Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

by Allen C. Guelzo

  Rodes saw Wadsworth bend Cutler’s brigade back “so as to occupy” Sheads’ Woods on Seminary Ridge; what he missed was Baxter’s stealthy tiptoe behind Cutler and out along Cutler’s flank. Anything Rodes sent to attack Cutler would either be flung back by Baxter, or (depending on the axis of attack) be hit from the flank by fire from Baxter—in the event, both happened. Baxter placed two of his regiments—the 11th Pennsylvania and the 97th New York—beside Cutler’s brigade, then faced the remaining four northward along the Mummasburg Road. Some berserk “Union horseman … charged wildly” past the 97th, shouting, “There are no troops behind you! You stand alone, between the Rebel Army and your homes! Fight like hell!”—although there was no report afterward whether this encouraged or depressed the New Yorkers. Someone in the 88th Pennsylvania struck up the John Brown song, and soon everyone was bawling out “Glory, glory, hallelujah” until Confederate infantry could be seen gathering in front. While Baxter was busy shifting his regiments into position, he heard a racket of complaint from the brigade’s rear, where the provost’s detail was loudly demanding to be put into the line with the rest of their regiments; Baxter grinned at their enthusiasm, and told them, “Well, if that is the case, you are just the men I want there. Go to your regiments!” Baxter was just in time to stop O’Neal’s Alabamians. Baxter’s men quickly put them “under a heavy fire from the front” while Schurz’s skirmishers from the 11th Corps, poking along the fence line of the McLean farm, peppered them with “a cross fire” from a distance, and in short order O’Neal’s men “had to fall back to a fence where the Brig. was rallied by Col. O’Neal & Genl Rodes.”30

  Then, Iverson’s brigade started forward, sans Iverson, who preferred to remain behind and watch—and watch he did, as his brigade swept grandly over the Mummasburg Road “in magnificent order, with perfect alignment, guns at right shoulder and colors to the front,” in a three-rank column of divisions (six companies in each division), wading into lushly fragrant and utterly unprotected fields of wheat and “a rank crop of timothy.” With exquisite timing, Baxter barked out the order for the 11th Pennsylvania and 97th New York to rise from behind the shelter of a low fieldstone wall, where they had waited with “rifles cocked and fingers on the triggers,” and hurl a deadly and unsuspected volley into the unprepared North Carolinians. “At the command,” wrote a Pennsylvanian, “a sheet of flame and smoke burst from the wall … flaring full in the face of the advancing troops.” Men in the North Carolina lines were toppled over like rag dolls, “falling like leaves in a storm.” As Baxter’s men now began firing at will, the colonel of the 23rd North Carolina, Daniel Christie, tried to rally his disintegrating command, only to be shot through both lungs. Entire companies broke or dove for the ground, while thickening banks of powder smoke became “so dense you could not perceive an object ten feet from you.” Trying to pile surprise on surprise, Henry Baxter roared out over the cracking of rifle fire, “Up boys, and give them steel,” and groups of men from the 11th Pennsylvania and 97th New York scampered forward with fixed bayonets as isolated bunches of numbed North Carolinians “rose singly and in groups” to “show the white flag.” (A captain in the 88th Pennsylvania actually had a fistfight with the color-bearer of the 23rd North Carolina for possession of the flag.) Out of the 1,520 men Iverson had started with at Middletown that morning, 233 were rounded up as prisoners (along with the flag of the 20th North Carolina); another 170 were dead (or nearly dead, with ghastly wounds), 79 of them lying “in a straight line … perfectly dressed.”31

  The repulse of O’Neal’s Alabama brigade and the destruction of Iverson’s North Carolinians left Junius Daniel’s brigade moving ahead on its own, “uncovered.” Two of Daniel’s regiments angled off to face Cutler’s brigade while the remainder bore down blindly on the railroad cut. They walked into a blazing volley from Union soldiers occupying the railroad cut and “close enough … to cut all three ranks down at one firing.” The 45th North Carolina and the 2nd North Carolina Battalion actually pushed some of their tormentors out of the railroad cut, and “the men in their ardor slid down the almost precipitous bank and attempted to scale the opposite” before it became clear that, without any other support, they (like Joe Davis’ Mississippians a few hours before) were actually in “a most deadly trap.” Junius Daniel, “in his stentorian tones, audible in command a quarter of a mile or more away,” ordered his brigade back “without regard to company or regimental formation,” and Robert Rodes’ plan to “burst through the enemy” with his division evaporated.32

