The Battle of Gettysburg 1863

VIII
THE SECOND OF JULY —Continued

Fighting begins.

At this signal all the enemy's batteries opened in succession, and for a space a storm of shot and shell tore through Sickles' lines with crushing effect. His own guns, posted partly in the orchard, partly along the cross-road, on the high knoll behind it, – that is to say, in the very spot selected by Lee in advance for his own, – began to lose both horses and men, nor were the infantry able to shelter themselves from the cross-fire of fifty-four pieces of artillery, some of which were killing men at both sides of the angle with the same shot.⁶³

Not many minutes had elapsed before every man on the ground, from general to private soldier, felt that a wretched blunder had been committed in thrusting them out there.

Explanation – R., Round Top; L. R. T., Little Round Top; D., Devil's Den; P. O., Peach Orchard; P. H., Power's Hill; G., Gettysburg.

See his Troops described, p. 26.

By and by the cannonade slackened. This was sufficient notice to old soldiers that something [113][114]more was coming. Before its echoes had died away Longstreet's first assaulting column, led by Hood himself, came down with a crash upon Birney, three lines deep.

The enemy was about to repeat his old tactics, employed at Chancellorsville with so much effect, of getting around the Union left and then rolling it up endwise.⁶⁴ That his calculations in this case were not quite accurate was soon made manifest.

Since noon Longstreet had been working his way round through the woods toward Little Round Top, making a wide circuit to avoid discovery.⁶⁵ Having remonstrated in vain against this movement, he was probably in no great hurry to execute it. It was therefore four o'clock before he was ready to begin. But if slow he was sure.

Longstreet's line crossed the Emmettsburg road at an acute angle with it, Hood's division stretching off to the right, McLaws' mostly to the left. Longstreet was thus about to throw eight brigades, or, by his own account, thirteen thousand men, against the three brigades of Ward, De Trobriand, and Graham, numbering about five thousand men. Hood was to begin by attacking from the wheat-field to the Devil's Den, McLaws to follow him up from the wheat-field to the orchard. It was not until they had got into line, however, that the Confederates were undeceived about the Union force before them. Until then they thought the Union left stopped at the orchard.

At four o'clock the Union signal-station on Little Round Top saw and reported these movements to headquarters. The Confederate advance began soon after four. By the first fire Hood was wounded and had to leave the field almost before his troops had fairly come into action.

Combat at Devil's Den.

The first shock fell upon Ward's brigade, which held the extreme left at the Devil's Den. Ward's line would not reach to Little Round Top, so that there was a wide space between him and this hill, with not a man in it – a fact that Hood's men were not slow either in perceiving or taking advantage of. But, what was far worse, it led to the discovery of the defenceless condition of Little Round Top itself, and, quickly grasping its commanding importance, the enemy instantly sent one of his brigades to seize it.

The conflict thus established at this point, which Sickles had so imprudently vacated, became of supreme importance to the Union army, while that about to begin at the peach orchard degenerated into a struggle to save Sickles' corps from annihilation.

Fortunately for Ward, the ground he held was just the place for a protracted defence, provided he should not be out-flanked. Weird and grisly, it looked as if some huge excrescent mass of earth, rocks, and trees had some time slid off the flank of Little Round Top into the low ground below, whence its own momentum had carried it still farther on – a misshapen heap, deeply seamed by rents and splits, thick-set with bowlders and filled with holes and hiding-places, among which Ward's men now found excellent cover.

The Danger Point.

Ward was firmly planted on and around the Devil's Den, with his sharp-shooters loading and firing from behind the scattered bowlders, when the enemy made their rush upon him, whooping and yelling like so many fiends come to reoccupy their own legitimate abode. Some portion soon found themselves in the unguarded hollow below. Seeing the enemy crowding into it, Ward sent first one regiment there, and then another, on the run. A combat at close quarters ensued.

The regiments of Hood's division were now either trying to scale Little Round Top, push through the hollow, or capture the Devil's Den with its guns. The left brigade, however, which extended beyond the Den, was being very roughly handled; the centre only had made progress, while the right was engaged in a murderous conflict, to be presently described. Hood's effort had, therefore, exhausted itself, and his division had to halt simply because it could advance no farther.

At the Wheat-field.

