by Mark Nesbitt
As soon as we left the car she asked if there had been a dirt road here at the time of the battle. She felt that this was one of the original roads, and in fact, it was the Furnace Road. She asked if a wealthy family had lived nearby, because she saw a lot of girls, giggling and moving, as if they were going to a party. I was fairly certain that no one could prove whether there had been a party in the vicinity, until I reread the segment of Noel Harrison’s book, Chancel-lorsville Battlefield Sites. I read that on December 10, 1862, some of J. E. B. Stuart’s staff went to a party that Harrison thought occurred at the Alrich House, formerly located near the junction of the Plank Road and Catharpin Road, only a mile southeast of where we stood. Stuart and his staff were known to attend balls or galas and invite all the young women in the area.
Laine then said, “I’m feeling a lot of people, a lot of energy coming this way.” She gestured from the intersection of the Plank Road and Furnace Road towards herself. “And they’re not fighting,” she continued. “They’re coming to fight . . . they’re going somewhere else to fight. I’m not getting fighting here. A large number of men, not hundreds, but thousands. They’re on horses and on foot. They’re mixed.”
We were standing in the middle of the Furnace Road, in the very space Stonewall Jackson’s men marched through some fourteen decades before. She described exactly what Jackson’s men were doing: marching a 12-mile flanking maneuver to do their fighting somewhere else. There were some 12,000 men with Jackson. Laine also described exactly how a column of infantry and their officers would have looked traveling on this road.
Hazel Grove
Located upon one of the higher ridges southwest of Chancellorsville is Hazel Grove. The term actually refers to a homestead owned by the Chancellor family. The area became hotly contested during the fighting as the only high ground suitable for artillery use.
A story comes from a park ranger who was at Hazel Grove one evening. It was a beautiful, calm night. He was walking among the cannons placed there to show the battle positions of the Confederate artillery.
The shadows seemed to gather and play tricks with his eyes. That, in the distance, is that a horse? No. It couldn’t be. The senses are fooled so easily, especially on a battlefield where so many struggled, suffered, and died. As a park ranger, he knew the vivid and horrifying descriptions of the combat at the site. Then, out of a completely calm night, a strong wind rushed past him, strong enough to rustle the leaves on nearby trees and set the branches clacking. But rustling leaves were not the only thing to be heard that eerie night.
From somewhere within that localized wind came the sound of scores of pounding horses’ hooves, so near he could almost hear the squeak of leather and metallic clank of sabers. Then, as quickly as it came, the sound vanished along with the strange wind that seemed to transport the audible impossibility, and the night fell, once again, into a deathlike stillness.
I attempted to capture EVP on two separate occasions at Hazel Grove. On March 4, 2006, I was part of an investigation there and was asked to try to get some EVP. I addressed various officers and men of the Confederacy. The results were positive: I was receiving background “white noise” as well as what sounded like answers to some questions. Some unusual sounds I received were clicks, sounding like someone snapping their fingers. There was no response, other than more white noise, when I asked to hear the rebel yell. The white noise is significant. The recorder is set on voice activation mode so if I don’t say anything, the recorder should stop recording. But it doesn’t stop, and records something that cannot be heard.
On July 2, 2007, during another investigation, I tried contacting Maj. Pennock Huey and Maj. Peter Keenan of the Eighth Pennsylvania Cavalry, the latter of whom was killed in the fighting at Hazel Grove. Only one appeared to respond. After asking for Major Huey, a rhythmic clopping sound, like horses’ hooves was heard, and then what seems to be a muffled, three-beat sentence.
Gettysburg
In the spring of 1863, after the major victory at Chancellorsville, Gen. Robert E. Lee and Confederate president Jefferson Davis determined the time was ripe to attempt a second invasion of the Northern states.
