Gettysburg (44 page)
Authors: Noah Andre Trudeau
As Alexander marched and Latimer tossed restlessly, awaiting sunrise, John L. Marye left a party. A sergeant in the four-gun battery known as the Fredericksburg Artillery (in Pegram’s Battalion, Hill’s Corps), which had fired the opening cannon shot near Marsh Creek this morning, Marye had
rested little since daybreak. He and his mates had found themselves at day’s end “in the yard of a large country residence” that had been hastily abandoned by its owner, who had been thoughtful enough to leave behind a full larder and a well-stocked wine closet. Good news had a way of spreading, so before long the battery boys were joined by lots of new friends. Even as burial parties and stretcher bearers were prodding across the churned-up ridges west of the town, Marye and his comrades were having what he would later term “a universal romp.”
Stepping outside for some fresh air, the sergeant and a companion decided to visit Gettysburg. “We found the streets dismal and deserted enough,” Marye remembered. “Here and there a scared and pale-faced woman scurried along towards a … Federal hospital.” It was a surreal scene. On one street, Marye recounted, “A few stragglers in Confederate uniforms were attempting to beat in the door of a store, but the provost guard, sent to patrol the town, appearing, they made off.”
Captain John Bigelow’s 9th Massachusetts Battery
*
had been garrisoning Washington when the Army of the Potomac passed by the capital, sweeping it and other units like it into Hooker’s force for the emergency. The gunners were used to the easy routine of manning fixed entrenchments, so the transition into mobile artillery had not been accomplished without its share of blisters and aching muscles, but Bigelow, who had been assigned the battery in 1862 with orders to shape it up, had done his job. His men may have been sore and tired, but they were also confident of their skills and training.
The Harvard-educated Bigelow looked and acted older than his twenty-three years and was quietly proud of his “self-possession to stand alone.” Camped near Taneytown this night, the 9th was one of twenty-one batteries forming the Army of the Potomac’s powerful Artillery Reserve. It did not take a veteran to read the signs. One of Bigelow’s artillerymen noted that “the body of Gen Reynolds and a large number of prisoners passed through,” and the rumor mill was operating at full capacity. Some of the reserve had moved off toward Gettysburg before darkness put an end to all but urgent travel. Like thousands of other Union soldiers, John Bigelow and his men waited nervously for dawn, under orders to be ready to march at a moment’s notice.
Much of Bigelow’s anxiety stemmed from not knowing what lay ahead—something that was not a problem for Lieutenant Alonzo H. Cushing, commanding Battery A, 4th United States Light Artillery, part of Captain John G. Hazard’s Second Corps artillery brigade. A confident and likable twenty-two-year-old West Point graduate, Cushing had found a place among the small gaggle of staff accompanying Winfield Hancock to Gettysburg this day. He had seen the situation on Cemetery Hill near dusk and helped George Meade’s surrogate bring order out of chaos. Then he had rejoined his battery on its march from Taneytown, guiding it into camp for the night some three miles south of Gettysburg. Cushing was no novice when it came to combat, and his experience undoubtedly helped him this long night as he mentally prepared himself for what tomorrow morning would bring.
Captain James E. Smith, commanding the six guns of the 4th New York Independent Battery, had a nagging sense tonight that he was missing the show. His unit was one of those chosen by Daniel Sickles to keep watch over the Emmitsburg area while the bulk of the Third Corps marched on to Gettysburg. The newlywed captain was a prideful man who zealously protected his personal reputation and his battery’s honor. He had organized the unit in New York City in 1861 and commanded it through a number of major Virginia campaigns. The march north into a region untouched by war had moved Smith, who would never forget the images of “great fields of yellow wheat, orchards loaded with fruit, green stretches of pasture and meadow-land, snug farmhouses and huge, red-roofed barns.”
Ahead of Smith and his men lay an appointment with destiny on a rocky ridge soon to be immortalized as Devil’s Den. The tramp from Virginia would take on a sad new gravity: “It was, indeed, a gay and jolly march, such as seldom fell to our lot,” reflected Smith in 1888. “But to many brave boys it was a march to death.”
