Gettysburg

by Stephen W. Sears

  Just then Freeman McGilvery, commanding the large bloc of artillery reserve batteries in the battle line, rode up and confronted the seething major general. “Why in hell do you not fire with these batteries?” Hancock demanded. Because he was under special instructions from General Hunt not yet to do so, “and the time was not come,” said Colonel McGilvery; this tough former Maine sea captain was not one to be intimidated. Hancock said Hunt had not anticipated the circumstances of the enemy’s bombardment. On the contrary, said McGilvery, General Hunt’s orders “were given to meet this very case.” With that Hancock huffed away and went back to encourage his command.

  McGilvery’s stubborn stance importantly saved the ammunition of his forty-one guns to contest the Rebel charge when it came, but there was more to it even than that. McGilvery’s batteries in their concealed position had thus far been neither seen nor targeted by the Confederate gunners; indeed, only one of his batteries would be hit all afternoon. By fighting off Hancock’s demands, McGilvery did not reveal his position and so preserved a major weapon of surprise for use against Pickett’s Charge.27

  In contrast to the comparative peace and quiet on McGilvery’s line, John Hazard’s batteries on the Second Corps line were hit repeatedly. Ziegler’s Grove and the Copse being the enemy’s aiming points, the space between and around them was savaged. Here again the Rebel gunners were generally aiming too high, or perhaps it was their faulty ammunition, yet enough shells still struck their targets to create havoc among the Yankee gun crews. In Captain James Rorty’s Battery B, 1st New York Light, two of its four guns were knocked out, and so many crewmen were down that some two dozen infantrymen from the 19th Massachusetts were detailed to carry ammunition and help man the guns. The explosion of a limber chest mortally wounded Captain Rorty; then his successor, Lieutenant Albert Sheldon, went down with a bad wound.

  In Battery B, 1st Rhode Island, commanded today by Lieutenant Walter’S. Perrin, the No. 4 Napoleon took three hits. One of them struck the gun’s muzzle just as it was being loaded, killing two gunners and deforming the barrel so that it could not be fired. In due course, for want of men and ammunition, Perrin’s battery was limbered up and withdrawn. The same was true, for the same reasons, for Captain William Arnold’s

  Battery A, 1st Rhode Island. In Lieutenant George Woodruff’s Battery I, 1st U.S., a shell ignited a caisson with a tremendous crash. To keep his guns firing, Woodruff had to call on the 108th New York for volunteers to replace his crew casualties. In his diary a surgeon recorded the scene on the ridgeline: “The horses rolled in heaps everywhere tangled in their harness with their dying struggles—wheels knocked off, guns capsized and artillerists going to the rear or lying on the ground bleeding in every direction.”

  Probably the most often hit of the Second Corps batteries was Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing’s Battery A, 4th U.S. Young Cushing, graduated early from West Point in 1861 to meet the need for educated soldiers, kept his guns firing steadily despite grievous losses among the crews. “He was as cool and calm as I ever saw him,” recalled one of his men, “talking to the boys between shots with the glass constantly to his eyes, watching the effect of our shots.” But so many gunners were down that Cushing too had to call on infantrymen to help man the guns. John Gibbon saw three of Cushing’s limber chests blow up at once, sending up a huge column of smoke and fire and triggering “triumphant yells of the enemy….” Finally only two of Cushing’s 3-inch Ordnance rifles were still serviceable. A shell fragment eviscerated one of the infantry volunteers, who pleaded for someone to put him out of his agony. When no one had nerve enough, he pulled out his pistol and ended the agony himself. Presently Cushing was painfully wounded in shoulder and groin but stayed at his post. His sergeant urged him to go to the rear. “No,” Cushing said, “I stay right here and fight it out or die in the attempt.“28

