Gettysburg

by Stephen W. Sears

  By Howard’s watch it was 11:30 A.M. when he learned of Reynolds’s death and that he was, by seniority, commander on the field. Beyond Reynolds’s earlier instruction to him to hold the high ground of Cemetery Hill south of the town, Howard had little to go on regarding a plan for the fighting. Several of Reynolds’s staff had gone to escort the general’s body to the rear, and were not available to explain what orders he had given and what dispatches he had sent. Still, it seemed apparent to Howard that he ought to follow Reynolds’s lead and attempt (as he later phrased it) “to hold Gettysburg,…to hold this strategic position till the army came up.”

  It was approaching noon now and except for the sporadic artillery duel west of the town, there was a tense but continuing lull in the fighting. To the west, Rebel troops could be seen massing along the Chambersburg Pike in front of Wadsworth’s First Corps division. By report from Buford’s troopers posted on the right flank, Rebels in some force were closing in from the north. This midday pause was clearly a time for incisive decision-making. General Howard’s response was indecision. If it was indeed his intention to hold the strategic position at Gettysburg “till the army came up,” he was grievously hesitant about calling for the reinforcements vitally needed to do so.

  It was not until 1:00 P.M. that Howard sent messages to the nearest supporting troops—Sickles’s Third Corps and Slocum’s Twelfth—and then it was merely to “inform” them that “Ewell’s corps is advancing from York” and that the left wing of the Potomac army was “engaged with A. P. Hill’s corps.” He said nothing of Reynolds’s death, nothing about any intent to fight for Gettysburg, nothing about needing help. After second thoughts that required another half-hour, Howard finally sent appeals for support to Sickles and to Slocum. Taking into account the delivery time for these messages, it would be well after 3 o’clock before any response to his appeal could even be considered.

  And only at 2 o’clock, two and a half hours after he took the command, did Howard get around to reporting to General Meade. He briefly explained that he was posting his forces west and north of the town, that he was facing both Hill’s and Ewell’s corps, and that he had “ordered General Sickles to push forward.” He said nothing to Meade about any determination to hold at Gettysburg until the rest of the army came up, nothing about the therefore urgent requirement to reinforce the First and Eleventh corps, nothing about his request to Slocum for assistance. Blunt John Buford sent a status report of his own that afternoon. General Reynolds had been killed, he told cavalry chief Pleasonton, and “In my opinion, there seems to be no directing person.” He added a stark postscript: “We need help now.“9

  Curiously, it was the one nonprofessional soldier in the quartet of Meade, Howard, Slocum, and Sickles who displayed the one spark of soldierly initiative in this situation. That morning, passing through Emmitsburg, Dan Sickles had sent an aide ahead to find General Reynolds for fresh orders. The aide returned with Reynolds’s battlefield injunction, delivered just before he was killed—“Tell General Sickles I think he had better come up.” In the interim, however, Sickles had been handed Meade’s Pipe Creek circular that ordered the Third Corps to hold Emmitsburg to guard the army’s western flank. Sickles was in a dilemma. Two days before, Meade had berated him for not carrying out a marching order; now he had an order from his immediate superior that directly conflicted with an order from the army commander.

  Sickles temporized by sending again to Reynolds for clarification, but the arrival of Howard’s call for help, and word that Reynolds was dead, spurred him to a decision. Leaving two brigades at Emmitsburg to satisfy Meade’s order, he marched for Gettysburg with his other four. When this was reported to Meade, who was still clinging to his Pipe Creek plan, he sent to Sickles to “hold on” at Emmitsburg “as it is a point not to be abandoned excepting in an extremity.” Receiving this dispatch en route, Sickles regarded it as overtaken by events and continued his march. 10

  As it happened, Dan Sickles’s action came too late to affect events at Gettysburg that day, but at least he showed the initiative to (in effect) march to the sound of the guns. Henry Slocum, for much of the day only five miles from the battlefield, did a good deal less than that. At Two Taverns on the Baltimore Pike, which Slocum’s Twelfth Corps reached in midmorning, the sound of the fighting was quite distinct. “The cannonading became more and more furious,” a Wisconsin soldier remembered, “… until in the distance it sounded like one continual roll of thunder.” There was no doubt, wrote Edmund Brown, 27th Indiana, “that musketry firing was mixed with that of the artillery.” Corporal Brown and his comrades were perplexed as their peaceful stay at Two Taverns stretched well into the afternoon.

