Gettysburg

  With a chilling rebel yell, the Confederates swept over the stone wall and captured the Union battery placed near the Angle driving the defending infantry back from their wall. War correspondent Charles Coffin witnessed the action:

  Men fire into each other’s faces, not five feet apart. There are bayonet-thrusts,

  saber-strokes, pistol-shots... hand-to-hand contests ... men going down on their hands and knees, spinning round like tops, throwing out their arms, gulping up blood, falling; legless, armless, headless. There are ghastly heaps of dead men. Seconds are centuries; minutes, ages; but the thin line does not break!

  The Rebel column has lost its power. The lines waver. The soldiers of the front rank look round for their supports. They are gone,—fleeing over the field, broken, shattered, thrown into confusion by the remorseless fire from the cemetery and from the cannon on the ridge. The lines have disappeared like a straw in a candle’s flame. The ground is thick with dead, and the wounded are like the withered leaves of autumn. Thousands of Rebels throw down their arms and give themselves up as prisoners.

  Armistead went down with wounds to his arm and leg just moments after storming the wall. Captured by Union soldiers, he was carried on a blanket to the rear where he was met by Captain Henry Bingham, an officer on Hancock’s staff who later wrote to Hancock of the exact exchange:

  I dismounted my horse and inquired of the prisoner his name. He replied General Armistead of the Confederate Army. Observing that his suffering was very great I said to him, General,

  Three Confederates taken prisoner at Gettysburg posed for this photo a few days after the battle. Photo credit: Library of Congress.

  “If the men I had the honor to command that day could not take that position, all hell couldn’t take it.”

  —Major General Isaac Trimble

  I am Captain Bingham of General Hancock’s staff, and if you have anything valuable in your possession which you desire taken care of, I will take care of it for you.

  He then asked me if it was General Winfield S. Hancock and upon my replying in the affirmative, he informed me that you were an old an valued friend of his and he desired for me to say to you, “Tell General Hancock for me that I have done him and done you all an injury which I shall regret the longest day I live.” I then obtained his spurs, watch chain, seal and pocketbook. I told the men to take him to the rear to one of the hospitals.

  Along the Union line the soldiers knew that they had at last won a decisive victory over their adversary, who had whipped them time and again until this day. Thousands took up the taunting chant, “Fredericksburg! Fredericks-burg!” upon the shattered legions of Lee’s army as they stumbled back toward Seminary Ridge. The Confederates had suffered over 50 percent casualties, including over 3,000 men taken prisoner. The copse of trees at the Angle would go down in history as the high-water mark of the Confederacy—the farthest advance of their army, and also perhaps the closest the South ever came to winning its independence.

  VISIONS OF APPOMATTOX

  Lee, watching the disaster unfold from Seminary Ridge, rode out alone to meet the survivors as they streamed back to the trees. Alexander Porter noted, “Lee, as a soldier, must have at this moment have foreseen Appomattox—that he must have realized that he could never again muster so powerful an army, and that for the future he could only delay, but not avert, the failure of his cause.” Yet Lee showed no anger, fear, or disappointment of any kind as he reached out to his wounded soldiers and told them, “This has all been my fault.” Colonel Fremantle, who witnessed Lee’s actions, was awed by his strength of presence and character:

  He was engaged in rallying and in encouraging the broken troops, and was riding about a little in front of the wood, quite alone—the whole of his Staff being engaged in a similar manner further to the rear. His face, which is always placid and cheerful, did not show signs of the slightest disappointment, care, or annoyance; he was addressing to every soldier he met a few words of encouragement, such as, “All this will come right in the end: we’ll talk it over afterwards; but, in the mean time, all good men must rally. ”

  I never saw troops behave more magnificently than Pickett’s division of Virginians did today in that grand charge upon the enemy. And if they had been supported as they were to have been,—but, for some reason not fully explained to me, were not—we would have held the position and the day would have been ours.

  —Robert E. Lee

  He spoke to all the wounded men that passed him, and the slightly wounded he exhorted “to bind up their hurts and take up a musket” in this emergency. Very few failed to answer his appeal, and I saw many badly wounded men take off their hats and cheer him. He said to me, “This has been a sad day for us, Colonel—a sad day; but we can’t expect always to gain victories. ”

  I saw General Wilcox come up to him, and explain, almost crying, the state of his brigade. General Lee immediately shook hands with him and said cheerfully, “Never mind, general, all this has been MY fault— it is I that have lost this fight, and you must help me out of it in the best way you can.” In this manner I saw General Lee encourage and reanimate his somewhat dispirited troops, and magnanimously take upon his own shoulders the whole weight of the repulse. It was impossible to look at him or to listen to him without feeling the strongest admiration.

  Pickett was equally devastated at seeing his proud division cut down before his eyes by enemy fire. When approached by Lee to reform his division he replied, “General Lee—I have no division.”

