Gettysburg (25 page)

The first small engagements around Gettysburg began some thirty minutes after sunrise. A few miles north, a Carlisle Road outpost manned by 17th Pennsylvania cavalrymen traded shots with Rebel riders likely probing out from Ewell’s columns. A short time later, in Hunterstown, northeast of Gettysburg, a pair of 9th New York scouts were surprised and chased by four mounted Confederates, who were themselves captured after the Yankees enlisted the help of a friendly patrol. Neither event signaled the start of any substantial action, but like heat lightning, the activity presaged increasing turbulence.

Smoke curled from Gettysburg’s chimneys as the town’s citizens prepared to entertain even more Union troops. “The members of our household were all up bright and early,” remarked Catherine Ziegler, “for much was to be done for the comfort of the soldiers.” “I got up early this morning to get my baking done,” Sarah Broadhead recorded. A number of cavalrymen were roaming the town on personal errands. A few residents living on the north side heard the outpost carbines crack. “Gettysburg awoke, but was not alarmed,” noted Henry Jacobs. “We felt no apprehension; at worst, the town thought there might be a skirmish.”

The mood was decidedly nonchalant among the bivouacs of Buford’s troopers, one of whom would remember that “the camp was astir; men prepared and partook of the morning meal; horses were fed and groomed, arms cleaned and burnished.” Young Leander Warren was having the time of his life. He and a couple of other boys went out to Buford’s camps, where they pitched in by “riding the cavalry horses to the creek for water.”

A newspaper reporter’s reputation depended on reliable sources of information and a little timely luck. After arriving in Frederick, Maryland, veteran correspondents Samuel Wilkeson (
New York Times
), Uriah H. Painter (
Philadelphia Inquirer
), and Whitelaw Reid (
Cincinnati Gazette
) had gone to work locating army headquarters. Everyone they contacted confirmed that George Meade had gone to Westminster, making that where their story would be. Wilkeson and Painter hustled to secure rail passage back to Baltimore, where they would hop a government train to Westminster. Reid bade his companions farewell, determined to reach that same point overland.

The Cincinnati newsman managed to obtain some breakfast shortly after dawn. Showing little concern for the modest limits of his expense account, he purchased a horse and all the equipment he would need “for the campaign.” And then some of that luck came his way: even as he was setting out in the company of “a messenger for one of the New York papers,” Reid encountered an army courier who helpfully revealed that headquarters were not at Westminster but at Taneytown. Reid immediately smelled gunpowder, believing “it was fair to suppose that our movements to the northwest were based upon news of a similar concentration by the rebels. The probabilities of a speedy battle were thus immensely increased, and we hastened the more rapidly on.”

Henry Heth’s marching column got under way at roughly the appointed hour of 5:00
A.M.
For some reason—perhaps because the morning’s assembly was so rushed, or maybe because Heth wanted mounted men leading the march—Major William Pegram’s artillery battalion was allowed to precede the column, followed by the 1,200 Alabama and Tennessee foot soldiers of Archer’s Brigade. Next came Brigadier General
Joseph R. Davis’ brigade, or at least part of it. Ironically, it was Davis’ two untested regiments, the 42nd Mississippi and the 55th North Carolina, that tramped along while his veteran pair—the 2nd and 11th Mississippi—stayed behind to guard army stores. The 2nd would be relieved in time to rejoin the brigade before it deployed for action, but the 11th would not. Colonel John M. Brockenbrough’s all-Virginia brigade marched next, though once the column reached Pettigrew’s camps, the Tarheels would fill in between Davis and Brockenbrough.

One of Pegram’s officers later recalled, “We moved forward leisurely smoking and chatting as we rode along, not dreaming of the proximity of the enemy.”

After handling some necessary headquarters business, John Reynolds headed north from Moritz Tavern to the area where James S. Wadsworth’s division was camped. “He rode up to my headquarters …,” Wadsworth later testified, “and asked what orders I had received from General Doubleday, who then commanded the corps. … I told him that I was waiting for the other divisions to pass, as I was ordered to move in rear of the other two divisions. He said that this was a mistake, and that I should move on directly.”

While Wadsworth went about getting his division on the road, Reynolds returned to the tavern, where acting corps commander Abner Doubleday was waiting to meet with him. “General Reynolds read his telegrams to me,” Doubleday would recollect, “showing where our troops were, and what they were doing.” Reynolds had decided that Buford should have infantry support at once. “He told me that he had already ordered Wadsworth’s division to go forward,” continued Doubleday. “He then instructed me to draw in my pickets, assemble the artillery and the remainder of the corps, and join him as soon as possible.” There was nothing subtle about Reynolds’ plan. His intention, as Doubleday later expressed it, “was … to fight the enemy as soon as he could meet him.”

Of all John Buford’s vedette posts, the one most likely to see trouble was located on the Chambersburg Pike, about three quarters of a mile east of where the road crossed Marsh Creek. A little after 6:00
A.M.,
two privates from the 8th Illinois Cavalry, Thomas B. Kelley and James O. Hall,
relieved the pair who had been standing watch. Soon after taking over, the fresh sentries observed a sizable dust cloud rising from the road, maybe three miles away. Something large was heading right toward them.

