Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

by Allen C. Guelzo

  The Confederates slowly worked their way up the rock-pitted slopes of both peaks, the firing becoming “close and deadly, while the echoing of the woods increased the appalling roar.” It was “almost continuous, at times tremendous,” and even in the town the family of Michael Jacobs, huddled in their cellar on Middle Street, thought “the noise of the musketry fire from that point as it reached the house was actually deafening.” Louis Léon found himself firing his rifle so often that “my gun became so hot that the ramrod would not come out, so I shot it at the Yankees.” He wondered afterward “if it hit a yankee; if so, I pity him.” Up on the north peak, a soldier in the 28th Pennsylvania had a similar experience: “We were in action 3 hours, during which time I fired 65 rounds of Amunition … more than I have used in any battle. I often had to wait for my rifel to cool, ramming home the ball with a stone.” The rain of bullets was so heavy that trees were “shot off about breast high” and “came tumbling down,” and a soldier in the 78th New York was startled to find “hundreds of small birds” landing “among the men in the firing line, as if for protection, often lighting upon their shoulders.”19

  But Pappy Greene and John Geary (“dressed in an old blouse, with few of the outward appearances of a general”) calmly cycled regiments in and out of the earthworks Greene had dug the day before, giving their men time “to secure ammunition, clean pieces, etc.” Altogether, Johnson launched four attacks at Culp’s Hill that morning; each time, they were beaten back, only to “retire a short distance to form again.” At 10:25, a third wave of attackers came up the slope against Geary’s division, charging in “with the usual yell in closed column in mass” in a solid block of companies only “a pace apart.” This accomplished no more than the first two attacks, and a single volley, delivered “within seventy paces,” shook “the entire column,” and it broke to the rear.20

  On the left of the 5th Ohio, a sergeant noticed something he had not expected: “An American citizen of African descent had taken position, and with a gun and cartridge box, which he took from one of our dead men, was more than piling hot lead into the Graybacks.” There is no way of knowing whether this solitary black fighter was a civilian teamster who decided to join the Ohioans or a refugee from the town who had come out of hiding to do his bit (or even a member of the Adams County company that had tried, unsuccessfully, to volunteer itself to the new all-black 54th Massachusetts). He was certainly not a soldier, since none of the new black regiments recruited since the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation were attached to the Army of the Potomac. Whoever he was, he is the only African American on record as a combatant fighting at Gettysburg. “His coolness and bravery was noticed and commented upon by all who saw him,” and the Ohio sergeant who described him thought that “if the negro regiments fight like he did, I don’t wonder that the Rebs … hate them so.”21

  The odds were mounting against Allegheny Johnson. By eleven o’clock, Slocum was getting reinforcements from a new source. John Sedgwick’s 6th Corps finally arrived in force during the evening of July 2nd, and though George Meade’s original notion had been to put them into the line along Cemetery Ridge, the position Dan Sickles was originally supposed to occupy, Sedgwick peeled off two brigades to help Slocum. They arrived in time for the fourth and last attack to come boiling up out of the woods at Geary and Pap Greene, with “two of Johnson’s brigades … formed in column by regiments,” and Maryland Steuart’s brigade “started forward to meet death and defeat” against the south peak. Steuart’s men did not get far; overtaxed by eight hours of fighting, men “threw themselves upon the ground, and despite the pleadings and curses of their officers refused to go forward.” On the north peak, the Confederates actually made it “fairly into our lines.” But Pappy Greene’s regiments drained the attackers of strength, and “in this last charge” some of them actually “rushed forward with white flags to surrender.” Enraged and embarrassed at the surrenders, Allegheny Johnson’s adjutant and chief-of-staff, Benjamin Leigh, spurred forward “to prevent this surrender, but was shot down when very near our lines.” The 12th Corps was once more “in full possession of its original line,” and “Johnson’s troops withdrew to Rock Creek, leaving a strong picket line in their front.” If Robert E. Lee had expected Ewell to be the other horn on which the Army of the Potomac would be gored on July 3rd, that horn had now been broken off. And once again, the mysterious genie of coordination had eluded him. “We accomplished nothing,” wrote a captain in the 53rd Virginia.22

