Gettysburg (46 page)

Almost as soon as the Tarheels settled into watchful positions, they began to make out figures heading toward the farm buildings from Cemetery Ridge. As it moved into line, the Federal Second Corps was also screening its front, and responsibility for the forward sector encompassing the Bliss farm had fallen to the 251 members of the 1st Delaware, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Edward P. Harris. Deploying in two wings, the regiment advanced in a line stretching from just south of the buildings into the peach orchard north of them. Hardly had these Yankee boys hustled into place when, as Lieutenant John L. Brady of the regiment recorded, they came under “a rattling fire from the enemy, which was repaid with interest.”

Whitelaw Reid and Lorenzo L. Crounse left Two Taverns “a little after daybreak” to follow the irresistible flow of Yankee materiel toward Gettysburg. On the approach to Cemetery Hill, after passing several farms already pressed into hospital service, they at last spotted the headquarters
of James Wadsworth. Perhaps in the knowledge that Crounse represented a home-state paper, New Yorker Wadsworth recounted yesterday’s events to the pair, who scribbled notes as he talked. When the correspondents moved on to Cemetery Hill, Reid saw Oliver Howard walking alongside the “spare and somewhat stooped form” of George Meade.

Reid ventured far enough ahead to glimpse occupied Gettysburg. “No sound comes up from the deserted town,” he wrote, “no ringing of bells, no voices of children, no hum of busy trade. Only now and then a blue curl of smoke rises and fades from some high window; a faint report comes up, and perhaps the hiss of a Minie [ball] is heard.” Once he had determined that combat was not imminent, Reid spoke with generals and other officers who had fought on July 1. Out of their recollections he fashioned one of the first dispatches chronicling the scope of the previous day’s fighting.

Among the first officers to find George Meade at the Leister house was Brigadier General John Newton, a division commander in Sedgwick’s Sixth Corps. Based on reports from Oliver Howard and John Buford, Meade had decided against retaining Abner Doubleday as John Reynolds’ successor. He now tapped Newton for the job of leading the First Corps, an action that the proud, vain Doubleday would never forget or forgive. Speaking to a congressional committee in March 1864, he would declare that “Meade thought a couple of scapegoats were necessary; in case the next day’s battle turned out unfavorably, he wished to mark his disapprobation of the first day’s fight.”

The prospect of irritating Doubleday did not weigh heavily on Meade this morning. His inventory of military assets indicated that the First and Eleventh Corps had fired off much of their ready artillery stock the day before; moreover, as Meade now learned, the fact that Daniel Sickles had brought the Third Corps to Gettysburg without its ammunition train meant that those guns, too, had minimal supplies. The army commander discussed the matter with his artillery chief, Henry Hunt, who had the best of surprises for his boss: anticipating just such a contingency, Hunt had the Reserve Artillery train carrying twenty rounds more per gun than regulations required. He therefore had enough extra on hand to restock the three corps and then some. According to Hunt, upon hearing this, Meade “was much relieved, and expressed his satisfaction.”

As the three brigades belonging to John W. Geary’s Twelfth Corps division began ascending Culp’s Hill, the key officers met to plan their defenses. Most passed along the west-facing First Corps line, where they saw the mix of breastworks and earthworks the soldiers had constructed during the night. One Twelfth Corps officer remembered hearing John Geary remark that he personally did not favor the use of entrenchments because he believed it “unfitted men for fighting without them”; still, he allowed each brigade commander to decide for himself. Brigadier General George S. Greene, the oldest Union general on the field, leading the 1,400-man Third Brigade, made it clear that his men would dig. He said that “so far as his men were concerned, they would have [entrenchments] if they had time to build them.”