  Fearing an enemy counterattack, Lee pulled together his shattered brigades in a defensive line, but the Union troops never came. The Army of the Potomac had suffered equal losses over the past three days of this epic battle and was content to see the rebels go. Lieutenant Haskell had the honor of informing Meade that the day had been won:

  General Meade rode up ... no bedizened hero of some holiday review, but he was a plain man, dressed in a serviceable summer suit of dark blue cloth, without badge or ornament, save the shoulder-straps of his grade, and a light, straight sword of a General. . . . his soft black felt hat was slouched down over his eyes. His face was very white, not pale, and the lines were marked and earnest and full of care. As he arrived near me, coming up the hill, he asked, in a sharp, eager voice: “How is it going here?” “I believe, General, the enemy’s attack is repulsed,” I answered.

  By this time he was on the crest, and when his eye had for an instant swept over the field, taking in just a glance of the whole—the masses of prisoners, the numerous captured flags which the men were derisively flaunting about, the fugitives of the routed enemy, disappearing with the speed of terror in the woods—partly at what I had told him, partly at what he saw, he said, impressively, and his face lighted: “Thank God. ”

  Chapter Six

  Aftermath of

  Battle—“

  A Strange

  and Blighted Land”

  Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just...

  —Thomas Jefferson

  Even before the guns cooled that hot third day of July a new crisis was at hand—the plight of the wounded. Gettysburg was now a manmade disaster unparalleled in American history. Over 20,000 men from both sides lay on the fields or crammed into any available shelter. Every church, private home, barn, stable, pigsty, or shed in and around the town was filled with critically wounded and dying men. Thousands of dead soldiers and horses were scattered for miles in the surrounding fields and woods. The wells had all been pumped dry by thirsty soldiers. As the armies separated themselves from combat, a new battle began in earnest—to rescue the survivors of both sides.

  Tillie Pierce, along with Mrs. Weikert and her children, had been evacuated earlier that day to a farm down the Taneytown Road near Two Taverns. By late afternoon they realized the sounds of battle were over and decided to make their way back to the Weikert’s home. Tillie recounted in her diary:

  As we drove along in the cool of the evening, we noticed that e
verywhere confusion prevailed. Fences were thrown down near and far; knapsacks, blankets and many other articles, lay scattered here and there. The whole country seemed filled with desolation.

  Upon reaching the place I fairly shrank back aghast at the awful sight presented. The approaches were crowded with wounded, dying and dead. The air was filled with moanings, and groanings. As we passed on toward the house, we were compelled to pick our steps in order that we might not tread on the prostrate bodies.

  When we entered the house we found it also completely filled with the wounded. We hardly knew what to do or where to go. They, however, removed most of the wounded, and thus after a while made room for the family.

  As soon as possible, we endeavored to make ourselves useful by rendering assistance in this heartrending state of affairs. I remember that Mrs. Weikert went through the house, and after searching awhile, brought all the muslin and linen she could spare. This we tore into bandages and gave them to the surgeons, to bind up the poor soldier’s wounds.

  By this time, amputating benches had been placed about the house. I must have become inured to seeing the terrors of battle, else I could hardly have gazed upon the scenes now presented. I was looking out one of the windows facing the front yard. Near the basement door, and directly underneath the window I was at, stood one of these benches. I saw them lifting the poor men upon it, then the surgeons sawing and cutting off arms and legs, then again probing and picking bullets from the flesh.

  Some of the soldiers fairly begged to be taken next, so great was their suffering, and so anxious were they to obtain relief.

  To the south of the house, and just outside of the yard, I noticed a pile of limbs higher than the fence. It was a ghastly sight! Gazing upon these, too often the trophies of the amputating bench, I could have no other feeling, than that the whole scene was one of cruel butchery.

  Twilight had now fallen; another day had closed; with the soldiers saying, that they believed this day the Rebels were whipped, but at an awful sacrifice.

  LEE RETREATS FOR VIRGINIA

  Saturday dawned and quickly the temperature rose as another hot and humid afternoon approached. The two armies were bloodied and battered—like two prize fighters unwilling to continue the contest—and stood a healthy distance from each other across the valley. Lee hoped Meade would attack and give the Confederates a chance to reclaim some measure of victory over the Union army, but Meade knew his shattered brigades were in no condition to advance though they had certainly won a great and decisive victory.

  The Jacob Weikert House where Tillie assisted the doctors and the wounded. Photo credit: The Gettysburg Daily.

  Tillie remembered that day as well: “On the summits, in the valleys, everywhere we heard the soldiers hurrahing for the victory that had been won. The troops on our right, at Culp’s Hill, caught up the joyous sound as it came rolling on from the Round Tops on our left, and soon the whole line of blue, rejoiced in the results achieved.” Most befitting of all, it was the fourth of July. By afternoon word had come that Vicksburg had surrendered to General Grant’s army in Mississippi. It seemed as if the Union victory was complete; that the war might soon be over.

  Lee wasted no time in making plans and issuing orders for his wounded army to retreat back through the Cashtown Gap and across the Potomac back into Virginia. The Army of Northern Virginia had lost a major battle, but they were not a defeated army. The prevailing mood of the Confederate troops was that the enemy’s superior position had been the key to their undoing on July 3. But some blamed Lee and his officers for making Pickett’s Charge in the first place. One was heard to say, “If Old Jack had been here, it wouldn’t have been like this.” The time for recriminations would come later. The task at hand was one of escape.

