Gettysburg (63 page)

William Barksdale’s rough but effective loose formation was suddenly struck in its front and left flank by a fresh Union line, bayonets at the ready. This was the Harper’s Ferry Brigade, led by George Willard. Willard had set up his attack using just the 125th and 126th New York, leaving two regiments in reserve, but as he advanced, it had become apparent that his right flank was imperiled by an approaching enemy column. Winfield Hancock had immediately sent one of Willard’s two reserve regiments, the 111th New York, forward to cover the flank.

The Federal line that hit Barksdale’s mass thus consisted of the 125th, 126th, and 111th New York Regiments, which advanced through a curtain of protective fire laid down by Alexander’s forward battalions along the Emmitsburg Road. “On we rushed with loud cries!” recollected a member of the 125th. “With shells screaming and cannon balls tearing the air, like so many fiends bent on destruction; now bursting above and around us; now ploughing the ground at our feet …; on, on, we rushed, through storm of fire and death, thundering above and darting around us like the thunder and lightning of Heaven.”

When the two sides collided amid the broken ground, bushes, boulders, trees, and soggy earth of the Plum Run swale, the New Yorkers were at the peak of their frenzy, while the Mississippians had spent theirs. The Confederate lines began to disassemble, with portions falling back, portions turning to fight, portions surrendering, and everywhere men dropping dead or wounded. Their determination to advance rested solely on William Barksdale, who was frantic in his efforts to regain the initiative. A Union officer later would recollect that “Gen. Barksdale was trying to hold his men, cheering them and swearing, directly in front of the left of the 126th near the right of the 125th who both saw and heard him as they emerged from the bushes.” Yankee guns swung toward the conspicuous figure, who fell after being hit several times. As its advance continued, the Federal line passed over the desperately wounded Confederate leader.
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Although no one present recognized it at the time, the moment had arrived on the left flank of the Federal line when the two sides had fought to a point of exhausted balance. Everywhere the Confederate soldiers felt that victory was near, but claiming it would require fresh troops that were not available. For their part, the Federals had taken a terrible licking; they had seen their comrades shot down by the score, their guns overrun, and their positions engulfed by human waves swelling under Rebel flags. But they had exacted a high price for their suffering. Arriving to join them were lines of reinforcements that would soon make all the difference. And most important, the Army of the Potomac had not lost its collective nerve.

At the southernmost edge of the battlefield, final efforts by the brigades of G. T. Anderson, Semmes, Kershaw, and Wofford to push across the northern neck of Little Round Top were stopped by countercharges by the Pennsylvania Reserves, Fifth Corps, supported by a Sixth Corps brigade just arrived on the field.
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Behind them stood more Sixth Corps brigades, insurance that this flank would hold.

One Confederate success remained to be registered, thanks to the still freelancing 21st Mississippi. After ending Bigelow’s stand near the Trostle farm, the Mississippi men continued eastward and managed to envelop the exposed southern end of McGilvery’s line of cannon. In almost no time, they took Battery 1, 5th United States Light Artillery, commanded by Lieutenant Malbone F. Watson. “We charged and captured these guns before they fired,” reported the 21st’s commander, Benjamin Humphreys.

Once he had had an opportunity to survey his conquest, however, Humphreys pronounced himself less than happy with his situation. “I now saw we had advanced too far to the front for safety,” he related, “though no gun was firing at us. I could see that Barksdale, several hundred yards to my left, was checked as well as Kershaw on my right in front of Little Round Top.” The question of whether to stay or go was answered for Humphreys when he observed a line of battle approaching from his left front. “I saw my safety was in a hurried retreat,” he later admitted.

The rapid withdrawal of the 21st Mississippi was speeded along by the arrival of the 39th New York, which had been part of the reserve established by George Willard before he charged Barksdale’s Brigade. While Winfield Hancock had detached one of the reserve regiments to assist Willard, the other, the 39th, had been grabbed by a fast-talking Third Corps staff officer.

