Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

by Allen C. Guelzo

  Kershaw’s three left regiments turned north to face the Yankee cannon fire, and as they did they took a terrific pounding. “We were in ten minutes or less time, terribly butchered,” wrote Franklin Gaillard, the lieutenant colonel of the 2nd South Carolina (and one of three brothers in the regiment). “I saw half a dozen at a time knocked up and flung to the ground like trifles,” including “familiar forms and faces with parts of their heads shot away, legs shattered, arms tore off.” Kershaw took his other three regiments forward toward the stony ridge “on foot … looking cool, composed and grand,” while “men fell here and there from the deadly Minnie-balls.” In their confusion, the 7th South Carolina moved to the left of the Rose farmhouse, got too far ahead, and overlapped the line of its neighbor, the 3rd South Carolina, as the 3rd came around the other side of the house; the 15th South Carolina lost touch and drifted far off to the right. But then, to Kershaw’s surprise, “the troops we first engaged seemed to melt away.” These were Tilton’s and Sweitzer’s brigades, and as they scrambled down the rear of the stony ridge, Kershaw’s men swept victoriously to the crest, where they could look down from its “copse of woods, covered with granite boulders,” into the wheat field.

  What they saw at the apex of the ridge froze them, and sent Kershaw running as fast to the rear as he could in search of his supporting brigade, Paul Semmes’ Georgians. Kershaw had seen “a heavy column” of infantry, moving “in two lines of battle across the wheat-field,” aiming to “attack my position” and take back the ridge. It was the 2nd Corps of the Army of the Potomac, and, as the clocks moved toward six o’clock, it was also the beginning of the best evening of Winfield Scott Hancock’s life.18

  John Rose’s Wheat Field

  After his brief stint as George Meade’s majordomo on Cemetery Hill on the evening of July 1st, Winfield Hancock rode back toward Taneytown to report to Meade and to locate his 2nd Corps, which he had left under John Gibbon’s command. He did not have to go far. Gibbon marched the 2nd Corps pretty vigorously through the evening, and Hancock had only ridden three miles out of Gettysburg before encountering them. One of his brigade commanders, Samuel Carroll, asked him point-blank what he intended to recommend to Meade, and Hancock confidently assured him that “If Lee does not attack before all our forces are up, we can hold the position … against the whole Confederacy.” Hancock reported to Meade at his Taneytown headquarters around nine o’clock, lay down to sleep for a few hours, and then was back in the saddle before two o’clock to rejoin the 2nd Corps. In the process, grumbled Hancock’s chief of staff, Charles Morgan, Hancock had managed to kill “nearly every horse belonging to the General or his staff” with “hard riding.” At four o’clock, Hancock had the 2nd Corps back on its feet and on the Taneytown Road to Gettysburg, and by seven he was positioning them “by brigade in mass” along the shallow ridgeline that tailed southward from Cemetery Hill.19

  The 2nd Corps contained three of the smaller-sized infantry divisions in the Army of the Potomac, with an average of about 3,500 men apiece. This had once been old Edwin “Bull” Sumner’s corps, and it had fought with enviable energy on the Peninsula, at Antietam, and at Fredericksburg. Two of its brigades, the Philadelphia Brigade and the Irish Brigade, were among the rare brigades in the Army of the Potomac to earn a brigade nickname. The 2nd Corps had also suffered some stupefying punishment—one-third of the corps had been struck down, dead or wounded, at Antietam, and three of the Irish Brigade’s regiments were so understrength that they had actually been consolidated into a single six-company battalion. Above all, the 2nd Corps was bitterly unhappy over the dismissal of McClellan and the release of the Emancipation Proclamation. “It was nothing but the nigar lovers of the North who took [McClellan] from us,” lamented a corporal in the Philadelphia Brigade. As they took up their positions on the ridge below Cemetery Hill, it was “given out that McClellan had taken command,” a piece of unlikely news which nevertheless made the men “perfectly wild with joy … Each battalion as it moved past stepped to the encouraging shouts of thousands of voices in one grand chorus for ‘little Mac.’ ” In the Irish Brigade, there was a lingering resentment at the way they had been “driven to mere slaughter” for the sake of “cursed Yankees” and “savage blacks.”20

