by Rod Gragg
Pickett’s soldiers fell in droves in front of the stone wall, but the survivors pressed on, spilling over the wall on both sides of the clump of trees and fighting hand-to-hand with the men in blue. Troops in General Webb’s brigade—the Philadelphia Brigade—began to break and run for the rear. Many stood firm, however, refusing to yield, frantically firing and fighting up close. Webb desperately tried to hold his troops in place, then ran to the rear under fire and ordered up a nearby regiment. When those troops refused to go forward, he sprinted to a regiment on his left, the 69th Pennsylvania Infantry, and ordered them to turn and fire into enemy troops who were pouring over the wall. Another regiment, the 106th Pennsylvania, added its firepower, and so did two more regiments—the 19th Massachusetts and the 42nd New York—which were rushed over from the left by Colonel Devereux. It was a frenzied, ferocious standoff. For perhaps as long as twenty minutes, the two sides struggled face-to-face on Cemetery Ridge around the clump of trees. Even in the desperation of the moment, men on both sides knew the outcome of the battle would be decided in that small deadly space.
Long afterward, Ernest L. Waitt, a soldier in the 19th Massachusetts Infantry—one of the regiments rushed to reinforce the Federal line—would try to describe the desperate struggle around the “copse of trees” on Cemetery Ridge.
After Pickett’s division crosses the Emmitsburg Road and comes sweeping up the slope, they still bear everything before them, as if carried forward by an all-ruling fate. Their right flank just touches the Cordora house. The left, a hundred and fifty rods away, is slightly in advance. Three lines of battle are moving up.... As they cross the road only 800 yards away, huge gaps begin to show in their lines as a result of the effective fire of the Union artillery, but they are quickly closed up in magnificent style, and the line still advances. At 300 yards canister takes the place of shell and their men fall like leaves in the Autumn gale, but the great mass silently, swiftly moves forward.
They are approaching the “little oak grove” in front of which, behind a stone-wall, lies Webb’s brigade of Pennsylvanians. The advancing columns close in on the infantry. With a yell they rush forward. A sheet of flame welcomes them and in its warm grasp their line melts like ice. Being obliged to cross a fence oblique to their line of advance, the rebels are crowded and closed in mass in the endeavor to regain their formation.
It is seen that Webb cannot firmly hold his men against the shock of that fierce charge, although he throws himself, with reckless courage, in front of them to face the storm and beg, threaten and command. They are obliged to fall back upon the second line.
When his brigade of Pennsylvanians began crumbling under the Confederate assault, Brigadier General Alexander Webb frantically collared reinforcements and rushed them forward to plug the gap.
National Archives
Based on eyewitness accounts and his own observations, combat artist Edwin Forbes re-recreated the moment Federal reinforcements drove back the Confederate breakthrough on Cemetery Ridge and repulsed the Pickett-Pettigrew Charge.
Library of Congress
Hall’s right, overlapped, has to sag back, swaying to the rear because of the pressure, but swaying forward again as the ocean surges against a rock. Regimental organization is lost, ranks are eight or ten deep—pushing struggling, refusing to yield, but almost impotent for good.
A gap opens between Webb and Hall for a brief instant, at the time when there was a sudden lull in the firing of the cannon. Woodruff, Brown, Cushing, Rorty and every other commissioned officer, almost without exception, of their respective batteries is dead or disabled. Gen. Gibbon, commanding the division is also wounded.... “Mallon! We must move!” shouts Col. Devereux to his friend, the commander of the Forty-Second New York....
The Nineteenth Massachusetts, trained from its inception in a discipline as stern as that of Cromwell’s “Ironsides,” is material upon which reliance in such an emergency can be placed. With it is the Forty-Second New York, which has served by its side in the same brigade, in the camp, on the march and on the battle field from Ball’s Bluff to the present moment.
Like a bolt of flame the little line is launched upon the enemy on the south side of the “Clump of Trees.” The first line is struck and broken through.
The heroic regiment pauses an instant to gather breath and then, with a furious bound, goes on to the second line. As the men break through the first line, Maj. Rice is in front. With a cry “Follow me, boys!” he dashes forward and is the first man to come into contact with the second line. He is severely wounded through the thigh and falls inside the enemy’s lines.
The two lines come together with a shock which stops them both and causes a slight rebound. For several minutes they face and fired into each other at a distance of fifteen paces, (as measured after the battle). Everything seems trembling in the balance. The side that can get in forward motion first will surely win.
The men in blue are jammed in, five and six deep. Sometimes there are groups which are even deeper and every time a man stoops to load, others crowd in ahead of him so that he will have to elbow his way through in order to get another chance to fire.
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“Muskets Are Exploding All Around”
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All can not be in the front rank, and the men in the rear are dodging around, firing through openings made by the changing crowd, no matter how small. There is little doubt that many are wounded in this manner, because of the rapid changes being made as the entire mass forges ahead. Muskets are exploding all around, flashing their fire almost in one’s face and so close to the head as to make the ears ring—and so the battle rages.
