Gettysburg

  Alexander Hays, whose division formed the right half of the Union center on Cemetery Ridge, continued to ride his lines exhorting his men. Pennsylvanian Hays thoroughly enjoyed a good fight, and for what was coming he was primed and in his element. His message was: Hold your fire until the Rebels reach the Emmitsburg Road—which, slanting across the valley between the two ridges, lay some 200 yards from the center of his line—and then aim low. “Now boys, look out; you will see some fun!” he promised. Hays made a particular point of urging the 12th New Jersey to hold fire until the range closed. The 12th’s .69-caliber smoothbores firing buck-and-ball would be deadly in a short-range encounter.

  Hays did not hold back any troops as a reserve. Instead he pushed his two brigades right up to the stone fence in their front, packing them together tightly until in places they were four ranks deep. Thomas Smyth’s brigade comprised the 14th Connecticut, 1st Delaware, 12th New Jersey, and 108th New York. Eliakim Sherrill, replacing the slain George Willard, commanded the 39th, 111th, 125th, and 126th New York. But in intermingling the regiments along the front, Hays was directing what was in effect a single grand brigade. His idea was to mass fire to break the enemy’s charge before it could reach him—before a reserve was needed. His front-line firepower, additionally strengthened by the numerous spare rifles he had the men collecting, was described by a 1st Delaware officer as “an embryo arsenal.” Of his third brigade, Samuel Carroll’s, expropriated by Otis Howard to reinforce the unsteady Eleventh Corps on Cemetery Hill, Hays retained only the 8th Ohio. He posted the Ohioans out front and to the right as a flank guard. The two brigades, plus the 8th Ohio, came to 2,580 men.2

  John Gibbon’s division was formed on Hays’s left, holding the line from the Angle of the wall southward past the Copse for some 500 yards. All three of Gibbon’s brigades had been engaged on Thursday defending the Union center and suffered accordingly, with the 1st Minnesota’s 68 percent loss the most severe. Gibbon would thus face Pickett’s Charge with perhaps 2,700 men.

  The division of John Gibbon, left, met Pickett’s Charge. The brigade of Alexander Webb was at the point of attack. (Library of Congress)

  Defending the Angle—which would prove to be a central focus of the afternoon’s struggle—was Alexander’S. Webb’s brigade, 69th, 71st, 72nd, and 106th Pennsylvania. This was the Philadelphia Brigade, a veteran outfit but led too long under a loose rein to be judged by Gibbon as entirely reliable. The evening before, for example, Colonel Richard Smith of the 71st had backed away from the fight when sent over to help out at Culp’s Hill. July 3 marked only Webb’s sixth day of command. Previously he had served the Potomac army in staff positions. “Webb has taken hold of his Brig. with a will,” wrote a pleased General Gibbon, and “comes down on them with a heavy hand and will no doubt soon make a great improvement.”

  It promised to be a testing day for both Webb and his new command. The 106th Pennsylvania, except for two companies on the skirmish line, had earlier been commandeered by General Howard to brace the Eleventh Corps. (Surprisingly, Winfield Hancock seems to have made no effort to demand that Howard return these troops, as well as Carroll’s, in time for the Day Three showdown.) This left Webb with barely 940 men. In contrast to Hays’s front, Webb mounted a defense in depth. He had posted the 69th at the stone fence, leaving a gap right and left for the fire of Cushing’s and Brown’s (now Perrin’s) batteries. His other regiments formed a second line to the rear.

  The division under Alexander Hays defended the Union right on July 3. (U.S. Army Military History Institute)

  To Webb’s left was Colonel Norman Hall’s brigade, forming the center of Gibbon’s position. A twenty-six-year-old West Pointer, Hall had headed the brigade since Antietam, quietly and efficiently and without fuss, and his troops reflected his calm competence. In the front line Hall put the 59th New York, 7th Michigan, and 20th Massachusetts. In a second line, in support, were the 42nd New York and 19th Massachusetts. Hall’s men had thrown up an entrenchment of sorts, one of the few man-made obstacles on the ridge. “The thin line of our division…,” Captain Abbott explained, “was very well shielded by a little rut they lay in & in front of our brigade by a little pit, just one foot deep & one foot high, thrown up hastily by one shovel….” They had scraped out this shallow trench where the stone boundary fence ended, then piled up a parapet of dirt and fence rails in front of it. It was decidedly unimposing, but the men gratefully sheltered behind it during the bombardment and would find it handy in the fight to come.