  As the Confederates faded away into the woods, the one thing which a Union soldier noticed above all others was “the lifeless body of Adjt. Gen. Leigh of Gen. Johnson’s staff, as stark in death he had fallen by the side of a dead horse close up to our works.” Pappy Greene had the body searched for “papers indicating the troops engaged to our front,” and then ordered him given “a soldier’s burial in rear of our line, and near the graves of our own officers and men.” The trees were stripped of leaves and bark, and the trunks “looked like target boards, and many of them had not space upon them where a man could put his hand and not cover a bullet hole.” Even “the ground was covered with flattened bullets, and the rocks were pitted with lead marks.” All through the woods was a littering of over 1,800 rifles, and 500 corpses, “piled up on each other four and five deep.” But at least the fighting had “practically ceased,” remembered one Union officer, followed by a “period of perfect quiet.” Then, breaking the stillness, there came the distant boom of two artillery pieces.23

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Are you going to do your duty today?

  GEORGE GORDON MEADE did not get to sleep much before midnight, but he took the time after his war council broke up to send off a message to be telegraphed to Halleck, confirming that “I shall remain in my present position to-morrow.” But exactly what he would do in that position was unclear, even to him. “I 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.” When he awoke on the morning of the 3rd, Meade dictated an order to William French at Frederick (where French had removed the Harpers Ferry garrison), warning him that the day might end in “our discomfiture and withdrawal,” and in that case French should “look to Washington, and throw your force there for its protection.” Meade rode toward Culp’s Hill, then went on “to various parts of the field, reforming the troops and strengthening their positions.” Just before nine o’clock, he dashed off another note to be telegraphed, this time to Margaretta in Philadelphia, assuring her “all well and going on well with this Army” but admitting that “both armies [are] shattered.” The Army of the Potomac was in “fine spirits & every one determined to do or die,” but the “result remains to be seen.” He distributed orders to round up stragglers, collect discarded weapons and equipment, and have everyone equipped “to move at a moment’s notice.”

  But where he might move them to was a mystery. The night before, as the council broke up, Meade warned John Gibbon that any rebel attack the next day would probably fall on his 2nd Corps division, on Cemetery Ridge. “If Lee attacks tomorrow, it will be in your front.” This puzzled Gibbon, and Meade explained: “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.” But by noon of the 3rd, Meade had changed his mind. He predicted to Winfield Hancock that “the next attack would be made on his right,” and he pinpointed the locus of the attack by telling John Cleveland Robinson “that he anticipated an attack on the cemetery by the enemy’s forces massed in the town.”1

  Winfield Hancock was up early, too, ordering up shovels, picks, and axes for details to begin creating some crude trenches and “rifle pits.” Hancock had the primary responsibility for defending 1,600 yards of territory along the crest of Cemetery Ridge, running from the western face of Cemetery Hill down to the edge of the sprawling farm property of Nicholas Codori. At that moment, he could count on only four brigades of infantry to keep watch. Lined u
p from right to left, this included the “Harpers Ferry Cowards” (who had spent July 2nd redeeming themselves) and Thomas Smyth’s brigade, which had undertaken the burning of the Bliss farm buildings—both brigades comprising what was left of Alex Hays’ division. Hays, “persistently riding along his line,” ordered his men “to hunt up all abandoned small arms, clean and load them, ready for use.” With this added firepower, Hays’ two brigades were posted around the small white cottage and barn owned by the black farmer Abraham Bryan.

  The other two brigades were the Philadelphia Brigade, commanded by Alexander Webb, and Norman Hall’s mixed brigade of two New York regiments (the 42nd and 59th), two Massachusetts (the 19th and 20th), and one Michigan regiment (the 7th). Their position was broken up by a two-and-a-half-foot-high stone boundary wall which jutted far enough ahead of Abraham Bryan’s property line to create a hundred-yard-deep angle, protruding westward toward the Emmitsburg Road. One of the Philadelphia regiments—the 71st Pennsylvania—had to be posted half by half along Bryan’s line and then along the angle. The Philadelphians had their hands full clearing brush and saplings along the stone wall at the angle in their line; the wall still had wooden rails crossed over the stone to prevent cattle straying, and that, together with the piled-up undergrowth, would provide some added measure of cover. With some thought for what might happen later on, they also collected the scattering of rifles and cartridge boxes left behind by Wright’s Georgians. “Almost every man had two to five guns,” many of them .69 caliber smoothbore muskets, which the 69th Pennsylvania reloaded as buckshot “putting 12 to the load.”2