  The 2nd Corps was not made happier when the reinforcements detailed to join the corps on the march to Pennsylvania turned out to be the “Harpers Ferry Cowards”—Col. George Willard’s disgraced brigade of the 39th, 111th, 125th, and 126th New York, who had been surrendered en masse when Harpers Ferry was captured by Stonewall Jackson during the Antietam Campaign. The surrender was no fault of their own, but the official report branded their conduct “disgraceful” and they had languished in a parole camp, smarting under “the lasting shame of the surrender.” Once exchanged under the official prisoner of war cartel, they were herded dismally into the defenses of Washington, digging ditches and doing maintenance on the capital’s chain of forts. The new uniforms they had been issued and the unseemly number of tenderfoots who fell out of the brutal route marches to Gettysburg only made them better targets for mockery by the rest of the corps.21

  But whatever the 2nd Corps had lost in numbers or integrity by 1863, it still had Hancock, and despite Hancock’s reputation for dark tempers and even darker profanity, no other corps commander was so admired for his dash (the Louis Napoleon whiskers, the spic-and-span military outfitting) or for his sheer physical courage. “General Hancock is in his element and at his best in the midst of a fight, which cannot be said of some of the general officers,” wrote a 2nd Corps staff officer, Josiah Favill. At Chancellorsville two month before, Favill had been astonished to see “General Hancock ride along amidst this rain of shells utterly indifferent, not even ducking his head when one came close to him, which is a difficult thing to do, for one seems to do it involuntarily.” The corps also had two enormously effective division commanders in John Gibbon and the sarcastically combative Alex Hays. It was the third (and ironically most senior) of the 2nd Corps’ division heads, John Curtis Caldwell, who was the big question mark. Caldwell had been a private high school principal before the war, and there were whispers that he had been an “infurnal cowardly soul” at Antietam and Fredericksburg. But Caldwell had powerful political friends. (He had been recommended for his brigadier general’s star by Maine Republican congressman Israel Washburn.) And so he had taken over Hancock’s original brigade when Hancock went up to division, and then ascended automatically to command of Hancock’s division when Hancock took over the 2nd Corps after Chancellorsville.22

  Unlike Dan Sickles, Winfield Scott Hancock displayed no special anxiety about his position on the left of the Army of the Potomac. Caldwell’s division, the farthest to the left of the three divisions, “was massed in brigade columns,” but otherwise the men “were allowed to sit or lay down in their ranks, while the officers gathered in groups and discussed the probable outlook for the day.” In the Irish Brigade, “arms were stacked and the colors lay folded on the upturned bayonets.” There was the usual random skirmish-line firing, but no intimation that very much was in store for Hancock’s men until Sickles staged his grand movement forward around two o’clock. Watching in mingled admiration and disbelief, John Gibbon muttered something about it being magnificent “but it is not war” to Charles Morgan—just what the French had said about the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava. Soon enough, the Confederate onslaught began. Now it was clear “that a general engagement would follow,” and the 2nd Corps “stood to arms.”23

  It was just as well that Hancock had his men ready for whatever might be afoot, because once George Meade had gotten Sykes and the 5th Corps moving and satisfied himself that Sedgwick and the 6th Corps were within hailing distance on the Taneytown Road, Meade crossed back toward Cemetery Hill and found Hancock and Gibbon, “just to the left” of a small woodlot of trees (which in another twenty-four hours would achieve a sort of immortality of its own). “Something must be done,” Meade barked out; Sykes was
not going to be able to shore up Sickles’ paper-thin line in time. At least, “send a couple of regiments out in support of Humphrey[s]” to fill in the gap between Humphreys’ right flank on the Emmitsburg Road and the 2nd Corps.