  The third of Gibbon’s brigades, William Harrow’s, formed the left of the divisional line. Harrow, like Webb, was commanding a brigade for the first time. Before the war he had been a lawyer in Illinois, where he rode the circuit with Abraham Lincoln, and he entered the war as a captain in the 14th Indiana. By the time of Gettysburg, however, due to ill health he had gained only limited combat experience. In the fighting on Thursday, Harrow tried to impress himself on his command by haranguing them. “He called upon all of us by all that was Good & Infernal to kill every son-of-a-bitch that runs without a cause,” a man in the 15th Massachusetts wrote approvingly. Of Harrow’s regiments, the 1st Minnesota, 82nd New York, and 15th Massachusetts had served together since the Peninsula; the 19th Maine joined in time for Fredericksburg. Thus these men had considerably more fighting time than their general, but after Thursday’s casualties all except the 19th Maine were led by new commanders.3

  Harrow positioned all four of his regiments in the front line. In support were two regiments from John Newton’s First Corps that had come over to plug a hole in the Second Corps line late on July 2. The 80th New York and the nine-month 151st Pennsylvania, severely handled in the first day’s fighting on Seminary Ridge, were about to be thrown again into the breach, this time on Cemetery Ridge. This demi-brigade was commanded by the 80th New York’s Colonel Theodore B. Gates.

  On Thursday Hancock’s third division, John Caldwell’s, had been ordered to the left to bail out the Third Corps, and there it remained. Guarding the Second Corps’ left flank today was the Vermont brigade of George J. Stannard, the First Corps’ reinforcement belatedly sent up from the Department of Washington. These nine-month Vermonters had served eight months or so of their enlistment peacefully enough in the Washington defenses, and General Stannard, for one, was doubtful about their motivation. On the march north from the capital he noted in his diary, “They count their time by days. Consequently they do not have any heart in the work. Officers as little as men.” Two of Stannard’s five regiments had been assigned to guard trains; that left the 13th, 14th, and 16th Vermont to demonstrate, on this July 3, whether or not their hearts were in the work. (The 13th, at least, had shown plenty of heart when thrown into the fight by Hancock on July 2.) However that might be, the First Corps troops of Stannard and Gates added some 2,700 much-needed men to the defenses of the Union center. 4

  If the Second Corps infantry had for the most part been spared by the enemy’s bombardment, the case was very different for the corps artillery. John Hazard’s five batteries began the day with a total of twenty-seven cannon, but in this sector at least, the Confederate gunners could claim a considerable success—the batteries of Walter Perrin and William Arnold badly knocked about and withdrawn, and two others, Alonzo Cushing’s and James Rorty’s, reduced to two serviceable guns each. George Woodruff’s six-gun battery continued in action, but only with the aid of infantry volunteers. The two sections sent to Hazard as reinforcement from the artillery reserve now had but three pieces firing. Of thirty-one guns originally defending the Union center, then, the count was down to thirteen. But as the charge began and in response to General Webb’s plea—the general was seen waving his hat and gesturing frantically—the Sixth Corps’ Andrew Cowan rushed his 1st New York Independent Battery’s six rifled pieces into Perrin’s empty place in the line at just the right moment, raising the defenders’ count to nineteen.

  Henry Hunt had ordered up other replacements from the reserve, but with the reserve
batteries driven to cover by the Rebel bombardment, their arrival was going to take time. Furthermore, due to Winfield Hancock’s insistence that the corps artillery respond to the bombardment, its long-range ammunition stocks were depleted. At the very center of the Union line the guns now sat silent, and would remain silent until the Confederate infantry advanced to within canister range. As Captain Hazard phrased it, “half the valley had been passed over by them before the guns dared expend a round of the precious ammunition remaining on hand.“5

