Gettysburg (64 page)

George Meade was so preoccupied by his struggle to contain Longstreet’s and Hill’s efforts against his left flank that he permitted a potentially catastrophic misunderstanding to develop between him and Henry Slocum. Meade had already withdrawn one of the two Twelfth
Corps divisions covering Culp’s Hill, but so concerned was he for his left, and so confident that his right flank was secure, that he began to press Slocum for even more troops.

Henry Slocum was in something of a fog in any case. He persisted in believing that his role was that of wing commander on Meade’s right, an odd leftover from the marches to Gettysburg, when he had been assigned that task to ensure better control of the corps grouped at the distant ends of the deployment. His impression that he still retained that responsibility was Meade’s doing to some extent. Early this day, when he was actively considering attacking from his right flank, Meade had counted on Slocum’s coordinating three corps. After the plan became impracticable, he failed to apprise his subordinate that he was no longer to watch over that wing. Slocum accordingly chose to cast himself still in the more important role, leaving the tactical handling of the Twelfth Corps to Alpheus Williams.

When Meade, anxious about affairs on his left, asked Slocum for all the help he could spare, Slocum took it to mean he was to send everything he had. According to Slocum, an aide he dispatched to Meade to convey his opinion that at least a division should be kept on Culp’s Hill returned with Meade’s reluctant permission for him to retain a single brigade there. Slocum made no further effort to change his commander’s mind; he simply passed along the directive pulling all but George S. Greene’s brigade off Culp’s Hill, leaving some 1,400 men to hold a sector previously occupied by almost 10,000. In his own defense, Slocum would later state that the “first duty of a subordinate is to obey the orders of his superior.”

Compounding the confusion, the initial order received by Second Division commander John Geary detailed all three of his brigades for duty on the left. A hasty follow-up message instructed George Greene to remain and “to occupy the whole of the intrenchments previously occupied by the Twelfth Army Corps.”

Greene had to make some quick decisions. Fortunately for the Union cause, most of them were also wise ones. Faced with the choice of either occupying the entire Twelfth Corps line by greatly thinning his own, or taking up a shorter section that would afford him a better concentration of firepower, Greene elected to do the latter. He filled the abandoned trenches for a distance of three regiments, kept two more back to cover his original position, and sent the fifth forward to stiffen the picket line. Greene’s extreme right flank was held by the 137th New York, commanded by Colonel David Ireland, whose line barely reached the lower
or lesser summit of Culp’s Hill. Nearly four hundred yards of earthworks extending south from the 137th’s right flank were left uncovered. Even to hold what he had selected, Greene had to take the risk of nearly doubling the front assigned to each regiment.

The uncoordinated and unsuccessful advances against Cemetery Ridge by Wilcox’s and Perry’s Brigades had left Ambrose Wright’s alone. With one regiment detached as skirmishers, Wright had perhaps 1,000 men available. He was a determined man, and at his direction, his troops swept over a Union skirmish line, knocking down fences with their bodies as they came forward, and then swelled as a fierce human wave that crashed into the two regiments John Gibbon had pushed out to the Codori farm. The outnumbered Federals held for as long as honor required, then ran for Cemetery Ridge.
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A Yankee in those ranks would report that they had “retired in some disorder, being pressed so closely that we lost quite a number of prisoners, captured by the enemy.”

Gibbon had backed up these two regiments with a battery posted about halfway between Cemetery Ridge and the Codori house. For a few minutes, its six guns played havoc with Wright’s line. According to a Georgia soldier who came under fire, “Shells around us tore our bleeding ranks with ghastly gaps [but] we pressed on, knowing that the front was safer now than to turn our backs, and with a mighty yell, we threw ourselves upon the batteries and passed them, still reeking hot.” In fact, the Federal gunners managed to save four of the guns, abandoning just a pair to the enemy.

That he was on his own was rapidly becoming the least of Wright’s problems. He could see the movement of troops gathering against him on the ridge ahead. His men surged up the slight slope of Cemetery Ridge, overtaking one of the four guns that had initially escaped their grasp. Some Georgia soldiers battled their way to the goal of the entire day’s effort, reaching a stone wall just south of the soon-to-be-famous clump of trees on Cemetery Ridge. An officer in the 3rd Georgia recalled that “Wright’s Brigade was driven into the Federal position like a wedge and was exposed on the right and on the left. The enemy quickly moved on both flanks to envelop this command.”

How many of Wright’s men got this far, and how far they actually did get, remain matters of dispute. Wright himself would be utterly convinced that all of his troops had made it, but in any case, the achievement was of little real consequence. With no help on the way, and Federal units rushing at him all across his front, Wright pulled back, so rapidly that the three guns his men had taken were left to be reclaimed by the enemy. The Georgians were hurried on their way by an impetuous charge carried out by five companies of the 13th Vermont. When the colonel leading the Vermont men got entangled with his stricken horse, he yelled to his battalion to continue forward: “Go on, boys, go on,” he shouted. “I’ll be at your head as soon as I get out of this damn saddle.”
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In his after-action report, Ambrose Wright would declare, “I have not the slightest doubt but that I should have been able to have maintained my position on the heights, and secured the captured artillery, if there had been a protecting force on my left, or if the brigade on my right had not been forced to retire.”

