Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (66 page)

Even after the misfire on Cemetery Hill, there was still Allegheny Ed Johnson’s division, and for once in this long day of Confederate misfires, something in Robert E. Lee’s plans actually looked as though it was going to work. Since the morning of July 2nd,
Culp’s Hill had been the property of Henry Slocum’s
12th Corps, aided by the fragments of the
1st Corps. The low spur that connected the west face of Culp’s Hill with Cemetery Hill was defended by the fragile survivors of James Wadsworth’s 1st Corps division, which by this point amounted to little more than an ordinary brigade; from there Culp’s Hill actually developed into two peaks, north and south, and Slocum delegated one of his divisions to the higher north peak and the other to the south.

Culp’s Hill had little military significance of its own—unlike Cemetery Hill and
Little Round Top, it was blanketed with a thick canopy of trees which made observation difficult and serving artillery nearly impossible unless Slocum wanted to exhaust the entire corps with lumberjack duties. But livestock grazing had kept the area almost entirely clear of underbrush, so the hill could be attacked by troops if they maintained at least minimal order in line. Culp’s Hill also screened the
Baltimore Pike as it headed south from Gettysburg and Cemetery Hill, and if Meade was to keep open a supply line, or a line of retreat to Pipe Creek, he would need to hold Culp’s Hill simply to prevent the Confederates from curling around behind his army and snipping the pike. So the 12th Corps would spread itself out not only to occupy the twin peaks, but also planted two brigades beyond the south peak to cover the open ground between the peak and the pike. Across from the point where Slocum’s men touched the pike loomed Powers Hill; there Meade positioned three batteries of artillery to create a last redoubt along the pike if the Confederates ever overran Cemetery Hill.
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At first, few people in the
12th Corps seem to have had much apprehension that the Confederates would attempt a head-on attack on
Culp’s Hill. “The first formation” of
John White Geary’s division on the north peak “was in line of battalions in mass with diminished intervals between battalions,” and neither Geary nor
Thomas Ruger (who was in temporary command of the division holding the south peak) was troubled enough by the likelihood of rebel movements to give any orders to improve their hillside positions by digging trenches or chopping down enough trees to form rough protective walls.
“No orders were given to entrench,” although at one point Geary got so much nagging from one of his brigade commanders that he gave him “permission” to do so.