  It was the regiment, more than anything else, that gave the soldier of these armies his primary identity, and in the regiment “the colonel, as a father, should have a personal acquaintance with every officer and man.” On the battlefield, however, the basic tactical unit was the brigade, and brigadier generals (or senior colonels who happened to be in temporary command of a brigade or awaiting confirmation of promotion) were expected to lead, if not from the front, then certainly alongside their brigades, if only in the interest of coordinating the movement of their regiments. The survivors of Iverson’s brigade, who already thought of him as a sort of secessionist policeman, would never forgive Iverson for violating that rule, and he was accused of everything from drunkenness to cowardice. “I was left alone without any orders,” the colonel of the 12th North Carolina bitterly complained, “our general [being] in the rear, and never coming up.” Daniel Christie, the badly wounded colonel of the 23rd North Carolina, swore that he would have “the imbecile Iverson” cashiered if it was the last thing he did (which, in fact, it was, since Christie died in Winchester on July 17th). Iverson was “relieved from the Command of his Brigade” by Robert E. Lee ten days later “for misconduct at Gettysburg.”33

  But Iverson’s failure was only one facet of a larger problem experienced by the Army of Northern Virginia on July 1st. The collective bloody nose suffered by Harry Heth’s division that morning could, after all, be blamed on Heth’s inexperience in division command. Not so Robert Rodes, a Virginia Military Institute graduate and the man whom Stonewall Jackson had put at the head of the attack that collapsed the Union Army at Chancellorsville. Yet, he had botched his division’s attack as surely as Heth had. The figure who seems curiously absent from much of this action is Dick Ewell, although there is some evidence that Ewell, who had switched to horseback to oversee operations despite his wooden leg, was put temporarily hors de combat when a Federal shell knocked the corps commander and his horse down. Ewell, who had performed so smoothly as a corps commander at Winchester that he seemed like the resurrection of Jackson, now displayed a propensity for looking over his shoulder, as though he was reverting mentally to his old role as a division commander “without responsiveness and without suggestiveness.”34

  The man Ewell was particularly looking for—as though the one-legged Ewell had forgotten he was in command of a corps rather than a division—was Robert E. Lee. That morning, however, Lee was still on the other side of South Mountain, and still issuing orders to coordinate the concentration of the Army of Northern Virginia between Cashtown and Gettysburg. His plan was to move his headquarters “for the present” to Cashtown, “east of the mountains,” and that morning he set off eastward on the Cashtown Pike, with James Longstreet in tow and Longstreet’s lead division under Lafayette McLaws on the road behind. If all went well, by the end of the day Lee would have most (if not all) of Hill’s corps in Gettysburg, two of Ewell’s divisions at Cashtown (and maybe three, if Allegheny Johnson could move Ewell’s wagon trains down from Scotland fast enough), and Longstreet between Chambersburg and Cashtown; all three corps would again be within easy supporting distance of one another, and ready to strike on Lee’s command at the disjointed march of the Army of the Potomac on July 2nd or 3rd.

  Longstreet found Lee “in his usual cheerful spirits on the morning of the 1st, and called me to ride with him,” which he did until they encountered the head of Johnson’s division at an intersection, “cutting in on our front, with all
of Ewell’s reserve and supply trains.” Johnson had indeed moved swiftly, and since Lee wanted Ewell’s corps kept together, he instructed Longstreet to give Johnson right-of-way to move ahead, and hold his own corps at the crossroads until Johnson passed. But Ewell’s trains alone turned out to be “fourteen miles” in length, and “after a little time General Lee proposed that we should ride on.” It was when they emerged through a rain squall on the eastern side of the Cashtown Gap and passed the division of Richard H. Anderson on the road that Lee, for the first time, began to hear “reports of cannon” in the distance. “General Lee passes, going toward the front,” noted a Mississippian in his diary, even as “the cannonading … keeps up briskly.” The firing “seemed to be beyond Cashtown, and as it increased” Lee left Longstreet behind and spurred into Cashtown to find Powell Hill and discover what the trouble was.35