There were several reasons for the Confederate government to launch an invasion that summer, not the least of which was to draw the seat of war out of Virginia so that her farmers could have a growing season without having to feed from the Virginia soil two ravenous armies and their horses. Lee also reasoned that, during an invasion of Pennsylvania, he could send all the supplies he captured back into Virginia to help feed, clothe, and provide transportation for his army (as well as civilians) for the near future. And always, in the back of everyone’s minds loomed the possibility of foreign recognition of the Confederacy as an independent nation. Lee and Davis reckoned that a big victory on Northern soil, with the possibility of capturing Pennsylvania’s capital, Harrisburg, or Philadelphia would compel France and Great Britain to open full diplomatic relations. Recognition of the Southern states by the world could attract monetary investments, perhaps even military support, and possibly force the North into a negotiated peace. Morale was high when, in the beginning of June, Lee’s three corps began their march westward from the Culpeper area of Virginia, got behind the screening mountains of the Shenandoah Valley, and then headed north. For nearly three weeks they marched through the lush valley, cavalry plugging the numerous gaps in order to screen their movement from prying Union eyes. By June 28, Confederates had reached Pennsylvania as far north as Carlisle and as far east as York, having marched through the small crossroads town of Gettysburg to get there. Around that same time, the Federal Army of the Potomac got a new commander, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade.
On the night of June 30, the nerve center for the Confederate invasion was Cashtown, Pennsylvania, in particular the Cashtown Inn, the largest building in the town some seven miles west of Gettysburg. Confederate generals passed in and out of the front door of the inn hundreds of times, delivering intelligence to Gen. A. P. Hill, in command of Lee’s Third Corps, who headquartered there.
That evening Gen. Johnston Pettigrew brought the news that he had just been to the outskirts of Gettysburg, saw a large body of enemy cavalry, and heard drums, meaning infantry, behind them. Hill, thinking the Union Army was still in Virginia, did not believe it, somehow discarding fresh intelligence for older. Gen. Henry Heth was present and asked if Hill had any objections to him marching into Gettysburg the next morning to gather supplies, in particular shoes for his men. Hill spoke the four words that would bring on the greatest battle to be fought on the North American continent: “None in the world.”
On the morning of July 1, 1863, Heth marched towards Gettysburg from the west and ran smack into Union general John Buford’s cavalry stretched out along one of the ridges to the west of town. In spite of being outnumbered, the Union cavalrymen held their own, firing their breech-loading carbines rapidly from the prone position, outgunning the slow-loading infantry weapons, which were loaded from a standing position.
But cavalry can hold out against infantry for just so long. Just as Buford was contemplating how to withdraw, Maj. Gen. John Reynolds, commander of the Union Army’s First Corps, arrived with his column of infantry right behind. Pleasantries were passed and Reynolds rode to watch his men spread out into battle lines. He would live only another few minutes before a rebel minié ball would slam into the back of his neck, killing him. He would become the highest-ranking Union officer to die in the battle.
At the first shots, couriers flew to scattered commands, and both Union and Confederate columns began to concentrate on Gettysburg, the Southerners approaching from the west, east, and north and the Northerners, who were attempting to shield Washington from the invasion, from the south. They spread out in parallel battle lines in the shape of two Ls facing each other.
The battle raged to the west and north of Gettysburg, with a brief noonday lull, into the afternoon. Fighting was fierce, particularly in the cuts through the ridges for a yet-to-be-f
inished railroad. Oak Ridge, an extension of Seminary Ridge, saw heavy fighting as Confederate brigades advanced and were repulsed. North Carolinians of Gen. Alfred Iverson’s brigade walked into a virtual trap and lost scores of men in one deadly Union volley. To the north of Gettysburg, artillery shells dropped into Union ranks and musketry riddled men of the Union Eleventh Corps standing in the open fields with no protection except some rail fences.
Finally, Confederates arrived on the field from the east and flanked the Union L-shaped line, which imploded into a general retreat, through the town of Gettysburg to the hills south of the borough.
Just as this was happening, Lee rode up in time to see his hordes driving the enemy from their positions through the streets of the little town before him. Up to this point, he had not wanted to bring on a general engagement; perhaps now, seeing his men victorious, he changed his mind, because instead of retreating or waging a defensive battle, he would be on the offensive.
