Gettysburg
Page 40
Nearby on Cemetery Ridge the 13th Vermont of Stannard’s brigade, the first of the First Corps’ reinforcements, reported for duty to General Hancock. The general, pointing to Lieutenant Weir’s battery, said to Colonel Francis Randall, “The enemy are pressing me hard—they have just captured that battery yonder…. Can you retake it?” The 13th Vermont was a nine-month regiment, fresh from the Washington defenses, never in action before, but Colonel Randall was not cowed by a challenge. “I can, and damn quick too, if you will let me,” he said. Hancock let him.
Randall was leading his vermonters down the slope at the double-quick when his horse was hit and he was pinned by the fallen animal. “Go on boys,” he yelled, “I’ll be at your head as soon as I get out of this damned saddle.” He was as good as his word. The 13th ran right over the surprised Rebel line and recaptured Weir’s battery. General Hancock, following along behind, told the vermonters to go on ahead and he would take care of the prisoners.57
General Meade was right on the battlefield as well. He and several of his staff, riding the lines on Cemetery Ridge, had reined up in the gap Rans Wright was striving to reach. Just then, amidst the drifting battle smoke and the din of musketry and cannon fire, they could see no Yankee troops to fill the void. “The general realizes the situation but too well,” wrote Meade’s son and aide. “He straightens himself in his stirrups, as do also the aides who now ride closer to him, bracing themselves up to meet the crisis. It is in the minds of those who follow him that he is going to throw himself into the breach….” But just then someone cried out, “There they come, General!” Up rode John Newton, new commander of the First Corps, heading a column of reinforcements. Newton reported for orders and offered the commanding general his flask, and the two drank a toast even as an enemy shell spattered them with dirt. Waving his hat, General Meade called out, “Come on, gentlemen!” and led the troops into a blocking position.58
Soon afterward orders came to Alpheus Williams that matters were now safely in hand on Cemetery Ridge and that his Twelfth Corps division should return to Culp’s Hill. As he rode northward in the dusk Williams came on General Meade and a gathering of his officers, and he learned that “we had successfully resisted all the Rebel attacks and had punished them severely. There was a pleasant gathering in an open field, and gratification and gratulation abounded.”
It was perhaps at this gathering that Captain George Meade, the general’s son, heard someone observe that affairs that day had seemed at one time to be pretty desperate. “Yes,” said General Meade, “but it is all right now, it is all right now.” His sentiment proved to be somewhat premature, yet that did not diminish the essential truth of it.59
11. Determined to Do or Die
BRIGADIER GENERAL George Sears Greene was sixty-two, the oldest Union general on the field. He had graduated second in West Point’s class of 1823, taught engineering at the Academy, and in 1836 resigned and started a new, and distinguished, career as a civil engineer. He had served in field command since the spring of 1862. When his brigade arrived on Culp’s Hill on the morning of July 2, Greene met with divisional commander John Geary to mark out their defensive line. General Geary said that personally he opposed building breastworks. After fighting behind breastworks, he said, the men became less than stalwart in the open field. But he would leave the matter to his brigadiers. “Pop” Greene thought Geary’s theory absurd. Fighting behind breastworks as recently as Chancellorsville had not left his men timid, and by noon, under his expert engineer’s eye, his brigade had erected an imposing defensive line. The rest of Geary’s division followed Greene’s example.
