Gettysburg (37 page)

The hot and humid day, the insulating effect of the forest growth, and the sheer heat thrown off by men in combat all turned the Herbst Woods into a furnace. “[The] men had difficulty in ramming down their cartridges, so slick was the iron ram-rod in hands thoroughly wet with perspiration,” said a North Carolinian. “All expedients were resorted to, but mainly jabbing the ram-rods against the ground and rocks.” In the tumult, a fifth, sixth, and seventh color-bearer fell carrying the standard of the 26th North Carolina. “Although they knew it was certain death to pick it up, the flag was never allowed to remain down,” swore a member of the regiment.

What was left of the Iron Brigade had by now backed up to the eastern edge of the Herbst Woods, beyond which open fields sloped down and then up to Seminary Ridge. Realizing that their next step back would put them out in the open, the Western soldiers drew on their last reserves of strength to ratchet up the firing rate.

The battered line of the 26th North Carolina shuddered under the impact of this desperate fusillade, seeming to stall. Henry Burgwyn was in the center of the holocaust, urging his men along. A courier arrived with an inspiring word from J. Johnston Pettigrew, who proclaimed that the 26th had already “covered itself with glory.” Even as this message was being delivered, another flag carrier was spun to the ground nearby. Hardly skipping a beat, the young messenger ran over, caught up the standard, and had just begun waving it to advance the line when he was killed by a shot through the heart. Yet another Tarheel grabbed the colors next, managing only a few steps before he, too, was brought down.

A commanding figure now worked his way over to the flag and picked it up. “‘Dress on the colors,’” Henry Burgwyn shouted as he
raised the standard for all to see. Slowly but surely, order began to reimpose itself as the ranks formed. Burgwyn called for someone to take the standard from him, and a young soldier stepped up to grasp the staff. Burgwyn’s second in command, John R. Lane, came up to report that the regiment was ready to advance, and at that moment, a swarm of bullets pelted the group. The short-lived flag carrier was killed, and Henry Burgwyn was struck in the side. The bullet had drilled through the two journals he carried, ripped into his rib cage, and pierced both his lungs. Lane saw at once that there was nothing he could do for his friend, whose painful gestures made it clear that he wanted his second to perform a higher duty. Rising from the dying form of the boy colonel, Lane signaled for the line to move forward. His tenure was a matter of minutes: during the Iron Brigade’s retrograde to Seminary Ridge, a noncommissioned officer in the 24th Michigan would shoot Lane in the head. Badly wounded, the stalwart Tarheel would survive to lead his regiment again.

Abner Doubleday may still have been hoping to salvage the failing situation on McPherson’s Ridge when he committed his entire reserve—the 151st Pennsylvania—to the fighting in the Herbst Woods. The 467 soldiers moved from near Seminary Ridge to the eastern edge of the copse, where they suddenly encountered an enemy line of battle. For one amazed Pennsylvanian, it was “the first sight I had of the rebel Stars and Bars.” The 151st prided itself on its marksmanship, so instead of being ordered to volley fire, the ranks were instructed to fire at will. The regiment’s commander would afterward remark that his men “coolly waited until they saw an exposed enemy and then brought him to the ground.”

The 151st’s arrival on the scene was not enough to reverse the momentum, but it covered the Iron Brigade’s withdrawal from the woods. Once they were clear, the obstinate Union regiments carried out a measured retirement to Seminary Ridge, pausing several times on the way to deliver volleys at their pursuing foe. The Pennsylvanians held their place long enough for the Westerners to disentangle themselves; then they joined in the rearward maneuver.

The loss of the Herbst Woods made it impossible for Rowley’s Second Brigade (Third Division, First Corps) to continue defending the Chambersburg Pike near the McPherson stone barn and house. Colonels Stone
and Wister had fallen for the cause, but now Edmund L. Dana realized that his troops could no longer remain in their exposed position. Rebel riflemen were chewing at his left flank from the cover of the Herbst Woods, while a full enemy brigade (Brockenbrough’s) was pressing from the front. Then, to top off his catalog of misfortune, Dana had to contend again with Junius Daniel’s determined North Carolina troops, coming at him from the north. If Dana saw the situation clearly, however, many of the others fighting did not. When a staff officer arrived from Seminary Ridge with orders to withdraw, one line officer was incredulous. “‘Adjutant, it is all damned cowardice,’” he exclaimed, “‘we have beaten them and will keep on beating them back!’”