Overnight, the remainder of the two armies approached Gettysburg. The Federals anchored their line on Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill and extended it south along Cemetery Ridge; their battle line began to take the shape of a giant fishhook. The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia outlined that fishhook shape curving from hills east of Gettysburg, occupying the town, and then extending down Seminary Ridge, paralleling the Union line on Cemetery Ridge at about a mile distance.
Lee reconnoitered the next morning, saw the curved Union line, and determined his tactics. With the enemy enjoying the advantage of an interior line, he would attack both ends of their line simultaneously, occupying each so one could not send troops to reinforce the other. Surely, thought Lee, one end of their line must give way and he would swarm around their flank, perhaps ending the war here.
Confederate general James Longstreet was to assault the left flank of the Union line early in the afternoon of July 2; upon hearing the sound of the cannons there, Gen. Richard Ewell would launch his attack upon the Union Army’s right flank at Culp’s Hill.
But Longstreet, in marching into position, thought his movement to the Confederate right flank was discovered by Union wigwag signalmen on a small, cleared hill, later to be known as Little Round Top. He countermarched his men, found a new route, and finally got into position to launch his attack around 3:00 P.M.
The fighting during the next few hours would be some of the most savage ever encountered by either army. Longstreet’s men were opposed initially by Union general Daniel Sickles’s Third Corps, which he had advanced without orders. His line, in the shape of an inverted V, was blunted, then flattened, as the Confederates pushed him back through the Peach Orchard at the road to Emmitsburg, Maryland, coincidentally capturing one of the retreat routes for the Federals back to Washington.
Meade poured brigade after brigade into the area to stem the rebel tide: a wheatfield east of the Peach Orchard changed hands several times until it became the Wheatfield, a bloody landmark of the battlefield.
As the Southerners continued their advance, they ran into stiff opposition in an oddly shaped triangular field; Georgians and Texans would fight New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians for its possession. Once the Confederates captured it, they overran the jumble of boulders some locals had named the Devil’s Den. But the Confederate line overlapped Sickles’s line on his left; where Sickles’s line ended in Devil’s Den, the Confederate line swept over Big Round Top to the east. The climb to the summit in the summer heat was too much for some of the men and they stopped to rest.
Meantime, Maj. Gen. G. K. Warren, serving with the Union engineers, was observing Sickles’s battle from Little Round Top, the smaller hill to the north. He thought he saw some suspicious enemy movement in the woods on Big Round Top. Looking around, he realized that he and a few signalmen were the only troops on the smaller hill, which dominated the southern end of the Union line. He immediately brought Federals to Little Round Top just in time to blunt the Confederate assault up its slopes. One of the heroes of the fighting was Col. Joshua L. Chamberlain, who ordered a bayonet charge when his men ran out of ammunition and stopped the advancing rebels cold.
From the Daniel Lady Farm and Benner’s Hill, east of Gettysburg, Ewell’s men listened all day as Federals built breastworks and felled trees to clear fields of fire on Culp’s Hill. Even the lowliest private knew that the longer they waited, the more deadly the assault would be.
Ewell, who was to attack when he heard the sound of Long-street’s guns, for some reason, never heard the fighting begin on the other side of the field. It wasn’t until Lee sent a courier around 7:00 P.M. that Ewell got his men moving. By then, there were only a few hours of daylight left, and Longstreet’s assault had spent itself.
Advancing up the slopes of Culp’s Hill and East Cemetery Hill, Ewell’s men fought in the dusk, then into the darkness, a rarity in the Civil War. By the time the fighting died down, some of the Confederates found themselves sitting inside the Union trenches, gained with firing barely a shot. They were perplexed: Where were the Union troops? They had been pulled from their trenches by Meade earlier to help in the fighting on the other side of the battlefield. At this moment, then, Lee’s plan was working. But the Confederates in the Union trenches, although only a couple of hundred yards from the Baltimore Pike and the rear of the entire Union Army, thought they had walked into a trap, and so they halted. They sent out scouts to find the Yankee enemy.
