Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

by Allen C. Guelzo

  The overall looseness of discipline in the Civil War armies, combined with the relative impunity with which the Civil War battlefield could be negotiated, made maneuver and combat appear surprisingly slow, like the choreographed movement of a large but clumsy ballet company. And it gave manifest opportunities for the less than heroic to remove themselves from danger simply by walking away. “There is a certain percentage in every marching column and battle line that are looking for an opportunity to get away from it before matters get too serious,” commented James Wright in the 1st Minnesota, “and opportunity is seldom lacking.” A wounded man would be assisted by one or two others to the rear, who would then stay there. “A large number of skulkers concealed themselves in the forests,” complained Henry Nichols Blake of the 11th Massachusetts, “and feigned wounds by binding up their heads and arms in blood-stained bandages.” In spite of every exasperated effort by the Army of the Potomac’s provost marshal, Marsena Patrick, and the 2,000 men assigned to military policing duties, “several thousand men” dribbled away from the Gettysburg battle “on a grand straggle” from “Frederick to Westminster, to Hanover, to Gettysburg, and back again to Frederick.” The battlefield also created opportunities for looting as an alternative to fighting. “The army thieves,” added Nichols, “plundered the slain,” and “grasped with their remorseless hands the valuables, clothing and rations of the unwary, wounded soldiers.” Frank Holsinger thought it was “sacreligious” to see “a cluster of men … engaged in cutting the buttons from the coat” of a fallen rebel colonel, but there was nothing he could do to stop them.8

  And yet these were men who could forget almost at once that they were soldiers and revert to being horrified and sympathetic Samaritans. Young Henry Eyster Jacobs looked out on the morning of July 2nd at the Georgians who had camped in front of the Jacobs house on Middle Street and was amazed to see men who had “breathed fire and fury at their foes” the day before, and “were full of what they were going to do to the hated north,” quietly “reading from their pocket testaments” after breakfast. Amos Judson never lost his surprise at how the men of his 83rd Pennsylvania “never had any compunction of conscience in their treatment of an attacking foe”—which was, of course, to kill them—“yet the moment the foe were prostrate and helpless at their feet, they would throw away their guns and everything else to render them assistance.” A private in the 20th Georgia went down near Devil’s Den; a captured sergeant from the 4th Maine was being prodded rearward, and the Georgian “called out to him for help.” The Yankee told him to “put your arm around my neck … Don’t be afraid of me. Hurry up, this is a dangerous place.” And as they hobbled off, the incongruity of mercy in the middle of battle struck the Yankee, and he said, “If you and I had this matter to settle, we would soon settle it, wouldn’t we?” (A half-century later, the Georgian would publish an account of Gettysburg that included a plaintive inquiry about the sergeant: “If he is living, I would be glad to hear from him.”)

  Robert Carter of the 22nd Massachusetts found a fatally wounded captain of the 5th Texas who had been left behind after the fight for Devil’s Den and the Round Tops, and Carter gave him “water in which we had soaked coffee and sugar … He expressed his gratitude and gave us a partial history of this attack,” as though they had all been gathered around a convivial saloon table. What galled Carter was not the Texan’s easy assumption that Carter meant him no harm; it was the persistence of rebel skirmishers in firing on “a sergeant and others” who were attempting to rescue other downed men, despite Carter’s efforts to hail the skirmishers, “explaining our object.” A man in Amos Judson’s 83rd Pennsylvania made repeated trips under fire to bring in wounded Confederates. He was finally “shot dead by the comrades of the men he was attempting to succor.” But Judson proclaimed it the “most sublime instance of courage and humanity” he had ever seen “upon the battlefield.”9