On Richard Ewell’s orders, Edward Johnson sent his division—minus the Stonewall Brigade, which had been retained at Brinkerhoff’s Ridge— southward to attack Culp’s Hill. Brigadier General John M. Jones’ Virginia brigade, already providing security for Joseph Latimer’s guns, was positioned east and just south of Benner’s Hill. The two brigades remaining—Nicholls’ Louisiana unit
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and George H. Steuart’s mixed Maryland/North Carolina/Virginia force—advanced from their positions north of the Hanover Road to extend Jones’ left flank. Once they had drawn abreast, the three headed south and west. Behind them, Latimer’s four guns reopened in support, drawing concentrated Yankee counterbattery fire. The gunners lost their commander when a shell-burst tumbled the boy major and his horse, killing the latter and mortally wounding the former, who would linger until August 1.

The movement of Johnson’s brigades conveyed an unintended piece of misinformation to the Federal officers watching from the eastern end of Cemetery Hill. Brigadier General Adelbert Ames, fretting about the
forces that might combine against his thin line along the base of the hill, sent two of his regiments forward about 1,500 feet to observe from a wooded hillock. The 700 men from the 33rd Massachusetts and 41st New York took their assigned station and from there watched Johnson’s men moving well off to their right, toward the eastern side of Culp’s Hill. While that meant trouble for the troops up there, Ames allowed himself to feel some relief, believing he would not be challenged this day.

A final bit of postcurtain theater was played out on the Union left as the first Twelfth Corps units, marched over from Culp’s Hill, reached the area near the George Weikert farm. As the luck of the draw would have it, the regiments leading the way were some of the least experienced on the entire battlefield. The pair belonged to Brigadier General Henry H. Lockwood’s brigade, only recently appended to the Army of the Potomac from the Baltimore district. One was the 150th New York, raised in Dutchess County; the other was the 1st Maryland (Regiment) Potomac Home Brigade, whose usual duty had it guarding railroads and various Federal properties.

Alpheus S. Williams, leading the column, was met by Freeman McGilvery, who had just one thing on his mind: putting some infantry in with his beleaguered cannon. Williams ordered Lockwood to take control of some woods in their front. With a confidence based solely on inexperience, the Marylanders never deployed into combat formation but merely marched in a column up the lane as far as the Trostle farm; the New Yorkers at least had enough sense to spread into lines of battle before scampering to catch up with the eager newbies. Both units secured postwar bragging rights when they came upon the guns John Bigelow had abandoned and happily reclaimed them for the Union.
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Behind these two regiments, along Cemetery Ridge, the two remaining brigades of the Twelfth Corps’ First Division appeared and were deployed for battle, though there was no action for them. Something of a mystery surrounds the odyssey of the other two Twelfth Corps brigades dispatched from Culp’s Hill to the left flank. Under the personal direction of the capable John W. Geary, the pair had departed from Culp’s Hill about half an hour after Williams led away the First Division. They followed the Baltimore Pike south, but instead of picking up the crossroads
that would have taken them west to Cemetery Ridge, they kept going straight on until they reached Rock Creek. There Geary stopped and sent a rider back to corps headquarters for instructions.

Adding to the enigma is the fact that in order to reach that point, Geary’s column had to march past the Twelfth Corps’ headquarters on Powers Hill, where none present seems to have noticed that he was going in the wrong direction. Given his belief that he was in charge of the right wing and Williams was the acting Twelfth Corps commander, Henry Slocum may have assumed that Geary was acting on independent instructions from Williams. Some hours would pass before everyone realized that Geary had marched off the game board and needed to be recalled to Culp’s Hill. In the meantime, for several critical hours on the Union right, his two brigades had simply disappeared.

Of all the Confederate brigades attacking this day, none drew a worse assignment than the three units of Edward Johnson’s Division that were sent against Culp’s Hill shortly before sunset. Once they had crossed the relatively open fields south of the Hanover Road, their situation swiftly began to deteriorate. Their first real obstacle was Rock Creek, which was not in itself especially formidable
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but whose far bank was steep in places and infested with Yankee soldiers ready to contest any passage. For perhaps thirty minutes, Johnson’s men battled the reinforced picket line thrown forward by George Greene. “We held this point with the briskest fire we could concentrate,” the Federal officer directing the skirmishers reported. “I desired to … sweep them as they crossed the brook.”

Having achieved its delaying purpose, Greene’s skirmish line started to fall back, though it persisted in stubbornly slowing the enemy down. Johnson’s three brigades pushed across the stream, with Jones’ Virginians on the right, Steuart’s mixed command on the left, and Nicholls’ Brigade of Louisianans (under Williams) in the center. The Virginia troops faced a steeper climb, so the Louisiana regiments likely made first contact.

Tragically for Confederate arms, the approach route taken by Johnson’s brigades had directed two of the three into the teeth of the Federal defenses. Once George Greene knew for sure that the enemy was coming his way, he had sent couriers looking for help. They had found some from James Wadsworth and Oliver Otis Howard, who promised three and four regiments, respectively. All would take some time to get there, however, so for the moment Greene was on his own.

The first Rebel attacks were bloody disasters. The steep pitch of the hill and the darkness of the hour, compounded by the rocks and brush that everywhere hindered movement, rendered any sort of coherent assault an impossibility. A private under Jones later recalled the Virginians’ objective only as a “ditch filled with men firing down on our heads.” In a grim understatement, Jesse Williams would allow that his brigade’s efforts “were attended with more loss than success.”

George Steuart’s men at first fared no better. Two of his regiments got ahead of the rest of their command and hooked onto the right flank of the Louisiana troops. This had the effect of funneling them into a deadly cul de sac, with unfriendly fire in their front and on both flanks. A soldier in those suffering ranks remembered that the battle lines, such as they were, “reeled and staggered like a drunken man” in the killing cross fire.