A battery had followed the Nineteenth Massachusetts and Forty-Second New York, and, in an instant more, from rear, right and left, at pistol range, these guns poured in an iron shower. Webb’s brigade came charging down. The remainder of Hall’s brigade rushed down upon the left. It cleared its front. Downward to the wall they forced the rebels back and for another twenty minutes, with ball and steel and rifles clubbed, hand to hand, they plied the awful work.
Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing, a twenty-two-year-old Federal artillery officer, commanded field artillery at the center of the Federal line. Although desperately wounded, he struggled to fire one last round.
Wisconsin Historical Society
A rebel color bearer came out between the trees in front of Webb and placed his battle flag upon one of Cushing’s guns,—and fell dead beside it. Another ran out to get it, but before reaching the gun he too fell dead. Then several rushed out together. They all fell about the piece and the rebel flag still waved on the Union cannon. Subsequently two more flags were placed upon the gun, all of which were captured, one of them by Corporal Joseph DeCastro, of the Nineteenth Massachusetts, who had become separated from his command and had joined the 72nd Pennsylvania regiment in the tumult. He turned, broke through the line, and thrust the captured flag into hands of Col. Devereux....
The opposing lines were standing as if rooted, dealing death into each other. There they stood and would not move. Foot to foot, body to body and man to man they struggled, pushed, and strived and killed. Each had rather die than yield. The mass of wounded and heaps of dead entangled the feet of the contestants, and, underneath the trampling mass, wounded men who could no longer stand, struggled, fought, shouted and killed—hatless, coatless, drowned in sweat, black with powder, red with blood, stifling in the horrid heat, parched with smoke and blind with dust, with fiendish yells and strange oaths they blindly plied the work of slaughter....9
“Boys, Give Them Cold Steel!”
Victorious Northern Forces Turn back the Pickett-Pettigrew Charge
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“Heaps of Dead Entangled the Feet”
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With his hat still held high on his sword point, General Armistead led the Virginians over the stone wall at “Bloody Angle” and into the ranks of the desperate Federal defenders. Before them, the men inblue began to fall away toward th
e rear. “Rise men!” he had told his soldiers back at their assembly point, before their long and bloody trek to the clump of trees. “Men, remember what you are fighting for—your homes, your firesides, and your sweethearts. Follow me!” Despite his forty-six years, he had led them the entire way—hustling across the deadly fields of fire yards in advance—and continued to lead once they crossed the stone wall. He had been that kind of leader in the Southern army, promoted from colonel to brigadier general in less than a year. He and his brigade had earned a reputation as fighters on fields of fire such as Malvern Hill, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. Now, as he climbed over the stone wall near the clump of trees and headed for Lieutenant Cushing’s abandoned artillery, his troops were still following him—although their bloodied ranks were reduced to probably less than 200. “Boys,” he shouted, “give them the cold steel.”
Federal troops in greater numbers now began to stumble toward the rear—like rabbits, one soldier said—and General Lee’s hope for victory once again seemed possible. But it was a fleeting moment. Yards away, General Alexander Webb was frantically pushing reinforcements forward to fill the gap in the Federal line. A veteran combat officer at age twenty-eight, Webb was a native New Yorker, the son of an American diplomat, and the grandson of one of George Washington’s staff officers from the Revolutionary War. Praised by his superiors and respected by his troops, he had been engaged in many of the same battles as Armistead—Malvern Hill, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville—but his rank had remained stalled at lieutenant colonel. In frustration, he had been ready to quit the army, but three days before Gettysburg he received his promotion to brigadier general. He was new to command of the Philadelphia Brig-age—assigned the post only days before the battle—but he proved his worth on Cemetery Ridge. He rushed troops forward to seal the break in the Federal line, directed the fire of others, and at one point even threatened to shoot a wavering color-bearer. “General Webb was everywhere,” one of his men would report.
Others also rushed troops to the gap or hurried to the fight there themselves. Among them were the survivors of the 1st Minnesota Infantry, whose regiment had almost been wiped out the day before while holding the line farther to the south. Now the regiment was again responsible for helping hold the line, although its ranks were drastically reduced in numbers. Even compared to the frenzied bloodletting the 1st Minnesota had experienced on Gettysburg’s second day, the fighting atop Cemetery Ridge was savage. “We were crazy with the excitement of the fight,” a Minnesota officer would recall. “We just rushed in like wild beasts. Men swore and cursed and struggled and fought, grappled in hand-to-hand fights, threw stones, clubbed their muskets, kicked, yelled, and hurrahed. But it was over in no time.” All but two members of Webb’s 72nd Pennsylvania’s color guard were shot down. In Armistead’s 53rd Virginia, eight of the nine members of the color guard were killed, and the sole survivor was wounded. General Webb suffered a leg wound. General Gibbon was shot in the shoulder. General Hancock also went down, seriously wounded when a Confederate bullet sent splinters and a nail from his saddle into his upper thigh.
