Gettysburg

  There was a struggle for a stone wall crossing the meadow roughly parallel to the line of works. First to try the Rebels at the wall was the 1st Maryland Potomac Home Brigade, an untested regiment from Lockwood’s newly arrived force. It got within perhaps 20 yards of the wall before Lockwood withdrew it, badly shot up and short of ammunition. General Geary then sent in the somewhat more experienced 147th Pennsylvania, of Charles Candy’s brigade, which was successful enough in its charge that the meadow would be christened Pardee Field, after the Pennsylvanians’ Lieutenant Colonel Ario Pardee.

  By now it was becoming painfully clear to General Steuart that he

  could make no headway against this Yankee line, just as his troops farther up the hill were discovering. The primary reason was the sheer intensity of the Federals’ fire. Confederates spoke of being “exposed to a very heavy fire,” of being “nearly annihilated.” “So terific was the strife that scarcely a leaf or limb was left on the surrounding trees,” said a Marylander. A Virginian decided, “I think it was the hardest battle we ever had.” All this was testimony to the efficiency of the Federals’ rotation of forces. A regiment blazed away without restraint, then was replaced by a fresh regiment that in its turn blazed away without restraint. General Geary reported that on July 3 his infantry division alone expended 277,000 rifle rounds. That came to 70 rounds for each man—a full ammunition issue and more.34

  The Confederates fell back and their fire slackened, leading General Slocum, viewing affairs from his distant headquarters on Power’s Hill, to conclude that the enemy was “becoming shaky.” He reached out to the nearest general, Thomas Ruger, and ordered him to retake the captured works. Ruger, on the scene and properly careful, wanted to reconnoiter the Rebel strength first before any attack, to which Slocum agreed. Ruger sent his aide to Silas Colgrove’s brigade with the necessary instructions: Advance skirmishers, and if the enemy was “not found in too great force … advance two regiments, and dislodge him from the breastworks.” In some fashion never explained, Colonel Colgrove misinterpreted this as a direct order for an immediate frontal attack by two regiments.

  Colgrove selected the 2nd Massachusetts and his old regiment, the 27th Indiana. Their combined 650 men would encounter (as they discovered) perhaps 1,000 Rebels behind the works, and to reach them they had to cross some 100 yards of open meadow. When the 2nd Massachusetts’ Lieutenant Colonel Charles Mudge heard the order, he insisted it be repeated. “Well,” he declared, “it is murder, but it’s the order.” Dutifully Mudge ordered the charge. “They had scarcely gained the open ground,” wrote Colonel Colgrove, “when they were met with one of the most terrible fires I have ever witnessed.”

  Within minutes five successive Massachusetts color bearers were shot down; Private James Murphy would be credited with finally rescuing the flag. Colonel Mudge was killed early in the charge and command fell to Major Charles Morse. As the veteran Morse remembered it, this battle in the meadow was “at the shortest range I have ever seen two lines engaged at…. I never saw men behave so splendidly. It was awful, yet grand….” It was also hopeless, and he soon signaled a withdrawal. The 2nd Massachusetts, what was left of it, fell back without panic to a stone wall near its starting point. “I never saw a finer sight than to see that regiment, coming back over that terrible meadow, face about and form in line as steady as if on parade,” wrote the regimental historian.

  The attack on Culp’s Hill on the morning of July 3 by Edward Johnson’s Confederate division, as pictured by Edwin Forbes. The defenders here were from George Sears Greene’s brigade. (Library of Congress)

  The 27th Indiana came up on the right of the 2nd Massachusetts. Colonel Colgrove, its old commander, sent it in personally: “Twenty-seventh, charge! Charge those works in your front!” As they started across the meadow the Hoosiers were harassed by Confederate skirmishers on the other side of Rock Creek. Then, halfway across the meadow, Extra Billy Smith’s troops in their front unleashed a concerted volley. It was, as the 27th’s regimental historian described it, “the scathing, fatal volley which all remember so well…. It was a terrific volley. It was one of those well-aimed, well-timed volleys which break up and retard a line, in spite of itself.” The 27th’s entire color guard was shot down. The Hoosiers halted to return fire, but this only made them stationary targets for the well-protected Virginians. At last Colgrove ordered retreat.

