Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation (21 page)

But general officers, who knew that the victory had not been secured, were thinking of Cemetery Hill crawling with reforming Federals. Harry Hays, whose Louisianians had come up alongside Gordon’s brigade, so far forgot himself as to ask Ewell if he could not go forward.

That the troubled man was incapable of making a decision was observed by Captain James Power Smith. “Our corps commander,” he said, “was simply waiting for orders when every moment of time could not be balanced with gold.”

The Federals’ indomitable Hancock, who was sent by Meade to assume charge of the remnants on the hill, said later: “If the Confederates had continued the pursuit of General Howard on the afternoon … they would have driven him over and beyond Cemetery Hill.”

The conviction that Lee’s army had the game in the bag pervaded the air of the fading afternoon, and the electric atmosphere began to get on Ewell’s nerves. His outward calm was shaken. As the scattered firing in Gettysburg receded toward the southern end of the town and the last of the Federals began climbing the steep hill for safety, the general and his agitated staff made their way through the confusion back to the comparatively quiet farmland where the action had reached its climax. There, off the road, he ran out the headquarters flag on the rear of the Blocher house and made his way to the back porch, facing a cool arbor.

He was to get no peace from importunists. Old Isaac Trimble, the volunteer major general, found him there. “Well, general, we have had a grand success,” Trimble said. “Are you not going to follow it up and push our advantage?”

Ewell answered in his squeaky voice: “General Lee has instructed me not to bring on a general engagement without his orders, and I will wait for them.”

Trimble said: “But that hardly applies to the present state of things. We have fought a hard battle already, and should secure the advantage gained.”

Ewell did not answer, and Trimble saw that he “was far from composed.”

Trimble persisted, saying: “This is a critical moment for us.”

Still Ewell made no reply.

As it became obvious that he would do nothing, Trimble impatiently turned away, mounted, and rode toward town to make a personal reconnoitering of Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill.

At that time no fresh Federal forces had arrived to support troops so shattered that even the famous Iron Brigade, which had started the day happily against Archer, was never again to be effective as a unit.

No Confederate needed to have followed the Federals up the slope of Cemetery Hill to know the condition of the broken commands. They needed only to observe the disorganized and battered state of their own victorious troops. Although the Confederates engaged supposedly outnumbered the Union forces, only four Confederate divisions of the two corps had been on the field against six Federal divisions, and their numerical superiority could not have been overwhelming. But as three of those four divisions (Rodes’s Heth’s and Pender’s) were too fought out for further action, it was obvious that the enemy must be in far worse shape with many of his survivors demoralized. Ewell had a fresh division, flushed with the
élan
of victory and in the momentum of pursuit.

When old Trimble, on his own initiative, went riding along the outskirts of the town, looking for a place to send the fresh troops, he observed something even more interesting. The eastern extension of Cemetery Hill, which culminated in the wooded, rocky knob of Culp’s Hill, rose higher than Cemetery Hill and was not occupied! Trimble didn’t even know the name of Culp’s Hill, but he knew it commanded the nearer hill on which the Federals were gathering.

Ewell could send fresh men without bringing on the general engagement he talked about. In fact, merely by troop movement he could bring the inconclusive day’s fighting to a definite and happy end. Trimble spun his horse around and galloped back to the Blocher house. With this information he would surely shake his old friend out of the strange apathy.

It was nearing five o’clock. Ewell had been on the field more than an hour when Trimble found him doing nothing in the arbor back of the house. Trimble advanced excitedly. Through the clear light of the falling sun he pointed a finger dramatically toward Culp’s Hill and shouted: “General, there is an eminence of commanding position, and not now occupied, as it ought to be by us or by the enemy soon. I advise you to send a brigade and hold it if we are to remain here.”

This was strong language from a subordinate who did not even hold a regular assignment.

Ewell only looked more worried. “Are you sure it commands the town?”

“Certainly it does, as you can see,” Trimble shouted back, “and it ought to be held by us at once.”