McLaws now came to Hood's assistance. His right brigade (Kershaw's) now struck De Trobriand's, which stood next in line along the edge of a wheat-field, back of and adjoining the Devil's Den. De Trobriand had a little muddy ravine in front of him, into which the enemy boldly plunged. His men waited until their assailants had got within twenty yards, when they poured in such a close and deadly fire that the gully was speedily vacated by all save the dead and the dying. The attack here not only completely failed, but three of Kershaw's regiments were nearly destroyed while attacking the peach orchard. This brigade fell back and was rallied about the Rose house.

Semmes' brigade had followed close behind Kershaw's, and now took its place. Its commander speedily fell, mortally wounded. Barksdale rushed upon Graham, followed by Wofford. This onset brought the whole Confederate force into action. The odds were as two to one.

That part of the enemy whom we left working their way up the hollow to Little Round Top also met with stubborn resistance, and as this was more and more seen to be the critical point, the enemy redoubled their efforts to force their way through. Our soldiers who had gone into ambuscade behind the bowlders there were being gradually driven back from cover to cover, so yielding up as they retired the approaches to Little Round Top.

Devil's Den taken.

Having gained this vantage-ground the Confederates now made a second onset against Ward and De Trobriand. This time it proved more successful. After an hour's obstinate fighting, Ward was driven out of his fastness,⁶⁶ De Trobriand forced back across the wheat-field. Sickles' left was thus completely broken up, the fragments drifting backward in search of some point of support.

Little Round Top in Peril.

Little Round Top was about to fall into the enemy's hands. Once in his possession, the Union line on Cemetery Ridge would have to be abandoned or swept to the winds. Fortunately the turning-point had been reached before the rebels could reap the reward of Ward's repulse. Shortly before Hood's onset began, General Warren, of the Engineers, had seen from his signal-station on Little Round Top the enemy's line advancing to the attack. In one moment his experienced eye took in all the danger. Ordering the signal officers to keep on waving their flags, Warren first sent for and then dashed off in search of assistance himself. Indeed, not a moment was to be lost. By a fortunate chance some troops were met moving out to reinforce Sickles. Detaching a regiment, Warren hurried it off to the threatened point. Meantime, in response to his request, though without his knowing it, Vincent's brigade was climbing the rearmost slopes off Little Round Top, arriving just in time to save the hill with the bayonet.⁶⁷

A murderous hand-to-hand conflict now began among the rocks and trees, with those of the enemy who were trying to scale the slopes regardless of death or wounds. Sometimes the assailants were firing at each other from behind the same bowlder; sometimes both fell at the same instant. The strife was still unequal. A battery was dragged to the summit;⁶⁸ three of the cannoneers were shot in succession before the fourth succeeded in firing off the piece. Another regiment was brought up. The rebels fought as if determined to take that hill or die: the Union soldiers as if they had made up their minds to perish to the last man in its defence. On both sides men fell fast, the bravest first of all. Vincent was killed outright, Weed mortally wounded, and only a moment later Hazlett, who had so gallantly scaled with his guns slopes seemingly inaccessible, was struck down while in the act of stooping over his commander's prostrate body. O'Rorke was killed while encouraging his men. All the superior officers were down. Never were rifles wielded by such deadly marksmen as those Texans of Hood's!

Little Round Top saved.

Finding all their efforts to carry the hill by storm useless, the rebels next made a rush up through the little valley separating the two Round Tops, with the view of taking the defenders in the rear. The 20th Maine met this assault. "Stand firm, men!" was the command. As if maddened to desperation, the enemy flung themselves upon the hardy backwoodsmen from the Pine Tree State. Twice they were forced backward over the crest, and twice they rallied and drove their assailants back in their turn. But the emergency had now been perceived and was being provided for. Fresh troops dashed over the hill to the aid of those who were fighting. A final charge sent the rebels reeling down into the hollow, and out of it by the way they came, leaving five hundred prisoners in the hands of the defenders, through whose gallantry the danger, though perilously imminent, had been averted.

McLaws assaults.

Sickles wounded.