  For a time, Dick Ewell’s guns created concern on Cemetery Hill by delivering the enfilade fire that Porter Alexander predicted could be so effective. “From the first they had our range and elevation exactly, and the havoc among my guns, men, horses and ammunition chests was fearful,” wrote Thomas Osborn, the Eleventh Corps’ chief of artillery. Some of this havoc came from a pair of 20-pounder Parrott rifles near Benner’s Hill, all the way around on the Confederate left. But Osborn’s gunners also had the range and elevation, after yesterday’s fight, and they put more guns into the effort than did the Confederates, and in short order this fire was beaten down. The two long-range English Whitworth rifles on Oak Hill remained an annoyance, however. A Yankee officer wrote of the “fiendish wailings” of the Whitworth’s peculiar hexagonal projectiles, “sounding like the predatory howls of demons in search of their prey.“29

  Through all this the Federal infantry waited out the shelling with remarkable patience. “The men of the Infantry,” wrote Frank Haskell, “have seized their arms, and behind their works, behind every rock, in every ditch, wherever there is any shelter, they hug the ground, silent, quiet, unterrified, little harmed.” It was soon evident that with the enemy gunners overshooting, the safest place on the field was actually in the front lines, and anyone tempted to skedaddle realized the danger in trying it. Unfortunately the wounded faced danger too if they risked going to the rear for aid, and so most stayed and suffered, and some thereby bled to death.

  One of the few who kept count of casualties from the bombardment was Alexander Webb. “This was awful, I lost fifty of my men lying down,” General Webb wrote his wife, “and more excellent officers….” Webb’s brigade, at the Angle, was squarely in the middle of the target area and surely suffered the greatest loss among the six brigades defending the Federal center. It is probable that all told no more than 150 to 200 infantrymen were casualties of the shelling. The day’s first officer of rank to fall was Thomas Smyth, commander of one of Alexander Hays’s brigades, wounded in the face by a shell burst.

  There was a randomness about these incidents that left men shaking their heads. A high, wild round through Ziegler’s Grove clipped off a tree limb that fell and injured several men. A solid shot striking near an 80th New York soldier sent his cap high in the air and flipped him over, and he was found to be dead, without a mark on him, a victim of concussion. Frank Haskell noticed a soldier, sent to the rear for water, returning through the hail of fire with his canteens when a shell fragment neatly sliced the knapsack right off his back. “The soldier stopped, and turned about in puzzled surprise—put up one hand to his back to assure himself that the knapsack was not there, and then walked slowly on again unharmed….“30

  The return fire that Winfield Hancock had ordered was meanwhile taking a toll in the Confederate ranks on Seminary Ridge. Like his Union counterparts, General Longstreet felt obliged by this counterfire to show himself to his men to reassure them. “Longstreet rode slowly and alone immediately in front of our entire line…,” General James Kemper recalled. “His bearing was to me the grandest moral spectacle of the war. I expected him to fall every instant. Still he moved on, slowly and majestically, with an inspiring confidence, composure, self-possession and re-pressed power….” Kemper joined him and Longstreet asked how his command was holding up. Kemper replied, “a man is cut to pieces here every second while we are talking.” Longstreet said he was “greatly distressed at this; but let us hold our ground a while longer; we are hurting the enemy badly; and will charge him presently.”

  Kemper’s brigade formed the right front of Pickett’s line, behind Porter Alexander’s guns, and Colonel Joseph Mayo, 3rd Virginia, found it an ugly place to be. In just the first minutes of the bombardment, Colonel Mayo counted 13 men killed or wounded among Kemper’s regiments. Like the Confederates, the Yankee gunners were hampered by the smoke clouds in gauging their ranges, and tended to fire long—and long meant striking among the Rebel infantry. Because of the artillerists’ restrictions on firing over their own men, due to faulty ammunition, most Southern infantry on July 3 was posted behind the guns. This was in contrast to the Yankees’ post
ings on Cemetery Ridge. Consequences were therefore reversed. Among the Yankees, the artillery suffered more than the infantry; it was just the opposite on the Confederate side.