This was too much even for the suffering Ewell, and he made a sharp reply. It was a personal response to the affront, however, and not to the military situation.

Trimble lost his own control. “Give
me
a brigade and I will engage to take the hill.”

Ewell only stared straight ahead, his bulging eyes glazed.

“Give me a good regiment and I will do it,” Trimble thundered.

Dick Ewell managed to shake his head. He said no more.

Immobilized though he was, Ewell was agonizingly aware that he should do something. From all around him came the sounds of battlefield action—the creak of worn ambulances and the rumble of ammunition wagons hurrying to the front, the thin crack of distant sharpshooters’ rifles and the sudden roar of heavy guns, the stumbling of stretcher-bearers, the groans of the wounded and their cries for water, the hard gallop of staff officers’ horses, and the hoarse-voiced commands of junior officers.

Some shouted words reminded Ewell that Johnson’s division was marching toward Gettysburg, and that his one definite order (besides halting Gordon’s pursuit) had been for Johnson to come on until he received further instructions. What were the further instructions to be?

His solution to that simple problem amounted to a confession of the weakness that Jubal Early had observed the night before. Ewell needed a leader. He sent Colonel Smead, the corps inspector, to find General Early and ask
him
where Johnson’s division should go.

The reason he gave was that Early had passed through Gettysburg the week before on his way to York, and would know the terrain. The real reason was that the corps commander was now unable to make any decision at all.

7

Smead returned with Early’s advice a little past five o’clock. There were upwards of three hours of fighting light remaining. Early urged Ewell to send Johnson’s men to take Culp’s Hill, as Trimble had suggested, because it dominated the hill protecting the Federals.

Colonel Smead added that Early had sent out Gordon and his brigade in response to a warning that a Federal force was advancing down the York road toward the Confederate rear. As this warning came from Early’s one “political” general, Extra Billy Smith, who was most noted for his irrepressible tendency to make speeches, Early put no credence in the alarm. Simply to avoid needless risks, he had sent Gordon to assume command, and he mentioned the matter at all only to make a full report of his division.

This alarm, though wholely discounted by alert Early, struck to the heart of Ewell’s fears of doing something wrong. For the first time in that slow-dying hour he was shaken out of his apathy. He sent for Jubal Early.

When Early reached the back porch of the temporary headquarters, he quickly dismissed the possible threat to their left and rear, and talked about taking Culp’s Hill. Although he had sent Smead with his advice that Culp’s Hill was the place for Johnson when his division arrived, Early did not want to wait for Johnson’s men before renewing an assault. He believed that Cemetery Hill, rising southward from the town, could be taken now by his own division with some help from A. P. Hill from the west.

Here at last was a course of immediate action defined by the man whom he had tacitly appointed as his adviser. Ewell was depressed by the prospect of committing any action, but this plan at least offered the relief of shifting the responsibility to General Lee. By James Power Smith he sent the commanding general a message of his plan to attack Cemetery Hill if General Lee would send A. P. Hill in support on the right.

While Ewell was fidgeting through the wait for Smith’s return, he was shaken anew by the arrival of handsome young Walter Taylor, Lee’s A.A.G. As Colonel Taylor reported it, “I … delivered the order of General Lee … that, from the position which he occupied, he could see the enemy retreating over those hills, without organization and in great confusion; that it was only necessary for him [Ewell] to press ’those people’ in order to secure possession of the heights, and that, if possible, he wished him to do this.”

Ewell nodded in acknowledgment of the oral order. Walter Taylor, who knew nothing of the general’s long hour of indecision, accepted the nod as agreement that the order would be executed. He rode off to report this to General Lee, who was with A. P. Hill on Seminary Ridge. Ewell, apparently hoping that Captain Smith’s reply from Lee would reprieve him from the order to attack, did nothing until his staff officer returned.