  General Slocum was an unassertive, exceedingly careful, by-the-book officer. He had no orders from headquarters to advance beyond Two Taverns, nor did he possess initiative enough to promptly send a staff man ahead to find out about those sounds of battle, or to go himself, nor was he moved to respond to Howard’s plea for reinforcements. After all, General Howard had no authority to give General Slocum orders. In due course, when it was finally clarified for him that a battle was actually in progress, Slocum did march his corps for Gettysburg … and started far too late to change anything. Major Charles H. Howard, General Howard’s brother and aide-de-camp, remarked in exasperation that on July 1 General Slocum demonstrated “the fitness of his name Slow come.”

  So it happened that through much of that hot July afternoon, when the fighting resumed at Gettysburg in greater force than before, there was a decided misconnection between the Yankee generals on the battlefield and the Yankee generals in the rest of the Army of the Potomac. As a consequence, all the infantry fighting on the Federal side that day would be done solely by the First Corps and the Eleventh Corps.11

  While these ranking generals haltingly tried to puzzle out what was going on and what if anything they ought to do about it, the troops called up earlier by General Reynolds were arriving to fill out the thin Union battle lines west of Gettysburg. During the midday lull the rest of the First Corps, the divisions of John C. Robinson and Thomas A. Rowley—Rowley was taking Doubleday’s place—reached the scene first and took their places alongside Wadsworth’s bloodied division. Doubleday posted Rowley’s two brigades, under Chapman Biddle and Roy Stone, on McPherson’s Ridge to the left and right respectively of Meredith’s Iron Brigade. Cutler’s brigade north of the Chambersburg Pike was reinforced by Henry Baxter’s and Gabriel Paul’s brigades of Robinson’s division. Colonel Wainwright brought up the other four First Corps batteries in support.

  The left and center of this line continued facing west in expectation of a renewed assault by A. P. Hill’s corps. On the right, north of the Chambersburg Pike, the expectation of Ewell’s approach caused the line to turn to face north by west. One important First Corps reinforcement, however, would not reach the field in time. General-in-Chief Halleck’s manipulations to unseat Joe Hooker had included holding back Hooker’s reinforcements, and consequently the brigade of Vermonters under George Stannard, assigned to the First Corps from the Department of Washington, had been started north too late to join the fighting that day. The four brigades of Rowley’s and Robinson’s divisions that did reach the battlefield comprised some 7,700 effectives. The First Corps, including Wadsworth’s battered division, would thus confront the enemy that afternoon with fewer than 10,000 men.

  The Eleventh Corps was now coming on the field as well. Like the First, the Eleventh contained six brigades in three divisions, but it remained sadly understrength after its Chancellorsville debacle, and on this day would bring fewer than 8,700 men to Gettysburg. Barlow’s and Schurz’s divisions, marching on parallel roads, arrived by 1 o’clock and were directed by Howard to march on through Gettysburg and out to the fields north of the town. Schurz assumed field command of the corps. The third division, von Steinwehr’s, arrived about 2 o’clock and was posted as a general reserve on Cemetery Hill, where Howard had established his headquarters. With von Ste
inwehr in reserve were two of the corps’ five batteries.

  General Howard probably had only an approximate idea of the strength of the First Corps, but he was certainly aware of the depleted condition of his own corps. Yet here he was posting some 5,200 infantry and three batteries in the fields to the north of Gettysburg to do prospective battle with what by all accounts was Ewell’s Confederate corps. And Howard knew this was Ewell, having reviewed the latest intelligence with Reynolds the evening before and with Buford after arriving on the field. It was understood that Ewell represented one-third of Lee’s army. The Eleventh Corps represented one-seventh—a small one-seventh, as it were—of Meade’s army. The case could therefore be made that Otis Howard’s failure to call immediately and aggressively for reinforcements was negligence on a level with his failings at Chancellorsville. He may well have intended, as he later said, to “hold until at least Slocum and Sickles … could reach the field,” but the wait would be longer than it had to be and proved costly beyond all expectations. 12