  ON JULY 1, from atop Oak Hill west of Gettysburg, an Alabama soldier had looked out over the fighting between A. P. Hill’s corps and the Yankee legions and pronounced it “like some grand panorama with the sounds of conflict added.” From atop Cemetery Hill the panorama presented on July 3 was equally grand. What Lieutenant Haskell described as an “ocean of armed men” was perhaps a mile and a half across. Nothing like it had been seen before in this war; indeed nothing like it had been seen since the wars of Napoleon. General Lee himself would term it a “grand charge.” Rank after rank of fighting men in gray or butternut, under their red-slashed battle flags and the blue banners of Virginia, emerged from cover along the Seminary Ridge front. The Song of Solomon had a phrase for it: “terrible as an army with banners.” 6

  When George Pickett left Longstreet and rode back to his command to give the order for the advance, he reined up first beside Dick Garnett and offered a bit of last-minute counsel. His advice was to “make the best kind of time in crossing the valley; it’s a hell of an ugly looking place over yonder.” For the rank and file Pickett assumed a more inspirational stance. “Up, men, and to your posts!” he shouted. “Don’t forget today that you are from Old Virginia!” That produced cheers and the Rebel yell, and on cue Garnett took his place before his brigade, waved his hat, and shouted for the men to follow.

  Rather surprisingly, James Kemper, former speaker in the Virginia legislature, did not take this opportunity to address his brigade beyond the usual forward-march orders. Perhaps he believed Pickett’s injunction was inspiriting enough. On the other hand, the usually gruff, no-nonsense Lewis Armistead, whose brigade was the second line of the division and therefore beyond the reach of Pickett’s voice, was moved by the moment to make a gesture. Drawing his sword, he called out, “Men, remember what you are fighting for! Your homes, your firesides, and your sweethearts! Follow me!” A man in the 9th Virginia remembered how the troops “caught his fire and determination…. It was his example, his coolness, his courage that led that brigade over that field of blood.“7

  Pickett’s division, lying concealed in the swale in front of Spangler’s Woods and well forward of both Pettigrew and Trimble, was first to advance in the grand charge. Exactly what time Pickett stepped off would become a matter of some debate. By taking Pennsylvania College’s Professor Jacobs as the benchmark—Jacobs carefully noted the Confederate bombardment opening at 1:07 P.M., a fairly close confirmation of the 1 o’clock starting time Porter Alexander recorded for it—and then considering the times marked on Alexander’s notes to Pickett, it appears that Pickett’s Charge commenced about 2:30. Pettigrew started soon thereafter, and Trimble followed Pettigrew.8

  Kemper’s brigade formed the extreme right of the charge, and his five regiments—from right to left, 24th, 11th, 1st, 7th, and 3rd Virginia—deployed in a single line, two ranks deep. General Kemper ignored the order for line officers to advance on foot. Perhaps he was influenced by looking to his left and seeing Dick Garnett mounted at the head of his brigade.

  Garnett’s explanation was that a horse had kicked him and he could not walk. He apparently also hoped that this highly visible gesture of leading his men into battle on horseback—and dressed resplendently in a fine new uniform—would finally erase the stain of the charges Stonewall Jackson had preferred against him back in 1862 during Garnett’s command of the Stonewall Brigade. Like Kemper, Garnett had his five regiments—from the right, 8th, 18th, 19th, 28th, and 56th Virginia—deployed in a single line, two ranks deep. That was also the formation employed in Armistead’s brigade, marching some 80 yards to the rear. Armistead’s regiments, right to left, were the 14th, 9th, 53rd, 57th, and 38th Virginia. Lew Armistead would lead his brigade on foot, as ordered. General Pickett and staff, all mounted, took their position at the center of the division between the two lines. Out ahead was the divisional skirmish line.

  In Pickett’s division there were some sunstroke victims and a few shirkers who hung back from the advance, but generally morale was reported good and confidence high. Sergeant David E. Johnston of the 7th Virginia looked back on the moment and thought that if anything the mood tended toward overconfidence. This was evident, he wrote, from General Lee down to the “shakiest private in the ranks.” As Sergeant Johnston reckoned it, “Too much overconfidence was the bane of our battle.“9

