Gettysburg

  Virtually every diarist and letter writer in the army commented on the friendliness of the inhabitants they met north of the Potomac, in contrast to what they had encountered over the past months in Virginia. The First Corps crossed the Pennsylvania line on June 30, and Lyman Holford of the 6th Wisconsin noted in his diary, “The people here turn out in holiday attire, wave flags, give us bread and butter, and water and in every way show their good will toward us.” Diarist Charles Wainwright, commanding the First Corps’ artillery, took note of this as well, but he also noticed citizens who did not let their Unionist feelings interfere with the profit motive. “The people along the road sell everything, and at very high prices,” Wainwright grumbled; “fifty cents for a large loaf of bread, worth, say, twenty; fifteen to twenty-five cents for a canteen, three pints, of skimmed milk; how much for pies I do not know, but they were in great demand….” But he admitted that this was by no means the universal practice. Many of the people “will not sell, but give all they can; and we are cheered through all the villages by good wishes and pleasant smiles.”

  This welcome was particularly exhilarating to the men in the sixty-seven Pennsylvania regiments posted to the Army of the Potomac. When the 12th Pennsylvania Reserves, just now joining the Potomac army as a reinforcement from the Department of Washington, crossed the Mason-Dixon Line into their home state, E. D. Burdick entered in his diary: “The Col. halted us at the time and the boys gave 3 cheers for old Pa. and we vowed never to leave the State until we had driven the rebels out … or perish in the attempt; this is how we feel to-day.” Burdick added, “we all felt enthused and showed our determination by increasing our speed.” 27

  Once the army had crossed the Potomac into Northern territory, headquarters issued stringent general orders warning the troops to be on their best behavior. As Major John Nevin, commanding the 93rd Pennsylvania, put it, the new regulation meant “total abstinence from pillage and ‘takings’ as we are now in friendly country.” The 93rd was a veteran outfit, accustomed to taking what was necessary for its camping comfort, and by its interpretation of the new regulation, no one should be caught taking the needed items. On June 29, after a march of 24 miles, the regiment approached its campground for the night, and as was their custom the men snatched up the rails of the nearest roadside fence for their supper fires. Thus burdened, they unsuspectingly marched past the tent of an officer who happened to be none other than Major General John Sedgwick, commander of the Sixth Corps.

  Uncle John Sedgwick, aroused by this blatant violation of the new regulation, personally collared poor Major Nevin and ordered him to halt his command and return every one of the fence rails to its rightful place. Not satisfied with this, the wrathful Sedgwick then rounded on brigade commander Frank Wheaton. “General Wheaton!” Nevin heard him yell, “what do you mean by allowing your men, in direct disobedience of the Order…, etc. etc.” In the end, Nevin explained, “enough of the rails were carried back to make a show, but I’m afraid that the majority of them were slyly dropped into the long grass, the moment the men knew what was wrong. I know our chaplain and our surgeon each dropped one.”

  A circular from army headquarters on June 30 included instructions to issue the men three days’ rations and sixty rounds of ammunition. With that announcement veterans knew that fighting was surely on the horizon—perhaps even around the next bend in the road. The banter stopped and the columns marched in an eerie quiet. A man in the 27th Indiana watched a division pass by silently, with “no warning whatever of their approach, until their head of column filed around a turn in the road…. In regular formation, a knot of mounted officers in front and rear of each regiment, the men in perfect ranks, in files of four, line officers and file closers on either side, all were reaching out in long, rapid steps. Regiment after regiment fairly glided by, with no word spoken, that could be heard a rod away.” 28

  As further preparation for battle, General Meade issued on the 30th a call to his commanding officers to “address their troops, explaining to them briefly the immense issues involved in the struggle.” As Meade phrased it, “the army has fought well heretofore; it is believed that it will fight more desperately and bravely than ever if it is addressed in fitting terms.” Delivering addresses to the troops was an Army of the Potomac tradition begun by General McClellan, but the effort by honest, uninspiring George Meade was not quite up to the rhetorical flourishes of the Young Napoleon. Meade’s language was stilted (failure “will leave us no such welcome as the swelling of millions of hearts with pride and joy at our success would give to every soldier of this army”), but he added a riveting closing sentence: “Corps and other commanders are authorized to order the instant death of any soldier who fails in his duty at this hour.“29