  The Stony Ridge

  Joseph Brevard Kershaw was probably the most popular brigade commander in the entire Army of Northern Virginia. His South Carolinians—the 2,100 men of the 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 8th, and 15th South Carolina, along with the seven companies which made up the 3rd South Carolina Battalion—adored him as “a very fine man and a good officer” who is “liked by everyone.” Actually, this forty-one-year-old lawyer from Camden (whose only military experience had been as a lieutenant of volunteers in the Mexican War) was a chronic depressive, unhappily married, and “intensely lonely.” But in Camden, he was “our favorite citizen,” and in the fellowship of his brigade he was renowned for “how he prayed, got up, dusted his knees, and led his men on to victory with a dash and courage equal to any Old Testament mighty man of war.” There was, said a sergeant in the 2nd South Carolina, “not a man … who would not follow him to the death.” Judging by what Kershaw had seen happening to John Bell Hood’s division that afternoon, it was entirely possible that Kershaw’s men would get exactly that chance.10

  Once Hood’s four brigades jumped off on their attack on the right, it would be the turn of Lafayette McLaws’ division to go in. Drawn up in the woodline on the left of Hood’s division, Kershaw’s South Carolinians and William Barksdale’s Mississippians were in front, with the two Georgia brigades of Paul J. Semmes and William Wofford directly behind them. Kershaw’s brigade would go first; but the problem he saw in front of him was go where? Longstreet’s instructions were to “advance my brigade and attack the enemy,” then “turn his flank” and pivot to the left to attack the peach orchard. (Hood’s division—presumably—would be executing its own larger pivot, and end up somewhere on Kershaw’s right flank, facing north.) But if he did so, Union soldiers whom he could see posted on a stony ridge 900 yards away, behind the Emmitsburg Road, would fire into his flank as the brigade pivoted; if he shifted the direction of his attack to the stony ridge, he would have to maneuver around the stone farmhouse and barn of farmer John Rose. (John Rose was only a tenant; the 230-acre farm was actually owned by his brother, George.) This would leave Kershaw’s left-hand regiments open to the unobstructed fire of four or five Union batteries he could see unlimbering near the peach orchard.

  Kershaw did not have much time to dither: the guns of Longstreet’s corps artillery would give him ten minutes’ worth of softening-up fire on the new Union positions, and then a three-gun signal that meant move. “I determined to move upon the stony hill with my center,” formed by the 3rd, 7th, and 15th South Carolina. But he would divert his three left units, the 2nd and 8th South Carolina and 3rd South Carolina Battalion, toward the peach orchard, assuming that they could act together with Barksdale’s Mississippians in distracting the attention of the Federal batteries. Once he had seized the stony ridge, Kershaw could wheel to rejoin the others and push northward. “I had each regimental officer instructed in these orders, with instructions to communicate them to company commanders.” The artillerymen actually gave him a good thirty minutes’ worth of firing, then (shortly before five o’clock) “the signal guns fired, “and at the word march! the whole line (of the brigade) went off.” Joining them at the last minute was Longstreet himself, “who accompanied me in this advance on foot, as far as the Emmitsburg Road.” It was only after he had started forward that he heard in the distance Barksdale’s drummers beating Assembly—which meant that they were only just starting to get ready. Kershaw’s brigade would have it all to do themselves.11

  Click here to see a larger image.

  It might have given Kershaw some solace to have seen his brigade through the eyes of the Union soldiers who were at that moment lying under the shade of the trees along the stony ridge. Earlier that afternoon, when the ebullient Dan Sickles paraded his 3rd Corps out to the Emmitsburg Road, he posted David Bell Birney’s division to cover the long, open flank that ran from Joseph Sherfy’s peach orchard down to Devil’s Den. The unhappy Birney had only two brigades—the 3,500 men of John Ward’s and Régis de Trobriand’s brigades—to cover nearly a mile of upfolded moraines, thick clumps of alder and oak, and
a wheat field with stone fences just high enough to keep livestock from meandering through the crops. By the time Kershaw’s attack surged forward, Ward’s brigade had been battered senseless by Hood’s division, and was drifting piecemeal in the direction of Cemetery Hill. That left only the five small regiments of de Trobriand’s brigade to enforce what was left of Sickles’ chicken-brained plan, and even then the expatriate Frenchman peeled off his largest regiment to send to Ward’s aid; posted another, the 17th Maine, to hold off the tide of Georgians and Texans spilling over Houck’s Ridge; and spread still another, the 3rd Michigan, in skirmish order to link up with the other Federal troops in the peach orchard. Even after he borrowed two understrength regiments—the 8th New Jersey and the 115th Pennsylvania—from the 3rd Corps’ other division, de Trobriand had only a little more than 900 men thinned out along the stony ridge when Kershaw’s skirmishers began hopping the fences along the Emmitsburg Road.12