The retreat off McPherson’s Ridge was not easy for the three Pennsylvania regiments. In the confusion, the small party that had been set out to decoy enemy fire, after fending off several efforts to rush the standards, lost first the state flag, then the national colors. As the 149th and 150th Regiments stumbled eastward, small but cohesive groups made brief stands before continuing on their way. The 143rd Pennsylvania was the last to leave. Watching it from Herr’s Ridge, even A. P. Hill had to admit that the Yankee unit “fought for some time with much obstinacy.” He would never forget the sight of the 143rd’s color-bearer “turning round every now and then to shake his fist at the advancing rebels.” Before the battered regiment disappeared from view, Hill saw the defiant color-bearer fall.
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Following the devastating repulse of Iverson’s Brigade, the Union troops on Oak Ridge near the Mummasburg Road had successfully repelled a second attacking wave from Stephen Ramseur’s brigade. In turning back that assault, though, the First Brigade (Second Division, First Corps) had lost its commander, Gabriel Paul, who was shot in the head and blinded. Colonel Adrian R. Root now directed the regiments.

After throwing back Ramseur’s effort, the Federals had watched as the world around them fell to pieces. They had seen the unraveling of the Eleventh Corps and the fury of Daniel’s repeated drives toward the Chambersburg Pike, and had heard the terrible, never-ending tearing sound of constant musketry as Pettigrew’s men locked horns with the
Iron Brigade. Every Union soldier standing on that hillside knew that his own turn was coming.

The First Brigade held the extreme flank alone. Shortly after 1:00
P.M.,
Henry Baxter’s brigade had been withdrawn to replenish its ammunition, as Cutler’s had been pulled in from the Wills Woods. The collapse of the McPherson’s Ridge line had left Root’s men isolated, so it was with relief that their colonel greeted the courier from headquarters who brought orders for the unit to retire. It would be a difficult movement to accomplish. Inspired by the advance of Pettigrew’s troops and the appearance of a fresh Confederate division (Pender’s) along Herr’s Ridge, a well-coordinated effort by three Rebel brigades was under way to drive the Yankees off Oak Ridge. Spearheaded by Ramseur’s Brigade, the new push also included portions of Daniel’s and O’Neal’s commands.

If most of the First Brigade was to get off that ridge, one unit would have to buy time for the others. The division commander, John Robinson, rode out to the position, picked the outfit, and gave the orders. He had selected the 16th Maine. Its colonel, Charles W. Tilden, protested. He had not quite two hundred men with him, he said, so Robinson might as well “set a corporal’s guard to stop the rebel army.” But Robinson was not entertaining arguments. “Hold at any cost,” he commanded.

Tilden had in fact already begun shifting his regiment away from its exposed position in the sharp angle made by the brigade line as it met the Mummasburg Road and bent back toward the town. Now he led his men over to a spot where a stone wall angled up to the road, and there planted the unit’s two flags. One by one, the brigade’s six other regiments began moving off toward Gettysburg.

Also pulling back were Cutler’s and Baxter’s brigades, which had held different positions in the Wills Woods area. The boyish enigma who had been adopted by the 12th Massachusetts at Marsh Creek paid a high price for his enthusiasm: hit first in the arm, then in the thigh, he was left behind in the retreat and never seen again by the Bay State soldiers.
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Yet again, Ramseur’s Brigade came at the Federal position, this time attacking from the north and northwest. Tilden’s soldiers, receiving diminishing support as each of the other regiments peeled away, kept up a steady fire until their colonel determined that his boys were the only ones left on the ridge wearing blue uniforms: time to go. An effort was made to retire in order, but the pressure was too great. “They swarmed down upon us,” declared the regiment’s adjutant, “they engulfed us, and swept away the last semblance of organization which marked us as a separate command.” A Maine lieutenant later confessed that “every man commenced to look after himself without further orders.”