  The brigade was the basic unit of maneuver in these armies, and in the Gettysburg campaign Union and Confederate brigades were, on average, virtually identical in size. Confederate divisions, however, were substantially larger, and therefore in this July 1 contest the Rebels held a considerable manpower edge. West of Gettysburg, for example, the divisions of Heth and Pender each contained four brigades, while the Federal First Corps divisions of Wadsworth, Rowley, and Robinson opposing them contained but two brigades each, leaving the Yankees outnumbered eight brigades to six. On the developing northern front the disparity was even greater. Dick Ewell’s two divisions, under Rodes and Early, had five and four brigades respectively, while the three Eleventh Corps divisions under Schurz, Barlow, and von Steinwehr had only two brigades each—a commanding Confederate edge of nine to six; and with von Steinwehr in reserve, the edge on the field was actually nine to four. The failings of Howard to promptly ask for reinforcements (and of Meade to promptly order them) would greatly imperil the Army of the Potomac on this first day of July.

  General Howard was as slow to appraise the prospective battlefield as he was to call for reinforcements to defend it. According to Doubleday, it was not until 2 o’clock or after that Howard rode out to McPherson’s Ridge to inspect the First Corps’ position. Buford had picked this ridgeline that morning as part of his defense-in-depth scheme to inflict maximum delay on the Rebels advancing from the west. Reynolds had put Wadsworth’s infantry there for the same purpose, and to relieve Buford’s beleaguered troopers. Now, four hours later, much had changed. Ewell was reported approaching from the north, making the McPherson’s Ridge position suddenly and exceedingly vulnerable to being turned. Tactical wisdom called for pulling the First Corps back to more easily defended Seminary Ridge, and doing so during the midday calm. That in turn would give the Eleventh Corps a shorter and more compact line to defend against Ewell north of the town.

  If such tactical wisdom occurred to Howard, it was but a belated thought. The hour was late, the enemy was threatening, and Howard kept Doubleday in place on McPherson’s Ridge, merely telling him (as Doubleday remembered it) to retreat in case he was “forced back.” Few elements of the military art are more difficult than conducting an orderly withdrawal while under attack (something Otis Howard in particular should have remembered from Chancellorsville). In the event, the First Corps stayed where it was, the two thin Eleventh Corps divisions manned a widely extended line facing north—and a recipe for military disaster was fixed in place. 13

  DICK EWELL, riding with Robert Rodes’s division, had reached the village of Middletown on their morning’s march toward Cashtown when A. P. Hill’s courier found him and reported that Hill was embarked on an expedition to Gettysburg. Ewell promptly turned Rodes south onto the Carlisle Road toward Gettysburg, and sent orders to Jubal Early to turn his division toward the same objective by way of the Harrisburg Road to the east. When they had closed to within about four miles of Gettysburg, Ewell and Rodes were surprised to hear sounds of battle. They hurried ahead to investigate. From an eminence called Oak Hill they looked upon a scene to warm any general’s heart. As Rodes put it, “I could strike the force of the enemy with which General Hill’s troops were engaged upon the flank, and … whenever we struck the enemy we could engage him with the advantage in ground.”

  James Thompson of the 6th Alabama, Rodes’s division, would remember the view from atop Oak Hill as extraordinary. Rank upon rank of A. P. Hill’s troops were plainly seen “away to our right across broad fields of ripe wheat….” Thompson described it as “the only time during the war that we were in a position to get such a view of contending forces. It seemed like some grand panorama with the sounds of conflict added.“14

  The god of battles appeared to be smiling upon the Confederacy. Beginning the day knowing virtually nothing about the Federals’ whereabouts, the two wings of the Army of Northern Virginia had stumbled blindly into positions to smite the Yankees in front and flank simultaneously. It was as if they had planned it that way.

  To press the advantage, Rodes directed his division to leave the road and advance along the wooded crest of Oak Ridge, which would not only give him the high ground but ought to conceal his approach as well. With five brigades his was the largest division in the army, although somewhat uneven in leadership. Dodson Ramseur and George Doles were skilled enough brigadiers, but Junius Daniel, up from North Carolina with his new brigade, would be experiencing his first command test in Lee’s army. Alfred Iverson displayed a singular discordance with his men, and Edward O’Neal thus far had demonstrated minimal command skills; O’Neal was heading Rodes’s old brigade over Rodes’s protests. To get into line of battle as quickly as possible, Rodes had to post his brigades according to their order of march—a decision that in the end would cost him much of his initial advantage.