  Right from the start, the left wing of the grand assault, under Pettigrew and Trimble, did not act in perfect concert with Pickett’s wing. This was almost inevitable due to their initial positioning. By taking its concealment back in the woods on Seminary Ridge, Pettigrew’s battle line started some 200 yards behind Pickett’s and 400 yards to the north of it. Pettigrew deployed his division in a different fashion than did Pickett. All four of Pettigrew’s brigades formed as a single front, but with each regiment in a so-called double line of battle—that is, five companies (in two ranks) in front and five companies (in two ranks) behind. In this more compact deployment, colonels could keep better control of their men in the din of battle, and could reinforce the front line with their own second line rather than having to depend on some other commander for support. This also left Pettigrew’s four-brigade front roughly equal in length to Pickett’s two-brigade front. Trimble’s two brigades, formed up some 150 yards to the rear of Pettigrew, would be the last to advance. 10

  Although severely wounded in his first battle, at Seven Pines on the Peninsula, Johnston Pettigrew had lived up to his high promise in his second, on July 1. Heth’s wounding that day moved Pettigrew, as senior brigade commander, into the divisional command. He confronted a challenge this Friday considerably greater than Pickett’s. Pettigrew’s brigade leaders were new (Fry and Marshall) or of doubtful ability (Davis and Brockenbrough), all his troops had been roughly hammered in Wednesday’s fighting, and he was a stranger to most of them and they to him.

  Although Pickett’s wing set out in advance of the rest of the charge, it would be guiding on Birkett Fry’s right-hand brigade of Pettigrew’s division. These centrally posted Tennesseans and Alabamians—from right to left, 1st Tennessee, 13th Alabama, 14th and 7th Tennessee, and 5th Alabama Battalion—had been mauled by the Iron Brigade on July 1, losing about a third of their numbers and suffering General Archer captured. Still, Colonel Fry seemed to have the men well in hand and there was no hesitation. “After lying inactive under that deadly storm of hissing and exploding shells,” Fry recalled, “it seemed a relief to go forward to the desperate assault.”

  Next to Fry in line came Pettigrew’s old brigade, today under Colonel James Marshall. These North Carolinians (from the right, 47th, 26th, 52nd, and 11th regiments), transferred north from D. H. Hill’s department in May, had undergone their first real test of battle on Wednesday. They passed the test, certainly, but at the staggering cost of more than a thousand casualties. Afterward General Pettigrew and his officers had labored to recruit and restore morale: “The cooks were given muskets, etc.; in fact everything was done to get as many fighting men in ranks as possible.” When on Friday the advance was signaled, Pettigrew rode up to Colonel Marshall and said, “Now, Colonel, for the honor of the good old North State, Forward!” Of Fry’s and Marshall’s brigades a man wrote, “We all moved off in as magnificent a style as I ever saw, the lines perfectly formed.“11

  Such a glowing description could hardly be applied to the rest of Pettigrew’s division that afternoon. Joe Davis’s brigade, next in line, failed to see Marshall advance and so made a belated start. Apparently its comm
and was still rattled from the battering the brigade had suffered on July 1. Finally the four regiments—55th North Carolina and 2nd, 42nd, and 11th Mississippi—burst out of the woods at the double-quick in an effort to catch up with the rest of the line. The inexperienced Davis and his staff now seemed unable to control the ardor of their men, for in the attempt at alignment the line started and stopped and bunched up and was thereby a better target for the Yankee guns.

  Of John Brockenbrough’s brigade, forming the far left of the advance, nothing was to be seen initially either. Pettigrew had sent his aide Louis Young hurrying over to prod Joe Davis, but the general seemed indifferent to Brockenbrough’s nonappearance. As Young recalled it, Pettigrew said Brockenbrough’s brigade “might follow, and if it failed to do so it would not matter.” It was a small brigade—after Wednesday’s fight, perhaps 500 muskets—with poor morale and worse leadership, “and was not to be relied upon; it was virtually of no value in a fight.” That had clearly been the case on July 1, when Brockenbrough’s Virginians simply stopped in their tracks at the first enemy fire … and it was to be the case again on July 3.

  The brigade’s divided command imposed by Brockenbrough—he led the 40th Virginia and 22nd Virginia Battalion, while Colonel Robert M. Mayo took charge of the 47th and 55th Virginia—did not help matters at this point, especially when Colonel Mayo could not be found to give the order to advance. In due course these Virginians would lurch forward independently of everyone else. “We were a long ways behind, and had to run to catch up with the rest of the Brigade,” explained Colonel William’S. Christian of the 55th Virginia. And as it happened, Brockenbrough’s brigade would suffer its fate independently of everyone else.12