  While Meade with his address sought to imitate the morale-boosting technique of General McClellan, in Washington Mr. Lincoln was laying the shade of McClellan to rest. In recent days there had been much talk in the press and the army and among the public aimed at bringing back the Young Napoleon to lead the fight against the invaders. Colonel Wainwright wrote on June 29 that many of the troops believed Meade was in command only temporarily, “until McClellan can be sent for.” Governor Joel Parker of New Jersey urged the president to appoint McClellan head of either the Army of the Potomac or the militia forces in Pennsylvania. “If either appointment be made, the people would rise en masse.” The New York Herald, the country’s largest newspaper, beat its drum loudly for McClellan. Pennsylvania editor Alexander K. McClure telegraphed, “to call McClellan to a command here would be the best thing that could be done.”

  Lincoln was diplomatic with Governor Parker about “the difficulties and involvements of replacing Gen. McClellan in command,” but he was more direct with editor McClure. “Do we gain anything by opening one leak to stop another?” he asked McClure. “Do we gain anything by quieting one clamor, merely to open another, and probably a larger one?” These were anxious days for the president, but at least he was certain that George McClellan was not the answer to any of his problems. Indeed he continued to argue that this was a time of great military promise. As he told Governor Parker, “I really think the attitude of the enemies’ army in Pennsylvania, presents us the best opportunity we have had since the war began.“30

  At his headquarters at Taneytown in Maryland, General Meade was pondering that opportunity. He needed first to compare the strength of his own army with the latest estimate for the enemy. The earlier estimate for Lee, based on counts of his forces that passed through Hagerstown, had been 80,000 infantry and 275 guns, and lacked a figure for cavalry. Now that was superseded. From counts made of the Rebels in Chambersburg, Carlisle, and other towns, the new figures came to 92,000 infantry, 270 guns, and 6,000 to 8,000 cavalry—a total in round numbers of 100,000 men. This was compiled from eyewitness reports—admittedly for the most part made by nonmilitary observers—and was accepted by Colonel Sharpe’s B.M.I. in lieu of anything better. It represented in fact about a 20 percent overcount. But a Confederate army 100,000 strong was the figure General Meade used in making his battle plans.

  In laying out this latest count of the enemy army, Meade hastened to add, “Our numbers ought to equal it….” He went on to say that when General French’s command arrived from Harper’s Ferry, he expected the count of his forces, “if not too much weakened by straggling and fatigue,” to exceed that of the enemy. As Meade calculated it that morning of July 1, then, the Army of the Potomac should field almost 105,000 men against Lee.31

  Meade’s advantage was greater than he realized. The returns for June 30, being compiled as he wrote, gave him something over 104,000 men—without counting French’s troops, who never got closer than Frederick, Maryland. There were in addition reinforcements that had reached the army, or were about to reach it, but did not make it into the June 30 returns. All told, Meade would have under his command in time to fight a total of 112,700 men “present for duty.” Nevertheless, he would fight his battle with the understanding tha
t his forces only slightly exceeded the enemy’s.32

  GENERAL MEADE’S NEXT STEP was to plot a battle plan. By June 30—his third day of command—intelligence sources had unveiled a picture of the enemy clear enough for him to shape a plan of action. Word was not yet in of the hurried recall of Ewell’s corps from the Susquehanna, but still Meade was satisfied he had achieved his first goal. “The general believes,” his circular announced, “he has relieved Harrisburg and Philadelphia, and now desires to look to his own army, and assume position for offensive or defensive, as occasion requires….”

  It was evident now that two-thirds of the Confederate army was advancing, at an undetermined pace, from Chambersburg across South Mountain’s Cashtown Gap in the direction of Gettysburg. Meade’s first instructions therefore went to John Reynolds, commanding the army’s left wing and closest to the enemy force. In a dispatch sent at 11:30 A.M. on the 30th, Meade observed that it was not yet known if Lee was at Cashtown Gap for the purpose of blocking a Federal advance or using it as a springboard for his own advance. But with Buford’s cavalry scouting from Gettysburg and Reynolds’s infantry between Emmitsburg and Gettysburg, there should be sufficient warning. Should the Rebels move against him, Reynolds was instructed to fall back to Emmitsburg, where Meade would reinforce him with nearby corps. Indeed, if in Reynolds’s judgment Emmitsburg offered a strong defensive position, he was authorized to fall back without waiting either for the enemy or for further orders.

