The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian

by Shelby Foote

  Hunt thought this over briefly, then agreed. Moreover, while the batteries on the hill fell silent one by one, he rode down onto Cemetery Ridge to increase the effectiveness of the ruse by passing the word along to the remaining two thirds of his guns. At closer range, however, he found the II Corps batteries so badly mauled by the rebel cannonade and so low on ammunition that he decided they might as well use up what few long-range rounds were still on hand. For example, Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing’s battery, posted just north of the clump of trees, had only three of its six guns still in working order and only two of these in action, casualties having reduced the number of cannoneers to barely enough for two slim crews; Cushing himself, a twenty-two-year-old West Pointer from Wisconsin, had twice been hit by fragments of exploding shells, one of which had struck him in the crotch and groin. Despite the pain, he refused to leave the field or relinquish his command, and Hunt let him stay, together with his handful of survivors. A Rhode Island battery just south of the clump was in even worse shape, its ammunition practically exhausted, all of its officers dead or wounded, and barely enough men left to serve the three remaining guns; Hunt took a quick look at the wreckage and gave the survivors permission to withdraw, which they did in a rather helter-skelter fashion, being leaderless, but took their three guns with them. Riding on south, Hunt passed the cease-firing order along to McGilvery, down near the far end of the ridge, and finally to Rittenhouse, whose six guns had been firing all the while from Little Round Top. When the weary and badly cut-up batteries of the II Corps had gotten off their few remaining rounds, thus adding to the effectiveness of the pretense by giving the impression that the guns were being knocked out group by group, spasmodically, the whole Union line fell silent under the continuing rain of rebel projectiles.

  That was about 2.45, and it soon became apparent that the ruse had worked, at least in part. Within another five or ten minutes, the Confederates also stopped firing, and what Osborn later referred to as “a singularly depressing silence” settled over the field. Whether the ruse had worked entirely would not be known until the enemy infantry started forward across the valley, but the Federal cannoneers were taking no chances that it had failed. The cooling tubes were swabbed to remove the gritty residue of powder and thus prepare them for the rapid-fire work that lay ahead, while in those batteries that had used up all their long-range ammunition, the pieces were carefully loaded with canister. Forty-four-year-old Alex Hays, a Pennsylvanian like his corps and army commanders, was certain that the rebs would soon be coming through the screening smoke. “Now, boys, look out; you will see some fun!” he called to the men of his two brigades, posted north of the clump of trees. In confirmation of his prediction, shortly after 3 o’clock, Warren wigwagged a message from the Little Round Top signal station, which afforded a clear view beyond the hump of earth that Sickles had claimed and lost the day before: “They are moving out to attack.” Presently, all along the bend and shank of the Union fishhook, the waiting troops could see for themselves, through or below the rifting, lifting smoke, that what Warren had signaled was true. “Here they come!” men exclaimed as they caught sight of the long gray lines moving toward them across the shallow basin inclosed by the two ridges.

  Reactions to this confrontation varied. “Thank God! Here comes the infantry!” one exuberant bluecoat cried. Though it was obvious at a glance that the attackers, moving steadily forward under their red and blue flags, outnumbered the defenders by no less than two to one, he and others like him looked forward to the slaughter, anticipating a Fredericksburg in reverse. A New Yorker, on the other hand, remembering the sight two days later, wrote in a home letter: “Beautiful, gloriously beautiful, did that vast array appear in the lovely little valley.” Then he and his fellows—first the cannoneers, who took up their work with a will, and then the foot soldiers, no less eager—settled down to the task of transforming those well-dressed long gray lines into something far from beautiful.