“Culp’s Hill was covered with woods, so all the materials needful were at our disposal,” wrote one of Greene’s officers. “Right and left the men felled the trees, and blocked them up into a close log fence. Piles of cordwood which lay near were quickly appropriated. The sticks, set slanting on end against the outer face of the logs, made excellent battening.” Rocks and dirt served as reinforcement, and felled trees blocked the approaches. At least part of the works included raised head-logs, enabling riflemen to fire with nearly complete protection. This irregular line of works faced eastward and extended from the crest of Culp’s Hill to its base, near Rock Creek. At his brigade’s right flank, halfway down the hill, engineer Greene constructed a traverse line at right angles to the main line to guard a difficult stretch of ground. Lieutenant Randolph McKim, on the staff of “Maryland” Steuart’s Confederate brigade confronting this line, wrote of July 2, “Greatly did officers and men marvel as morning, noon, and afternoon passed in inaction—on our part, not on the enemy’s, for, as we well knew, he was plying axe and pick and shovel….“1
Dick Ewell had been told that Longstreet’s offensive would commence at 4:00 P.M., and so he was prompt to open his artillery demonstration at that hour. As to the second half of General Lee’s directive—the demonstration “to be converted into a real attack should opportunity offer”—Ewell seems to have defined “opportunity” by two factors. The first was signs of progress on Longstreet’s front. Ewell sent staff members climbing into the cupola of the Catholic church in Gettysburg to view the fighting against the enemy’s left, which by early evening, if sight and sound could be believed, appeared to be progressing well. The ultimate objective, to join with Longstreet’s forces atop Cemetery Hill, seemed feasible. Second, since he and his lieutenants had assured Lee of the grave risks in assaulting Cemetery and Culp’s hills in daylight, Ewell apparently welcomed concealing dusk as the opportune time for an attack. In any event, as his failed artillery bombardment sputtered out (and, unknown to him, as Longstreet’s offensive sputtered out), and as the sun sank in the west, General Ewell ordered his infantry forward.
Here as elsewhere on the field that day, Confederate tactics called for an attack en echelon. First, Allegheny Johnson would strike Culp’s Hill from the east. Once Johnson’s assault was under way, Jubal Early would move his division against Cemetery Hill from the northeast, followed by Robert Rodes against Cemetery Hill from the northwest. Johnson started forward about 7 o’clock; sunset was due at 7:29. The operation would hardly be well along before it was full dark. The moon was one night past full, but how much illumination it might furnish in wooded areas and on a smoke-blanketed field was problematical.
Ewell’s timing was unknowingly perfect. Five of the six Twelfth Corps brigades had been pulled out to meet Longstreet’s offensive. Only Greene’s 1,400-man brigade remained on Culp’s Hill to confront Allegheny Johnson’s division. Johnson made his attack with just three of his four brigades—the Stonewall Brigade was occupied with Yankee cavalry in the rear—or some 4,700 men. That kind of manpower edge would likely have been decisive elsewhere on the field that day, but against Pop Greene’s providential and well-constructed breastworks the odds leveled out.
The moment the rest of the Twelfth Corps was ordered away, Greene had begun shifting and extending his five regiments to man at least some of the empty breastworks on his vulnerable right, toward the base of the hill. Much as Joshua Chamberlain had done with the 20th Maine on Little Round Top, Greene ended up with a much-thinned single-rank battle line without reserves. Then, the moment the enemy began its advance, he called on the First and Eleventh corps to his left for help. In due course General Wadsworth, manning the north face of Culp’s Hill, would send over three of his battle-worn First Corps regiments. From Cemetery Hill General Howard added four of his Eleventh Corps regiments. These reinforcements totaled only about 750 men, but they served Greene as a valuable reserve and as relief for units running low on ammunition. 2
Brigadier General George Sears Greene led his brigade in the defense of Culp’s Hill on the evening of July 2. (National Archives)
John M. Jones’s brigade, on the right of Johnson’s battle line, faced the most daunting prospect—a climb up the steepest part of Culp’s Hill to reach the Yankee line on the crest. In the darkening evening Jones’s Virginians scrambled up the rocky slope through the brush a
nd trees, losing all alignment until, said T. R. Buckner of the 44th Virginia, “all was confusion and disorder.” The appearance of the works on the heights above came as a shock. Captain Buckner described them, with some exaggeration, as “of a formidable character, and in some places they could scarcely be surmounted without scaling-ladders.” According to the 42nd Virginia’s Captain Jesse Richardson, his regiment “got within 30 paces of the enemy’s works, driving all the enemy within them. Some of the men got nearer.” Still, these charges must have been beaten off with comparative ease (wounding General Jones in the process), for losses in the 60th New York, which took the brunt of Jones’s attack, were described as “very small, so perfect was our concealment.” It might have been otherwise, wrote one of the 60th New York’s officers: “Without breastworks our line would have been swept away in an instant by the hailstorm of bullets and the flood of men.”
