Gettysburg

  It was late, after 10:30, when the moonlit hills and fields marking the Gettysburg battleground fell mostly silent except for the occasional crack of a picket’s rifle and that ever present undertone of every battlefield, the moans and cries of the wounded. Soon visible from Devil’s Den all the way around to Culp’s Hill were the bobbing lanterns of the stretcher bearers searching for casualties. By unspoken mutual agreement the opposing pickets left these samaritans to their work.

  AT 8 O’CLOCK that Thursday evening, General Meade reported on the day’s fighting to General-in-Chief Halleck in Washington. “The enemy attacked me about 4 P.M. this day,” he began, “and, after one of the severest contests of the war, was repulsed at all points.” After noting casualties, especially in the officer corps, Meade sketched out his plans: “I shall remain in my present position tomorrow, but am not prepared to say, until better advised of the condition of the army, whether my operations will be of an offensive or defensive character.”

  Within the hour, to advise him on the critical matter of the condition of the enemy’s army, Meade summoned to headquarters Colonel George Sharpe, of the Bureau of Military Information. In the cramped front room of the Leister house, Sharpe found General Meade seated at a small table and, on a rough cot in the corner, Generals Hancock and Slocum. Hancock sat at the foot of the cot and Slocum was stretched out on it. A note from the B.M.I. had come to Meade in late afternoon reading, “Prisoners have been taken today, and last evening, from every brigade in Lee’s Army excepting the four brigades of Picketts Division.” Meade asked Sharpe for any further intelligence that might elaborate on that earlier finding. Sharpe excused himself and consulted with his aide John Babcock and soon returned to headquarters to find the three generals in the same tableau.

  Sharpe explained that some 1,300 prisoners were under guard by the provost marshal, and that interrogation of them under Babcock’s direction had identified nearly 100 Confederate regiments in action on Wednesday and Thursday. On the B.M.I.‘s carefully charted order of battle for the Army of Northern Virginia, not one of those regiments belonged to Pickett. Sharpe was assertive: “Pickett’s division has come up and is now in bivouac, and will be ready to go into action fresh tomorrow morning.” At that, Hancock turned to Meade, raised his fist, and said emphatically, “General, we have got them nicked!”

  Hancock had good reason for his confidence. From Sharpe’s report it was now clear that Lee had already committed his entire army, except for Pickett’s division, to the battle—and had been, in Meade’s phrase, “repulsed at all points.” Lee had only Pickett to enhance a further attack (and Pickett had, in fact, three brigades rather than four as credited by the B.M.I.). The Army of the Potomac had Sedgwick’s big Sixth Corps to enhance its defense (or its offense). With this vital intelligence in hand, General Meade determined to call his lieutenants into council to discuss the army’s course for the next day.15

  The gathering, as John Gibbon noted, “was at first very informal and in the shape of a conversation….” The room was small, not more than twelve by twelve feet, stuffy and thick with cigar smoke, lit by a single candle. Howard was the last to arrive, after the Cemetery Hill position was secured, raising the total of generals present to twelve—Meade; John Newton, new commander of the First Corps; Hancock, wing commander on the left; Gibbon of the Second Corps; David Birney of the Third Corps, replacing the wounded Sickles; Sykes of the Fifth Corps; Sedgwick of the Sixth; Howard of the Eleventh; Alpheus Williams of the Twelfth; Slocum, self-appointed right-wing commander; Chief of Staff Butterfield; and chief engineer Warren. Seeing Slocum already there, Williams asked Meade if he should leave, but was directed to stay. Thus the Twelfth Corps, like the Second, was doubly represented. Gouverneur Warren, exhausted from his long day’s labors, lay down in a corner and slept through the proceedings.

