Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation (16 page)

At this point, a shell fragment struck Harry Heth on the side of the head. He fell from his horse in a limp heap. His staff rushed to him, thinking he had been killed outright. He was still breathing. Unconscious, he would regain his senses by nightfall. Heth’s life had been saved by the accident of not being able to get a hat that fitted in Cashtown: the paper padding in the sweatband had prevented the shell fragment from piercing his skull. After a poor morning of the blundering contact that brought on the engagement, Heth was removed from action at the climax of his hour.

A. P. Hill, in his first field command of a corps, recognized that the tide of Heth’s troops was spent. As his former classmate went down, Hill sent in Pender’s division with fresh momentum.

To these four brigades of Hill’s old division, thrusts in virtual parade-ground order had become ingrained. They went in fast, screaming their high, eerie battle yell, but they went in solidly. Their regimental units as cohesive as a fist, they poured out the tremendous firepower that characterized all of Lee’s best veteran brigades.

Dorsey Pender, who wrote the reflective letters to his wife in North Carolina, had been a hard-driving commander of one of these brigades. Taking a division of four of them into action for the first time, Pender handled the larger force with the same control he had exerted on a brigade. Something of his own dark force fused with the confidence and the discipline of the experienced fighters to send masses lunging forward like indestructible objects.

His troops had been tired before they went in. After their ten-mile walk from west of Cashtown in the sultry weather, they had suffered the mental strain of waiting under fire, of small advances in the open and then waiting again. A private in the 1st South Carolina, formed before Sumter, said that “these advances in the line of battle are the most fatiguing exercise I had in the army. ... The perspiration poured from our bodies.” Waiting, they heard the screams in the ambulances crowding the narrow turnpike, saw the slack-faced wounded staggering past them, huddled under bursting shells and strav bullets with no one to shoot at—and had time to think.

Plunging ahead under Dorsey Pender’s fierce resolution was a relief after the waiting. Down the ravine they went, where Heth’s men had marched so lightheartedly in the morning, across the stream, and up the open hill that Heth’s men had just won at the cost of fighting themselves out. Nearest the turnpike, where Pettigrew’s North Carolinians had carried the hill, the 1st South Carolina moved with their brigade.

This brigade, created as a state unit of hot-bloods before the Confederacy was formed, had originally been commanded by Maxcy Gregg, and they were the first Southern troops to parade in Richmond when Virginia seceded in protest against the invasion of the newly formed Confederacy. They had marched down Franklin Street, their band playing “The Bonnie Blue Flag,”on their way to drive the Yankees back North so that they themselves could go home in peace. That had been more than two years before. Gregg had been killed at Fredericksburg, and McGowan, his successor, was absent because of wounds; on the Cashtown turnpike the hard-bitten survivors of the original young chevaliers were commanded by a colonel, Abner Perrin.

Although their elaborate uniforms had long since given way to the frazzled butternut and patched makeshifts worn indistinguishably by ante-bellum princelings and paupers, although most of their body servants had been sent home and their mess chests no longer contained the imported wines that made their suppers social events in the early days, their new commander, Colonel Perrin, rode in front of the troops, sword in hand, wearing a tailored cadet-cloth uniform with shining buttons—a bright target against the background of faded gray.

On the smooth plateau beyond the hill, Perrin’s brigade passed through the ranks of Pettigrew’s halted men. The two-year veterans observed the spent men of the North Carolina brigade that Jefferson Davis had forced on Lee, and one said: “They had fought well but, like most new soldiers, had been content to stand and fire, instead of charging.” That statement was a little less than just to the troops who, under Pettigrew, had pressed steadily forward in the face of galling fire; it was, however, an essentially sound judgment by an experienced soldier of the specific requirements for a successful attack.

Then from across the open plain the brigade came under the fire that had checked the advance of Pettigrew. “The artillery of the enemy opened upon us with a fatal accuracy. . . . Still we advanced, with regular steps and a well-dressed line. . . . Shell and cannister continued to rain upon us. A good many were killed and disabled. . . .” Next “the Federal infantry opened on us a repetition of the fire that had already slaughtered a brigade (Pettigrew’s). This was particularly heavy on the two right regiments, for at that point the enemy was protected by a stone wall.

“Still ... the line passed on, many of the men throwing away their blankets and haversacks to keep up. Struggling and panting, but cheering and closing up, they went, through the shell, through the Minie balls, heeding neither the dead who sank down by their sides, nor the fire from the front which killed them, until they threw themselves desperately on the line of Federals and swept them from the field.”

The stubborn Union line did not break all at once. The Confederates kept up the pressure, and the Federals were given no chance to reform. As soon as some units found an island of natural defense for a stand, other parts of their line were forced back and the defenders came under enfilade fire.

Pender’s other three brigades were forcing their way through the more obstructed areas on the right with the same unremitting drive. Then, on the left of Pender’s division, the right of Rodes’s division of Ewell’s corps thrust in from the northwest and made contact. Suddenly all the pieces of the Confederates’ extemporized action came together, and the separate battles became one. The weakened Union defensive line was enveloped at the crest of the single attacking wave, and, the South Carolinian reported, “they then gave back at all points, and the rebel turn came to kill.”

“As the disordered mass fled toward Gettysburg,” Pender’s division began to lose order in chasing the Federals who had inflicted such heavy losses on them. Groups of the 1st South Carolina raced on tired legs to get the gun crews, toward whom they felt especially vengeful. The Union gunners got their pieces out fast, losing some men, and the exhausted Confederates could get close enough only to finish off one crew and capture its gun.

With the flesh no longer able to sustain the spirit, the men of Perrin’s brigade stumbled on toward Gettysburg in the wake of the fugitives. To their right the other brigades had rougher going on the slopes of Seminary Ridge, named for the Lutheran seminary whose cupola rose out of the mists of smoke. By the time they had cleared Seminary Ridge of the enemy, the men of those three brigades were in no mood to give chase. They began to look for water for their parched throats.