The Louisiana brigade under Colonel Jesse M. Williams, at the center of the Confederate attacking force, had very much the same experience as Jones’s Virginians. The terrain was rugged, the night dark, the enemy works forbidding. Williams reported reaching a position some 100 yards from the Yankee line on the hill, and from there launching “several attempts to carry the works by assault … attended with more loss than success.” The regiments defending the breastworks here, the 78th and 102nd New York, suffered but a handful of casualties during what Colonel Williams claimed was “an almost incessant fire for four hours….“3
While Jones and Williams achieved nothing in their assaults, Maryland Steuart came a good deal closer to breaking the Culp’s Hill line that evening. Steuart’s advantages were twofold: The terrain near the base of Culp’s Hill was considerably less forbidding, and Steuart’s battle line was considerably longer than Greene’s.
Maryland Steuart had been brought in by General Lee to harness a fractious brigade that contained three regiments from Virginia, two from North Carolina, and a Maryland battalion (a battalion in name but a regiment in size). Perhaps with state rivalries in mind, Steuart set up his attack line with the 10th, 23rd, and 37th Virginia regiments together on the left, separated from the 3rd North Carolina by the 1st Maryland battalion; the 1st North Carolina was in reserve. Like the rest of Johnson’s division, Steuart’s brigade had spent the day in concealment east of Rock Creek, so there was no advance reconnaissance of the Federal positions. Some delay was encountered crossing Rock Creek, deepened here by a milldam downstream, so that on this east face of Culp’s Hill it was getting dark even before Steuart’s men made contact with the Yankees.
Steuart’s regiments on his right went up against the works manned by the Union flank regiments, the 149th and 137th New York, and made little progress. But the 137th, last in the line of Greene’s regiments, was outflanked by both the 23rd and 10th Virginia, and that was a recipe for trouble.
Edwin Forbes’s painting, based on his battlefield sketch, depicts the sturdy breastworks on the crest of Culp’s Hill. (Library of Congress)
The two Virginia regiments soon discovered that the enemy fire was coming from their right rather than from their front. Indeed, the 10th Virginia found itself peering into a line of empty breastworks, “which was carried with a shout,” said its colonel. The Virginians promptly wheeled right and began firing into the unprotected flank of the 137th New York. “I ordered Company A, the right-flank company, to form at right angles with the breastworks and check the advance of the enemy…,“the 137th’s Colonel David Ireland reported, “but being sorely pressed, they fell back….” The New Yorkers were sorely pressed all the way back to the traverse line that Pop Greene had fortuitously erected facing south. Behind this they were able to make an equal fight against further Rebel advances. But the cost was high; that night Colonel Ireland lost almost a third of his men.
By this time it was full dark, and the battle fought by faint moonlight in the woods amidst clouds of choking smoke turned chaotic. Colonel Edward Warren, 10th Virginia, later tried to explain: “It was now dark and the regularity of our lines was not preserved and some confusion arose on account of our uncertainty as to the position of the enemy and of our forces, and great apprehension exhibited by officers and men lest we should fire into our friends.” Exactly that happened. Lieutenant Randolph McKim of Steuart’s staff brought up the 1st North Carolina from its reserve position to brace the assault, and as he placed the men he saw muzzle flashes from where he supposed the enemy to be. “Fire on them, boys; fire on them!” he cried. After several volleys a Confederate officer came rushing up to McKim shouting, “They are our own men!” So they were—the 1st North Carolina had fired into the 1st Maryland battalion. “I believe no injury resulted from my mistake,” McKim wrote hopefully, but according to the 1st Maryland’s historian, there were casualties from this friendly fire. 4
The reinforcements rushed to General Greene had their share of adventures. The First Corps sent over Rufus Dawes’s 6th Wisconsin, of the Iron Brigade, which Greene directed toward his threatened flank. In the darkness the 6th stumbled blindly right into a line of equally surprised Rebels, who, Dawes wrote, “rose up and fired a volley at us, and immediately retreated down the hill. This remarkable encounter did not last a minute. We lost two men, killed—both burned with the powder of the guns fired at them.”