But Smith, staring bleakly at the successor to Jackson, brought no reprieve. A. P. Hill, he reported, could give no support, and General Lee wanted Ewell to take the hill “if it were possible.” Then Smith added that the commanding general would ride over and see him shortly.

This was an order, and General Lee must not find him sitting supinely in a safe arbor while the sun went down on the field. Keeping Jubal Early beside him, miserable Ewell mounted again and went for another personal reconnoitering into Gettysburg.

By now the firing had dwindled. Only a few snipers were shooting from houses on the southern edge of town, at the foot of Cemetery Hill. The bullets ricocheting through the streets did not bother Ewell, but the Federal batteries posted on the hill did. In their anxiety to present a brave front, the Federal gunners were blasting away as if preparing an attack. This was a sound that had stirred Ewell’s blood in former days. But there in the fading light these few courageous demonstrators were sufficient to snuff the faint flicker of decisiveness in him.

Seizing on any excuse to postpone the commitment to action, he told Early he would wait for Johnson’s arrival before attacking. Even the protests of his adviser could not move him out of that procrastination. With the sun sinking behind South Mountain (while Lee on Seminary Ridge was waiting anxiously to hear Ewell’s men going into action), the corps commander turned his horse around and rode back to the arbor.

He and Early were joined there by Rodes. Having received no orders after posting his men in skirmish line from the middle of town out toward Seminary Ridge, Rodes had come for instructions. Ewell had none to give.

With Early growing frantic at the approach of sundown, Ewell seated himself to wait for General Lee’s visit. Ewell could think of nothing he had done wrong. Most certainly he had avoided bringing on “an engagement.” Yet, in his fretting over avoiding mistakes, he kept worrying about that report from Extra Billy Smith which Early had dismissed. Suppose there was a sizable force of Federals on his flank and rear. He could not sit and think about it. He had to see for himself.

Accompanied by the raging Early and the subdued Rodes, Dick Ewell rode to the eastern side of town (the side opposite to where the fight had begun in the morning). From a rise, in the final clarity of light before sundown, they looked down the York road, which, Early said, “was visible for nearly or quite two miles.” By chance, as they stared into the distance, figures that looked like a skirmish line began to move in their direction. They were too far away for the generals to distinguish the uniforms. The usually intrepid Rodes now showed the effects of the day’s battle. Believing the alarm from Extra Billy Smith and convinced that Federals were on their flank he cried: “There they come now!”

Not having forsworn profanity as had the converted Ewell, Old Jube cut loose in a torrent of disgust. To it he added a logical remark: “Gordon is out there, and if the enemy was advancing, he would certainly be firing on him!”

Poor Ewell was torn between the two opinions. Rodes voiced the fear that was his own, and Jubal Early voiced the obvious logic. Ewell resolved the dilemma by sending a staff officer to investigate. The movement turned out to be the skirmish line of Extra Billy Smith, facing his phantoms; Gordon had been moving Smith’s skirmishers to a position he preferred.

Jubal Early, without waiting for the staff officer to confirm his own opinion, abandoned hope of influencing Ewell to any action and rode to his two brigades nearest Cemetery Hill. Probably he had held some wan hope that the Federals might be preparing to abandon their refuge and continue to retreat back on the main army, for, after surveying the hill, he reported that “it was very apparent he [the enemy] was determined to hold the position on Cemetery Hill.”

His personal reconnoitering was sound. Redoubtable Hancock, sped on by Meade, had reached the field and assumed command, and troops commanded by Hancock were not likely to run. Also, Hancock had observed at once their vulnerability from Culp’s Hill, and ordered troops to occupy that huge rockpile.

With Early gone, Ewell kept Rodes with him and returned to the back porch of the Blocher house. It was now sundown, and on Seminary Ridge Lee was asking: “What has happened to Ewell?”

Ewell was waiting for Lee’s visit. He had hardly settled himself when a staff officer arrived with the report that Johnson’s leading brigade had reached the outskirts of Gettysburg.