Meantime the peach orchard was being furiously attacked. Exposed here to a severe cross-fire, the Union line crumbled away at every discharge. The resistance was stubborn, as might be expected from such good soldiers as Graham's, but even they could not long maintain such a disadvantageous position, and though the attacking brigades were badly cut up, the enemy broke through there after a bloody contest. Barksdale swept on over the guns, Wofford gathered up what he left behind. All that men could do to stem the tide was done, and all in vain. Graham was wounded and taken prisoner, Sickles himself carried off the field, shot through the leg. In less than two hours Birney's line was clean gone.

As the infantry fell back from the orchard, the artillery posted along the cross-road behind them became, of course, the enemy's object. Many of these guns had to be abandoned, some sacrificed in the effort to delay the enemy's progress. Bigelow's battery obeyed the order to fight to the last with a constancy as worthy of lasting commemoration as Perry's famous "Don't give up the ship!"

Though the position itself was scarcely worth the sacrifice of a single soldier, it was felt that Sickles' troops must be extricated at any cost; and since a battle had been forced we must not be the losers.

Efforts to help Sickles.

So after sending Vincent's brigade to Little Round Top, the rest of Barnes' division went out to help maintain the line where De Trobriand had been fighting; and Caldwell's division of the Second Corps also went to Ward's assistance.

Repulsed from Little Round Top, the enemy fell upon Caldwell. The struggle was brief but bitter. Half a score of general and field officers went down on the Union side. But Caldwell finally succeeded in driving the enemy back across the ravine from which Ward had been dislodged, and two brigades of regulars firmly closed the gap toward Little Round Top.

But the point of support at the orchard being gone, all these troops were in turn driven back after repeated charges and countercharges made across the wheat-field had piled it with the slain of both armies.

Anderson's Confederate division now advanced to perform its share of the work cut out for it; namely, of continuing the assault from right to left.

Humphreys driven off.

One side of the angle being swept away, being violently assaulted both in front and flank, Humphreys also had to fall back from the Emmettsburg road to the main position, or be cut off from it. Everything that had been fighting on Sickles' new line was now going to the rear in more or less confusion. The enemy were now masters of the whole of that line, had inflicted serious losses upon the Third and Fifth Corps, and had taken some of Sickles' guns. We had only Round Top to show for the terrible struggle resulting from Sickles' advance.

Crumbs of Comfort.

These disasters could not make our generals give up beaten yet. Crawford's "Pennsylvania Reserves," a splendid body of well-seasoned soldiers, were now ordered to drive the victorious enemy beyond the wheat-field. Seizing a color, the general himself led the charging column across this thrice-fought field, clearing it in the most gallant manner. Two brigades of the Sixth Corps followed this movement. These prompt measures completely discouraged all further efforts on the enemy's part in this quarter. Longstreet withdrew his shattered forces to the peach orchard. In these unavailing assaults he had lost upwards of five thousand men. Hood was wounded, Barksdale killed, and Semmes mortally wounded.⁶⁹

After this repulse, some of Doubleday's division went out to the Emmettsburg road, capturing the enemy's post at the Rogers house on that road.

It was now growing dark. Lee's brilliant plan of consecutive attack from right to left had dwindled to a series of isolated combats – a blow here and a blow there, instead of those combined and telling strokes he had designed giving all along the Union line.⁷⁰

Cemetery Ridge pierced.

In falling back upon Cemetery Ridge, which was done in admirable order, Humphreys was followed up by three of Hill's brigades, one of which, Wright's, actually succeeded in reaching the crest, and had even seized some of the guns there, before troops could be brought up to check it. The other brigades having failed to support it, this one was easily driven off, though its having pierced the Union centre with so little opposition undoubtedly led Lee to think the thing not so difficult, after all. We think it was the controlling motive for his attack on the third.

Culp's Hill deserted.

And is occupied.

One other conflict remains to be noticed. The peril menacing his left had induced Meade to nearly strip Culp's Hill of its defenders. All of the Twelfth Corps, which, it will be remembered, held Culp's Hill and its approaches, had been hurried over to the left, except one brigade, thus abandoning the rude but substantial breastworks that these troops had raised with felled trees, earth, or loose stones, against an attack. As yet all seemed quiet on this side; but when, shortly after sunset, Ewell's corps tardily began the part assigned it by pouring out of the woods in which it had lain concealed, to begin a furious assault upon Culp's Hill, his men found nothing before them except the undefended works just spoken of on that part of the hill bordering upon Rock Creek. Finding the door standing open, as it were, they had only to walk in and take possession.

