The Illustrated Gettysburg Reader: An Eyewitness History of the Civil War's Greatest Battle

by Rod Gragg

  As the survivors of the Pickett-Pettigrew Charge streamed back to Confederate lines, Lee rode among them on horseback. “All this has been my fault,” he stated repeatedly.

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  He asked for something to drink: I gave him some rum out of my silver flask, which I begged he would keep in remembrance of the occasion;—he smiled, and, to my great satisfaction, accepted the memorial. He then went off to give some orders to McLaws’s division.

  Soon afterwards I joined General Lee, who had in the meanwhile come to the front on becoming aware of the disaster. If Longstreet’s conduct was admirable, that of General Lee was perfectly sublime. 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; and 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. We want all good and true men just now,” &c. 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.” He was also kind enough to advise me to get into some more sheltered position.

  Notwithstanding the misfortune which had so suddenly befallen him, General Lee seemed to observe every thing, however trivial. When a mounted officer began licking his horse for shying at the bursting of a shell, he called out. “Don’t whip him, Captain; don’t whip him. I’ve got just such another foolish horse myself, and whipping does no good.”

  I happened to see a man lying flat on his face in a small ditch, and I remarked that I didn’t think he seemed dead; this drew General Lee’s attention to the man, who commenced groaning dismally. Finding appeals to his patriotism of no avail, General Lee had him ignominiously set on his legs by some neighboring gunners.

  I saw General Wilcox (an officer who wears a short round jacket and a battered straw hat) 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, and I never saw any man fail him except the man in the ditch.

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  “‘We’ve Not Lost Confidence in the Old Man’”

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  It is difficult to exaggerate the critical state of affairs as they appeared about this time. If the enemy or their general had shown any enterprise, there is no saying what might have happened. General Lee and his officers were evidently fully impressed with a sense of the situation; yet there was much less noise, fuss, or confusion of orders than at an ordinary field-day: the men, as they were rallied in the wood, were brought up in detachments, and lay down quietly and coolly in the positions assigned to them.

  We heard that Generals Garnett and Armistead were killed, and General Kemper mortally wounded; also, that Pickett’s division had only one field-officer unhurt. Nearly all this slaughter took place in an open space about one mile square, and within one hour.

  At 6 P.M. we heard a long and continuous Yankee cheer, which we at first imagined was an indication of an advance, but it turned out to be their reception of a general officer, whom we saw riding down the line, followed by about thirty horsemen.

  Soon afterwards I rode to the extreme front, where there were four pieces of rifled cannon almost without any infantry support. To the non-withdrawal of these guns is to be attributed the otherwise surprising inactivity of the enemy.

  I was immediately surrounded by a sergeant and about half-a-dozen gunners, who seemed in excellent spirits and full of confidence, in spite of their exposed situation. The sergeant expressed his ardent hope that the Yankees might have spirit enough to advance and receive the dose he had in readiness for them. They spoke in admiration of the advance of Pickett’s division, and of the manner in which Pickett himself had led it. When they observed General Lee they said, “We’ve not lost confidence in the old man: this day’s work won’t do him no harm. ‘Uncle Robert’ will get us into Washington yet; you bet he will,” &c.

  Whilst we were talking, the enemy’s skirmishers began to advance slowly, and several ominous sounds in quick succession told us that we were attracting their attention, and that it was necessary to break up the conclave. I therefore turned round and took leave of these cheery and plucky gunners....3

  “It Has Been a Sad, Sad Day”

  Lee Decides to Fight No More

  Late on the night of July 3, Brigadier General John D. Imboden, a cavalry officer who had spent the battle protecting Lee’s long line of ammunition and supply wagons, was fetched by a courier to come to Lee’s headquarters. Imboden left the wagon park west of Gettysburg and followed the courier through the darkness into town. There, at Lee’s headquarters, he found himself in the unique situation of listening to General Lee as he shared his personal feelings about the Southern defeat at Gettysburg.

  Seven years later, Imboden would share his story of that memorable encounter with the readers of The Galaxy magazine.

  When night closed upon the grand scene our army was repulsed. Silence and gloom pervaded our camps. We knew that the day had gone against us, but the extent of the disaster was not known except in high quarters. The carnage of the day was reported to have been frightful, but our army was not in retreat, and we all surmised that with to-morrow’s dawn would come a renewal of the struggle; and we knew that if such was the case those who had not been in the fight would have their full share in the honors and the dangers of the next day. All felt and appreciated the momentous consequences of final defeat or victory on that great field. These considerations made that, to us, one of those solemn and awful nights that every one who fought through our long war sometimes experienced before a great battle.

  Horses are tied outside General Robert E. Lee’s headquarters site in this sketch by soldier-artist Charles W. Reed. Here, on the night of July 3, Lee made plans to move his army back to Virginia.