  Hill heard the thumping, too, and so did Anderson’s division in the line of march. “Some one hears a boom in front,” recalled one Virginian, but the rest shrug it off as “some-one tapping the bass drum.” Then more, and more, and soon “we know that someone is fighting ahead.” When Lee caught up with Hill in front of the Cashtown inn, “Little Powell” could not offer Lee much enlightenment: he had sent Harry Heth forward that morning with only the expectation of sweeping some odds and ends of Yankee cavalry out of the way and a warning not to start any sort of sizable fight by himself. But what they were hearing was plainly artillery, and presently a courier from Heth arrived with the highly unwelcome news that he had collided with the 1st Corps of the Army of the Potomac and would Hill please send up supports. Hill was not about to do anything until he had seen matters for himself, and so off he rode toward Gettysburg, leaving Lee at Cashtown “very much disturbed and depressed.” When Richard Anderson’s division stopped at midday at Cashtown, Lee poured out his irritation to Anderson, beginning with the missing Stuart. “I cannot think what has become of Stuart; I ought to have heard from him long before now.” Lee had not planned on meeting the Federals for at least another twenty-four hours, yet here they were in Gettysburg, and Lee had no idea whether “it may be the whole Federal army, or … only a detachment.”

  Soon enough, “orders were received from General Hill” for Anderson to “move forward to Gettysburg,” and just after noon Lee and his staff “quickly followed.” A courier from Ewell caught up with them at a crossroads beyond Cashtown, informing Lee that Ewell was turning down toward Gettysburg. This only brought on a new round of irritation from Lee: he had been repeating to all of his corps commanders that “a general engagement was to be avoided until the arrival of the rest of the army,” and yet here was not only Hill, but Ewell as well, about to leap blindly into the mess up ahead. Lee’s vehemence surprised the courier (who happened to be Ewell’s stepson, George Campbell Brown), knowing “Lee’s habitual reserve.” But Lee’s reddest wrath was reserved for Stuart, who—from what Lee had gleaned from the newspapers—was on the other side of Meade’s army and coming to no good end.36

  It took Lee about two hours to work his way up the Cashtown Pike, through the thick backward-flowing stream of wounded, stragglers, couriers, and teamsters, until, around two o’clock, he caught up with Powell Hill on Herr Ridge, and was joined by Harry Heth. “Turning into a grass field on his left he sat on his well-bred iron gray, Traveller, and looked across the fields eastward, through the smoke rising in puffs and long rolls,” wrote a staff officer. “He held his glasses in his hand and looked down the long slope by the Seminary, over the town to the rugged heights beyond.” Rodes’ division was just breaking off its mangled attempt to dislodge the 1st Corps, and Heth begged Lee for permission “to go in … as Rodes appeared to be heavily engaged.” This proposal did not enchant Lee at all. “On arriving at the scene of battle,” Walter Taylor wrote, “General Lee ascertained that the enemy’s infantry and artillery were present in considerable force.” That led him to an immediate conclusion: “I do not wish to bring on a general engagement today,” he declared. “Longstreet is not up.” And without all of his infantry within close reach, Lee wanted to run no risk of clamping down on the 1st Corps, only to discover that it was connected to the rest of the Army of the Potomac.37

  That, at least, was Lee’s initial assessment. But the longer he pondered the situation, and the more he and Hill received reports from prisoner interrogations, the more it began to seem that—perhaps—the coveted opportunity to pinch off pieces of the Federal army and crush them one by one might be exactly what was happening after all. All that was in front of him was the 1st Corps; the 11th Corps was deploying north of the town. But apart from that, there was no word from the prisoners of any other Union infantry within striking distance. If he broke off the action, it would be a bad sign to his own men, that in fact they had been defeated. And while Lee could see that the Yankees were holding their ground pretty stoutly, Harry Heth’s pestering for a second chance was an indication that the two repulses the Confederates had sustained had done nothing to dampen rebel self-confidence. At least for this afternoon, there were also far more Confederates soldiers within easy call than Yankees. Dorsey Pender’s division of Hill’s corps, 6,000 strong, was moving up behind Heth; and Heth still had Pettigrew’s and Brockenbrough’s brigades (another 3,700 or so) unbloodied. Rodes, likewise, still had Stephen Dodson Ramseur’s brigade in reserve, and both Daniel’s and Doles’ brigades had plenty of fight in them. And there was still the entirety of Jubal Early’s division, closing in somewhere along the road from Heidlersburg. Was this not what he had prayed for? Had not God delivered the Philistines into his hands? Who was he, then, to pull back? “It had not been intended to fight a general battle” on July 1st, Lee explained afterward, but a battle began anyway, and it “became a matter of difficulty to withdraw.” When Heth came up a second time asking for permission to attack, Lee had a different answer: “Wait awhile and I will send you word when to go in.”38