Perrin’s brigade, gathering prisoners as they went, made it all the way into the town. The 1st South Carolina Regiment claimed that theirs was the first Confederate flag raised in Gettysburg.

General Pender rode into town to survey the new situation, raising his hat to the men of Perrin’s brigade as he passed them. Other general officers were coming in with the soldiers of Ewell’s corps. Unarmed Federals were everywhere, nearly five thousand to be gathered as prisoners. It would have been hard to decide whether the Federals or the Confederates were the more surprised by the stampede that had ended the unexpected collision of the armies.

The confusion in the streets grew. Farther back in town, sniping went on from the windows of houses. In the distance, light sporadic fire broke out and ceased. Pender’s officers began to collect the men who, disintegrating into small units, were engaged in little more than halfbewildered sightseeing. The more voracious had found frightened families who would hand over food, and the dyed-in-the-wool foragers were searching for henhouses. Some just sat down in the street, resting against the sides of buildings.

Some time after four o’clock they had all been collected and withdrawn to the west of town. There they formed in a skirmish line that extended up onto Seminary Ridge, where the other brigades were resting.

A. P. Hill was up there, studying the condition of his units. There was enough daylight left for a pursuit that would complete the victory, but Hill decided that other units would have to do it. His brigades had suffered fearful casualties. The survivors had been at it since five in the morning and looked done in. Hill felt that no more should be asked of the men today. Actually, it was the time for the cavalry. As he said, “The want of cavalry ... was again seriously felt.”

At half past four A. P. Hill mounted his horse and rode to report to General Lee.

7

The commanding general had established temporary headquarters alongside the turnpike, across the road from a small stone house. As Hill approached, Lee and his staff were standing on the grassy edge of Seminary Ridge, from where the general was studying the movement and terrain below him.

Gettysburg lay about half a mile below, and he could see the confusion of sudden victory in the streets. Southward from the town a street extended for a quarter of a mile up a sharp incline and leveled out at the top of a steep hill, where it divided into the Baltimore pike and the Emmitsburg road. On the plateau an arched brick gateway opened southward into the Evergreen Cemetery, giving the name of Cemetery Hill to that end of a ridge. This ridge ran from north to south, roughly paralleling the rise on which Lee stood.

Through his field glasses he could see the disordered Federal units who, retreating through Gettysburg, were reforming on Cemetery Hill. The position where they were seeking safety was given great natural strength by the angle at which that end of the ridge extended eastward from Cemetery Hill, like the foot of a boot. This rocky extension, called Culp’s Hill, presented a precipitous front facing northward. The sloping front of Cemetery Hill faced westward toward Lee. The Federal troops were placing themselves within the right angle of a natural fortress.

The Baltimore pike, crossing the hill from the southeast, was the route by which Federal reinforcements would hurry to check the broken retreat of the van of the army. Lee could see blue troops and guns scurrying southward along the ridge. They were drawing a defensive line from the right angle at Cemetery Hill along the leg of the boot across from him.

This ridge, Cemetery Ridge, ran southward for two miles and ended in rocky peaks called Round Top and Little Round Top. The crest of that ridge was a little more than three quarters of a mile from where Lee stood. Between the two rises, small farms lay on the slopes of the shallow valley, along the floor of which ran the Emmitsburg road.

It was obvious to Lee, and to all the men staring beyond Gettysburg, that either Cemetery Hill or the ridge extending southward had to be taken to complete the victory of the spontaneous clash. Only one of the positions needed to be occupied, since occupancy of either would expose the other to enfilade fire. If neither was occupied, the whole Union army could converge on that natural fortress and take a strong defensive position. The day’s success would be reduced to a local action without meaning and won at extremely heavy cost in casualties.

Repeatedly, in Virginia, Lee had failed to reap any fruits from military victories, partly because of the lack of manpower to follow up an action and partly because of the barren defensive lines that Davis’s policy of holding ground forced him to adopt. Here, Lee could not afford another such barren victory. He would never have more men than he had now, and never a better opportunity to drive home a stroke for independence. His decision to attack one of the two defensive positions south of Gettysburg was already made: he was considering the details of what units to use for the final attack when A. P. Hill rode up to the group.

According to a British observer, Little Powell looked “very delicate” as he reported to General Lee. Hill too had noticed the Union reinforcements gathering on the opposite ridge, and he admitted that he did not believe his troops were in condition to clear the ridge. Casualties had been heavy, units were disorganized by the furious fighting and the chaotic pursuit, the men were close to exhaustion, and ammunition was running low. In some regiments, all ammunition was gone.

It is possible that the relentless Jackson would have spent an hour reorganizing his units while the men refreshed themselves, redistributed ammunition as far as it would go, ordered the men to fix bayonets, and driven those able across the rough, shallow valley the 1,400 yards to Cemetery Ridge. It is possible.

Hill and his best division had served with Old Jack, and he did not believe that his men were capable of another attacking effort. Some had staggered when they tried to run toward the Union guns barely an hour before, and all were puffing and stumbling on their last climb up Seminary Ridge. It was known that Hill was more indulgent of his men than Jackson. It was also known that in battle he never counted costs, but demanded all that flesh could endure. He was a natural attacker, and if he believed his men incapable of mounting the final attack, Lee must accept his judgment.

The conclusive action must therefore be made against the precipitous right angle of Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill. Once that position was in Confederate hands, the Federals would find south-running Cemetery Ridge untenable. Union reinforcements and the survivors of the day’s fighting would be forced back on the main army before Meade could complete his convergence. Then it would devolve on Lee’s old army friend to find a way to get at
him.