Gettysburg (39 page)

Winfield Scott Hancock reached Cemetery Hill somewhere between 4:00 and 4:30
P.M.
He was on horseback, having transferred out of the ambulance after he finished studying all the available area maps. He would later write that “owing to the peculiar formation of the country, or the direction of the wind at the time,” he had not even heard the fighting until he was a few miles from the town. Hancock had some experience with the seeming chaos of a battlefield, and his instincts told him that while these soldiers had been whipped, they were not yet ready to run. What they needed was a demonstration of pure, physical leadership, something he was better equipped than most to provide.

As Hancock told it, “I rode directly to the crest of the hill where General Howard stood, and said to him that I had been sent by General Meade to take command of all the forces present; that I had written orders to that effect with me, and asked him if he wished to read them. He replied that he did not, but acquiesced in my assumption of command.” This exchange would become a point of controversy after the battle, with the prideful Howard insisting that Hancock (below him in rank) had not taken command from him but merely shared the responsibility. The evidence, from the wording of Meade’s orders to Hancock’s careful recollections, does not support Howard’s case, though he nevertheless assumed proprietary authority over the units reaching the northern face of Cemetery Hill, as did Doubleday over those (mostly First Corps) reaching the western side.

Hancock was the right man in the right place at the right time. “I shall never forget the inspiration of his commanding, controlling presence or the fresh courage he imparted, his whole atmosphere strong and invigorating,” remembered a Federal on that hill. Displaying “no excitement in voice or manner,” observed a fellow officer, the general issued “only cool, concise, and positive directions, given in a steady voice and a conversational tone.” Following his brief meeting with Howard, Hancock “at once rode away and bent myself to the pressing task of making such dispositions as would prevent the enemy from seizing that vital point [Cemetery Hill].” The real question was whether or not the triumphant Rebels would allow him time enough to do that.

Richard Ewell had barely begun to taste the heady wine of victory when the cold odds of combat nearly claimed him. He had watched his forces defeat the enemy on Oak Ridge and across the valley north of the town. Eager to be present at the finish, he rode down Oak Hill into the valley, in search of Jubal Early. He had made it as far as the McLean barn when a shell exploded nearby, letting fly a fragment that struck his sorrel mare in the head and caused her to throw her one-legged rider to the ground. Helping hands levered the slightly shaken corps commander onto another horse so he could continue his journey.

Ewell had knowingly ignored Lee’s prime directive in initiating his attack against the two Union corps, and he had won big. But now, soberly aware of his transgression, and confronting a tactical situation that was neither as clear nor as obviously advantageous as that obtaining at midday, he could sense his tolerance for risk diminishing by the minute. Riding on, he encountered John Gordon, who was flushed with success and eager to press forward—so eager, in fact, that he did not even acknowledge the injuries and exhaustion suffered by his brigade in the fighting.

As Ewell and Gordon were talking, Edward Johnson’s aide Major Henry Kyd Douglas appeared, heralding the imminent arrival of Ewell’s only unengaged division. Johnson’s men were just a few miles away, Douglas reported, adding that they would be ready for action as soon as they reached the battlefield. But Ewell was suddenly feeling less eager to press matters. “‘Gen. Lee is still at Cashtown, six miles in the rear,’” he told Douglas. “‘He directed me to come to Gettysburg, and I have done so. I do not feel like going further or making an attack without orders from him.’”
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The Federals’ retreat through Gettysburg was a kaleidoscopic blur of memories for all the soldiers involved. One of Ramseur’s North Carolina soldiers recalled the clearing of Oak Ridge this way: “We had them fairly in a pen, with only one gap open—the turnpike that led into Gettysburg—and hither they fled twenty deep, we all the while popping into them as fast as we could load and fire.” When Stephen Ramseur saw the crowd of Yankees on the Chambersburg Pike, he briefly lost his self-control. “‘Damn it! tell them to send me a battery! I have sent for one a half dozen times!’” he shouted. Then, catching himself, he raised his hand toward Heaven. “‘God almighty,’” he prayed, “‘forgive me for that oath.’”

Abner Perrin led a detail from the 1st South Carolina into town, in pursuit of the Federals fleeing Seminary Ridge. “Now when our line was reformed it was long enough to reach across the street with two or three files of men turned at one end,” recalled a sergeant with the group. “At the command forward by Col. Perrin, we marched on up the street. … As we passed the cross streets there were great numbers of Federal troops on right and left but [they] had no arms and why we were not all captured has been a mystery to me.”

Rufus Dawes still commanded the 6th Wisconsin, though it was now just a fragment of the regiment that had charged into the railroad cut. His men maintained a loose formation as they hustled east along the pike before making the turn south along Washington Street. “The first cross street was swept by the musketry fire of the enemy,” Dawes would recollect. Glancing across the way, he saw a barnyard fence that had a couple of boards loose, making it possible for one man to slip through at a time. The lieutenant colonel grabbed one of his regiment’s flags, dodged across the street, and positioned himself just inside the fence hole. “Officers and men followed rapidly,” he noted. Dawes held his place by the opening, so that “when any man obstructed the passage-way through it, I jerked him away without ceremony or apology. … Two men were shot in this street crossing. The regiment was reformed in the barn-yard, and I marched back again to the street leading … to the Cemetery Hill.”

After watching Pender’s men drive Doubleday’s off Seminary Ridge, and Rodes’ perform a like service on Oak Ridge, Robert E. Lee rode toward
the town. According to his aide, Charles Marshall, Lee “established his headquarters near where the Chambersburg pike crosses the ridge and from that position he observed the retreat of the enemy through Gettysburg before General Ewell’s advance.”