  The ill-conceived venture cost the 2nd Massachusetts 43 percent of its numbers, and the 27th Indiana, 32 percent. Whether General Ruger’s aide had misdelivered the order or Colonel Colgrove had misconstrued it would never be determined. Ruger called it “one of those unfortunate occurrences that will happen in the excitement of battle.” It appears, however, that Colgrove might have confirmed any oral order that seemed so divorced from the reality of the moment. However that may be, Colgrove’s charge stands as the only serious mistake committed by the defenders of Culp’s Hill. General Slocum and his lieutenants were content thereafter to let their defenses carry the day. 35

  The contest was in its fourth hour now, and Allegheny Johnson’s reserves were reinvigorating the attack. Against the upper reaches of Culp’s Hill he had sent in Edward O’Neal’s Alabama brigade, from Rodes’s division, to assist Williams’s Louisianians. Against the defenders on the lower hill, James Walker’s Stonewall Brigade reinforced Maryland Steuart’s efforts. From their positions on the respective flanks of the attackers, the 66th Ohio at the top of the hill and the 147th Pennsylvania at the bottom, behind the stone wall it had won in Pardee Field, continued to deliver deadly enfilading fire.

  The result was repeated bloody repulse from one end of the line to the other. Colonel O’Neal summed it up with grim exactitude—his brigade, he wrote, “charged time and again up to their works but were every time compelled to retire. Many gallant men were lost….“In some places on the hillside the Rebels found enough cover to keep up a fire at their tormentors, but they could not advance, and to retreat was to expose themselves to a galling fire. To resupply ammunition under fire, Johnson’s staff hit on the idea of unloading boxes of cartridges into blankets, which were then slung from poles and hauled up the hill.

  General Lee’s revised directive to Ewell that morning had announced that Longstreet’s assault would be delayed until 10:00 A.M. Apparently with that timetable in mind, Ewell ordered Johnson to continue his attacks so as to conform to Lee’s stated intention for July 3 of striking both flanks of Meade’s army simultaneously. As it happened, Longstreet was nowhere near ready to open his advance by 10 o’clock, but Lee did not notify Ewell of that fact. Presumably he wanted the Federals to continue to focus their attention on their right. Johnson’s offensive, by now clearly seen to be senseless, was thereby rendered even more senseless.

  Lieutenant Randolph McKim of Maryland Steuart’s staff recorded in his diary that both General Steuart and General Daniel, from Rodes’s division, “strongly disapproved of making the assault.” Whether they made complaint to Johnson or to corps commander Ewell is not stated. In any event, Ewell did not visit Steuart’s front, no minds were changed, and soon after 10 o’clock yet another attack was launched against Culp’s Hill. When Major William Goldsborough of the 1st Maryland battalion received the order to charge yet again, he protested it as “nothing less than murder…. I moved slowly down the line to my position with feelings I had never before experienced on the battlefield. I felt that I had but a few minutes to live.” 36

  Lieutenant Colonel Charles Randall, 149th New York, Greene’s brigade, peering down the smoke-covered hill, suddenly shouted, “Here they come, boys! Give them hell, boys, give it to them right and left!” This newest attack was the strongest attempt yet to break past the Federal right at the foot of Culp’s Hill. It was spearheaded by Steuart’s brigade, supported by Junius Daniel’s North Carolina brigade and the Virginians of the Stonewall Brigade. The tactics were unchanged—frontal assaults against the well-dug-in or well-secured positions of Geary’s division, reinforced now with elements f
rom Ruger’s division and from the Sixth Corps.

  Each advance along the line was met by a torrent of musketry. “It was the most fearful fire I ever encountered…,” Lieutenant McKim wrote of crossing Pardee Field. “The greatest confusion ensued—regiments were reduced to companies and everything mixed up. It came very near to being a rout.” At the center of the line delivering this fire was the 29th Pennsylvania, Thomas Kane’s brigade. Colonel William Rickards noticed that great numbers of leaves were fluttering down as the enemy advanced from the woods. He realized his men were firing too high, and shouted out a correction: Aim at the Rebels’ knees. The effect, he said, “was noticeable at once.” “It was truly awful how fast, how very fast, did our poor boys fall by our sides,” wrote Private Louis Leon of Daniel’s brigade. Leon’s company began the fight with sixty men and ended it with sixteen.