  There they came. And for them, advancing eastward over the gently undulating floor of the shallow valley, the relief of tension was as great as it was for the men awaiting their arrival on the ridge just under a mile across the way. In fact, if a comparison of losses was any measure of the strain, it was probably greater. The Federal infantry had suffered a good deal less from the bombardment than the Federal artillery had done, but for the Confederates, whose infantry was posted behind instead of in front of their fuming line of metal, it was the other way around. Both sides were overshooting, with the unequal result that the eastbound “overs” spared the bluecoats on the forward slope of their ridge, whereas a high proportion of their long shots landed squarely in the ranks of the gray soldiers drawn up to await the order to advance. Fewer than 200 of the former were hit, while the latter suffered approximately twice that number of casualties in the course of the nearly two-hour-long exchange. “Such a tornado of projectiles it has seldom been the fortune or misfortune of anyone to see,” one of Pickett’s veterans declared. It seemed to go on forever, he recalled, under a high hard hot blue sky that soon became “lurid with flame and murky with smoke,” until presently the sun was in a red eclipse, “shadowing the earth as with a funeral pall,” though this gave little relief from the heat, which was even more oppressive here in the swale than it was for the blue soldiers on the high ground in the distance. “Many a poor fellow thought his time had come,” another grayback wrote. “Great big, stouthearted men prayed—loudly, too.” Stretcherbearers were kept on the run, answering the sudden, high-pitched yells of the wounded up and down the sweaty, mile-long formation. One of Kemper’s men, attempting later to describe what he had been through, finally gave it up and contented himself with a four-word description of his ordeal by fire: “It was simply awful.” Even so, not all the accustomed butternut risibility was suppressed. Near one badly pounded company, when a rabbit suddenly broke from a clump of bushes and went bounding for the rear: “Run, old hare,” a man called after him. “If I was a old hare, I’d run too.”

  Officers of rank, commanders of the nine brigades and three divisions, kept moving among the waiting troops, seeking to encourage them by example, much as Hancock was doing at the same time across the way. However, the response was somewhat different on this side of the valley. When Longstreet rode along the front of Pickett’s division and a round shot plowed the ground immediately under his horse’s nose, the general kept the startled animal under control, “as quiet as an old farmer riding over his plantation on a Sunday morning, and looked neither to the right or left.” Thus an admiring captain described the scene; but the men themselves, apparently resentful of the implication that they needed steadying, had a different reaction. “You’ll get your old fool head knocked off!” one of them called out to him, while others shouted angrily: “We’ll fight without you leading us!” Similarly, in Armistead’s brigade, where the troops had been instructed to remain prone throughout the bombardment, there was resentment that their commander felt it necessary to move erect among them with encouraging remarks and a showy disregard for the projectiles whooshing past him. One soldier rose in protest, and when Armistead ordered him to lie back down, pointed out that he was only following his general’s example. Armistead, however—like Hancock on the ridge across the valley—had a ready answer. “Yes, but never mind me,” he said. “We want men with guns in their hands.”

  Out front, on the low bulge of earth crowned by the peach orchard Barksdale’s men had seized the day before, Alexander had been watching all this time for evidence that the cannonade was accomplishing its mission, which was to wreck the enemy batteries or drive them from the ridge that was the infantry’s objective. So far, although an hour had elapsed since his guns first opened, the young colonel had seen little that encouraged him to believe that he was going to succeed in his assignment. Volcano-like, the enemy ridge and its two flanking heights not only continued to return the fire directed at them, but presently that return fire grew more furious than ever, despite an occasional burst
of flame and the sudden resultant erection of a pillar of smoke whose base marked the former location of a caisson. Earlier, Wright and Pickett had persuaded him that all Lee intended would be accomplished in short order. After more than an hour of steady firing, however, Alexander’s doubts returned in strength. Moreover, the pressure of command responsibility grew heavier by the minute, until at last, as he wrote later, “It seemed madness to order a column in the middle of a hot July day to undertake an advance of three fourths of a mile over open ground against the center of that line.” What was worse, another half hour reduced the ammunition supply to the point where the attack would have to be launched without delay if it was to have artillery support. Shortly after 2.30, with the counterbattery fire approaching crescendo, Alexander dispatched a courier with a note informing Pickett of the situation. “If you are to come at all, you must come at once,” he told him, “or we will not be able to support you as we ought. But the enemy’s fire has not slackened materially and there are still 18 guns firing from the cemetery.” This last had reference to the little clump of trees, which the colonel had been told was a cemetery, and though he was mistaken in this, his estimate as to the number of guns still active in that vicinity was accurate enough. And presently, as he kept peering through the smoke to catch the slightest encouraging reaction by the blue gunners in the distance, he observed with gratification that the Federals had ceased firing on the hill to the left, and soon afterwards he spotted a rearward displacement by some guns near the critical center. It was the battered Rhode Islanders, whom Hunt had given permission to withdraw their three surviving pieces, but in his elation—for the enemy fire continued to slacken all along the ridge and on both adjoining heights—Alexander persuaded himself that the withdrawal had been considerably more substantial than it was in fact. In other words, the blue ruse had worked far better than its authors would have any way of knowing until they saw the long gray lines of infantry advancing. He got off a second note to Pickett, hard on the heels of the first: “For God’s sake come quick. The 18 guns have gone. Come quick or my ammunition will not let me support you properly.”