  There were also some fragments of William Harrow’s brigade (which also belonged to Gibbon) on the line—the 19th Maine, the 15th Massachusetts, the 1st Minnesota—but they had been so badly chewed up the day before that any roll call made them look more like companies than regiments. Hancock could also call on George Stannard and his brigade of Vermonters, who had been moved into position on Hancock’s left after stopping Ambrose Wright the evening before. The Vermonters energetically “built such slight breastworks as we could on the crest of the ridge,” using “old rails and logs.” But they were nine months’ volunteers and their enlistments were about to expire, and Hancock did not expect much from them.3

  Not that the others were in reliable shape. The “Harpers Ferry Brigade” had taken some rough handling from Barksdale’s Mississippians, and they lost their commander, George Willard, when an errant shell decapitated him the evening before at the height of his brigade’s newfound glory. They were now commanded by Eliakim Sherrill of the 111th New York, and Sherrill had managed to irritate Hancock sufficiently for the short-fused Hancock to put him under arrest. The 20th Massachusetts lost its colonel, Paul Joseph Revere, to a shell fragment on July 2nd; so had the 72nd Pennsylvania in the Philadelphia Brigade. The 69th Pennsylvania was down to 258 men; the 59th New York could count only 137 men. All told, Hancock’s four brigades may have had no more than 3,500 infantry in their crooked line. Apart from Stannard’s Vermonters and the provost guard, there was no other reserve between themselves and the rear of Cemetery Hill or the Baltimore Pike.4

  As temperatures rose into the upper 80s, “many of the men” created “improvised shelters by inverting their muskets, with the bayonets stuck in the ground … to which, by means of the hammers, pieces of shelter tents or blankets were fastened.” Then they “lolled, sweltered, and waited under the tropical sun.” Samuel Robert, the major of the 72nd Pennsylvania, sat on “one end of a fence-rail … passively listening to some jesting remarks about some girls in Philadelphia, made by a sergeant, who was sitting upon the other end of the rails.” In the 82nd New York, “the men rested idly in line as they listened to the incessant roll of musketry at Culp’s Hill.” In the 1st Minnesota, men went “one or two at a time back to the rear, where they were allowed fires and cooking,” to get coffee. Once the skirmishing over the Bliss farm was over and the columns of black smoke from its burning billowed skyward, a peculiar quiet settled over the ridge. Out at the Emmitsburg Road, details of skirmishers from the 72nd, 69th, and 106th Pennsylvania formed a skirmish line in the roadbed. The booming to the east, from the struggle for Culp’s Hill, petered out around noon, and “a strange hush fell on the battle-field.”5

  John Gibbon was feeling the pangs of hunger. Somewhere, his division staffers had “picked up … an old and tough rooster which was prepared for the pot and made into a stew.” He invited Hancock over to share whatever the rooster might yield in the way of sustenance, setting up “an old mess chest for a table.” Then George Meade, accompanied by John Newton of the 1st Corps and Alf Pleasonton, cantered past, headed toward his headquarters behind the ridge at the Leister cottage. Gibbon may have been overestimating what one rooster could provide, but he urged Meade and the others to join him. Meade at first refused; he had reports coming in and paperwork to oversee. But Gibbon cajoled him, arguing that the makeshift mess table was “in plain sight, that he would be absent but a few minutes.” So Meade, who had eaten no breakfast and looked “worn and haggard,” relented. “An old cracker box was found which served as a seat for the commander of the Army of the Potomac,” and for once the “general feeling was hopeful.” Meade stayed only long enough to share “our coffee and stewed rooster,” and then rode back to the cottage. But the others stayed “on the ground chatting over the probable events of the day,” lighting up cigars, “while the opposing armies waited in deep suspense under the oppressive heat of the July sun.”