Greene’s brigade drew as its position the crest of Culp’s Hill. An officer recalled that the well-wooded slope provided plenty of raw material for defensive works: “Right and left the men felled the trees, and blocked them up into a close log fence. … Fortunate regiments, which had spades and picks, strengthened their work with earth.” As Geary’s Second Brigade extended Greene’s line down the southeastern slope, its members imitated their comrades. Where picks and shovels were not available, “bayonets, tin pans, tin cups etc were improvised as implements in the construction of earthworks,” noted one soldier.

Culp’s Hill was actually a collective name for a pair of unequal summits, aligned northeast to southwest and linked by a ravinelike sag or saddle. Greene’s men were to cover the eastern side of the upper or higher summit all the way down to the saddle, where the Second Brigade took over. Prudence compelled Greene to take the additional precaution of having his men construct a short traverse at the lower end of their sector, providing an emergency line facing the saddle. With a full brigade digging in on the right and another standing in close support, there was little likelihood that the line would be needed, but Greene ordered it built anyway.

Samuel R. Johnston, the engineer captain delegated by Lee to “reconnoiter along the enemy’s left,” returned at around 8:00
A.M.
His had been a remarkable excursion. By his own account, upon leaving Lee, Johnston had ridden out with three others, heading west along the Fairfield Road and then turning south after crossing Willoughby Run. The foursome had trekked along the creek’s western bank until they intersected with a
lane leading in an easterly direction up the slope of Warfield Ridge, a southern continuation of Seminary Ridge. Passing to the edge of some woods, they had found themselves facing the Emmitsburg Road, opposite the Sherfy farm peach orchard. Ahead of him, Johnston had discerned the dark form of two hills, the southern elevation higher than the northern. His group had cautiously made its way to the foot of these hills and ascended partway up one, gaining what the officer would later term “a commanding view.” On descending the hill, the party had moved south and then west, looping back toward Warfield Ridge.

“When I … again got in sight of the Emmitsburg road, I saw three or four troopers moving slowly and very cautiously in the direction of Gettysburg,” Johnston remembered. “I had to let them get out of sight before crossing the road, as to see and not be seen is what was required of a reconnoitering officer. … They … got out of sight and I lost no time in getting back.”

Johnston found Lee at his observation post with Generals Longstreet and Hill. “General Lee saw me and called me to him,” the young officer recalled. “The three Generals were holding a map. I stood behind General Lee and traced on the map the route over which I had made the reconnaissance.” When he came to the two eminences that had marked the climax of his journey, Johnston pointed to the smaller one, Little Round Top. He described his climb partway up the slope and noted that he had seen no Yankee troops save those on the road. Lee, wrote Johnston, “was surprised at my getting so far, but showed clearly that I had given him valuable information.” The commander needed to be sure, however. “‘Did you get there?’” he pointedly asked Johnston, indicating Little Round Top on the map. “I assured him I did,” Johnston testified.

Johnston’s intelligence provided a key element for the plan Lee was formulating. He had been constructing a picture of the Federal position based on his own observations and on scouting reports—now, especially, Johnston’s. Tragically, both the observations and the reports were flawed. As Lee viewed the southward extension of the enemy’s Cemetery Hill line, it appeared to him that the Yankee force was holding “the high ground along the Emmitsburg road, with a steep ridge in rear, which was also occupied.” In point of fact, Meade had placed none of his main strength along the Emmitsburg Road, but instead had followed the line of Cemetery Ridge, which diverged from the road. The angle from which Lee was looking at the position made it seem as if the road represented the Federal defensive line.

Had Johnston followed the course he claimed, he would have come upon the encampments of the Third Corps, located just north and west of Little Round Top. He would also have encountered trouble from John Buford’s cavalry vedettes, some of whom were posted about Sherfy’s peach orchard. Only if Johnston had bypassed the orchard farther south and gone up the slope of the
larger
hill—
Big
Round Top—would his story not strain credulity. He truly believed there were no Federals near Little Round Top, and though the reality was otherwise, his account helped confirm Lee’s notion of the Union position.