  The first need was to evaluate the condition of the army, and each general in turn recounted the day’s fighting on his front and the state of his troops. Birney said the Third Corps was “used up” and not in good condition to fight after Thursday’s ordeal. Each was asked how many men he could put in the field the next day. The total came to 58,000 infantry. Newton, who had only just arrived on the field with the Sixth Corps, was quoted by Gibbon as saying, “this was no place to fight a battle in.” Newton was well respected as an engineer, and his remark set off some discussion. His point, as he later described it, was that there was danger that Lee would turn the army’s left and get between it and its supplies—“and ought to do so.” He recalled, Newton wrote, “taking the ground that Lee was not fool enough to attack us in front after two days’ fighting which had ended in consolidating us into a position immensely strong.” At the same time, it was pointed out that pulling back to prevent the left from being turned—back to the Pipe Creek line, say—would be a highly dangerous maneuver to attempt in the immediate presence of the enemy. Hancock said he was “puzzled about the practicability of retiring.”

  There was also discussion about supplies. In the recent days of maneuvering the army had outrun its supply line, with the closest depot at Westminster, in Maryland. “We had but one single day’s rations for the army,” Alpheus Williams wrote. “Many corps had not even one.” It was hoped that with the beef cattle and flour on hand, he added, “we could eke out a few half-fed days.” But supplies remained a worrisome problem.

  Through all this discussion, which went on for some time—and which was accompanied by the last of the cannonading from Cemetery Hill—General Meade said little beyond an occasional comment, but seemed to be listening for the tenor of his lieutenants’ thinking about the next day. He had, after all, already told Washington he would “remain in my present position tomorrow….” He seems to have decided that their thinking should be on record, for in due course, when Butterfield suggested formulating questions for a vote, in the manner of a council, Meade agreed.

  General Meade’s council of generals at his headquarters on the evening of July 2, as an artist imagined it. Meade, standing, faces a gesturing Winfield Scott Hancock. (U.S. Army Military History Institute)

  With the commanding general’s concurrence, Butterfield posed three questions:

  “1. Under existing circumstances is it advisable for this army to remain in its present position or to retire to another nearer its base of supplies?

  2. It being determined to remain in present position, should the army attack or wait the attack of the enemy?

  3. If we wait attack, how long?”

  Answers were solicited from the nine generals of corps rank in reverse order of seniority. John Gibbon therefore went first. In consideration of Newton’s view about the army’s lines, Gibbon voted (as Butterfield recorded it), on the first question, to “correct position of the army but would not retreat.” Williams, Birney, Sykes, Howard, and Sedgwick voted simply, “stay.” Slocum said, “Stay and fight it out.” Hancock wanted to “rectify” the position, but only “without moving to give up the field.” Newton used the same phrasing as Gibbon, and Gibbon wrote that “we had some playful sparring as to whether he agreed with me or I with him.” The vote was unanimous that the army should stay where it was, whether “correcting” its lines or not.

  On the second question, of attacking or awaiting attack, the vote to await attack was also unanimous. Some were emphatic. “By all means not attack,” said Newton. “In no condition to attack,” said Gibbon. Hancock offered the only qualification: “No attack unless our communications are cut.”

  On question three, on how long to wait for Lee’s attack, there was more variation of opinion, apparently in part because of the supply question. Answers ranged from one day, to “until Lee moved” (Gibbon), to if not attacked, “attack them” (Howard). But again, the overall result was unanimity. General Meade now had a clear sense of his generals’ thinking. “I recollect there was great good feeling amongst the Corps Commanders at their agreeing so unanimously,” Gibbon wrote, “and Gen. Meade announced, in a decided manner, ‘Such th
en is the decision.’”

  John Gibbon, in command of the Second Corps at the center of the line on Cemetery Ridge, concluded his account of the evening’s council by recording a conversation he had with Meade at about midnight, just as they adjourned. There was no question the council had favored acting on the defensive, “awaiting the action of Lee,” and in reference to this, wrote Gibbon, “Meade said to me, ‘If Lee attacks tomorrow, it will be in your front.’ I asked him why he thought so and he replied, ‘Because he has made attacks on both our flanks and failed and if he concludes to try it again, it will be on our centre.’ I expressed a hope that he would and told Gen. Meade with confidence that if he did, we would defeat him.”