*
In fact, William Pegram was not promoted to the rank of colonel until
after
the Gettysburg campaign. In such cases, however, fellow officers writing after the war tended to refer to their comrades by the superior rank, more as an honorific than as a statement of fact.
*
One of Gettysburg’s enduring myths is that Buford’s men were armed with seven-shot Spencer guns. Ordnance reports indicate, however, that most of the Union troopers carried an assortment of single-shot, breech-loading weapons.
*
Ten miles northeast of Gettysburg, the Harrisburg Road became the Heidlersburg Road.
*
During dismounted fighting, every fourth cavalryman in four was detailed to hold the others’ horses, keeping station a few hundred feet to the rear of the firing line.
*
The surgeon of the 17th Pennsylvania would later declare that he had been treating minor combat wounds since the skirmishing began.
*
Modern Biglerville.
*
There is convincing evidence that both John Buford and John Reynolds also recognized the tactical significance of Cemetery Hill.
*
The 5th Alabama Battalion was fully deployed in skirmishing.
*
Reynolds’ body was carried first to the seminary, then to the George house on the Emmitsburg Road, near Cemetery Hill. From there it was transferred to an ambulance that conveyed it to Westminster, where it was put on a train to Baltimore and then to Lancaster, where John Reynolds was finally buried.
*
Just one Iron Brigade soldier was rewarded with a Medal of Honor for the Herbst Woods fight: Sergeant Jefferson Coates of the 7th Wisconsin was cited for displaying
*
Corporal Waller would later receive a Medal of Honor for his “conspicuous bravery on the battlefield.”
*
For the record, a Union soldier captured later this day, in a letter home on July 3, wrote that he had seen “a rebel cannon which had been struck in its mouth by one of our shots and flattened out.” What he saw may actually have been an imperfect shell jammed in the barrel during firing, an anomaly noted several times in the course of this battle.
*
Major Alfred J. Sellers of the 90th Pennsylvania would be awarded a Medal of Honor in recognition of his efforts directing the brigade’s fire against O’Neal.
*
Sergeant Edward L. Gilligan of the 88th Pennsylvania, who helped his captain wrestle away the flag of the 23rd North Carolina in this action, would later receive a Medal of Honor for his deed.
*
There were two Medals of Honor given to members of the 150th Pennsylvania for service in this action: one to Lieutenant Colonel Henry S. Huidekoper for continuing to lead his men while severely wounded, and the other to Corporal J. Monroe Reisinger for his “brave and meritorious conduct in the face of the enemy.”
*
Heth’s misspelling of Robert Rodes’ name has been intentionally preserved here.
*
Hubert Dilger’s smooth-bore battery had been reinforced by the four rifled guns of Lieutenant William Wheeler’s 13th Battery, New York Light Artillery.
*
Meredith was without the 6th Wisconsin, which was retained on detached service helping Cutler’s brigade and supporting the artillery.
*
George Doles was almost captured in this action when his horse bolted toward the enemy. He saved himself by falling off the animal some fifty yards from the Yankee line.
*
Another heroic effort, this one made by Sergeant James M. Rutter in safely carrying his wounded captain off the field, would bring the Pennsylvanian a Medal of Honor.
*
Years later, veteran George Kimball would launch a nationwide search that identified the “boy” (actually twenty-one years old) as J. W. Weakley. The mysterious recruit had survived his Gettysburg wounds to enlist officially in the 13th Pennsylvania Cavalry. He died of an epileptic seizure in late 1864.
*
Lee was actually close at hand, but he had yet to establish communication with Ewell.
*
Unlike most chaplains, Howell followed army regulations to the letter, even going so far as to wear a straight dress sword, which likely contributed to the Confederates’ failure to identify him as a noncombatant.
†
One of those aiding Barlow
may
have been John B. Gordon. Long after the events of this day, Gordon would make a claim to that effect in print and public lectures. Unfortunately, his account remains the only source for this anecdote of the battle.
*
For his leadership this day, Francis Irsch would receive a Medal of Honor.
*
Trimble would get his revenge through a series of postwar retellings of this incident, with each iteration making Ewell sound more hesitant and indecisive than the one before.
*
Grover would later be court-martialed for this dereliction of duty, but the military tribunal would completely exonerate him.