  This withdrawal scheme for Reynolds was a first step in General Meade’s larger plan—to force Lee to battle, but if at all possible to fight that battle defensively on ground of his own choosing. He had already chosen that ground. His engineer’s eye was attracted to the high ground of Parr’s Ridge in Maryland, just south of his Taneytown headquarters. The ridge overlooked a small tributary of the Monocacy River called Pipe Creek, and was nicely positioned to cover his own supply line while blocking the direct route to Baltimore. Meade ordered a circular drawn up that fully explained this Pipe Creek plan to his corps commanders. In the event that “the enemy assume the offensive, and attack, it is his intention, after holding them in check sufficiently long,…to withdraw the army from its present position….” There was much detail on routes to be taken and the positioning of supply trains and march discipline. In the middle of the lengthy document was a one-sentence disclaimer, in small print as it were: “Developments may cause the commanding general to assume the offensive from his present position.” Twenty paragraphs for defense, one sentence for offense.

  It was Meade’s intention that the Pipe Creek circular be in his generals’ hands before day’s end that Tuesday, the 30th, but Dan Butterfield and the headquarters staff did not finish the paperwork and the delivery before Wednesday, July 1. By then events were overtaking General Meade’s best-laid plan. This left him in high temper. According to an eyewitness, Stephen M. Weld of the First Corps staff, Meade “roundly damned” his chief of staff “for his slowness in getting out orders.” Meade said he “had arranged for a plan of battle, and it had taken so long to get the orders out that now it was all useless.” The general commanding, Captain Weld noted, was “very much disturbed indeed.”

  If the Pipe Creek circular was a dead letter even as it was being issued, it did clearly reveal its author’s state of mind toward his new command and how he intended to use it. George Meade was far too tough-minded a general to be intimidated simply by the prospect of meeting Robert E. Lee in battle. But Meade very much wanted the Army of the Potomac—after its two consecutive defeats, after all the high-command upheavals of the Hooker regime—to be able to fight defensively when it came time to fight. He wanted to force the other man to give battle, to do the attacking. Had he known it, this was precisely General Lee’s intention for the Pennsylvania campaign. Ironically, of the two generals, it was Meade who had the only opportunity to attempt such a plan—and he missed only by the narrowest of margins.33

  That night of June 30 John Reynolds made camp at Moritz’s tavern, across the Pennsylvania line at Marsh Creek on the Emmitsburg Road, some five miles from Gettysburg. With him were his three First Corps divisions. Also under his command were Howard’s Eleventh Corps, posted that night to the south at Emmitsburg, and behind Howard, Sickles’s Third Corps. Reynolds passed the evening with Otis Howard, who remembered making “cheerful conversation on ordinary topics during the meal,” and then for several hours the two of them reviewed the latest dispatches and discussed the fluid situation. The burden of all this intelligence, Howard wrote, “forced the conclusion upon us that Lee’s infantry and artillery in great force were in our neighborhood.” Howard felt Reynolds was depressed by the uncertainty pressing in on him.

  In writing a reply to Meade’s dispatch of earlier that day, giving him the option of falling back on Emmitsburg in the face of enemy attack, Reynolds explained that if the Rebels should occupy Gettysburg and then move against him, he proposed defending a line behind Middle Creek just north of Emmitsburg. There was reason to believe, he said, “that the main force of the enemy is in the vicinity of Cashtown, or debouching from the Cumberland Valley above it.” Reynolds soon saw this confirmed, along with a good deal of ominous detail, in John Buford’s 10:30 P.M. intelligence report from Gettysburg that reached him around midnight. When he finally lay down for a few hours’ sleep on the floor of Moritz’s tavern, General Reynolds had not yet received his marching orders from army headquarters, which told him, on the 1st of July, to take his First Corps to Gettysburg.34