  Privately Meade expressed his own confidence. Early next morning he took a moment to write a hurried note to his wife: “Dearest love, All well and going on well with the Army. We had a great fight yesterday, the enemy attacking & we completely repulsing them—both armies shattered…. Army in fine spirits & every one determined to do or die.“16

  A DOZEN YEARS after the war, analyzing the Confederates’ Day Two fighting, Lee’s aide Walter Taylor concluded that “The whole affair was disjointed. There was an utter absence of accord in the movements of the several commands, and no decisive result attended the operations….” General Lee seems to have held the same opinion—a visitor to army headquarters that evening described him as “not in good humor over the miscarriage of his plans and his orders”—although in his report he painted it over with a bright coat of optimism. “The result of this day’s operations,” he wrote of July 2, “induced the belief that, with proper concert of action, and with the increased support that the positions gained on the right would enable the artillery to render the assaulting columns, we should ultimately succeed, and it was accordingly determined to continue the attack.”

  Lee took that decision Thursday night before the guns had hardly cooled. In contrast to General Meade, he did so without consulting a single one of his lieutenants. In a display of sublime self-confidence he said simply, “The general plan was unchanged.“17

  It was James Longstreet’s habit, after a hard day’s fighting, to present himself at Lee’s headquarters to report on the condition of his command and to discuss what ought to be done next. It was a hallmark of their relationship. After that bloody, terrible day at Sharpsburg, for example, Old Pete had ridden to Lee’s headquarters and been greeted warmly—“Ah! here is Longstreet; here’s my old warhorse!” After this bloody, terrible day at Gettysburg, however, Old Pete merely sent a courier with a brief report of his doings to army headquarters, and remained stolidly at his own headquarters behind the Emmitsburg Road. His mood was sour. When the Austrian observer FitzGerald Ross queried him about the day’s events, he said shortly, “We have not been so successful as we wished,” and blamed it on officer casualties, especially those of Hood and Barksdale.

  Later, writing privately to General McLaws, Longstreet revealed what his true intentions had been for July 2. The offensive “went further than I intended that it should…. It was my intention not to pursue this attack, if it was likely to prove the enemy’s position too strong for my two divisions.” But instead of stepping in to halt the misguided operation the moment it ran into trouble, Longstreet had watched his inspired officers and men smash through the Yankee lines. “Then was fairly commenced,” he wrote proudly, “what I do not hesitate to pronounce the best three hours’ fighting ever done by any troops on any battlefield.” In the end Old Pete had to pull back somewhat from his gains in the face of heavy Federal reinforcements, and his opinion that from the beginning this was a misguided operation was not changed in the least.18

  General Lee, for his part, very likely did not care to listen to Longstreet’s predictable opinions and objections, and so he did not visit him or summon him to headquarters. Lee’s orders for July 3 reached Longstreet probably about 10 o’clock that Thursday night. The orders themselves are not on record—they were probably delivered verbally—but the best description of their content is artillerist Porter Alexander’s. He visited Longstreet’s headquarters that evening “to ask the news from other quarters & orders for the morning…. I was told that we would renew the attack early in the morning. That Pickett’s division would arrive and would assault the enemy’s line. My impression is the exact point for it was not designated, but I was told it would be to our left of the Peach Orchard.”

  James Longstreet could be a remarkably stubborn man, and the receipt of these attack orders did not dissuade him from again building a case against them. During the night he sent scouts off to his right, around Round Top, to investigate the possibility of seizing the Taneytown Road and turning Meade’s southern flank. This was not the grand turning movement he had first proposed on July 1—to impose the army to the south between Meade and Baltimore and Washington—but a repeat of his July 1 alternate plan: a close-in tactical turning movement designed simply to threaten the Yankees’ flank and rear and pry them out of their imposing lines. As Longstreet later described it to McLaws, he proposed to “move Ewell’s corps around my rear and right so as to command this other road, and that we then place our Army in a strong position for the day and await the enemy’s attack.” Referring to his pre-campaign “understanding” with Lee, he added that such a move “would give us just the kind of battle that we had agreed to seek and to fight.” (It would also be the kind of battle the Yankee generals, then in council in the Leister house, were concerned about.)19

  Lee’s orders to Dick Ewell, also sent out that evening, called on the Second Corps “to assail the enemy’s right” at daylight on July 3, in conjunction with Longstreet’s attack. So far as the record shows, Ewell neither filed a protest nor offered an alternative plan. Like Longstreet, he was in a sour mood after the July 2 failures. He and his generals believed more than ever that a daylight assault against the ranked guns on Cemetery Hill would be suicidal—Harry Hays said such an attack would invite “nothing else than horrible slaughter”—so the morning’s target would again be Culp’s Hill. It was to be launched from the empty works captured by Allegheny Johnson the night before.