  At some point, Meade decided to peel one of Hancock’s divisions away, too; he was getting impatient for Tardy George to move up, and if Sykes couldn’t hop to it, one of Hancock’s divisions would have to do. Since Caldwell’s division would have the least distance to cover, Hancock cantered over to Caldwell and ordered him to “get your division ready” and move down to Sickles’ rescue. Then “a column of the Fifth Corps”—Tilton’s and Sweitzer’s brigades—swung into view, and Hancock recalled the order. Not for long, though. Around 5:15, as the Federal positions in the wheat field and on the stony ridge began to fall in, Hancock got Caldwell on his feet again, with orders to report to Sykes. Caldwell “moved rapidly, a portion of the time at the double-quick,” his lead brigade commanded by the irascible and colorful Col. Edward Cross. “Boys, you know what’s before you,” announced the ever-belligerent Cross, “give ’em hell!” and with a shout his brigade echoed, “We will, Colonel!” (Cross was not as optimistic as he sounded; it was always his habit to lead his men into a fight wearing a red bandanna to make himself easier to find in the smoke and confusion of a battle, but today he tied a black scarf around his head, somehow certain that “this is my last battle.”) Cross’ brigade was followed by the Irish Brigade, then Samuel Zook’s brigade of three New York and one Pennsylvania regiments, and last by John Brooke’s mixed-bag brigade of New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians, the 27th Connecticut, and the 2nd Delaware.24

  Caldwell moved his division along in column—“in a chunk,” as one lieutenant recalled—stopping at the farm lane that bordered the north side of the wheat field and deploying them into line along the lane, starting with Cross’ brigade. “We stood in line of battle, officers and sergeants in front,” and then “scaled the fence” along the lane and lined up in the wheat field. Guidons went up to correct the brigade’s alignment, and then “the officers and file closers passed through the ranks and got in rear of the men.” Behind them, the Irish Brigade was still in column, waiting its turn to deploy along the wheat field lane, when the Catholic chaplain of the 88th New York, Father William Corby, took the halt as the opportunity to put some last-minute fire into the worn-down ranks. Corby was a priest of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, the “most priestly of priests” and “scholastic, gentle, refined, cultured.” He had only been ordained on Christmas Day in 1860, but, along with seven other Holy Cross priests, he was directed by his superiors to volunteer for war service to demonstrate that Catholics could be as patriotic as their nativist despisers.

  Scrambling onto a “large rock,” Corby proposed to offer absolution to every Catholic “on condition that they make a sincere act of contrition” and that none “turns his back upon the foe or deserts his flag.” Caps flew off heads “and the entire brigade”—including the smattering of Protestants in the ranks—“knelt from ‘Parade rest’ … on the right knee with musket erect in the right hand.” (Out of the corner of his eye, Corby could see that even the luxuriantly profane Hancock had “removed his hat” and “bowed in reverential devotion.”) Dominus noster Jesus Christus vos absolvat, Corby intoned, and even before he could finish, “the order came to move.” The watch of the adjutant of the 140th Pennsylvania read “just six o’clock.”25

  Caldwell did not have an easy time getting the division deployed properly (“some of the officers alleged that the troops were not put into action very handsomely by the division commander,” and the color company of the 148th Pennsylvania found itself “far out of place” on the flank of the regiment”). Caldwell could not find Sykes, and had to rely on one of Sykes’ staffers to learn “where to place” the division so as not to blunder into the path of the 5th Corps. Still more disruptive, refugees from the 3rd Corps were streaming over the wheat field lane and “were almost inextricably mixed up with” Caldwell’s men even as Caldwell was trying to use the road to form a line of battle. Then Dan Sickles put his oar in. From his temporary command post at Abraham Trostle’s farm, Sickles could see Caldwell’s division heading for the wheat field, and impulsively dispatched Henry Tremain to tear loose a brigade and send them to stanch the ebb of Tilton’s and Sweitzer’s men from the stony ridge.26

  Click here to see a larger image.