  The men in the ranks were just as hungry as the officers, but without any equivalent access to roosters. What they did have access to was whiskey. Alcohol was, in fact, being ladled out pretty freely in both armies; Richard Garnett and Cadmus Wilcox sat down to a lunch in the shadow of Joseph Sherfy’s house with cold mutton and a bottle of whiskey. Porter Alexander was puzzled to find “two lieutenants, of a Miss. Regt.,” apparently rifling through the pockets of a dead Confederate officer, only to discover that the officer was the regimental surgeon who was drunk and passed out. Lewis Armistead could be seen “taking out a small flask” before the advance, and a Union prisoner “lying on the ground near General Pickett’s headquarters” could not help noticing that Pickett had been fortifying himself with more than encouraging reflections. “In looking at his cheeks and nose, we divined that their color was not caused by drinking sodawater only.”6

  And then, at “about one o’clock,” there was a loud bang from what Charles Bane, the adjutant of the Philadelphia Brigade, thought sounded like “a single Whitworth gun … fired from the extreme left of Seminary Ridge.” Professor Michael Jacobs checked his watch (or was it a mantel clock?) and saw its hands had moved to 1:07 p.m. A soldier in the 82nd New York happened to be looking down toward the peach orchard, and “saw a puff of white smoke … darting across the meadow,” and shouted, There she goes! even before the “sound of the discharge could reach the eager spectators on the Union side.” The shell landed a little to Bane’s left, among the 19th Massachusetts, where it blew apart a lieutenant who “had leaped to his feet at the sound.” Then there was “another stream of thick, white smoke, streaked with flame,” and another round which also flew into the midst of the 19th Massachusetts, “striking among the gun stacks of the Nineteenth.” And then Adjutant Bane heard “at intervals along the entire line solitary shots were fired” like an engine coughing to life, “and in a few moments there burst forth from the whole Confederate line a most terrific fire of artillery.” Michael Jacobs turned to his son, Henry, and could only think of a verse from St. John’s apocalypse: Seven thunders uttered their voices.7

  Around noon, James Walton and Porter Alexander reported to Longstreet that “all [was] ready” with the artillery. But all was not ready with Longstreet’s infantry. After marching “about 25 miles on the 2d,” Pickett’s division “bivouacked about four miles from Gettysburg on the Chambersburg turnpike” for the night, and even when they got moving again “at 3 o’clock A. m. to take our position i
n line of Battle,” the entire maneuver was not finished until at least “11 o’clock A. M”—if even by then. (Alexander remembered that as late as noon, he was still waiting to hear whether “Pickett was ready.”) In the meanwhile, Longstreet wanted Alexander “to take a position where I could see the field well & take one of Picketts couriers with me, & that I must send Pickett word when to charge.” Once the infantry was finally in place, Longstreet would signal Walton to open fire with “all the guns on the line … simultaneously,” and Walton’s own signal to the artillery would be “two guns [fired] in quick succession by the Washington Artillery” at the peach orchard. Alexander’s job would be to observe the effect of the artillery bombardment, and once it was clear the batteries of Federal guns on Cemetery Ridge had been silenced, he would send off Pickett’s galloper with the signal for the infantry to advance.8

  Pickett’s three brigades moved down the Cashtown Pike, filed off to the southwest on the Knoxlyn Road, and then worked their way across the Fairfield Road—behind the Lutheran seminary, behind the divisions from Hill’s corps which would go into action with them—until by eight o’clock they moved into position in a hollow “four hundred yards or so from the top, under the crest” of Seminary Ridge. It was a “shady quiet march,” ending under the grateful cover of Henry Spangler’s woods, almost due west from Hancock and the 2nd Corps. There, “arms were stacked” and the men fell out “with the understanding that when two signal guns were fired” they would “take arms and lie flat on the ground.” Kemper’s brigade had the lead on the march in, so the three brigades, when they finally deployed for the attack, would create a front rank of Kemper’s and then Garnett’s brigade, with Armistead’s drawn up a hundred yards behind.