  He would not have to wait long.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The dutch run and leave us to fight

  ABNER DOUBLEDAY was well aware that the 1st Corps had only survived two serious Confederate attacks because of extremely bad Confederate management. They were not likely to give Doubleday such gifts again, nor had they actually left him in a particularly enviable position. The corps had been pulled like taffy along a line that had to protect the Fairfield Road on the left, the Cashtown Pike in the middle, and the Mummasburg Road on the right. Starting at the Fairfield Road, one brigade of Doubleday’s original division was strung thinly across the Herbst farm, barely managing to link hands with the Iron Brigade in Herbst’s Woods. On the other side of the Iron Brigade, Doubleday’s other brigade (under Roy Stone) formed an elbow around the McPherson house and barn, with the 149th and 143rd Pennsylvania bent backward along the Cashtown Pike. Cutler’s brigade, which had been rejoined by the 95th New York and 14th Brooklyn after their fight over the railroad cut, permanently abandoned any attempt at holding on to the north extension of McPherson’s Ridge and were backed up against Sheads’ Woods, where they connected with Henry Baxter’s brigade at the Mummasburg Road. Doubleday had only one brigade left in reserve, and Buford’s cavalry brigades, one posted to the north and east of the town and the other below the Fairfield Road, and neither would be able to offer much in the way of assistance if the rebels looked like they would overrun Doubleday’s positions. There was clearly no hope that the 11th Corps could move up on the other side of the Mummasburg Road, because Rodes’ rebels, however unsuccessful they had been on the attack, held the knob of Oak Hill in greater strength than the 11th Corps could bring up to drive them from it. At least Doubleday had plenty of artillery. All six batteries of the 1st Corps’ artillery were now up and in place, evenly balanced between 3-inch Ordnance Rifles for distance and 12-pounder Napoleons for short-range work.1

  Doubleday sent off an aide, followed by his adjutant, Eminel Halstead, to beg reinforcements from Howard, but there were none to spare. “Tell General Doubleday t
hat I have no reinforcements to send him.” At two o’clock, Howard came up to the seminary to see Doubleday’s position for himself, and he frankly advised that if the two big Confederate forces that had attacked earlier came back again in strength, Doubleday would have to “fall back to Cemetery Hill” and make a final stand there. Sickles and the 3rd Corps were somewhere on their way up from Emmitsburg, and Howard dispatched one his staff captains to find Sickles and hurry him up. But he was pinning his real hopes on the next nearest Union corps—Henry Slocum’s 12th Corps—which had started north from Littlestown and was now at Two Taverns, only five miles to the southeast. If Slocum could make Gettysburg in the next hour and a half, Howard could post the 12th Corps on the right flank of his own corps and firm up the defensive arc that now stretched west and north of Gettysburg. Almost as an afterthought, he sent another courier to Meade with “a report of the state of things as then existing.”2

  In lieu of reinforcements, Doubleday’s regiments picked up some strange volunteers. The 9th New York Cavalry was approached by “a young man in citizens’ clothes who said his name was James Watson” and “expressed a desire to go into the fight.” The troopers of Company A found him a blue sack coat, and “he rode with that company.” The 12th Massachusetts (in Baxter’s brigade) absorbed an enthusiastic local sixteen-year-old named Charles Weakley on the march up from Emmitsburg, and equipped him with a borrowed “cap, blouse, musket and roundabout … together with a supply of ammunition.” A twenty-three-year-old “photographist” named Phineas Branson “went out to meet the Rebels,” as did a “gray-haired man, sixty years of age,” who turned out to fight alongside the 56th Pennsylvania in Cutler’s brigade “and fought with that Regiment all day.” Another “stranger to the regiment” took up a position “about fifteen paces to the rear” of the 16th Maine (in Gabriel Paul’s brigade) and began “loading and firing independently,” until a lieutenant in Company G, convinced that the “stranger” would end up shooting his men in the back, “kicked him rapidly to the rear.”3