  Brigadier General John Imboden

  Lee summoned Brigadier General John Imboden, a cavalry officer whose troopers had been protecting Lee’s supply wagons in Cham-bersburg. Imboden was given command of a wagon train that would take the wounded who could be moved back to Virginia. Lee’s troops would follow along a different route. Low on ammunition and with ranks decimated by three days of hard fighting, Lee was in a dangerous situation. To retreat with so many wounded in the face of the enemy would take all his skill as a commanding general. If his army became trapped on the northern side of the Potomac, it could face total destruction if Meade’s army attacked.

  Around noon, the sky opened and let loose a howling thunderstorm, drenching the wounded who were unable to find shelter and turned the fields of battle into muddy swamps. Major General Carl Schurz remembered, “A heavy rain set in during the day—the usual rain after a battle—and large numbers had to remain unprotected in the open, there being no room left under roof. I saw long rows of men laying under the eaves of the buildings, the water pouring down upon their bodies in streams.”

  The storm made Imboden’s task to command the wagon train of wounded even more difficult. He later wrote, “The very windows of heaven seemed to have opened . . . The deafening roar of the mingled sounds of heaven and earth all around made it almost impossible to communicate orders, and equally difficult to execute them.” Around 4:00 PM, the vast column of wagons began to move out. Imboden’s orders were to get to Williamsport with all haste. There the men and horses would rest before crossing the Potomac. His 1,200 wagons were filled to capacity with wounded men.

  Map by Hal Jespersen, www.cwmaps.com.

  Imboden wrote of the retreat that night:

  The column moved rapidly, considering the rough roads and the darkness, and from almost every wagon for many miles issued heart-rending wails of agony . . . Scarcely one in a hundred had received adequate surgical aid, owing to the demands on the hardworking surgeons from still worse cases that had to be left behind. . .

  Some were only moaning; some were praying, and others uttering the most fearful oaths and execrations that despair and agony could wring from them; while a majority, with a stoicism sustained by sublime devotion to the cause they fought for, endured without complaint unspeakable tortures, end even spoke words of cheer and comfort to their unhappy comrades of less will or more acute nerves.

  A Vast Procession of Misery by Allen Christian Redwood.

  No heed could be given to any of their appeals. Mercy and duty to the many forbade the loss of a moment in the vain effort then and there to comply with the prayers of a few. On! On! We must move on.

  THE CONFEDERATES WITHDRAW FROM GETTYSBURG

  On the night of July 4, Ewell’s troops, who were still occupying Gettysburg, quietly prepared to withdraw. The townspeople had heard the massive bombardment and gunfire of the previous afternoon, but no one knew for sure what it all meant. Resident Sarah Broadhead noted the change of mood among the rebel soldiers in her diary: “Who is victorious, or with whom the advantage rests, no one can tell. It would ease the horror if we knew our arms were successful. Some think the Rebels were defeated, as there has been no boasting as on yesterday, and they look uneasy and by no means exultant.”

  Daniel Skelly knew something was afoot and could not sleep that night:

  On this night, I went to bed restless and was unable to sleep soundly. About midnight I was awakened by a commotion down in the street. Getting up I went to the window and saw Confederate officers passing through the lines of Confederate soldiers bivouacked on the pavement below, telling them to get up quietly and fall back. Very soon the whole line disappeared but we had to remain quietly in our homes for we did not know what it meant.

  About 4 AM, there was another commotion in the street, this time on Baltimore, the Fahnestock building being at the corner of West Middle and Baltimore Streets. It seemed to be a noisy demonstration. Going hurriedly to the window I looked out. Ye gods! What a welcome sight for the imprisoned people of Gettysburg! The Boys in Blue marching down the street, fife and drum corps playing, the glorious Stars and Stripes fluttering at the head of the lines.

  THE COSTS OF WAR

  As Lee’s army withdrew toward
the Potomac, he surrendered 4,000 wounded men to Union care. The following day, as Meade’s army moved out in pursuit of Lee, most of the army doctors went with the troops. Almost overnight, a town of 2,000 residents and a handful of surgeons was left in charge of more than 20,000 wounded men in dire need of care. The task of burying the dead also remained. The devastation—both of people and property—in and around Gettysburg was beyond description.

  The bodies of Union soldiers killed during the fighting on July 1, near McPherson’s Woods, await burial. Photo credit: Timothy H. O’Sullivan, National Archives.

  The Trostle barn near the Peach Orchard after the battle. The dead horses belonged to an artillery battery. Photo credit: National Archives.

  The townspeople and volunteers from miles around came to Gettysburg to render aid. The government’s Sanitary Commission, an organization similar to today’s Red Cross, arrived almost immediately, setting up tents and organizing relief efforts. The wounded were eventually collected into improvised hospitals in tents and buildings where they received medical care until they were well enough to be discharged, moved to a proper hospital, or in the case of the Confederates to prison camps. In these relief efforts the Union wounded received aid first, but once under the care of a doctor, wounded Confederate soldiers were generally treated with the same care as their Union counterparts.