This particular brigade commander was George Sears Greene, who was a member of the West Point class of 1823 and also the Army of the Potomac’s oldest general officer (at age sixty-two) at Gettysburg. Born in Rhode Island, Greene had endured enough reverses in his career to develop a remarkably thick hide: his first wife and their three children had all died within seven months of one another … he served thirteen years in the
U.S. Army with only a single promotion, to first lieutenant … he re-married, fathered six more children and left the Army for private engineering practice … and then in 1861, volunteered for service and mustered-in as colonel of the 60th New York. He was short and stocky, with a sharply pointed Vandyke beard which gave him something of the appearance of a gnome out of a German fairy tale, and his men delighted in calling him “Pap” or “Old Pappy.” He rose to command a division in the
12th Corps at Antietam, only to get bumped back to brigade command for—without any shade of irony—lack of seniority in the volunteer service. He was “a most remarkable man,” said
Oliver Otis Howard, “a man whose reputation will grow; a man who was not appreciated during his lifetime.”
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Uncomplaining, Greene had saved his brigade at Chancellorsville by having them clear a 200-foot-wide space in front of their position and digging in with bayonets, tin cups, and canteen-halves. Greene’s instincts warned him that it would be a good idea to do the same here, and Geary relented. “Right and left,” Greene’s five New York regiments “felled the trees, and blocked them up into a close
fence.” A line of trees was felled down the slope with “branches sharpened in regular order,” to form a ready-made abatis, and serve as a primitive forerunner of barbed wire fencing. Stacks of cordwood left from logging operations were piled up “against the outer surface of the logs,” and any pioneer details “which had spades and picks” set to work piling up a battening of earth over the felled logs. They were finished by noon, and “a very fair work” it was. But then, at mid-afternoon, came the erupting roar in the distance that signaled Longstreet’s attack, followed by the artillery duel between the “Boy Major” Latimer’s battalion on
Benner’s Ridge and the Federal artillery on
Cemetery Hill, and as Greene “walked along the lines with care, giving personal direction to the measurements and the angles” of the earthworks, both Slocum and Geary began feeling prickles of anxiety over reports of large-scale rebel troop movements in the woods to the east.
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Prickles, however, are not proof against orders. At 7:30, as Ambrose Wright’s Georgians curled toward the crest of Cemetery Ridge, Meade summoned Slocum and the 12th Corps to the rescue of the staggering
2nd Corps.
Much as he required
Culp’s Hill, Meade needed to save Cemetery Hill even more. But the summons could not have come at a worse moment for Slocum, who was growing convinced that Culp’s Hill was about to receive its own attack. Slocum sent his adjutant back to Meade, asking to be permitted to keep “General Geary’s division to cover the works of the corps, and not to leave them deserted.” Slocum’s reply must have seemed as pedantic to Meade to Meade’s order seemed risky to Slocum, but in the end Slocum was “permitted to retain one brigade, and I retained Greene’s.” As the rest of the
12th Corps hurried away, Greene’s brigade resigned itself to stretching out to cover, as best it could, the lines vacated along both peaks of Culp’s Hill. Given that Greene had less than 1,400 men and one battery of artillery to count on, there was more stretching than cover. Greene “formed his brigade in a single line, with spaces between the men, the regiments moving to the right as the line lengthened,” and the smallest of the regiments (the 78th New York) forming a loose line of
skirmishers in front. They had “scarcely accomplished this extended formation when a sharp crackling fire announced” that both Old Pappy and Henry Slocum had been right to worry.
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Allegheny Ed Johnson sheltered the three big Confederate brigades he would throw against Culp’s Hill behind
Benner’s Ridge and on the north side of the
Hanover Road for most of the afternoon. (“One of our staff” prudently “conducted religious services … the men gladly joining in the solemn exercises.”) Once the blackened remains of Latimer’s artillery battalion had pulled themselves to safety, “aides were seen dashing furiously down the long line of infantry on our right, who spring to their feet as they pass.” Johnson’s would actually be the first element of Dick Ewell’s corps to begin the “distraction,” and “as soon as Johnson was heard engaged,” Early’s division would move to its attack on east Cemetery Hill. Johnson moved his brigades stealthily along the face of Culp’s Hill until they faced almost due west of the two peaks, then shook out into line of battle and waded
Rock Creek (“waist-deep in some places”) to begin ascending the slope. One of Greene’s officers could make out Johnson’s advance in the gathering dusk, “and counting battle flags and intervals in the front line, I calculated that there were eight regiments, and of probably about 400 to 500 muskets in each,” with “two smaller lines of infantry” formed up behind them and “two or more regiments” in column on their left flank.

This was a remarkably good estimate. Johnson had indeed arranged his division so that the
Virginia brigade of the newly promoted brigadier
John Marshall Jones (to the incalculable confusion of nearly everyone, he replaced John
Robert
Jones, who was not only no relation, but had been charged repeatedly with cowardice under fire), the five
Louisiana regiments commanded by
Jesse Williams, and half of
George “Maryland” Steuart’s brigade would form
a front of eight regiments. They were backed up by a line of six more regiments, while the remaining half of Steuart’s brigade was kept back beyond Rock Creek on the left. (Johnson’s fourth brigade, the old “Stonewall” Brigade which had originally been commanded by Stonewall Jackson, was held in reserve.) In all, Johnson was sending in about 4,700 men, which would usually have been more than enough to sweep Pap Greene’s brigade out of their path like dead leaves.

