Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (28 page)

The advance party, followed by the head of Archer’s brigade, crested the last ridge before dipping down to
Marsh Creek between 7:00 and 7:30, moving through the pickets left by Pettigrew the previous evening. Across the creek, the road rose to
Knoxlyn Ridge, where the home of a blacksmith,
Ephraim Wisler, was perched. There, watching the long Confederate column cross the creek and begin its ascent of the road, was one of Buford’s outlying videttes—four troopers of the
8th Illinois Cavalry. The four cavalrymen hallooed for their sergeant, and when they could not find him, one of the troopers,
Thomas Kelley, mounted up and galloped the 200 yards back to the reserve post to find Lt.
Marcellus Jones. Kelley and Jones came up in a hurry, and the four troopers pointed to the moving column and “the old Rebel flag” up ahead. When their sergeant,
Levi Shafer, also showed up, Lieutenant Jones asked him for his
carbine, steadied and aimed it “in a crotch” of a rail fence, and squeezed off a shot. Pettigrew’s outpost officer “was watering my horse” in Marsh Creek while Heth’s “troops were passing” when he was startled by a shot in the thick morning air, some 400 yards ahead. His first thought was that it was some slovenly soldier’s “accidental discharge.” It was, instead, the first shot of the battle of Gettysburg.
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PART 2
 

  CHAPTER NINE  

T
HE NEWS
of the Confederate contact set the chain of picket lines into motion: Lieutenant Jones sent a trooper back to his captain,
Daniel W. Buck, at a “wayside inn about a mile and a half from camp,” and Buck in turn sent a galloper to find Major
John Beveridge of the 8th Illinois, and then on again to find
William Gamble and Buford at the
Eagle Hotel. Buford’s signal officer,
Aaron Jerome, caught the message as the courier hurried past, and took his “glass” with him up into the cupola of the Lutheran seminary. Beveridge ordered boots-and-saddles, and by the time Gamble and Buford rode up the
Cashtown Pike to Gamble’s bivouac, “the brigade stood to horse, prepared to mount,” and off they went, moving a long dismounted skirmish line along the next ridge, where the Cashtown Pike crossed the farm property of Edward McPherson, a protégé of
Thaddeus Stevens’ and a former Republican congressman. Buford sent Gamble off with his brigade and ordered Tom Devin to extend Gamble’s line on the ridge northward on the other side of the pike. A knot of boys from the town had come out to poke around Devin’s encampment and rub shoulders with real soldiers, but the call for boots-and-saddles quickly scattered them.
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Buford climbed up into the Lutheran seminary’s cupola (it was a small flat affair, open on all sides, with a wooden canopy, and accessed by a ladder and hatch) to have a look westward with Lieutenant Jerome’s heavy signal telescope, and what he saw did not please him. “He seemed anxious,” Jerome noticed, “even more so than I ever saw him.” He kept climbing up and down from the cupola, spitting orders, riding out along the line of
McPherson’s Ridge to supervise the placement of Gamble’s and Devin’s brigades, then riding back to the seminary and climbing up to the cupola again. A slow-witted staffer whom Reynolds had sent up to Gettysburg to act as a messenger for Buford asked dully, “Why, what is the matter general.” At that moment, a dull boom revealed that someone in the distance had unlimbered artillery and was trying the range. “That,” Buford snarled, “is the matter.” Only three miles separated Lieutenant Jones from the diamond at the center of town, and if Reynolds did not get his infantry athwart the Cashtown Pike in the next two hours, he might as well stay at Moritz Tavern.
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Buford’s troopers might, however, buy Reynolds at least some extra innings. He had a battery of long-range 3-inch
Ordnance Rifles under Lt.
John Calef which might force a little hesitation on the rebels’ part, and he also had Harry Heth’s uncertainty about what might lie behind Buford’s pickets to add to the delay. And sure enough, Harry Heth’s first reaction was to stop the line of march, unlimber a battery “in the road,” and shake out skirmishers from Archer’s brigade to clear the ground in front of them. As Archer’s skirmishers deployed, a company of the 8th Illinois under Capt.
Amasa Dana conveniently showed up, and this allowed Jones and Dana to set up a skirmish
line of their own on the next ridge. “Scattering my men to the right and left, at intervals of thirty feet, and behind post and rail fences,” Dana “directed them to throw up their
carbine sights to 800 yards, then taking rest on the top rail we gave the enemy the benefit of long range practice.”
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It is not clear how many times the 8th Illinois played cat and mouse with Archer’s skirmishers, backing up the
Cashtown Pike toward Gettysburg. (They probably inflicted the first Confederate casualty of the battle, too, a skirmisher named
Henry Raison of the 7th Tennessee.) But every time the Confederate column stopped to swat at the Yankee cavalry, formations at the rear of the advance slackened, men fell out to boil coffee, and tempers frayed. And the clock ticked: the Confederates, just to be certain that it was
only
cavalry in front of them, would need to move from marching column into line of battle, and orders from a division commander in Heth’s position to his brigade commanders would require at least twenty minutes for transmission (including writing them out, and sending them by courier), and another fifteen to get verbal orders from brigade commanders down to the colonels of the brigade’s regiments. To preserve the unity of companies in a regiment, a column could not simply be turned off the road and allowed to convert column files into battle lines; it required a complicated process, starting with the regimental lieutenant colonel (or adjutant) galloping off to mark where the far flank of the regiment was to rest, and the junior major of the regiment marking the other flank. Company sergeants had to mark out the points along the line which would be filled by companies, always ensuring that the regimental colors were front and center. Whatever artillery was on hand would also need to be galloped into place, unlimbered, and readied for action. And this was likely to consume yet another forty-five minutes to an hour.
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Which is just what it did. From his vantage point with Brockenbrough’s brigade, the brigade chaplain could see Archer’s lead regiments reach the crest of
Herr Ridge, and then begin to “file to the right off the road and march by column of fours, or marching order, at right angles to the road,” and then begin forming battle lines. And in “a few moments,” orders came down the road for Brockenbrough’s brigade to begin doing likewise. As Archer’s brigade turned off the Cashtown Pike to its right on Herr Ridge, Joe Davis’ brigade turned off to the left, so that they could present one long, two-rank line of battle, stretched on either side of the Cashtown Pike. The two artillery batteries Heth brought with him also rolled up into positions on the ridge, and regimental officers began dressing the lines, holding impromptu weapons inspections, and trying to make little speeches of encouragement before going into action against the Yankee cavalrymen on the next ridge. “Men, clean out your guns, load and be ready,” repeated Col.
John Stone, as he walked up and down the line of the 2nd Mississippi. “We are going to have it.” The
Confederate cannon—in this case,
Edward Marye’s Fredericksburg Artillery, with their two
Ordnance Rifles and two 12-pounder Napoleons—let off the first shells at McPherson’s Ridge.
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This teasing, jolting retreat gave Buford at least an hour and a half to concentrate most of his two brigades along the line of McPherson’s Ridge in dismounted order. It was now close to ten o’clock, and Buford had done almost everything that his horse soldiers could be expected to do. Calef’s battery could trade shots with the Confederate guns for as long as anyone liked, but once the rebel infantry started forward, his men would be knocked out of the way like snakes by a stick. It would be only a matter of a few volleys of
carbine fire before his troopers would have to mount up and bolt south or east through the town. Heth was putting out skirmishers, and a splutter of small-arms fire was igniting along the thin line of dismounted cavalrymen. Buford dashed off a quick message to Meade, warning him that “the enemy’s force (A. P. Hill’s) are advancing on me at this point, and driving my pickets and skirmishers very rapidly.” This might have been the curtain call for Buford had not Lieutenant Jerome, still in the cupola of the Lutheran seminary, caught sight to the south, along the
Emmitsburg Road, of “the corps-flag of General Reynolds.”