  Ewell set about reinforcing Johnson. From Rodes’s division, without an assignment for July 3, he took the brigades of Junius Daniel and Edward O’Neal. Now that Stuart’s cavalry was finally on the scene to guard the army’s rear, Extra Billy Smith’s brigade from Early’s division, and the Stonewall Brigade from Johnson’s, were available to add to the attacking force. This would give Johnson seven brigades, effectively doubling his force of the previous day. Ewell completed these arrangements during the night, and was poised, as ordered, to assail the Yankees at daylight.

  Jeb Stuart was ordered to operate on Friday on Ewell’s left and rear. Artillery chief William Pendleton was to prepare for a bombardment along the entire line “as early as possible on the morning of the 3d…. “Itisnot known what orders, if any, Lee gave Powell Hill that Thursday evening. For his attack scheme he presumably intended Hill’s Third Corps, at the center of the Confederate line, to act as a general reserve, to apply the finishing touches to any breakthrough achieved by Longstreet or Ewell.

  Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of Lee’s battle plan for Day Three, as he conceived it that Thursday evening, is how barren and uninformed it was. There is no knowing what Longstreet’s and Ewell’s couriers may have said to Lee about the July 2 fighting, but they were surely poor substitutes for personal accounts delivered by the two generals themselves. It is thus astonishing how little General Lee knew of his own army, of the enemy’s army, and of the battlefield when he announced that his general battle plan was unchanged and that the attack would continue.

  The contrast to General Meade’s knowledge at that moment is striking. From the B.M.I. Meade had trustworthy intelligence on his enemy—about Lee’s reserves (Pickett’s division) and, since he was known to be part of Longstreet’s corps, approximately where Pickett might be employed. Meade knew in detail, as did his generals, the condition of t
he Potomac army—that the Third Corps, for example, was pretty well “used up.” He had his generals’ best estimates of their effective strength. And, most important, army commander Meade and his corps commanders were in full and thoroughly discussed agreement about what they were going to do on July 3.

  None of that could be said for Robert E. Lee. He knew little of Meade’s forces, except that they seemed to be massed just where he had attacked. Presumably he realized, from the reports of prisoners taken, that by now he faced the whole of the Army of the Potomac. Yet he had gained no sense of the mettle displayed that day by the Yankee army (and by its commander), in contrast to Chancellorsville, where both had earned Lee’s contempt. Whatever Lee had observed of the fighting was limited to what was visible with binoculars from his field headquarters on Seminary Ridge. That meant very little of Ewell’s front, not much more of Longstreet’s, and something of Hill’s in the center. Any reports he received from these battlegrounds were sketchy and secondhand. Consequently, when that evening he ordered Longstreet and his two wounded divisions to renew their effort to strike the lower end of Cemetery Ridge and roll up the Yankee line toward Cemetery Hill—with no change from Thursday’s effort except the addition of Pickett’s division—Lee was taking a military decision utterly divorced from reality. Longstreet knew the reality all too well, and not surprisingly he sought out a different course.

  That neither Lee nor Longstreet, before or after these orders were issued, made any effort that night to meet and to discuss the course of the battle thus far and the course to follow for tomorrow, reveals two strong-minded men engaged in a contest of wills. Neither would blink. Lee, without a serious examination of the case, intent on enforcing his will, was refusing to deviate from his original battle plan. His unhappy lieutenant, stretching a corps commander’s discretion to its limit and beyond, was attempting to change a plan he was certain was misguided and doomed to fail.20