That, certainly, was what many of Greene’s men expected. “It seemed to me that something like two hours must have elapsed,” wrote a New Yorker as the slow-motion ballet of deployment played out beneath their gaze. They waited for their skirmishers to begin firing and falling back, “moments … which were years of agony” as the soldiers’ “pale faces, staring eye-balls, and nervous hands grasping loaded muskets told how terrible were those moments of suspense.” From behind their log walls, they saw an officer ride along the front of the Confederate battle line who “must have made some remarks to the men,” and then with “a flutter of battle flags and hats waving in the air,” the rebels started forward “with arms at right-shoulder-shift, their movement in perfect alignment … at a slow measured tread,” with a skirmish line and a line of pioneers “clearing the way” through fallen trees and other obstructions.
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Greene’s skirmishers, the 78th New York, fell back “slowly up the hill,” trying “to hold the enemy at bay to the last notch” and using “the heavy timber” to make “every tree and rock a veritable battlefield.” Johnson was evidently concerned about the disrupting effect of the terrain on his advance, because “the Confederate infantry halted from time to time, waiting for its advance to clear the way.” And no wonder, since “we found the ground here very uneven, and covered with immense rocks, which necessitated the dismounting of field & staff officers.” But on they pressed, “up the steep acclivity through the darkness,” cracking dead branches underfoot, slipping and skidding, drawing with each breath the dankness of woods still saturated from a week’s worth of heavy rain, guided forward in some places “only by the flashes of the muskets” of the Yankee skirmishers as they fell back. Greene took the precaution of ordering his men “closely concealed … behind the works,” and even had the regimental flags kept below the barricades to disguise his regiments’ positions. He waited, in fact, until the Confederate advance had struggled its way through the abatis and had stopped “to dress up the line”—in other words, “within pistol shot range”—before ordering a general open fire “like chain-lightning” from his brigade.
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The
volley in front and the abatis behind trapped John Marshall Jones’
Virginia brigade “scarcely thirty yards from the enemy’s breastworks,” and the Virginians promptly went to ground while their officers figured out what
to do next. “We held this point with the briskest fire we could concentrate,” and in George Steuart’s regiments on the left, “we could distinctly see the Federals rise and fire at us from the works in front.” Paralyzed in this position for “probably fifteen minutes,” the Confederates were finally gotten to their feet and rushed Greene’s feebly manned emplacements. “They succeeded this time in getting up to the works,” and then another of Gettysburg’s savage rifle-butt and
bayonet-thrust fights broke out. “They reached the works and sought to climb over, and in several places their dead fell within our line.” One lieutenant in the 60th New York counted “four separate and distinct charges”; a sergeant in the 102nd New York counted three. In the 149th New York, the regimental flag had eighty-one bullet holes in it, and its staff was hit so often that the regimental color sergeant,
William Lilley, had to keep splicing it together and replanting it on the log walls. But Jones’ Virginians could not punch their way through Old Pappy’s cleverly laid-out revetments, and Marshall Jones himself went down and out of action with a wound in the thigh.
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Greene, meanwhile, was finally getting some reinforcement. He sent off pleas to Geary, to Otis Howard on
Cemetery Hill, and even to Winfield Hancock, and though Geary had no choice but to ignore him, Hancock sent one regiment, the 71st Pennsylvania. They did not do much on Greene’s behalf. The colonel blundered around the south peak of Culp’s Hill, let loose a scattering fire at some Confederates, then decided that it was no part of their job to “have his men murdered” in the dark, and walked back to Cemetery Ridge. But James Wadsworth sent over a small ad hoc brigade—the 6th Wisconsin, the red-legged chasseurs of the 14th Brooklyn, and the stubborn survivors of the 147th New York; and Otis Howard dispatched four regiments from the brigade of the still missing
Alexander Schimmelpfennig. Together, this amounted to little more than 700 men. But at that moment, as they charged “with all their might … without regard to alignment and in silence,” they “tumbled the rebels out” of any breaks in Greene’s line. Their brief rush gave Greene’s own men time to step back, swab out their powder-fouled rifle barrels, and scavenge for spare ammunition. Finally, between 9:30 and 11:00, darkness and disappointment quieted the last of the Confederate attacks. If a former professor of rhetoric had saved
Little Round Top, Old Pappy Greene had saved Culp’s Hill.
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