  Pickett by then had already acted on the first of the two dispatches. Glad to receive anything that might end the strain of waiting, he mounted his horse and rode at once to Longstreet, whom he found sitting on a snake rail fence out front, observing the bombardment. Dismounting, he handed him the note. Old Peter read it deliberately, but said nothing. “General, shall I advance?” Pickett asked eagerly. Longstreet, who later explained: “My feelings had so overcome me that I could not speak, for fear of betraying my want of confidence,” responded with a silent nod. That was enough for the jaunty long-haired Virginian. “I am going to move forward, sir,” he said. Then he saluted, remounted, and rode back to join his men.

  Front and center of his division, he delivered from horseback what one of his officers called “a brief, animated address” which only those soldiers nearest him could hear but which ended on a ringing note: “Up, men, and to your posts! Don’t forget today that you are from old Virginia!” There was, however, no disconcerting haste as the troops were placed in attack formation. For the most part, they simply rose to their feet and began to dress their regimental lines while their colonels passed among them repeating the instructions received from above: “Advance slowly, with arms at will. No cheering, no firing, no breaking from common to quick step. Dress on the center.” In at least one outfit, a survivor would recall, one of the captains led in the singing of a hymn and a white-haired chaplain offered prayer. Nor was the step-off itself unduly precipitate. Pettigrew gave the signal on the left to the new leader of his old brigade: “Now, Colonel, for the honor of the good Old North State, forward!” The advance was somewhat ragged at first, as if the Virginians, Mississippians, Alabamians, and Tennesseans of his division supposed that the spoken order only applied to the Carolinians, but the laggard brigades soon restored the alignment by double-timing to catch up. Meanwhile, in the wooded swale to the south, others had taken up the cry. Armistead, whose brigade comprised the supporting line on the right, as Trimble’s two did on the left, did not neglect the opportunity afforded for another display of determination. “Sergeant, are you going to plant those colors on the enemy works today?” he asked a nearby colorbearer, and when the sergeant gave the staunch expected answer, “I will try, sir, and if mortal man can do it, it shall be done,” the general removed his wide-brimmed black felt hat, placed it on the point of his sword, and raised it high for all to see, shouting in a voice that carried from flank to flank of his brigade: “Attention, 2d Battalion, the battalion of direction! Forward, guide centerrr, march!” and led the way. Beyond the left, within the lower limits of the town of Gettysburg, onlookers from Rodes’s division, seeing Pettigrew’s troops emerge from the woods and begin their downhill march into the valley, called out to the Federal surgeons who had remained behind to tend the captured wounded of their army: “There go the men who will go through your damned Yankee line for you!”