The Eleventh Corps’ encampments around Emmitsburg were stirring by first light. The members of one unlucky regiment, the 41st New York, had already been up for hours patrolling the roads, under orders to detain any civilians they encountered. Also feeling unlucky were 200 soldiers from the four regiments of Colonel Charles R. Coster’s brigade, assigned to scout six miles west; included in this group, which set off at 5:00
A.M.,
were 50 men from the 154th New York. Nor was it a particularly auspicious morning for those remaining in camp. A diarist in the 153rd Pennsylvania noted that “it is still cloudy,” while another, from the 136th New York, described the conditions in a single word: “Rainy.”

Oliver Otis Howard shook off his weariness by charting a route for his units that would enable them to avoid likely congestion with the First Corps. Reflecting the lack of urgency everyone felt, his instructions to his supply trains were to march in tandem with the infantry. Howard sent a summary of his planned movements to Reynolds at 6:00
A.M.

Since breaking contact with Kilpatrick’s cavalry at Hanover, Pennsylvania, an immensely tired Jeb Stuart had led his likewise exhausted column first east and then north, expecting to cut Ewell’s trail near York. “Whole regiments slept in the saddle, their faithful animals keeping the road unguided,” Stuart later reported. “In some instances they fell from their horses, overcome with physical fatigue and sleepiness.”

Once his men reached the town of Dover, Stuart let them rest while he pondered his situation. His unwavering objective throughout the operation had been to join up with Ewell’s Corps. Now here he was, near York, but there was no sign of Ewell—though there was plenty of evidence that he had recently been in the area. The most Stuart could glean from scouting reports and local newspapers was that the Confederate Second Corps was concentrating near Shippensburg.

While his men slept away the daylight hours of the morning, Stuart did something he should have done sooner: he dispatched his staffer Major Andrew R. Venable and a small escort with orders to find Ewell. At about the same time, Brigadier General Fitzhugh Lee, then holding
Stuart’s western flank, ordered one of his aides, Captain Henry Lee, to try to locate the Army of Northern Virginia.

At 7:00
A.M.
George Meade sent a brief situation report to Henry Halleck. “The point of Lee’s concentration and the nature of the country, when ascertained, will determine whether I attack him or not,” he declared. By now, Meade’s Pipe Creek instructions had begun circulating among his corps commanders.

The cannoneers at the head of Heth’s reconnaissance column had crossed the western outskirts of Pettigrew’s camps a little after 6:00
A.M.,
and reached the picket line on their eastern side before 7:00. At some point—either as his command party rode slowly through the camp or (as most historians have suggested) the previous evening—Pettigrew had briefed James Archer about Gettysburg. According to his aide Louis Young, Pettigrew “told General Archer of a ridge some distance west of Gettysburg on which he would probably find the enemy, as this position was favorable for defense.”

Archer’s leading regiment was the 13th Alabama. The men halted as they got to the swampy land fringing Marsh Creek, beyond which the ground angled up in a single gentle swell to a ridge line. A light and misty rain blurred faraway objects, making it impossible to identify the mounted men an artillerist spotted to the east of the creek. A brief argument ensued when a few present insisted that the strangers must belong to Longstreet, who was rumored to be marching on a parallel course. The discussion ended abruptly, however, when a trustworthy sergeant spoke up, saying that as he had ridden through the pass the day before, he had seen Longstreet’s men camped west of the mountains. “That decided the question,” recorded one gunner, “and at a word from Colonel Pegram the leading gun, a three-inch rifle piece of accuracy and long range, was at once unlimbered and swung around.”
^*

Colonel Birkett D. Fry, commanding the 13th Alabama, had eased ahead to find out why the artillery had stopped. Seeing one of the guns deploying, he hurriedly returned to his regiment. According to a private
in the ranks, Fry “rode back to the color bearer and ordered him to uncase the colors, the first intimation that we had that we were about to engage the enemy.” A skirmish line was quickly established south of the pike, consisting of four companies from the 5th Alabama Battalion (135 men) and two from the 13th Alabama (70 men).

The cupola of the Lutheran seminary offered a fine vantage point for viewing the landscape west and northwest of Gettysburg. A Union signal corps officer, Lieutenant Aaron B. Jerome, had climbed to the rooftop platform early this morning to establish an observation post. It was around 7:00
A.M.
when he spied the leading elements of Heth’s column approaching on the Chambersburg Pike and immediately notified John Buford. The cavalry commander kept a cool head, holding off for the moment on sounding an alert. Until he knew in what strength the enemy was advancing from Cashtown, Buford did not wish to commit his main forces either west or north.

Oliver Howard’s proposed order of march reached John Reynolds by 7:00
A.M.
The left wing commander wanted all the fighting troops to be up front, so he instructed Howard not to intermingle his supply wagons with his infantry. Similar instructions had been given to Abner Double-day, to ensure that the First Corps wagons would wait until the Eleventh Corps foot soldiers had passed.

Reynolds took these steps merely as a precaution, not because he had positive information that any special effort was necessary. To the contrary: Colonel Charles Wainwright, commanding the First Corps artillery, remembered Reynolds’ telling him that “he did not expect any [trouble], that we were only moving up so as to be within supporting distance to Buford, who was to push out farther.”

Amid all the activity, Reynolds’ assistant adjutant general failed to collect a more personal message that Meade had sent on the heels of the morning’s orders. In it the Army of the Potomac commander shared some of the conflicting intelligence he had been given and offered his thoughts on the likely options. The note closed with the words “You have all the information which the general has received, and the general would like to have your views.” Also not delivered to Reynolds was Meade’s Pipe Creek circular.