  De Trobriand’s one hope was the same hope Sickles, Meade, and Warren were appealing to, and that was George Sykes’ 5th Corps. Sykes was indeed on the way, but his lead division under James Barnes had already seen one of its three brigades siphoned off to Little Round Top. That left Barnes with two brigades still in hand, one belonging to Col. William Tilton and the other to Col. Jacob Sweitzer. Tilton was a thirty-five-year-old businessman from Newburyport, Massachusetts, and only in temporary command of his brigade since May 5th; Sweitzer was a lawyer from Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, “a gentleman in the noblest sense of the word,” but he, too, had been in brigade command only since the previous December. Nevertheless, they brought de Trobriand another 2,000 men, who were posted on the upper end of the stony ridge. If Sweitzer and Tilton could buck up de Trobriand’s jittery regiments on the stony ridge, and the 17th Maine could keep the overflow from Hood’s Confederates from spilling into the wheat field behind the ridge, they all might be able to hang on to this ground until the balance of the 5th Corps arrived on the scene.13

  Which they almost did. De Trobriand had only one battery, George Winslow’s Battery D, 1st New York Light Artillery, but he planted Winslow’s six 12-pounder Napoleons on a small rise in Rose’s wheat field that gave the gunners a clear line of sight to plaster anything which overran either the stony ridge or the Maine men’s stone wall. For almost an hour, the 17th Maine held the back door to Rose’s wheat field and the stony ridge shut. Battering them from in front were the frustrated hordes of Tige Anderson’s Georgia brigade, and they pressed the Maine men so hard that “one third of the regiment” was bent backward “at nearly a right angle.” The fighting became “a desperate struggle at close quarters,” frequently “hand-to-hand.” For a moment, a Georgia regiment’s flag “was planted upon the very wall behind which we lay,” but the color-bearer was shot down. Bodies piled up “within three feet of our line” and other Georgians were speared by bayonets “in endeavoring to scale the wall.”

  Some of the 17th’s men divided labor: Charles Mattocks “had three men loading for me, and I blazed away at the Rebs.” Eventually, the 17th Maine’s “ammunition was exhausted, and “we had used nearly all we could get from the dead and dying or wounded.” As the 17th Maine began to creep slowly backward, de Trobriand galloped up and pleaded with them to make one more stand, even if it was only “with the bayonet.” But on the other side of the stone wall Anderson’s Georgia brigade finally scented weakness. “The Confeds came right over the wall undaunted,” recalled one Maine private, “and we had to go.” David Birney now came up “with several of his staff” and begged the Maine men “to move forward,” but to no avail.14

  The collapse of the 17th Maine could not have come at a worse moment for de Trobriand and Birney. Winslow’s New York battery continued to spray Tige Anderson’s triumphant Georgians, first with solid shot angled over the heads of the disappearing 17th Maine, then firing off “shell and case shot at about one degree of elevation” with a perilously short “one to one-half second fuse.” Winslow kept the Georgians at bay long enough for the 17th Maine—as well as stragglers from Ward’s brigade and the two orphaned Parrott rifles of Smith’s battery—to scramble out of range in the direction of Cemetery Hill. But this would only work until the Georgians began sliding around to Winslow’s left. Winslow slewed one section of the battery around to beat the Georgians’ heads down with canister, and then galloped off to find David Birney and get the division commander’s approval to pull out. Yes, Birney agreed: “Be careful not to get cut off.” By the time Winslow returned, rebel bullets were “clipping the heads of wheat from the stalks as they whistled past … cutting down my men and horses” with skirmish fire. After a few last rounds—and “impressing into service some of the horses” from Smith’s battery which had been tethered behind the New Yorkers—Winslow began limbering up his bronze 12-pounders, one by one, from the left and got them out of danger.15