  There were also casualties in the other front-rank brigade on Pickett’s line, Dick Garnett’s. A man in the 18th Virginia remembered that “shrill shot overhead or bounding madly across the field would alike dip through a line of prostrate men and rush on with a wail to the rear leaving a wide track of blood behind.” Lewis Armistead’s brigade, in Pickett’s second line, was largely spared such losses. Armistead and Garnett, like Kemper, made a point of showing themselves to the troops for morale’s sake. To several nervous men glancing about for a haven from the shelling, Armistead counseled, “Lie still boys, there is no safe place here.” Confederate infantry losses during the bombardment very likely exceeded those of the Federals, but the Rebels’ artillery losses were comparatively light.31

  It had been Porter Alexander’s first thought that a bombardment of 15 to 30 minutes would sufficiently prepare the way for the charge. The enemy’s response was slow at first but then increased dramatically, and he was persuaded that it would be “madness” to send a storming force against a line “blazing like a volcano.” Yet if he continued the bombardment long enough to beat down the Federal guns, he risked running out of ammunition. He decided he must make this clear, and 25 minutes after the guns opened he sent a note back to Pickett, with a copy to Pettigrew: “General: If you are to advance at all, you must come at once or we will not be able to support you as we ought. But the enemy’s fire has not slackened materially and there are still 18 guns firing from the cemetery.” (Alexander would later explain that at the time he misunderstood the location of the town’s cemetery: “The 18 guns … occupied the point at which our charge was to be directed. I had been incorrectly told it was the cemetery.”)

  Just after sending off this note, Alexander began to “notice signs of some of the enemy’s guns ceasing to fire.” Batteries could be seen to limber up and retire. He waited to see if they would be replaced, “but there was not a single fresh gun replacing any that had withdrawn.” He long remembered the moment: “I felt encouraged to believe that they had felt very severe punishment, & that my fire had been generally well aimed & as effective as could be hoped.” Fifteen minutes after his previous note, he dispatched a second note to Pickett: “For God’s sake come quick. The 18 guns are gone. Come quick or my ammunition will not let me support you properly.“32

  In fact there was method behind this slackening of the Federals’ fire. Henry Hunt had been riding his artillery line, checking on its condition, and he ended his tour in Evergreen Cemetery on Cemetery Hill. There he met with the Eleventh Corps’ artillery chief, Thomas Osborn, and Generals Howard and Schurz. It was now plain to all that Lee intended an infantry assault on the center, and Major Osborn thought that should be encouraged. So did the general commanding. General Meade had just visited Cemetery Hill, said Osborn, and “expressed the hope that the enemy would attack, and he had no fear of the result.” Osborn suggested that the artillery cease fire all along the line, to lure Lee into thinking his bombardment was successful and thus be persuaded to send in his infantry.

  Hunt was all for the plan—its other objective would be to save ammunition to meet the infantry attack, which had been his goal from the beginning—but he asked General Howard if his troops would hold their ground if the guns were not returning fire. Howard knew this was a veiled reference to the Eleventh Corps’ shaky reputation, and he drew himself up: “I support Major Osborn’s idea of stopping the artillery fire, and my men will stay!”

  Hunt took the responsibility for the decision, and hastened to notify Meade. He was gratified to learn that Meade had been looking for him with the same proposal, “so I had only anticipated his wishes.” (Meade had had a message from Gouverneur Warren, on Little Round Top, saying the guns were accomplishing little more than “filling the valley with smoke” and advising a pause.) Hunt passed the word to the battery commanders to cease firing. He then sent for four fresh batteries from the artillery reserve to reinforce the center of the line the moment the Rebel cannonade ended.

  General Meade was meanwhile ordering up infantry reinforcements. John Robinson’s First Corps division on Cemetery Hill was to shift over to support Alexander Hays’s right. The Sixth Corps, still serving as a floating reserve for the whole army, was called on for two brigades to support Hancock’s line. Elements of the Third Corps were shifted to their right. Henry Slocum was alerted to have the Twelfth Corps in position behind the battle front. With his customary forethought, George Meade thus had some 13,000 troops—as it happened, just about the same number as stepped off in Pickett’s Charge—positioned and ready for any contingency.33

  After he received Porter Alexander’s first note, Pickett hurried to Longstreet for orders. He found Old Pete sitting on a snake-rail fence by Spangler’s Woods near the center of the line, watching the gunnery. Longstreet read Alexander’s note without comment. Pickett asked, “General, shall I advance?” Longstreet turned his face away and did not answer. He afterward admitted to Alexander that “he knew the charge must be made, but he could not bring himself to give the order.” After a few awkward moments, Pickett said, “I am going to move forward, Sir,” and he rode back to prepare his division. In due course, wrote Alexander, his “come quick” note reached Pickett, which “of course brought him some comfort & encouragement.”