The aide to David Birney, acting without authority, had discovered the New Yorkers waiting patiently while their comrades were engaged to
their front. His first attempt to direct the regiment to move toward Watson’s battery was met with a curt refusal by the regimental commander, who added, “‘I am not in Birney’s command.’” After learning that this regiment belonged to Hancock’s Second Corps, the never-say-die aide repeated his request, this time substituting Hancock’s name where he had previously used Birney’s.
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His sense of protocol thus satisfied, the 39th’s commander led his men into a charge that repossessed Watson’s battery. His proud soldiers would later claim the honor of having ejected the Mississippi troops, who would be equally adamant that the New Yorkers had simply hastened their leave-taking. In any case, the battery was back in Federal hands, and the 21st Mississippi finally finished for the day.

There was more that George Willard’s brigade, those Harper’s Ferry boys, had to accomplish. Their charge had first stopped and then repulsed Barksdale’s Mississippi brigade, ending that threat to the union center. They were not yet through, however. They regrouped, continued their advance, and suddenly found themselves retaking three guns of Lieutenant John Turnbull’s 3rd united States Light Artillery, which had been abandoned during the Third Corps’ retreat from the Emmitsburg Road.

The New Yorkers were by now the target of choice for Edward P. Alexander’s batteries, as well as for the remnants of Barksdale’s command. Soon enough they also began to be fired on by Cadmus Wilcox’s brigade to their right, advancing along Barksdale’s left. Willard’s advance had brought his brigade to a point near the right and rear of Wilcox and the Florida brigade moving with him. This was enough for Willard, who ordered his men to fall back; they had done their job.

In fact, his brigade had done more than he would ever know. Its presence at this time and in this place had been reported to David Lang, commanding the three Florida regiments trailing Wilcox. Lang had taken this information to mean that enemy troops were working around his right and getting into his rear. “I immediately ordered my men back to the [Emmitsburg] road,” he testified. This left Wilcox with no help on either flank.

The opportunity to savor the vindication of his men and the validation of his own leadership would be denied to George Willard. Hardly
had he led his brigade back into the rough cover of the Plum Run swale when a Confederate shell struck him, carrying “away part of his face and head.” He was dead before he hit the ground.

Cadmus Wilcox continued to urge his men forward, only too aware that he had lost track of the units that were supposed to be on his flanks. His men, having fought through Andrew Humphreys’ collapsing but still potent division, remained fixed on Cemetery Ridge, but every step was harder than the one before. From fully manned Yankee batteries in his front, “grape and canister were poured into our ranks,” Wilcox recollected. And then just when the prize of Cemetery Ridge at last seemed to be within his grasp, he observed a “line of [enemy] infantry [that] descended the slope in our front at a double-quick.”

That line of enemy infantry was a single regiment, the 1st Minnesota. Not an hour earlier, its 262 men had been shifted from their reserve position near Cemetery Hill to the area occupied by Caldwell’s division before its departure for the wheat field. The Minnesotans had witnessed the drama on the Union left: the broken units in retreat, the cheering reinforcements charging into the cauldron, the gunshots and cannon discharges mixed in a grand cacophony. And then it had become obvious that a dark cloud of enemy soldiers was heading toward them, with nothing in its way.

Winfield Hancock had also seen it. He had enlisted the 1st Minnesota’s commander, Colonel William Colvill, in a vain effort to corral enough Third Corps stragglers to form a line; he finally had to tell him to stop, for fear that the demoralization would spread. The acting Third Corps commander had then sent back a call for help, but he knew that unless something was done right away, the Rebels would reach Cemetery Ridge.

Hancock broke from his thoughts and looked at the 1st Minnesota, as if for the first time. “My God!” he exclaimed. “Are these all the men we have here?” He demanded to know, and was told, the regiment’s name. “Colonel, do you see those colors?” he asked Colvill, pointing to some of the Rebel battle flags bobbing amid Wilcox’s Brigade. When Colvill said he did, Hancock gave his orders: “Then take them,” he said.