  Library of Congress

  Few camp fires enlivened the scene. It was a warm summer’s night, and the weary soldiers were lying in groups on the luxuriant grass of the meadows we occupied, discussing the events of the day or watching that their horses did not straggle off in browsing around. About eleven o’clock a horseman approached and delivered a message from General Lee, that he wished to see me immediately. I mounted at once, and, accompanied by Lieutenant McPhail of my staff, and guided by the courier, rode about two miles toward Gettysburg, where half a dozen small tents on the roadside were pointed out as General Lee’s headquarters for the night. He was not there, but I was informed that I would find him with General A. P. Hill half a mile further on. On reaching the place indicated, a flickering, solitary candle, visible through the open front of a common tent, showed where Generals Lee and Hill were seated on camp stools, with a county map spread upon their knees, and engaged in a low and earnest conversation. They ceased speaking as I approached, and after the ordinary salutations General Lee directed me to go to his headquarters and wait for him. He did not return until about one o’clock, when he came riding alone at a slow walk and evidently wrapped in profound thought.

  There was not even a sentinel on duty, and no one of his staff was about. The moon was high in the heavens, shed
ding a flood of soft silvery light, almost as bright as day, upon the scene. When he approached and saw us, he spoke, reined up his horse, and essayed to dismount. The effort to do so betrayed so much physical exhaustion that I stepped forward to assist him, but before I reached him he had alighted. He threw his arm across his saddle to rest himself, and fixing his eyes upon the ground leaned in silence upon his equally weary horse; the two forming a striking group, as motionless as a statue. The moon shone full upon his massive features, and revealed an expression of sadness I had never seen upon that fine countenance before, in any of the vicissitudes of the war through which he had passed. I waited for him to speak until the silence became painful and embarrassing, when to break it, and change the current of his thoughts, I remarked in a sympathetic tone, and in allusion to his great fatigue: “General, this has been a hard day on you.”

  This attracted his attention. He looked up and replied mournfully: “Yes, it has been a sad, sad day to us,” and immediately relapsed into his thoughtful mood and attitude. Being unwilling again to intrude upon his reflections, I said no more. After a minute or two he suddenly straightened up to his full height, and turning to me with more animation, energy, and excitement of manner than I had ever seen in him before, he addressed me in a voice tremulous with emotion, and said:

  Summoned to Lee’s headquarters late at night, Brigadier General John Imboden witnessed a rare comment from Lee about his defeat at Gettysburg. “It has been a sad, sad day,” said Lee.

  Library of Congress

  “General, I never saw troops behave more magnificently than Pickett’s division of Virginians did to-day in their grand charge upon the enemy. And if they had been supported, as they were to have been—but, for some reason not yet fully explained to me, they were not—we would have held the position they so gloriously won at such a fearful loss of noble lives, and the day would have been ours.” After a moment he added in a tone almost of agony: “Too bad! Too bad!! OH! TOO BAD!!!”

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  “I Never Saw Troops Behave More Magnificently”

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  I never shall forget, as long as I live, his language, and his manner, and his appearance and expression of mental suffering. Altogether it was a scene that a historical painter might well immortalize had one been fortunately present to witness it.

  In a little while he called up a servant from his sleep to take his horse; spoke mournfully, by name, of several of his friends who had fallen during the day; and when a candle had been lighted invited me alone into his tent, where, as soon as we were seated, he remarked:

  “We must return to Virginia. As many of our poor wounded as possible must be taken home. I have sent for you because your men are fresh, to guard the trains back to Virginia. The duty will be arduous, responsible, and dangerous, for I am afraid you will be harassed by the enemy’s cavalry. I can spare you as much artillery as you require, but no other troops, as I shall need all I have to return to the Potomac by a different route from yours. All the transportation and all the care of the wounded will be intrusted [sic] to you. You will recross the mountain by the Chambersburg road, and then proceed to Williamsport by any route you deem best, without halting. There rest and feed your animals, then ford the river, and make no halt....4

  “The Sights and Smells That Assailed Us Were Indescribable”

  The Two Armies Remain in Place on a Field of Dead

  Dawn arrived on Saturday, July 4, with drizzling rain, which steadily increased into a downpour. The two armies remained in place all day, exhausted, like spent boxers glowering at one another after a match. The torrents of rain added to the misery of the wounded still left on the field—mostly Confederates—soaked the uniforms of the dead, both blue and gray, and turned Gettysburg’s many roads into muddy quagmires. There had been some quick follow-up clashes after the Pickett-Pettigrew Charge as well as some sporadic skirmishing on the fringes of the armies’ lines, but the charge marked the end of the battle. Neither Meade nor Lee attempted to resume combat, and at nightfall on July 4, Lee’s army began pulling back from its lines and heading southward toward Virginia. Alerted to Lee’s retreat, General Meade would move in his army in pursuit—but not immediately.