  Longstreet now went to Alexander’s advanced position for the latest observations and reports. He was surprised to learn from Alexander of the artillery’s depleted ammunition status. Like the Federals, the Confederate fire had slackened, but in the latter’s case it was unintentional. Up and down the line, ammunition chests were empty or nearly so, and crewmen sent back to the ordnance train had returned empty-handed and angry. The witless Pendleton had moved the trains back for safety but neglected to leave anyone at their former location to give directions for finding them. Alexander also explained that the nine-gun “bonus” he had been awarded by the Third Corps, and intended to send forward to support the attack, had also disappeared. General Pendleton, it turned out, had expropriated four of the guns, and the others had been pulled back to safer (and hidden) ground by their commander.

  All this was enough to rouse Longstreet to one last effort to stifle the attack. As Alexander remembered it, “Gen. L. spoke at once, & decidedly, ‘Go & halt Pickett right where he is, & replenish your ammunition.’”

  “General, we can’t do that…,” Alexander told him. “Even if we had it, it would take an hour or two, and meanwhile the enemy would recover from the pressure he is now under. Our only chance is to follow it up now—to strike while the iron is hot.”

  Longstreet stood silent for a time, focusing his glasses on the enemy line. As he scanned the scene he said quietly, pausing between phrases, as if he were talking to himself, “I don’t want to make this attack … I believe it will fail … I do not see how it can succeed … I would not make it even now, but that General Lee has ordered and expects it.”

  Alexander was stunned. It appeared that with any encouragement from him, Longstreet might even now stop the attack. But the responsibility “in so grave a matter” was too great for a mere colonel of artillery. Alexander held his tongue, and as the silence between them stretched on he became almost embarrassed. Finally Pickett’s legions came striding past, and the moment was gone.34

  13. The Grand Charge

  THE THUNDER AND CRASH of the cannonade died away, and seemingly on cue, as if the god of battles were stage-managing the scene, a light breeze sprang up and gradually carried away the clouds of smoke obscuring the battlefield. It was like a curtain rising, and the sheer magnitude of the sight revealed took breaths away. Involuntarily, all along the Yankee line, came the cry, “Here they come!” “Here comes the infantry!”

  Lieutenant Frank Haskell, of General Gibbon’s staff, was in the audience at front and center of the Union line. “None on that
crest now need be told that the enemy is advancing,” he wrote. “Every eye could see his legions, an overwhelming, resistless tide of an ocean of armed men, sweeping upon us!…Right on they move, as with one soul, in perfect order, without impediment of ditch, or wall, or stream, over ridge and slope, through orchard, and meadow, and cornfield, magnificent, grim, irresistible.” Haskell looked around him and took note that “All was orderly and still upon our crest—no noise, and no confusion.” These Second Corps men of Hancock’s were veterans, “survivors of a dozen battles,” as Haskell put it, and they “knew well enough what this array in front portended….”

  For some among the Federal infantry, the impending charge was almost welcome. It finally meant relief from the deadly shelling, finally meant a chance to shoot back at their tormentors. For others, the charge was welcome for a different reason. The 20th Massachusetts, for example, in Norman Hall’s brigade, had taken 163 casualties at Fredericksburg in December, most of them in a fruitless charge against the deadly stone wall at Marye’s Heights. Now the positions were reversed, as the 20th’s Captain Henry Abbott was quick to recognize. It was a “magnificent sight,” Abbott wrote, yet…“The moment I saw them I knew we should give them Fredericksburg. So did every body.”

  However determined these Yankees might be, the mere sight of that great throng of attackers was intimidating. A man in the 125th New York, posted on the Union right, confessed in his diary of his fear that “our line would give way as I noticed the uneasiness of some of the men.” Tully McCrae, an artilleryman in Woodruff’s battery, also on the right, remembered watching that approaching mass of men, “and knowing that we had but one thin line of infantry to oppose them, I thought that our chances for Kingdom Come, or Libby Prison were very good.” 1