  The Federals continued rotating fresh regiments into their front-line positions. The Sixth Corps’ 122nd New York, for example, was ordered as a replacement regiment to a ravine 50 yards behind the battle line. “A regt. in the 12th Corps had just fallen back from this place, they being out of ammunition,” wrote Corporal Sanford Truesdell. “To reach it we had to cross a space of about ten rods, fully exposed to the fire of the enemy. We crawled on our hands and knees to the top of the bluff, and raising up, ran to our position as fast as our legs could carry us, but O! how the bullets whistled … and it seemed impossible for one of us to reach there alive. But when once there we had the advantage of the enemy….” When the 122nd New York discovered it was posted next to the 149th New York, there was much neighborly cheering. Both regiments had been recruited from Onondaga County at the same time in the fall of 1862.

  Virginia soldier Allen Redwood made this drawing of Confederates of the 1st Maryland Battalion, of George Steuart’s brigade, storming Culp’s Hill during the morning attack of July 3. (Century Collection)

  In the Pardee Field fighting there was another meeting of neighbors, although not so pleasant a one. The 1st Maryland battalion of Steuart’s Confederate brigade tangled with the 1st Maryland Eastern Shore Infantry of Lockwood’s Union brigade. Both had been recruited in the same section of the state; each had relatives and friends, or former friends, in the other; cousins served in the opposing color guards. “The 1st Maryland Confederate Regiment met us & were cut to pieces,” wrote Colonel James Wallace of the Eastern Shore Marylanders. “We sorrowfully gathered up many of our old friends & acquaintances & had them carefully & tenderly cared for.“37

  General Walker of the Stonewall Brigade had seen enough. The attack had met “with equally bad success as our former efforts,” he wrote, “and the fire became so destructive that I suffered the brigade to fall back to a more secure position…. ” Maryland Steuart did the same, and as his men streamed to the rear, the distraught Steuart cried, “My poor boys! My poor boys!” A good many attackers, trapped between the lines and unable to retreat without being hit, had no choice but surrender. The 7th Ohio took seventy-eight prisoners, the 122nd New York, seventy-five, the 137th New York, fifty-two.

  By the final count, Allegheny Johnson lost 2,000 men, nearly a third of his division, trying to take Culp’s Hill on those two days. Perhaps another 800 fell in the brigades of Daniel, O’Neal, and Extra Billy Smith on July 3. The defenders in the Twelfth Corps lost just over 1,000 men on July 2–3. The cost to Pop Greene, the primary defender, was 300 men, one-fifth of his brigade. Alpheus Williams was echoing many in Allegheny Johnson’s division when he wrote, “The wonder is that the rebels persisted so long in an attempt that the first half hour must have told them was useless.”

  Gradually the smoke cleared and the slopes and fields and woods in front of the Yankee lines were found at last to be empty of Rebels, except for the dead and the helpless wounded. By 11:00 A.M. Culp’s Hill fell silent but for the tendentious fire of opposing pickets. Pop Greene’s brigade broke the silence with three rousing cheers.38

  12. A Magnificent Display of Guns

  GENERAL MEADE, who had gotten no rest at all Wednesday night, managed three or four hours’ sleep early Friday morning, following his council of war, but he was up with the dawn on what he was confident would be a day of renewed battle. His first task was to ride the lines. He started where the morning’s fighting was, at Culp’s Hill, and called in help from Sedgwick’s Sixth Corps to strengthen General Williams’s hand. To further secure his right flank, he saw to it that the cavalry stood watch along the Hanover Road that entered Gettysburg from the east. The assignment there went to David Gregg’s troopers.

  In company with Winfield Hancock, he then inspected the center of the Cemetery Ridge line, the defense of which on July 3 would be primarily the responsibility of Hancock’s Second Corps. Meade continued to think, as he had warned John Gibbon the night before, that this position would be critical in the day’s events. In an 8:00 A.M. dispatch to John Sedgwick, he said it appeared to be the enemy’s intention “to make the attempt to pierce our center.” He wanted Sedgwick to mass forces “in a central position,” where they might be “thrown to the right or left, as required.”