The 1st Minnesota moved down the gentle slope, bayonets fixed, a line of battle perhaps a hundred yards from end to end. The soldiers came under fire right away. “Men stumbled and fell,” recalled an officer in
those ranks. “Some stayed down but others got up and continued.” The charging line of Minnesotans drove into the advance screen of Wilcox’s Brigade and hustled it back to a second line, which fell back to the main body. This last, some 1,000 strong, was not going to be scattered by 250 or so Yankees. The men of the 1st Minnesota halted along the dry stream bed of Plum Run, firing for all they were worth. A torrent of Confederate rifle fire lashed into the Yankee regiment from Wilcox’s men in their front and from some of Lang’s Florida troops, who got an enfilade position. After enduring a few minutes of this, the union survivors ran back to Cemetery Ridge. Between 170 and 178 Minnesota soldiers fell in this counterattack; it was not quite the 82 percent loss that has often been cited, but it was bad enough.

One more Union regiment added its weight to the blows against Anderson’s two brigades. The 19th Maine of the Second Corps’ Second Division, Colonel Francis E. Heath commanding, had maintained its cohesion despite lying down in the path of Andrew Humphreys’ retreating division. A distraught Third Corps officer had tried ordering the Maine soldiers to stop his men with their bayonets, but his instructions had immediately been countermanded by Heath. The 19th now rose and delivered several volleys into Perry’s Florida regiments—confirming Colonel Lang’s decision to retreat—before falling back in an orderly fashion to Cemetery Ridge.

This was the final straw for Cadmus Wilcox. His requests for reinforcements had not been answered, and both his flanks were exposed. “Without support on either my right or left,” he reported, “my men were withdrawn, to prevent their entire destruction or capture.”

Three pieces had yet to be put into play in the chess game that was Richard Anderson’s attack against the Union left: Wright’s Georgia, Posey’s Mississippi, and Mahone’s Virginia brigades. One would succeed; one would find the distraction of the Bliss farm too much to overcome; and one would never make it into action.

Posey’s men had been entangled for much of the day in the deadly rounds of take-away at the Bliss farm. Catching the rhythm rolling up from the south, the Mississippi skirmishers swept past the buildings, a few even aligning with the Georgians to their right. But when Posey sought to advance his entire brigade to support Wright, he found that two of his four regiments were so ensnared around the structures that they could
not participate; even though they had driven away the New Jersey soldiers, they were not strong enough to force back the Federal skirmishers just north of them. As Posey’s other two regiments advanced, they exposed their flank to an enemy skirmish line. They did the best they could, but the Emmitsburg Road marked the limit of their effort. The Mississippi riflemen would later claim to have briefly driven off some of the Union gun crews along Cemetery Ridge, but their contribution went unacknowledged by Ambrose Wright, whose report unfairly declared that Posey’s men had provided no assistance at all.

When William Mahone was called upon to help, he declined on the ground that Anderson had designated him as the division’s reserve. Mahone was convinced that A. P. Hill had seconded that selection, so even when a staff officer appeared to convey Anderson’s personal directive that he move forward, the brigade commander refused.

In a heated print exchange after the battle, a Georgia reporter would accuse Posey and Mahone of failing in their duty. In reply, he would receive a note from Richard Anderson, who insisted that the pair “were acting under instructions from himself,” and that “his own actions ‘were in strict conformity with his orders’ from his ‘own immediate commander.’” The reporter concluded that “we are permitted to infer from the tenor of Gen. Anderson’s card, … [that the movements of the two brigades were] arrested on orders from their military superiors.”

Mahone himself also answered the charges in the papers, noting that Anderson’s Division “was not the attacking party” but instead “a cooperating force.” The only call for an advance, as Mahone understood it, came when the “successes of the attacking corps on the right became susceptible of assistance.” Carnot Posey, who coauthored this response, asserted his own understanding that his brigade “was moved forward more to protect … [Anderson’s] right brigades from any flank attack of the enemy” than to participate directly in the assault. Between them, the two officers ended by avowing that Confederate “success on the right had not yet arrived at that stage, which invited any advance from this part of the line.”