  General Meade, too, ended this last day of June in a state of some unease. He had undertaken several initiatives that day more on intuition than on hard facts. He knew much about the divided condition of his

  Major General John F. Reynolds of the First Corps commanded the Army of the Potomac’s left wing. (National Archives)

  opponent’s army, yet he lacked up-to-the-minute information on the exact whereabouts of all those various elements. At Taneytown he was 14 miles from what surely was soon to be a point of some confrontation, at Gettysburg, and the distance made fresh information all the harder to come by. Yet he must maintain a central location amidst his own divided forces. In any event, Taneytown was the best place from which to direct the assembling of his proposed defensive line behind Pipe Creek. “I continue well,” he wrote his wife that evening, “but much oppressed with a sense of responsibility and the magnitude of the great interests entrusted

  to me…. Pray for me and beseech our heavenly Father to permit me to be an instrument to save my country and advance a just cause.“35

  That evening of June 30 in his camp at Greenwood, on the Chambersburg Pike west of the Cashtown Gap, General Lee’s serene self-confidence had to be at least somewhat inwardly eroded by the continuing mystery of Stuart and the cavalry. In response to the spy Harrison’s revelations, Lee had done all he could for the time being. He had called Dick Ewell back to the army, and sent for Beverly Robertson’s cavalry, although those troopers had too far to come to offer much immediate hope of lifting the intelligence blackout. Just that evening he told Powell Hill that his scouts—whoever they might now be—had put the entire Federal army still in camp in Middleburg, Maryland, 10 miles below the Pennsylvania line. From the lack of urgency in his marching orders, Lee apparently accepted that as fact. General Hill had said tomorrow he would take a second, longer look at whatever Yankees Johnston Pettigrew thought he had seen in Gettysburg that morning. That too General Lee seemed to accept with equanimity.36

  For Jeb Stuart June 30 was the worst of days. At Hanover, 30 miles to the east of Lee’s Greenwood camp, he engaged in what William Blackford called “a hot affair” against Judson Kilpatrick’s Yankee troopers. At nightfall Stuart at last managed to disengage from the Federals and, by detouring ever farther to the east, sought to make contact with Jubal Early’s infantry somewhere in the vicinity of York. It was a terrible all-night march, with men and horses pushed to the edge of exhaustion and beyond. Dawn brought them no reward. Without
a hint of where Ewell’s corps might have gone, Stuart set his course northwest, toward Carlisle.37

  In Gettysburg during that last night of June, John Buford called together his officers to brief them on what to expect the next day and to post them for the fighting he anticipated. Brigade commander Tom Devin expressed confidence that his men would handle anything thrown at them over the next twenty-four hours. “No, you won’t,” answered grim-faced Buford. “They will attack you in the morning and they will come booming—skirmishers three deep. You will have to fight like the devil to hold your own until supports arrive.“38

  7. A Meeting Engagement

  GETTYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, could boast of a true founding father, by name James Gettys, who laid out the town in the 1780s and nurtured its early growth. Incorporated in 1806, the seat of Adams County, Gettysburg by 1863 enjoyed a comfortable prosperity. The majority of the buildings where its 2,400 residents lived or worked or traded were of brick, and there were two institutions of higher learning, the Pennsylvania College and the Lutheran Theological Seminary. It was a market town that listed its leading businesses as carriage-making and blacksmithing. But none of this was enough to mark Gettysburg on history’s calendar. What was shortly to burn its name into the national consciousness was a simple fact of geography. Like another rural market town, Sharpsburg, down in Maryland, Gettysburg was a place where the roads came together.1

  Angling into the town from the west was the Chambersburg Pike, the axis of advance for two corps of Lee’s army; it became, leaving town toward the east, the York Pike. Trisecting the northern quadrants west to east were roads from Mummasburg, Carlisle, and Harrisburg, over which Ewell’s corps was advancing. The roads entering town through the southeastern quadrant, over which the Federals advanced, were (from east to south) the Hanover Road, the Baltimore Pike, and the Taneytown and Emmitsburg roads. Running south by west was the Hagerstown Road. Ten roads altogether, entering from all points of the compass. For anyone traveling (or marching) through south-central Pennsylvania, it was hard to avoid Gettysburg.