  Major Robert Stiles, an artillery officer in Lee’s army, surveyed the battlefield before the Confederate army retreated southward, and felt sickened by what he observed.

  On the 4th of July, in readjusting and straightening our lines, the guns of Hilary Jones’ battalion were put in position on a part of the field which Hill’s corps had fought over on the 1st, and upon which the pioneer corps and burying parties had not been able to complete their work; so that the dead bodies of men and horses had lain there putrefying under the summer sun for three days. The sights and smells that assailed us were simply indescribable—corpses swollen to twice their original size, some of them actually burst asunder with the pressure of foul gases and vapors. I recall one feature never before noted, the shocking distension and protrusion of the eyeballs of dead men and dead horses. Several human or unhuman corpses sat upright against a fence, with arms extended in the air and faces hideous with something very like a fixed leer, as if taking a fiendish pleasure in showing us what we essentially were and might at any moment become.

  A dead Confederate soldier lies beside a breastwork of piled stones in Devil’s Den—one of many bodies that awaited burial for days. “We were all sickened,” a Southern officer would recall.

  Library of Congress

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  “In a Short Time We All Sickened”

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  The odors were nauseating, and so deadly that in a short time we all sickened and were lying with our mouths close to the ground, most of us vomiting profusely. We protested against the cruelty and folly of keeping men in such a position. Of course to fight in it was utterly out of the question, and we were soon moved away; but for the rest of that day and late into the night, the fearful odors I had inhaled remained with me and made me loathe myself as if an already rotting corpse.5

  “The Real Nature of War Appeared in All Its Repulsiveness”

  Volunteers Are Shocked by the Aftermath of Battle

  A week after the battle, a Methodist pastor from New York, the Reverend William G. Browning, joined a group ministers who arrived by train at Gettysburg. Their mission was to assist the thousands of wounded troops from both sides who were still being treated in field hospitals with limited attention and medical supplies. The amount of wounded troops proved too numerous for efficient treatment.

  Pastor Browning and his fellow pastors worked in the army hospitals as volunteers, doing whatever needed to be done at the given moment. Afterward, he would record a candid account of ministering to the wounded on what he called Gettysburg’s “field of gore.”

  With many delays, caused mainly by the difficulties of continued travel, occasioned by the necessities of the war and the transportation of the hundreds and thousands of suffering men being moved to Northern hospitals, we reached Gettysburg on Friday, July 10th.... I was specially favored in having a note of introduction to one of the principal residents, who furnished me a place to sleep in her open house, where were sheltered all that could be accommodated in rooms and halls and stoops.

  The whole place was turned into a hospital for the victims of the bloody strife; the evidences of which were everywhere. Dwellings, churches, and other buildings were all appropriated to the sufferers, and in some of these places no distinction was recognized between Union men and Confederates. Soldiers from both armies lay side by side as brothers, receiving the ministrations of the “Angels of mercy.” A sickening odor filled the air, and the real nature of war appeared in all its repulsiveness. A tour of the battlefield was enough to fill the mind and heart with the deepest aversion to everything that could result in such a conflict as was then raging. The armies had left, one in retreat, and the other in pursuit, but the distant firing gave evidence that more deadly work was being performed.

  Among the leas
t visible results of the fiery contest that had so recently swept over all this section, were the shattered houses, prostrate fences, and numerous trees destroyed, intentionally, and by being cut off with flying missiles. Horses in multitudes lay stretched in death and, worse than that, in some cases in dying groans and struggles. I saw one group of dead horses, perhaps numbering eight or ten, and remarked to one accompanying me: “That it was strange that these animals should be left exposed to be shot down one after another.” His answer was: “That probably they had all been slain by a single shell.” The destructive nature of these flying engines of death I never conceived until told by eyewitnesses of the wholesale execution sometimes accomplished, when just one of them would do its work along the line of soldiers it was sent to kill.

  Volunteer staff of the U.S. Christian Commission pause momentarily from their work at the Gettysburg General Hospital, which was established on the battlefield soon after the fighting ended. Comprised of pastors and YMCA volunteers, the Commission ministered to the wounded on both sides. Library of Congress

  The “field hospitals” contained the most dreadfully mangled, who had not been removed because of the severe nature of their injuries, demanding immediate attention. Armless and legless men were there found in scores, bearing their pangs as it would seem impossible that they could, if the evidence were not so positive as to be undoubted. In the hospital tents containing the wounded Union men, the joys of victory mounted above the groans of anguish. Songs and shouts were the expressions of their delight that they had been successful.