The Danger of it.

Trifling as it seems when relating it, this was by far the most important, we might say the only real, advantage gained by the enemy in all this day's fighting, with its frightful losses in men and material – and for this reason: The point seized was within short musket-shot of the Baltimore pike, and quite near that part of it where the reserve Union artillery was parked. This might be seized or stampeded. More than this, the pike led first to Westminster, where Meade had fixed his base of supplies before moving up to Gettysburg, so making it from necessity his line of retreat in case of a reverse to the army. In short, this was one of those desperate cases that admit only of desperate remedies; either the Confederates must be driven out before they could look about them, or the army must retreat. Again, night undoubtedly saved the Union army from a great disaster.

Farther to the left Greene's brigade met and repulsed every assault made upon them. The combat took place in the thick woods, already darkened by the approach of night.

Cemetery stormed.

While this was happening at Culp's Hill, the rest of Early's Confederate division came on in the early twilight to the assault of Cemetery Hill. The day had worn itself out, the west only glowed a sullen red upon the battlefield. Early's dusky lines could scarce be made out except by the flashes of musketry seen here and there. One of his brigades struck the side nearest Culp's Hill (the gap side), where the Union infantry were kneeling behind stone walls, waiting with guns cocked for them to get up nearer; the other brigade, with a third in reserve, marched on the right of the first. Thirty odd guns flamed and thundered upon them from the Cemetery. The hillside was lighted up by flashes of musketry. It was one incessant blaze and roar. The left brigade was mowed down in swaths, and had to give way; but that on the right forced its way through the ranks of the infantry, swarmed up around the guns that were dealing death among them, and began a hand-to-hand fight with the artillery-men, in which men were beaten to death with handspikes and rammers.

Enemy is repulsed.

The Confederates enjoyed a short-lived triumph. An ominous silence succeeded the struggle around the guns. Word was passed that the enemy was in our works. Orders were given in whispers, for it was now too dark to tell friend from foe. The steady tramp, tramp of armed men was now heard approaching. Presently, out of the darkness, a brigade of the Second Corps rushed in with a cheer. Being joined by other troops, all fell upon the exultant Confederates, who, finding themselves left without support, saved themselves as they could. As it was, not half of them got back to their own lines.

This ended the fighting for the day. Darkness and exhaustion summoned the weary soldiers of both armies to a much-needed rest. Thus far the two days' fighting had proved indecisive. On the left the enemy had taken a somewhat closer hold, yet the Union position was everywhere practically intact except at Culp's Hill.⁷¹ It is true that both armies were much weakened from loss of blood, although their relative strength remained much as before. Perhaps the Union army had suffered most, because its reinforcements were thrown in piecemeal, and badly cut up before they could render effective assistance.

It now began to be understood that if the Union army had not sustained a defeat, it was not so much because of any natural strength of the ground, since the Confederates had twice forced a way to it, as because its form enabled troops to concentrate upon the threatened point with great rapidity. To lengthen it out, as Sickles had done, was to throw away this advantage. He had finally been forced to retake his natural position. Herein, we think, lies the whole secret of Meade's successful defence. The first of July was an accident: the second, a blunder.

IX
THE THIRD OF JULY

The events of the second seem to have impressed the two generals quite differently. In Lee the combative spirit rose even higher. To Meade the result seemed, on the whole, discouraging. The enemy held a strong vantage-ground on his right; his line had been twice pierced. Would he be better able to hold it now that the army was weakened by the loss of eight to ten thousand men?

Meade's council.

At nightfall a council of war was called, and the situation discussed. Meade desired to know first the condition of the troops, and next the temper of his officers. To this end they were separately asked whether they favored a removal of the army to some other position, or waiting another attack where they now were. The general voice was in favor of fighting it out to the bitter end, and it was so determined.

A strong force of infantry and artillery was therefore moved over to the right, in readiness to expel the enemy there at break of day.

Lee not beaten yet.