Before long the scouts came back—with Yankees behind them. Finished with the fighting on the south end of the field, they were returning to their trenches on Culp’s Hill. Fighting broke out all over again. There was a lull, but then at daylight, they fought some more. Confederates were finally driven back from Culp’s Hill after getting so close.
Lee had a dilemma. Supplies and ammunition were running low. He had attacked both ends of the Union fishhook, per his battle plan, and they had held. He reasoned that the enemy line must be weak in the center. Longstreet had a fresh division, Gen. George E. Pickett’s, arriving on the battlefield after guarding wagons. With that and parts of two other divisions, Lee would strike at the heart of the Union line, Cemetery Ridge. Longstreet disagreed and suggested a flanking maneuver. Lee responded, “The enemy is there, and I am going to strike him.”
At about 1:00 P.M. on July 3, E. P. Alexander opened with his Confederate artillery, stretching nearly the entire length of Seminary Ridge, on the Union position. Most artillery bombardments in the Civil War lasted thirty minutes; this one went on for two hours in an attempt to soften up the Yankee center. Finally, Alexander sent a desperate message to Longstreet: If Longstreet didn’t send the infantry soon, Alexander’s big guns wouldn’t have enough ammunition to support them. Reluctantly—some say with tears in his eyes—Longstreet merely nodded his assent to launch what was to be known to history as Pickett’s Charge.
Sadly, the words Pickett’s Charge have also come to mean a doomed action. Some 12,500 Confederates, aligned shoulder-to-shoulder with supporting lines, crossed the open plain between Seminary Ridge and Cemetery Ridge. No sooner had they stepped off when Union artillery on Little Round Top found their range. One artillerist thought it was like shooting practice; gaps began to appear in the Confederate lines when men were driven to the ground by shells bursting overhead.
They hit the Emmitsburg Road, lined with a stout post-and-rail fence that wouldn’t be broken down. Confederates began to climb over it when the massed lines of Union infantry behind a stone wall on Cemetery Ridge, just 300 yards away, stood and fired. Sons of Virginia, North Carolina, Mississippi, and other southern states crumpled into the road. Under intense fire, they halted, realigned their ranks, and continued the attack. At a spot where the stone wall makes an angle, they rushed the Yankees, driving some back. For a few minutes, Confederates held the stone wall. Brig. Gen. Lewis A. Armistead, his old black hat upon his sword as a rallying point, stood and shouted, “Come on, boys! Give them the cold steel! Who will follow me?” and leapt the wall. Three hundred survivors of the cro
ssing followed but were met by a Yankee countersurge. Hand-to-hand fighting ensued: Muskets were swung like clubs, rocks were used as weapons, and men wrestled on the ground. In ten minutes it was over. The Confederates were driven back over the wall and began their retreat back to Seminary Ridge.
It took about twenty minutes for them to cross the fields, ten minutes of fighting, and twenty minutes to limp back. In those fifty minutes, two-thirds of Lee’s attacking force became casualties. When Lee found Pickett, he asked him to gather his division for an expected counterattack. Pickett’s tearful answer shocked Lee. “General Lee, I have no division.”
That night and the following day, it poured rain. Under cover of darkness on July 4, Lee began his retreat back to the Shenandoah Valley and Virginia. His wagon train of wounded, as it passed the Cashtown Inn, was estimated to be seventeen miles in length.
The casualties during the three days of Gettysburg were not counted in the thousands, but in the tens of thousands: 51,000 killed, wounded, or missing. It would be the bloodiest single battle of the entire war, and the war would last nearly another two years.
Lee, for the most part, would be on the defensive in Virginia. Full diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy by the rest of the world would remain an unfulfilled dream. Years later, when the Confederacy was determined to have been a lost cause, Gettysburg became known as the High Water Mark, the closest they came to victory in the four-year American Civil War, and generations of Southerners would argue who was to blame for the defeat. Someone asked Pickett after the war, perhaps trying to draw him into the war of words and accusations, what was the cause of the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg? His answer was truer than most others: “I think the Yankees had something to do with it.”