There was one adventure of a rather different sort. When he heard the eruption of firing from Culp’s Hill, Winfield Hancock quickly deduced the threat it represented, and “without application or instructions” volunteered help from his Second Corps. One of the regiments sent was the 71st Pennsylvania. The 71st was welcomed by Captain Charles Horton of Greene’s staff and put in next to the embattled 137th New York. The newcomers were subjected to a scattering of fire in the darkness—not very severe fire, according to Captain Horton—when to Horton’s astonishment the Pennsylvanians abruptly “rose up and retreated in line, apparently without panic or disorder.” Horton demanded an explanation from Colonel Richard P. Smith. Smith said without apology that he had ordered his regiment to retreat, “saying that he would not have his men murdered.” The 71st Pennsylvania, wrote an angry Captain Horton, “thereupon marched to the rear to the sound of the enemy’s guns.” Colonel Smith would report fourteen casualties suffered during his brief stay on Culp’s Hill that night, and his strange behavior apparently went unremarked—at least in the Second Corps.5
By now the five absent brigades of the Twelfth Corps were being recalled to Culp’s Hill. “I returned toward my entrenchments after dark,” wrote General Alpheus Williams, “and was met with the astounding intelligence that they were taken possession of by the Rebels in my absence!” There followed a series of sharp, exceedingly confusing encounters in the dark woods as the Yankees tried to reclaim their former positions and Maryland Steuart’s Virginians tried to hold on to their gains.
The 2nd Massachusetts approached its old lines “crawling along cautiously and quietly” in the darkness when voices were heard ahead. Major Charles F. Morse advanced two scouts. “Boys, what regiment do you belong to?” one of the scouts called out. “Twenty-third” was the reply. “Twenty-third what?” asked the scout. “Twenty-third Virginia” was the response, suspicious now, and then, “Why, they are Yanks!” There was a brief tussle and one of the scouts was captured but the other one escaped to spread the alarm. The 2nd Massachusetts pulled back to safer ground.
General Williams saw no merit to these blind encounters. “I had had experience in trying to retake breastworks after dark,” he wrote, “so I ordered all the brigades to occupy the open field in front of the woods, put out a strong picket line, and waited daylight for further operations.” For his part, Allegheny Johnson had to rest content with the foothold Steuart’s brigade had won in the unoccupied Yankee works. The brigades of John M. Jones and Jesse Williams were pulled back off Culp’s Hill and they too waited for daylight and fresh orders.6
ON CEMETERY HILL Otis Howard was tracking the assault on Culp’s Hill with some trepidation, for he suspected he would b
e the Rebels’ next target and his confidence in the fighting men of his Eleventh Corps was not very high. Two months earlier, at Chancellorsville, the Eleventh Corps had collapsed under Stonewall Jackson’s attack. Twenty-four hours earlier, under attack by Jackson’s successor Dick Ewell, it collapsed again. General Howard, calling for help from other corps, admitted that he could not rely on his own men.
Howard had to be prepared for attack from two directions—from the northwest against Cemetery Hill proper, and from the northeast against that portion of the hill east of the Baltimore Pike, called East Cemetery Hill. The core of his defense, regardless of direction, was artillery. Facing northwest were some twenty-five guns, braced by the infantry of Carl Schurz’s and Adolph von Steinwehr’s divisions. It was from Schurz’s division that Howard had sent reinforcements to Pop Greene on Culp’s Hill. Positioned on the crest of East Cemetery Hill by Colonel Wainwright specifically to meet an infantry assault were four batteries, twenty-two guns. The infantry support here was Barlow’s division, led now, after