  At that point, de Trobriand’s regiments at the southern end of the stony ridge—the 110th Pennsylvania and the 5th Michigan, plus the two borrowed units, the 8th New Jersey and 115th Pennsylvania—began looking nervously over their shoulders. They, too, had sustained a series of short, brutal rushes by Anderson’s Georgians, and were “holding on only in fragments.” With the fallback of the 17th Maine, de Trobriand became desperate to pull them out of harm’s way. “Riding onto the line unattended by staff or orderly,” de Trobriand gave (in his thicky accented English) “ze order tree or four times” to “Change quick, or you all be gobbled up; don’t you see you are flanked? Ze whole rebel army is in your rear.” Once de Trobriand’s men began inching to the rear, Tilton’s and Sweitzer’s brigades suffered their own tremor of isolation on the ridge. And their fears for what was happening to their left and behind them were compounded by the appearance of Kershaw’s South Carolinians, “plainly seen as his regiments gained the Rose [farm] building,” all along their front. The Union “skirmishers came in hurriedly,” recalled by the regimental sergeant-majors “with sword drawn.” Right on their heels, the South Carolinians “appeared through the smoke” like a malevolent fury, “moving with shout, shriek, curse and yell … loading the firing with deliberation as they advanced, begrimed and dirty-looking fellows in all sorts of garb, some without hats, some without coats, none apparently in the real dress or uniform of a soldier.”

  Tilton’s and Sweitzer’s marooned brigades put up a brief but determined fight along their end of the stony ridge. “A shot—one—two—three—and then with a perfectly startling rattle and roar, the line blazed forth, followed by an incessant cheer that seemed to thrill one’s very marrow,” and in the 22nd Massachusetts, men were “placing a heap of cartridges and caps on the ground in front of them” to speed up “loading and firing as rapidly as possible.” One Massachusetts man noticed the odd “tremulous, wavering movement” along the line “when a shell burst” overhead; but the oddest sound of all—a sound which could be heard even over a battle racket that drowned out bugles and drums—was the repeated dinging of John Rose’s farm bell as errant bullets ricocheted off it. Neither Yankee brigade had enough men to hold the stony ridge, and with Anderson’s Georgians spilling across the wheat field behind them and the ridge itself “nearly surrounded,” both brigades retrieved their caps and cartridges, hefted their wounded on unrolled blankets, and abandoned the ridge to Kershaw. There were now no Union troops, from Sherfy’s peach orchard down to Little Round Top, left to stand in the Confederates’ path, and the remaining brigades of the 3rd Corps along the Emmitsburg Road were ready to be rolled up at leisure.16

  Little of this looked leisurely to Kershaw’s South Carolina regiments. Until Kershaw’s brigade reached the Emmitsburg Road, “little damage was done us,” apart from Union skirmishers who “injured us while climbing the two fences that line the pike.” One rebel skirmish company, striding through “a large patch of ripe blackberries,” actually slowed down long enough to scoop up “the ripe fruit” and were “eating berries” until they bumped into the Federal skirmish line. But once the six So
uth Carolina regiments cleared the road and moved on to the Rose farm, they found themselves hit, as Kershaw had feared, not only from in front by the rifle fire of Tilton’s and Sweitzer’s men, but from their left flank, where Union batteries could bowl solid shot and canister their way with obscene ease. “We saw plainly that their artillerists were loading their guns to meet our assault, while their mounted officers were dashing wildly from gun to gun, to be sure that all were ready,” recalled one soldier in the 2nd South Carolina, and when they opened fire, “every Federal cannon let fly at us” with solid shot and canister. “O the awful deathly surging sounds of those little black balls as they flew by us, through us, between our legs, and over us!” Hearing the canister balls “clatter … against walls and houses” of Rose’s farm, Kershaw boiled with resentment that Barksdale’s Mississippians had not moved forward with him—they should have been on Kershaw’s left, giving the Yankee batteries all the distraction they required. “I have never been in a hotter place,” he claimed years afterward.17