Deeming the result of the day's operations to be on the whole favorable to him, Lee was equally determined to fight to a finish. As Napoleon had said before him, in a similar spirit of impulsive exultation, when satisfied that Wellington was awaiting his onslaught at Waterloo, "I have them now, those English!" so Lee now replied to all Longstreet's remonstrances by shaking his clenched fist at Cemetery Hill, exclaiming as he did so, "The enemy is there, and I am going to strike him!"

Plan of Attack.

He too, therefore, strongly reinforced his left at Culp's Hill, with the view of having a heavy force well in hand there, ready to strike in upon the Union right and rear, while a formidable column of wholly fresh troops, charging it in the centre, should cut that in two, seize the Baltimore pike, and with Ewell's help crush everything on that side. In order to reap to the utmost the advantages looked for as certain, Stuart's cavalry, now back with the army, was sent far round to the Union rear, with orders to strike the Baltimore pike as soon as the retreat should begin.

To guard against some such movement, or in fact any demonstration towards its rear, the Union cavalry was posted on this pike, a few miles back of Cemetery Ridge. Still another cavalry force was guarding the Union left, beyond Round Top.

These dispositions present, in brief, the preparations both generals were making for the third day's conflict.

Pickett to lead it.

Lee had silenced Longstreet's objections by ordering him to get ready Pickett's fresh division for the decisive charge on Cemetery Ridge. These soldiers, Virginians all, bitterly complained because they were only the rear-guard of that army which they were told was driving the Yankees before them in utter rout. Their charge was to be preceded and sustained by turning every gun in the Confederate army upon the point of attack.

With the first streak of day the struggle for the possession of Culp's Hill began again. As both sides had orders to attack, there was no delay in commencing. Soon from every commanding spot the Union batteries were sending their shot crashing and tearing through the woods in which the Confederates lay hid, smiting the forest with a tempest of iron, throwing down branches, and plowing up the earth in great furrows.⁷² Stirred up by this shower of missiles, Ewell's men poured forth from the valley of Rock Creek, and rushed up the hillside in front, to begin anew the sanguinary struggle they had only ceased from on the previous night. Here among the gray rocks and aged oaks – the pleasure-ground, in fact, of the people of Gettysburg – a contest raged for hours, similar to that which Little Round Top had witnessed on the previous afternoon.

One piece of hopeless heroism deserves commemoration in all accounts of this battle. In the height of the engagement an order was brought for two regiments, the Second Massachusetts and the Twenty-seventh Indiana, to charge across the meadow stretching between Culp's Hill and McAllister's Hill, on the other side of which the enemy lay in the old intrenchments. To try to pass that meadow was rushing to certain destruction. "Are you sure that is the order?" was demanded of the officer who brought it. "Positive," was the reply. "Up, men – fix bayonets – forward!" was the ringing command. One regiment reached the works, the other faltered midway under the terrible fire. As many were lost in falling back as in going forward. Only half the men got back to the lines unhurt.

Culp's Hill retaken.

After seven hours of this kind of fighting, the assailants were finally driven beyond Rock Creek again, leaving five hundred prisoners, besides their dead and wounded, behind them. Again an essential part of Lee's plan of attack had signally failed, and once more the whole Union line stretched unbroken from Culp's Hill to Round Top.

But it was only eleven o'clock; and though the battle had gone against him on this side, Lee seems to have felt, like Desaix at Marengo, that there was still time to gain another. Was it here that Lee lost that moral equipoise which seems born in really great commanders in moments of supreme peril?

The Cannonade.

Be that as it may, the order was given for his artillery to open. Longstreet had massed seventy-five guns in one battery, Hill sixty-three, and Ewell enough more to bring the number up to one hundred and fifty in all. At precisely one o'clock the signal guns were fired. Before their echoes died away the whole line of Confederate batteries was blazing like a volcano. There seemed to be but one flash and one report, and their simultaneous discharges, pealing out deafening salvos, went rolling and rolling on through the valleys, and echoing among the hills, in one mighty volume of sound, vying with the loudest thunder. It was sublimely grand, sublimely terrifying. Without a moment's warning, as if the heavens above had opened and the earth below yawned beneath their feet, the Union soldiers found themselves in the midst of the pitiless storm. A tornado of shot and shell burst upon Cemetery Hill, tearing the air, rending the rocks, plowing up the ground, and dealing death on all sides at once.