Robert E. Lee pondered the tactical problem of July 2 with the intention of attacking if a suitable arena could be found. “‘The enemy is here, and if we do not whip him, he will whip us,’” the army chief remarked this morning to Brigadier General John B. Hood, one of Longstreet’s division commanders. Richard Ewell and company had apparently ruled out the rugged Confederate left as the primary point, and Hill’s position opposite the enemy’s strong Cemetery Hill defenses took his sector out of serious consideration. Lee had been hoping to find an opening on the Rebel right, and all the evidence in hand suggested that he had succeeded.

Lee thanked Johnston and asked him to remain for another assignment. Longstreet’s Corps would soon be marching to the area reconnoitered by the young officer, so he understood Lee to mean that he was to “aid [Longstreet] … in any way that I could.” At some point in their early-morning discussions, Longstreet had expressed to Lee his preference that any attack be led by Major General Lafayette McLaws and his division. When the thickly bearded McLaws appeared at about 8:30
A.M.,
Lee was ready with instructions.

Lee’s inner turmoil seems to have subsided once his basic decision had been made; McLaws found the army commander “as calm and cool as I ever saw him.” Lee spread out a map of the vicinity and pointed to a line drawn perpendicular to the Emmitsburg Road, near Sherfy’s peach orchard, where he believed the Federal position terminated. “‘General, I wish you to place your division across the road, and I wish you to get there if possible without being seen by the enemy,’” Lee said, looking hard at McLaws. “‘Can you get there?’” he asked.

In the admirable spirit of “can do,” McLaws answered that he knew of no reason that he could not make the movement requested. He had not a clue as to the lay of the land, though, so when Lee mentioned a survey undertaken by Johnston, McLaws misunderstood the context and asked at once to accompany that officer. Longstreet stepped forward
from where he had been standing. “‘No, sir, I do not wish you to leave your division,’” he said, not bothering to explain that Johnston’s reconnaissance had already occurred.

While McLaws was digesting this, Longstreet surprised him by running his finger over the map to indicate an orientation at a right angle to the one designated by Lee. “‘I wish your division placed so,’” Longstreet said. Lee firmly corrected his First Corps commander before allowing McLaws to depart to prepare his division. Prior to leaving, McLaws once more asked permission to accompany Johnston, and again Longstreet turned him down without explanation. “General Longstreet appeared as if he was irritated and annoyed,” noted McLaws, “but the cause I did not ask.”

There remained one sizable loose end: Ewell’s Corps. With no report yet from Charles Venable, Lee decided that the time was right for him to pay another visit. It was nearing 9:00
A.M.
when he set out for the Second Corps headquarters.

Even as Lee was heading for Ewell’s position, the rattle of musketry around the Bliss farm began to crescendo. Lee’s decision to prolong his line south along Seminary Ridge had brought up Anderson’s Division of Hill’s Corps, which provided ready reinforcements for the Rebel skirmishers opposing the 1st Delaware.

Union Lieutenant John Brady suddenly realized that his skirmish line north of the farm buildings “was being slowly pressed back toward our regimental centre.” An even bigger surprise awaited young Brady when he reported this development to the regiment’s commander, Edward P. Harris, who had set up his command post in the basement of the barn. As soon as Brady had explained things, Harris, “after carefully venturing from this, his safe retreat, and taking a very hasty glance over the situation, turned and fled precipitately, towards our main lines.” His rapid departure left a captain and a couple of lieutenants on their own to confront the increasingly intense pressure of a numerically superior enemy.

After making a valiant effort to rally the skirmishers on the right, Brady retreated with them toward Cemetery Ridge. Word of the withdrawal was slow in getting to the Delaware troops south of the buildings, who suddenly found themselves almost cut off. In the ensuing confusion, Captain Martin W. B. Ellegood was mortally wounded. The twenty-three-year-old’s letters reveal that he was a patriot sensitive to the ironies of war, as well as a serious scold when it came to his sister’s constant overspending. Ellegood would linger for four days before his wound finally claimed him, on July 6.