complexion. He always kept his cap on because he was bald on top.
“My boys ought to go in right now,” Barksdale insisted. The man retained the politician’s sense of immunity.
Longstreet was not about to be stampeded. He gave Barksdale a look that would shrivel an oak tree. “You’ll go in when General McLaws orders you to go in. Meanwhile, General, I expect you to see to it that the day’s orders for officers are obeyed without exception. Brigade commanders and their staffs may remain mounted, but all regimental officers go forward on foot. I will not have needless casualties among our officers. Is that clear, sir?”
Barksdale snorted. Then he grunted. Then he stamped his foot and walked away. Heading back toward his nearby brigade. The man was insubordinate. But Longstreet knew he would fight.
He turned to McLaws. The division commander looked relieved to be free of Barksdale for the present, but the big man was still unsettled: The waiting was worse than the fighting. But after the day’s long litany of blunders on every side, Longstreet was determined to regain control. Each next increment of the attack would advance in its proper order. Enough harm had been done this day through bravado and hasty judgment.
Longstreet glanced at Kershaw, who had not unfolded his arms, then told McLaws, “Send your right forward.”
The division commander passed the command to Kershaw, who had already heard it clearly enough.
“I’m going forward with Kershaw for a bit,” Longstreet said to McLaws. “Do nothing until I return.”
After ordering his shrunken retinue to remain behind, Longstreet led his horse toward Kershaw’s line. He could see the South Carolinians rising in the treelines, eagerness vanquishing fear. Soon they’d step into the sunlight, dress their ranks, and advance.
He would not interfere. Kershaw knew what he was about. But Longstreet wanted the men to see him, to feel they were in his care, that he had confidence in them and the day’s plan of battle. Even if he could not feel that confidence himself. Hope, yes. But not confidence. They would carry that first Union position, which was built on air, hanging out on an invisible limb, waiting to be snapped off. But he did not know what George Meade had hidden behind it. They all were paying for Stuart’s long and inexcusable absence—the man’s appetite for renown had left the army in the position of a blind man in a knife fight.
Still, if Hood grabbed those two hills, the attack would have a chance. Longstreet would have liked to have Pickett’s division to exploit any success, but the men ready to attack had plenty of courage. The problem was that Longstreet didn’t have plenty of men.
Valor would have to make up for hard numbers.
Billows of smoke, light gray to death dark, obscured the Union lines. Bursts of flame marked the muzzles of Union batteries, but the enemy could be seen only when a quirk of the air made a path through the earthbound clouds.
There was smoke in plenty around Kershaw’s forming ranks, too, but shafts of golden afternoon light pierced it, gilding rifle barrels and bayonets.
“For South Carolina!” Kershaw shouted.
The regimental commanders echoed his war cry, but a mighty Rebel yell soon buried their words, its fury defying even the rage of the guns.
The batteries behind which they’d formed up ceased their bombardment and the gray lines passed into the rising smoke. Leading his horse by the reins, Longstreet strode beside them. A battlefield’s sounds played many a trick, but he was certain that Hood was well into the fight on the corps’ right. Now it was time to press the attack where the Yankees looked their thinnest.
Make them fear you, Longstreet thought. Shock them, make them run. Get behind them just once, and it all collapses.
Panic could do what strength of arms could not.
Noting his presence, some of Kershaw’s men gave Longstreet a cheer. He nodded, but did not smile. It was a rough-hewn business now, best left to their own officers.
Union cannon found their range. Men dissolved in bursts of crimson spray. The South Carolinians closed ranks and continued advancing.
As they approached the road between the battle lines, Longstreet mounted and galloped back toward McLaws. Behind him, another grand Rebel yell rasped from thousands of throats.
The division commander had come forward to the edge of the treeline. His face asked, Barksda
le? Now?
Longstreet shook his head, then drew his field glasses from the case strung behind his saddle and passed his mount to an orderly. The series of assaults had turned into a classic oblique attack, even more so than Lee had intended. Events had dictated what needed to be done. When the situation changed, plans had to be altered.
Before scouting Kershaw’s progress, Longstreet swung his glasses to the northeast. Searching for artillery smoke rising from the Confederate left, for any sign that Ewell had begun the diversionary attack the old man had promised.
The sky beyond his own front remained as blue as a baby’s blanket.
As blue as the blanket his dead son had favored.
What in the Hell was delaying Ewell? Did Lee understand that his plan was coming apart on both flanks now? What, in the name of all the devils in Hell, was wrong with Ewell?
Tom Goree appeared beside him. Longstreet didn’t like the dour look on his face.
“Tom?”
Goree raised his voice to be heard above the commotion: “It’s General Hood, sir. He’s been wounded. He’s been carried from the battlefield.”
Longstreet lowered his eyes. Not Hood. Good God. Not now.
He fought to steady his voice: “That leaves Law the senior brigade commander, am I correct?”
The Texan nodded.
“Ride back down there,” Longstreet ordered. “Make damned sure that Law understands he commands the division now, not just his brigade. He’ll have to spread his attention, and that’s a hard thing to do when a man’s in a fight. He’s to push the entire division, not just his own boys. And just keep going.”
Goree raised a salute and turned away.
Hood was a terrible loss, his wounding a grim turn of fate. Law wasn’t ready for division command. The man was a good officer. Just not ready. For a moment, Longstreet was tempted to disobey Lee’s order to remain with McLaws. But Hood’s attack was well under way and Law would have to manage. He just had to keep up the pressure and not relent, not listen to the inevitable entreaties from subordinates that their casualties were too high or their ammunition too low. On the other hand, three of McLaws’ brigades still had to be committed. Putting them in properly would require a steady hand.