This terrific cannonade, under which the solid earth shook, the sky was darkened at noonday, the valley filled with thick-rolling smoke, the air with explosions and nameless rubbish, and which seemed announcing the coming of the Last Day, is thus described by an eye-witness: —

"The storm broke upon us so suddenly that soldiers and officers who leaped, as it began, from their tents, or from lazy siestas on the grass, were stricken at their rising with mortal wounds, and died, some with cigars between their lips, some with pieces of food in their fingers, and one at least – a pale young German from Pennsylvania – with a miniature of his sister in his hands. Horses fell shrieking out such awful cries as Cooper told of, and writhing themselves about in hopeless agony. The boards of fences, scattered by explosions, flew in splinters through the air. The earth, torn up in clouds, blinded the eyes of hurrying men; and through the branches of the trees and among the gravestones of the cemetery a shower of destruction crashed ceaselessly. The hill, which seemed alone devoted to this rain of death, was clear in nearly all its unsheltered places within five minutes after the fire began."

Eighty guns replied from the Union position almost as soon, so that the very air between the two armies was alive with flying missiles.⁷³ During the cannonade the Union infantry were lying down in open ranks behind the crest, taking it, for the most part, with remarkable steadiness. As the enemy's artillerists mostly overshot the ridge, the ground behind was a place of even greater danger. The little farmhouse standing on the Taneytown road, occupied as army headquarters, was so riddled that the general was compelled to seek a safer spot. Even as far back as Culp's Hill, where the Twelfth Corps were still facing their assailants, the enemy's shot came plunging and plowing through the ranks from behind, thus killing men by a fire in the rear.

After this indescribable uproar had lasted upwards of two hours, the Union batteries were ordered to cease firing in order to husband their ammunition for what every man in the army knew was coming.

It was now three o'clock. The moment had come for the supreme effort of all.

All the Union generals now set themselves to work repairing the damages caused by the cannonade – re-forming ranks, replacing dismantled guns, rectifying positions, exhorting the men to stand firm, and, in short, themselves offering the highest examples of coolness and soldierly conduct.

Union Defences.

We had a first line of infantry posted along the foot of the heights, – some behind stone walls, when these followed the natural line of defence, as they now and then did; some behind rocky inequalities of the ground, – with artillery above and behind it; and there was a second line of infantry back of the crest. Although Meade is said to have expected, and even told some of his officers, that Lee's next blow would fall on the Union centre, we detect no specific preparation to meet it.

The Storming Column.

The troops designated for the assault were waiting only for the order to advance, Pickett's splendid division on the right, Pettigrew's, lately Heth's, on the left, with two brigades in support of Pickett, two in support of Pettigrew, and still another marching at some distance in the rear. Though the equals of any in that army, Heth's soldiers had been so much shaken by their encounter with the First Corps that they were far from showing the same ardor as Pickett's men. All told, the assaulting force numbered not less than fifteen thousand, and probably more.⁷⁴

Pickett was watching the effect of the artillery-fire when a courier brought him word from the batteries that if he was coming at all now was his time, as the Union guns had slackened their fire. After reading it himself, Pickett handed the note to Longstreet at his side. "General, shall I advance?" Pickett asked his chief. Mastered by his emotions, Longstreet could only give a nod of assent and turn away. "I shall lead my division forward, sir," was the soldierly reply.

As the charging column passed through them to the front, fifteen or eighteen guns followed close behind in support.

Friend and foe alike have borne testimony to the steadiness with which this gallant band met the ordeal – by much the hardest that falls to the soldier's lot – of having to endure a terrible fire without the power of returning it. No sooner had the long gray lines come within range than the Union artillery opened upon it, right and left. For a quarter of an hour the march was kept up in the face of a storm of missiles. Cemetery Hill was lighted up by the flashes. Little Round Top struck in sharply. Smoke and flame burst from the batteries along Cemetery Ridge. Solid shot tore through the ranks; shells were bursting under their feet, over their heads, in their faces; men, or the fragments of men, were being tossed in the air every moment, but, closing up the gaps and leaving swaths of dead and dying in their track, these men kept up their steady march to the front, as if conscious that the eyes of both armies were upon them. They had been told that the enemy's artillery was silenced!