  Longstreet had preceded them out to the line of guns and was conferring with Alexander. Pleased though he had been at seeing the enemy artillery first slack then cease its fire, he was anything but pleased when he saw his own guns follow suit immediately after he gave Pickett the nod that would send him forth to what he himself had predicted would be slaughter. But his greatest surprise was at Alexander’s explanation that he had suspended firing in order to save ammunition, being doubtful whether enough remained on hand for proper support of the infantry on its way across the valley. Old Peter was plainly horrified, despite the colonel’s earlier statement that the supply was limited. “Go and stop Pickett right where he is, and replenish your ammunition!” he exclaimed. Now it was Alexander’s turn to be surprised. “We can’t do that, sir,” he protested. “The train has but little. It would take an hour to distribute it, and meanwhile the enemy would improve the time.” Longstreet made no reply to this. For a long moment he stood there saying nothing. Then he spoke, slowly and with deep emotion. “I do not want to make this charge,” he said; “I do not see how it can succeed. I would not make it now but that General Lee has ordered it and expects it.”

  With that he stopped, gripped by indecision and regret, though in point of fact he had been given no authority to halt the attack even if he had so chosen. The young artillerist volunteered nothing further. Just then, however, the issue was settled for once and all by the appearance of Garnett’s and Kemper’s brigades from the swale behind the guns. Garnett was mounted, having been granted special permission to ride because of his injured knee and feverish condition, and Alexander went back to meet him; they had been friends out on the plains in the old army. Apparently the Virginian was experiencing a chill just now, for he wore an old blue overcoat buttoned close to his throat despite the July heat. Alexander walked beside the horse until they reached the slope leading down to the Emmitsburg Road and the Union ridge beyond. There he stopped and watched his friend ride on. “Goodbye,” he called across the widening gap, and he added, as if by afterthought: “Good luck.”

  By now—some twenty or thirty minutes after the Union guns stopped firing, and consequently about half that long since Alexander followed suit—much of the smoke had been diffused or had drifted off, so that for the attackers, many of whom had stepped at a stride from the dense shade of their wooded assembly areas into the brilliant sunlight that dappled the floor of the valley, the result was not only dazzling to their eyes but also added to their feeling of elation and release. “Before us lay bright fields and fair landscape,” one among them would recall.

  It was not until the effect of this began to wear off, coincidental with the contraction of their pupils, that they saw at last the enormity of what was being required of them, and by then, although the vista afforded absolute confirmation of their direst apprehensions, the pattern of exhilaration had been set. Under the double influence of secondary inertia and terrific deliberation, the long gray lines came on, three brigades t
o the south under Pickett and six to the north under Pettigrew and Trimble, with a quarter-mile gap between the interior flanks of the two formations, the former composed of fifteen and the latter of twenty-seven regiments, all with their colors flying at more or less regular intervals along the rows of nearly 11,000 striding men. Harvey Hill was to say of the individual Confederate, as he had observed him in offensive action: “Of shoulder-to-shoulder courage, spirit of drill and discipline, he knew nothing and cared less. Hence, on the battlefield, he was more of a free-lance than a machine. Whoever saw a Confederate line advancing that was not crooked as a ram’s horn? Each ragged rebel yelling on his own hook and aligning on himself.” But Hill, though he was to see about as much combat as any general on either side before the war was over, was not at Gettysburg. If he had been, he would have had to cite it as the exception. Forbidden to step up the cadence or fire their rifles or even give the high-pitched yell that served at once to steady their own nerves and jangle their opponents’, the marchers concentrated instead on maintaining their alignment, as if this in itself might serve to awe the waiting bluecoats and frighten them into retreat. And in point of fact, according to one among the watchers on the ridge across the way—a colonel commanding a brigade adjacent to the little clump of trees—it did at least produce the lesser of these two reactions. For him, the advancing graybacks had “the appearance of being fearfully irresistible,” while a foreign observer, whose point of vantage was on the near side of the valley, used the same adjective to communicate the impression the attackers made on him: “They seemed impelled by some irresistible force.” Out front with the rebel skirmishers, a captain had a closer view of the troops as they strode down the slope toward where he crouched, and he remembered ever afterwards the “glittering forest of bayonets,” the two half-mile-wide formations bearing down “in superb alignment,” the “murmur and jingle” of trouser-legs and equipment, and the “rustle of thousands of feet amid the stubble,” which stirred up dust and chaff beneath and before them “like the dash of spray at the prow of a vessel.”