  The first brigade commander Tremain found was Samuel Zook. The forty-two-year-old Zook was a Pennsylvanian, born and raised near Valley Forge and infatuated from his boyhood with stories of the Revolution (Zook took Kosciusko as his middle name, and his sister married into the family of the Revolutionary general Mad Anthony Wayne). But soldiering was not his profession. He built a youthful interest in the electrical telegraph into the presidency of the Washington & New York Telegraph Company, and moved to New York City. He finagled a commission in the New York state militia, and with the outbreak of war in 1861, Zook took command of the 57th New York and was promoted to brigadier general just before Fredericksburg.

  Zook was not the most approachable of men; he was rumored to be the only general in the Army of the Potomac who could outproduce Hancock in picturesque blasphemy. But Tremain took his staff rank in his hands, and begged Zook to pivot to his right and retake the stony ridge. “With soldierly mien,” Zook told him he would do nothing of the sort; he belonged to Caldwell’s division, and no underling from another corps had the authority to give him orders—unless, of course, this was a direct order from Sickles as a major general. Very well, Tremain replied, if that was what Zook required, “I do give General Sickles’s orders.” That satisfied Zook, and he turned his four regiments and swung around toward the ridge where Kershaw’s South Carolinians had paused in triumph.27

  For the second time that day, the nineteen acres of Rose’s wheat field became an arena of confrontation, the slow-moving blocks of infantry moving to within deadly range and blazing away until one or the other began to wilt and fold. Edward Cross’ brigade was the first into the wheat field, with Cross’ old regiment, the 5th New Hampshire, on the left and in front. The Georgians of Anderson’s brigade who had just swept de Trobriand’s regiments out of the wheat field stopped and waited for the New Hampshire men, then stunned them with a volley that felled almost half of the regiment’s 177 men. That included Cross, who was hit in the abdomen by a bullet which tore all the way through him and exited near his spine. But behind them came the 148th and 81st Pennsylvania and the 61st New York, who let off a volley and waded through the “breast-high wheat” to the stone wall at the south end of the field.

  “Here the battle was desperate and sanguinary”—and, true to form, here the Pennsylvanians and Georgians stood with “unyielding tenacity” and shot each other to ribbons. Charles Augustus Fuller, a lieutenant in the 61st New York, described it simply as “a case of give and take,” with his regiment’s line shrinking “into clumps” as the volleying went on. Still, Fuller saw “no flinching or dodging,” except for a single lieutenant who was bending behind the firing line “so as to bring his head below the line of the heads of the men.” An irritated captain saw this as a fall from masculinity, and whacked the doubled-up lieutenant with his sword, growling, “Stand up like a man.”28

  To the left and out of sight of the 61st New York, the 530 men of the Irish Brigade rolled through the wheat field and, angling slightly toward the stony ridge, headed for Kershaw’s South Carolinians. Catching his first glimpse of the lines of the Irish Brigade emerging from the smoke banks below the ridge, Elbert Bland (the lieutenant colonel of the 7th South Carolina) instinctively remarked to the colonel of the 7th, “Is that not a magnificent sight?” It did not feel particularly magnificent to the Irish Brigade: “The ground was exceedingly uneven … which made a regular line of battle impossible,” wrote John Noyes, an Irish Brigade lieutenant, and the awkward angle at which they were approaching the stony ridge allowed the South Carolinians at the north end of the ridge
to fire straight down along the front of the brigade, “decimating the front line, whose gaps were promptly filled by each file-closer stepping to the front as his file leader fell.” As the Irish Brigade scrambled up the ridge, they were hit from in front with a volley from the 3rd and 7th South Carolina. But the rebels “became too excited and fired too quickly, resulting in the volley passing overhead,” and for a few minutes the Irish Brigade and Kershaw’s men were fighting face-to-face, at revolver and bayonet distance. “The enemy’s infantry came up and stood within thirty steps of each other,” wrote another officer in the 7th South Carolina. “I was so desperate I took two shots with my pistol.”29