After Oliver O. Howard completed his circuit ride of the battlefield, he remained on Cemetery Hill, keeping in touch with the action through couriers and direct observation. Per his orders, one division of the Eleventh Corps, supported by one battery, had taken position on the hill. Almost from the moment of his arrival on the field, Howard had been convinced that Cemetery Hill must be held at all costs. So fixed was he in his purpose that he turned a deaf ear to requests from both Doubleday and Schurz for reinforcements, instead either offering obvious partial solutions (for example, instructing Buford to support Doubleday) or passing along impractical suggestions (asking Schurz if he could detach troops to help Doubleday).

Only when it became clear that the Eleventh Corps was disintegrating
north of town did Howard allow one of his two reserve brigades to go forward to help. “I feared the consequences of sparing another man from the cemetery,” he later admitted. “It was not time to lose the nucleus for a new line that must soon be formed.” In sum, rather than craft a flexible plan employing the resources he had on hand, Howard chose to fall back on a static defensive scheme. He was depending on the timely arrival of the Twelfth Corps to stabilize the situation.

None save Union dead, wounded, or captured now held McPherson’s Ridge. It had not fallen without a terrible combat, one that had wrecked the victors almost as much as the defeated. Heth’s Division had little punch left. Archer’s and Davis’ Brigades were minimally functional, Pettigrew’s had fought itself to exhaustion, and Brockenbrough’s was decidedly uninspired in its efforts this day. The man commanding them all was himself out of the action: while stationed with Pettigrew’s men in the Herbst Woods, Henry Heth had been struck in the head by a piece of ordnance that ought to have killed him. He happened, however, to be wearing a loose-fitting hat lined with a wad of newspaper to keep it snug. Besides supporting the hat, the paper pads deflected enough of the blow that Heth was merely knocked unconscious, suffering from a painful but nonfatal wound. Command devolved to Pettigrew, who turned over his own battered brigade to Colonel James K. Marshall.

On the other side, despite its licking, Doubleday’s command somehow held together. “What was left of the First Corps after all this slaughter rallied on Seminary Ridge,” he recorded. The surviving fragments of Stone’s, Biddle’s, and Meredith’s brigades gathered under their unit flags, still prepared to fight it out. Also in the mix were a couple of regiments from Cutler’s brigade. What made this new line deadly was the cannon positioned here by the First Corps’ artillery chief, Charles Wainwright.

The crusty colonel would later claim that his decision to hold this ridge had stemmed from the cultural divide between himself and one of Howard’s aides who spoke English as a second language. Wainwright thought he heard the aide say that Howard intended to defend Seminary Hill at all hazards, when he actually said
Cemetery
Hill. “I thought it was the
Seminary Hill
we were to hold,” Wainwright confided. “I had therefore strung my batteries out on it as well as I could. … Thus there were eighteen pieces on a frontage of not over two hundred yards.”

In what would prove to be his final major contribution to the Battle of Gettysburg, A. P. Hill determined to sweep the enemy from the field. Pender’s Division was on hand, and Hill, uncertain as to the condition of Heth’s formations, ordered Pender’s troops off Herr’s Ridge to join them. Pender’s instructions were to “pass Genl Heth’s division, if found at a halt, and charge the enemy’s position.” He had a force of nearly 6,700 with which to do the job, but circumstances would remove more than 3,000 from his attack. One brigade (Brigadier General Edward L. Thomas’) was held in reserve, while a second (Brigadier General James H. Lane’s) was detailed to counter the Union cavalry still operating along the south side of the Fairfield Road. That left Brigadier General Alfred M. Scales’ North Carolina brigade and Colonel Abner Perrin’s South Carolina one to clear the enemy from Seminary Ridge.

Moving east off Herr’s Ridge, Pender’s battle lines encountered wounded and stragglers from Pettigrew’s fight. A South Carolina soldier remembered that the fresh troops “did not halt, but opened ranks for them to pass to the rear.” As they filtered through the determined files, a few bloody Tarheels told any of Pender’s men who would listen that they “would all be killed if [they] went forward.” Crossing Willoughby Run, portions of the formation passed over combat-weary soldiers of Pettigrew’s Brigade, most of whom, Abner Perrin observed, “could scarcely raise a cheer for us.” “The field was thick with wounded hurrying to the rear,” remarked a company officer, “and the ground was grey with dead and disabled.” Closer to the pike, Scales ordered his men to march over Brockenbrough’s Virginians, who were “lying down.”