Lee’s ride from Herr’s Ridge to Seminary Ridge was a sobering experience. The dead and wounded of Pettigrew’s Brigade filled the McPherson farm area, while Scales’ North Carolina men lay in orderly rows where Wainwright’s canister had found them. A. P. Hill was unfazed by the sight; he could see only the prospect of an even more complete victory as compensation for the heavy losses Heth’s Division had suffered. But where Hill believed that “the rout of the enemy was complete,” Lee’s more analytical scrutiny revealed that many of the Federal units were maintaining some order as they fell back.

Lee had reluctantly allowed himself to be drawn into the fray only when it seemed that the advantage secured by Ewell’s arrival would be lost if the enemy were free to maneuver against him. It had cost much to force the enemy corps off McPherson’s Ridge—so much, Lee felt, that Hill’s men now had no more fight left in them. But the job was not finished: Lee could see that the Federals were organizing a defense on high ground just south of the town. He summoned his staff officer Walter Taylor and directed him “to go to General Ewell and to say to him that, from the position which he occupied, he could see the enemy retreating over those hills …, that it was only necessary to press ‘those people’ in order to secure possession of the heights, and that, if possible, he wished him to do this.”

Taylor rode off. Less than three miles west of Lee’s position was a 7,000-man striking force of fresh troops, in camp on his orders. Major General Richard H. Anderson had marched his division forward from Cashtown, reaching Knoxlyn Ridge just after 4:00
P.M.
According to Anderson’s later recollection, as told to one of Heth’s staff officers, he “was met by a messenger from General Lee with an order for him to halt and bivouac his brigade.” After passing the word along to his subordinates, the puzzled division commander rode across the next two ridges to confirm that order, reaching Lee not long after Walter Taylor left with the message for Ewell. Lee told Anderson that there had been no mistake, “that he was in ignorance as to the force of the enemy in front, … and that a reserve in case of disaster, was necessary.”

The first impression of many of those who managed to reach Cemetery Hill was chaos. “Panic was impending over the exhausted soldiers,” remembered Rufus Dawes. “It was a confused rabble of disorganized regiments of infantry and crippled batteries.” “Many of the troops … thought that it was an utter defeat of our forces, and they made an effort to get as far away from the enemy as possible,” recollected a rather tactful Ohio man. Not every officer rose to the occasion. Third Division (First Corps) commander Thomas Rowley, for one, appeared so far out of control that he was arrested and later court-martialed for his erratic behavior this day. “Many brave, strong men of the regiment sobbed like children,” recalled a member of the 94th New York, “thinking of the seemingly utter wreck of our noble corps.”

If not every house in Gettysburg was harboring wounded men, a good many were. The stone barn on the McPherson farm was filled with First Corps casualties, including Roy Stone. On Seminary Ridge, the house of C. P. Krauth “was used for Hospital purposes … [the] first floor filled with wounded; the surgeon and wounded officers upstairs.” At the Trinity German Reformed Church, just north of the square, one resident swore that the “wounded were carried into the lecture room … and there was so much amputating done there that the seats were covered with blood and they had to bore holes in the floor to let the blood run away.”

There were as many battle stories this day as there were soldiers in the field. Crusty old John Burns, who had made his stand with the Iron Brigade in the Herbst Woods, had suffered three wounds before being left behind in the retreat; he would spend this night lying in a field, and find help the next morning at the Henry Dustman farm, not far from Lee’s headquarters tent. Brigadier General Alexander Schimmelfennig had his own close call when he took a wrong turn into a dead-end alley, with Confederates hot behind him. His horse shot, the Third Division (Eleventh Corps) commander scrambled over a board fence and then hid in a covered drainage ditch, where he hoped to hide until dark.

The surgeon from John Robinson’s command (Second Division, First Corps) had selected the Christ Lutheran Church on Chambersburg Street to serve as the divisional hospital. As Rebel riflemen were closing on the place, a Federal officer came out onto the church steps and seemingly ignored signals to surrender. One quick shot felled the officer, who
proved to be Chaplain Horatio S. Howell of the 90th Pennsylvania, a tragic victim of misunderstanding and confusion.
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Prominent among the wounded left behind by the retreating Eleventh Corps was Francis Barlow, who had lain helpless in the fields north of town until sympathetic Confederate officers carried him to a field hospital.
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There surgeons unsuccessfully probed his wound and then solemnly informed the young Yankee general that the bullet was imbedded in his pelvic cavity, and inoperable. Told to prepare himself for death, the fiercely ambitious Barlow was equally determined that he would not die.

Even as he struggled to stay alive, however, Barlow was racked by worry for the safety of his wife, who had traveled with the division to Gettysburg and had been waiting for him on Cemetery Hill. He finally persuaded a Rebel soldier to go looking for her, but the man returned empty-handed: he had roamed the streets asking, but no one had ever heard of Arabella Barlow.

Winfield Scott Hancock decided that the position chosen by Oliver Otis Howard on Cemetery Hill would be held, at least until nightfall. “Orders were at once given to establish a line of battle on Cemetery Hill,” he later reported, “with skirmishers occupying that part of the town immediately in our front.” The Eleventh Corps units were consolidated to cover that portion of the hill overlooking the southern edge of Gettysburg “and commanding the Emmitsburg and Taneytown roads and the Baltimore turnpike.” Hancock then turned his attention to the First Corps, sending “General Wadsworth to the right to take possession of Culp’s Hill with his division.” Next, the “rest of the First Corps, under Major-General Doubleday, was [set] on the right and left of the Taneytown road, and connected with the left of the Eleventh Corps.”