General Armistead was shot down, too, and his wound was mortal. He led his troops across the stone wall and all the way to one of Lieutenant Cushing’s cannon, but as he reached his hand toward its muzzle, he was hit. When a Federal officer stooped to help him after the storm of battle, Armistead’s chief concern was the welfare of his friend Hancock. The rush of Federal reinforcements proved too much for Pickett’s men, who were overwhelmed after their breakthrough, and were shot down, driven back, or captured. The Confederate surge through the Federal line at “Bloody Angle,” with Armistead reaching for the muzzle of a Federal cannon, would become known as the “High Water Mark of the Confederacy.” As the defeated Confederates from the Pickett-Pettigrew Charge retreated, the Federal troops atop Cemetery Ridge broke into rousing cheers.
Thirty-four years after Gettysburg, Lieutenant Colonel Rawley W. Martin—an officer in Armistead’s Brigade—responded to a request from a Northern veteran to record his memories of the Pickett-Pettigrew Charge—when he went all the way to Cemetery Ridge with General Armistead.
LYNCHBURG, VA., August 11, 1897.
Commander SYLVESTER CHAMBERLAIN, Buffalo, N.Y.
My dear Sir,—
In the effort to comply with your request to describe Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, I may unavoidably repeat what has often been told before, as the position of troops, the cannonade, the advance, and the final disaster are familiar to all who have the interest or the curiosity to read. My story will be short, for I shall only attempt to describe what fell under my own observation.
You ask for a description of the “feelings of the brave Virginians who passed through that hell of fire in their heroic charge on Cemetery Ridge.” The esprit du corps could not have been better; the men were in good physical condition, self reliant and determined. They felt the gravity of the situation, for they knew well the metal of the foe in their front; they were serious and resolute, but not disheartened. None of the usual jokes, common on the eve of battle, were indulged in, for every man felt his individual responsibility, and realized that he had the most stupendous work of his life before him; officers and men knew at what cost and at what risk the advance was to be made, but they had deliberately made up their minds to attempt it. I believe the general sentiment of the division was that they would succeed in driving the Federal line from what was their objective point; they knew that many, very many, would go down under the storm of shot and shell which would greet them when their gray ranks were spread out to view, but it never occurred to them that disaster would come after they once placed their tattered banners upon the crest of Seminary Ridge.
I believe if those men had been told: “This day your lives will pay the penalty of your attack upon the Federal lines,” they would have made the charge just as it was made. There was no straggling, no feigned sickness, no pretence of being overcome by the intense heat; every man felt that it was his duty to make that fight; that he was his own commander, and they would have made the charge without an officer of any description; they only needed to be told what they were expected to do. This is as near the feeling of the men of Pickett’s Division on the morning of the battle as I can give, and with this feeling they went to their work. Many of them were veteran soldiers, who had followed the little cross of stars from Big Bethel to Gettysburg; they knew their own power, and they knew the temper of their adversary; they had often met before, and they knew the meeting before them would be desperate and deadly.
Pickett’s three little Virginia brigades were drawn up in two lines, Kemper on the right (1st, 3d, 7th, 11th and 24), Garnett on the left (8th, 18th, 19th, 28th and 56th), and Armistead in the rear and center (9th, 14th, 38th, 53d and 57th) Virginia Regiments, covering the space between Kemper’s left and Garnett’s right flanks. This position was assigned Armistead, I suppose, that he might at the critical moment rush to the assistance of the two leading brigades, and if possible, put the capstone upon their work. We will see presently how he succeeded. The Confederate artillery was on the crest of Seminary Ridge, nearly in front of Pickett; only a part of the division had the friendly shelter of the woods; the rest endured the scorching rays of the July sun until the opening of the cannonade, when the dangers from the Federal batteries were added to their discomfort. About 1 o’clock two signal guns were fired by the Washington Artillery, and instantly a terrific cannonade was commenced, which lasted for more than an hour, when suddenly everything was silent. Every man knew what that silence portended. The grim blue battle line on Seminary Ridge began at once to prepare for the advance of its antagonists; both sides felt that the tug of war was about to come, and that Greek must meet Greek as they had never met before.
From this point, I shall confine my description to events connected with Armistead’s brigade, with which I served. Soon after the cannonade ceased, a courier dashed up to General Armistead, who was pacing up and down in front of the
53d Virginia Regiment, his battalion of direction (which I commanded in the charge and at the head of which Armistead marched), and gave him the order from General Pickett to prepare for the advance. At once the command “Attention, battalion!” rang out clear and distinct. Instantly every man was on his feet and in his place; the alignment was made with as much coolness and precision as if preparing for dress parade. Then Armistead went up to the color sergeant of the 53d Virginia Regiment and said: “Sergeant, are you going to put those colors on the enemy’s works to-day?” The gallant fellow replied: “I will try, sir, and if mortal man can do it, it shall be done.” It was done, but not until this brave man, and many others like him, had fallen with their faces to the foe; but never once did that banner trail in the dust, for some brave fellow invariably caught it as it was going down, and again bore it aloft, until Armistead saw its tattered folds unfurled on the very crest of Seminary Ridge.
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“‘Sergeant, Are You Going to Put Those Colors on the Enemy’s Works To-day?’”
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