  Lieutenant Frank Haskell of John Gibbon’s staff took note of the commanding general as he made his inspection: “He was early on horseback this morning, and rode along the whole line, looking to it himself, and with glass in hand sweeping the woods and fields in the direction of the enemy, to see if ought of him could be discovered. His manner was calm and serious, but earnest.” Haskell listened in on Meade’s conversation with Hancock. Meade seemed satisfied with the defenses on both right and left, and admitted, wrote Haskell, that an attack against the center, where “our artillery has such sweep … was not the favorite point of attack with the Rebel.” Still, “should he attack the center, the General thought he could reinforce it in good season.”

  Completing his tour of the lines, Meade consulted with Generals Newton and Sedgwick, and on Little Round Top he and engineer Warren discussed the implications of the Confederate artillery beginning to be visible in front of Seminary Ridge. Back at headquarters, newspaper correspondent Whitelaw Reid described the commanding general as “Quick and nervous in his movements, but calm, and as it seemed to me, lit up with the glow of the occasion….” Meade sent circulars to his corps commanders calling on them to keep the men alert and under arms at all times, and to make an effort to collect all stragglers and absentees and get them back to the firing line. Everything appeared to be pointing to an enemy attack—somewhere.

  Yet Meade was thinking ahead as well. To General Darius Couch, commanding militia forces at Harrisburg, he explained that the sound of the guns at Gettysburg was all the signal “you need to come on. Should the enemy withdraw, by prompt cooperation we might destroy him.” On the other hand, should the enemy gain the upper hand, Couch must turn back to the defense of Harrisburg and the Susquehanna line. To General William French, at Frederick, Maryland, with the Harper’s Ferry garrison, Meade delivered similar contingency orders. If Lee fell back after being defeated at Gettysburg, French should “re-occupy Harper’s Ferry and annoy and harass him in his retreat.” If, however, “the result of today’s operations should be our discomfiture and withdrawal,” French must look to the defense of Washington.1

  Another of Meade’s conferees that 3rd of July was his chief of artillery, Henry Hunt. During these early-morning hours, General Hunt had been as tireless as the army commander in checking and adjusting and ordering his sphere of responsibility. His first concern had been the gunnery in the Culp’s Hill clash, but he soon concluded there was nothing to worry about there. As he put it laconically in his report, “In this work the artillery rendered good service.” He then examined, in close detail, the rest of the artillery postings on Cemetery Hill, Cemetery Ridge, and Little Round Top.

  The Eleventh Corps’ batteries on Cemetery Hill had put to rights any damage suffered in the previous afternoon’s gun duel and, with twenty-nine guns, were prepared for whatever might now come their way. The artillery line that ran
south from there along Cemetery Ridge was commanded by the Second Corps’ John G. Hazard. Captain Hazard’s brigade had been badly cut up during Longstreet’s offensive the previous evening. In Lieutenant George Woodruff’s Battery I, 1st U.S., for example, a third of the gun crewmen this morning were infantry volunteers

  Ten o’clock on the morning of July 3, behind the Union lines looking north, sketched by Edwin Forbes. At left is the Taneytown Road, at right the Baltimore Pike, crowded with troops. Ziegler’s Grove, on Cemetery Ridge, is at left rear, Culp’s Hill (1) at far right. (Library of Congress)

  from Alexander Hays’s division. Battery B, 1st Rhode Island, overrun by Rans Wright’s Georgians, had lost heavily, including battery commander Frederick Brown, seriously wounded. Captain James Rorty’s Battery B, 1st New York Light, had also been badly damaged. The brigade’s five batteries mounted twenty-seven guns now, but Captain Hazard had all his limbers and caissons filled and was ready to do battle once again. In due course, Hazard would be braced by two additional two-gun sections, one of them being all that remained of Bigelow’s 9th Massachusetts battery after yesterday’s fight.

  At the next slot in the artillery line, Hunt ordered up two batteries to support Newton’s orphaned First Corps division. Then, on lower Cemetery Ridge, came a grouping under the artillery reserve’s Freeman McGilvery, who had performed so boldly in mustering the last-ditch gun line behind the shattered Third Corps on July 2. Colonel McGilvery’s patched-together assembly of Thursday was now a solid and substantial forty-one-gun line, thanks to additions from the reserve.