*
Properly the Ninth Independent Battery, Massachusetts Light Artillery.
July 2, 1863
(Midnight-Sunrise)
G
eorge Meade, accompanied by some key staff members, reached Cemetery Hill at approximately 1:00
A.M.
The ride from Taneytown in the dark had not been without incident: at one point, after traffic congestion forced his party off the road, a collision with some low-hanging branches had cost the general his spectacles. Fortunately, he had a spare pair. On the way, Meade had paused for a short while at John Gibbon’s headquarters, where after briefing the acting corps commander he had ordered him to move the Second Corps to Gettysburg at daybreak.
Approaching Gettysburg on the Taneytown Road, Meade rode up to the two-story, arched brick gatehouse of the Evergreen Cemetery, where he was met by Oliver Howard, still stewing about his reputation and the significance of Meade’s having sent Hancock to assume control of the battlefield. “The first words he spoke to me were very kind,” Howard remembered. “I believed that I had done my work well the preceding day; I desired his approval and so I frankly stated my earnest wish. Meade at once assured me that he imputed no blame.”
The pair entered one of the gatehouse’s lower rooms, where Meade found many of his generals engaged in a July 1 postmortem. Each offered his appraisal of the day’s events and then expressed his opinion regarding the army’s situation. “‘I am confident we can hold this position,’” Howard said. “‘It is good for defense,’” Henry Slocum agreed, doubtless happy that he was no longer responsible for the battlefield. Daniel Sickles was characteristically pugnacious: “‘It is a good place to fight
from, general!’” he declared. Meade, for his part, was not given to stirring bromides. “‘I am glad to hear you say so, gentlemen,’” he responded, “‘for it is too late to leave it.’”
The conversation continued for a while longer before Slocum and Sickles left for their respective headquarters. Meade followed them out, then crossed the Baltimore Pike and stood contemplating the enemy’s lines, delineated by campfires to the north and west. “There was a rumor that Lee’s army was fully as strong as ours,” Carl Schurz later wrote, “… and from what we saw before us, we guessed that it was nearly all up and ready for action.”
Meade returned to the gatehouse. Then, accompanied by his artillery chief, Brigadier General Henry J. Hunt, Captain William H. Paine (an engineer on the headquarters staff), and Oliver Howard, the commander of the Army of the Potomac, set off on horseback to inspect the position fate had selected for this contest.
Finally, Jeb Stuart knew his destination. The report delivered to him by Andrew R. Venable at around 1:00
A.M.
both pinpointed Lee’s army and provided a route of approach. The pesky Yankee militia squatting in Carlisle were no longer of any importance. Orders went out to Fitzhugh Lee, directing him to leave off his cannonade and withdraw, while other couriers delivered marching instructions to the half of Stuart’s column that had been halted ten miles to the southeast. By 2:00
A.M.,
the weary troopers and their exhausted animals were moving on roads toward Gettysburg.
Sunrise was at 4:37
A.M.,
but Robert E. Lee was up and about well before then. Between his late session with Richard Ewell and the duties of his position, he had managed perhaps two or three hours of rest this night. After a hasty breakfast, he strode off in the direction of the Lutheran seminary, bound for a point from which he could see not only the western face of Cemetery Hill but also activity as far east as Benner’s Hill and south toward the Codori farm. In the predawn darkness, only campfires signaled the enemy’s position. The flickering light revealed nothing of the nature of those troops—whether they were the same ones Lee had beaten yesterday or fresh units.
When James Longstreet joined Lee, he noted that “the stars were [still] shining brightly.” The First Corps commander had also risen early,
then headed over to Lee’s headquarters with a retinue that included several of the foreign observers accompanying the army, Arthur Fremantle among them. While Longstreet conferred privately with Lee, the Englishman climbed a nearby tree with another guest, Justus Scheibert. A major in the Prussian Royal Engineers, Scheibert had been with this army at Chancellorsville and would later offer the opinion that Lee was “not at his ease” this early morning, appearing “care-worn.” It may well have been around this time that Lee heard from Ewell, as later reported by a Second Corps aide, that “Culp’s Hill [was] already occupied” by the enemy.