Shortly Reynolds himself “and staff came up on a gallop,” leaving the lead elements of his
1st Corps behind on the road. It was the first of a series of heart-stopping moments at Gettysburg when the entire battle would come down to a scramble of minutes getting to one place or another. “Now we can hold the place,” Buford said, and added to a note to Alf Pleasonton, “General Reynolds is advancing, and is within 3 miles of this point with his leading division.”
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John Reynolds was up early on the morning of July 1st. He had been waiting to the last minute to see which way Meade would jump—to move forward and support the 1st Corps and
11th Corps, or issue a final, inalterable order to withdraw to
Pipe Creek—and at six o’clock called for his senior division commander,
Abner Doubleday. No more waiting: “He then instructed me,” said Doubleday, “to draw in my pickets, assemble the artillery and the remainder of the corps, and join him as soon as possible.”
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The sun soon came up, a dim blood-red disk behind the clouds on the eastern horizon, and some morning drizzle briefly pelted the rousing soldiers. Reynolds did not stay with Doubleday, but rode on ahead with an escort, meeting couriers from Buford on the way. Once on the move, the men’s spirits lifted, and in one German company, recruited from Milwaukee, the soldiers struck up a “soul-stirring song” in the
Männerchor
fashion “such as only the
Germans can sing.” But the enthusiasm did not last long. First, they began passing melancholy knots of refugees, stumbling southward, in the opposite direction. “Citizens were met driving cattle and horses before them in search of a safe retreat,” and one Pennsylvania officer was particularly melted when he passed by “two children—a boy and a girl … on one horse, crying as if their little hearts would break.” Alongside the 76th New York rushed “gray-haired old men … women carrying their children, and children leading each other, while on the faces of all were depicted the indices of … terror and despair.” Then they heard the first, faint crump of artillery. One soldier in the 6th Wisconsin, unwilling to let the high spirits of the morning dissipate, tried to joke that “the Pennsylvanians have made a mistake and are celebrating the 4th [of July] three days ahead of time.” But there could be no mistaking what artillery meant—up ahead, someone was fighting, hard enough and in sufficient numbers to make it worth their while to unlimber artillery and commit it to the fight.
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