  On July 1 the Union’s O. O. Howard, left, faced attack by Robert Rodes. (Library of Congress-U.S. Army Military History Institute)

  Rodes’s haste was made necessary by a rapidly changing battlefront. Tom Devin’s cavalry pickets, alerted by Federal intelligence, were posted north of Gettysburg specifically to look for Ewell’s approach, and they sounded the alarm in timely fashion. In the uneasy calm following the repulse of Heth’s morning attacks from the west, Doubleday ordered Henry Baxter’s brigade from Robinson’s newly arrived First Corps division to move up to protect the corps’ northern flank. Howard gave the same mission to the Eleventh Corps divisions of Schurz and Barlow as they arrived. Rodes and Ewell, during the time it took to deploy the troops for battle, found themselves surveying a new military chessboard. Surprise would not be a deciding factor in the contest after all.15

  Perhaps remembering how deliberately his mentor, Stonewall Jackson, had posted his forces before striking the Union flank at Chancellorsville, Rodes held off the launch of his own flank attack until everyone, reserves as well as front line, got into place. Meanwhile, to initiate the new battleground, he brought forward two batteries to Oak Hill and opened on the Yankee infantry north of the Chambersburg Pike. Two of Colonel Wainwright’s batteries responded. Then Harry Heth’s guns to the west chimed in. In the midst of this artillery duel, Major Campbell Brown arrived back from his mission to General Lee and found Ewell helping to post Rodes’s guns. Brown reported the army commander’s orders: a general engagement “was to be avoided until the arrival of the rest of the army.”

  Now it was Dick Ewell’s turn to face a moment of decision, and he acted with Jackson-like decisiveness. Rodes held the high ground and was deploying for battle. His guns were already engaged with those of the enemy. To the west, Powell Hill had apparently already been heavily engaged. To the east, long columns of Yankee infantry were emerging from Gettysburg and approaching Oak Hill, very possibly to strike at Rodes’s flank. “It was too late to avoid an engagement without abandoning the position already taken up,” Ewell would write in his report, “and I determined to push the attack vigorously.“16

>   It was 1:30 P.M. now, and about a mile and a quarter southwest of Oak Hill, on a rise of ground called Belmont Ridge alongside the Chambersburg Pike, General Lee joined Powell Hill to observe fighting he had not anticipated, and did not want, erupt before his eyes in a barrage of flame and smoke and thunderous noise. So far as he could see, it was as yet only an artillery battle—Ewell’s guns on the high ground to the northeast and Harry Heth’s guns on the Chambersburg Pike dueling with the Yankee batteries in front of Gettysburg. Perhaps he might yet gain control of events.

  Just then Harry Heth rode up. Still smarting from his morning’s defeat and anxious to redeem himself, he addressed Lee: General Ewell was on the enemy’s flank; was it not time to put his division, reinforced now by Pender’s, back into the fight? Lee’s response was brief and pointed and no doubt intended as a reproof to both Heth and Hill. “I do not wish to bring on a general engagement today,” he said; “Longstreet is not up.” Lee sent Heth back to his division, and continued watching and waiting to see what Dick Ewell was going to do in response to his earlier instructions.

  During this noisy hiatus General Lee received another messenger—Andrew Venable of the cavalry, at last bringing word from the long absent Jeb Stuart. Major Venable had set out that morning from Dover, a village well to the east, near York, and had ridden some 30 miles in search of the army. This was Lee’s first direct communication with Stuart in a week. General Stuart, Venable explained, was then on his way to Carlisle on the trail of Ewell’s corps. Lee sent Venable hurrying back to Stuart with orders to bring the cavalry to Gettysburg “at once.” It would be midnight before Venable could reach Carlisle, which promised the arrival of the cavalry late in the day on July 2 at the earliest. Whatever decisions General Lee might make, he would not have the benefit of any cavalry intelligence or reconnaissance or screening for at least the next twenty-four hours. 17