Richard Heron Anderson had been a classmate of James Longstreet’s and Lafayette McLaws’ at West Point, and under almost any circumstances would have been happier serving under Longstreet than mired as he was, commanding a division under the erratic Ambrose Powell Hill. For that matter, he would have probably preferred not to have been in the Confederate Army at all. Although Anderson was born and raised in South Carolina, he had courted and married a Pennsylvanian—the daughter of the chief justice of Pennsylvania—in 1850 during a posting to the Carlisle Barracks. Shy and laconic by temperament, he was notably unenthusiastic about both slavery and secession, and joined the Confederate Army only after being browbeaten by his father into a sense of obligation to follow “the old Palmetto State.” He was jumped to brigadier general in May 1861, then to major general after the Peninsula (where he became a protégé of Longstreet’s). But there, like William Wofford and so many others who lacked the requisite egotism, secessionism, or Virginia-ism, Anderson stalled. He was assigned to division command in Powell Hill’s corps, where he did not hesitate to make his displeasure with Hill known to a sympathetic James Longstreet. Anderson’s division had come up at the tail end of Hill’s corps on the Cashtown Pike on July 1st, and when Lee authorized Longstreet to substitute Anderson for George Pickett’s division, he could not have made Longstreet or Anderson a more mutually agreeable gift.24
“Shortly after the line had been formed,” Anderson wrote, “I received notice that Lieutenant-General Longstreet would occupy the ground on the right” and that Anderson was to “put the troops of my division into action by brigades as soon as those of General Longstreet’s corps had progressed so far in their assault as to be connected with my right flank.” Those brigades were five in number, and Anderson had positioned them so that Cadmus Wilcox’s brigade of Alabamians would be the first to go in, followed by a diminutive Florida brigade under the temporary command of David Lang, yet another brigade of Georgians under a highly flammable lawyer and politician named Ambrose Ransom Wright, and Carnot Posey’s Mississippians (the last brigade, of Virginians under William Mahone, would act as Anderson’s reserve). This amounted to over 7,000 men, with the single biggest concentration in the 1,700 soldiers of Wilcox’s five Alabama regiments.25
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Like Anderson, Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox suffered from being a non-Virginian. Born in North Carolina, he had grown up in Tennessee, and gone from the University of Nashville to West Point and the same graduating class in 1846 that produced George McClellan. He resigned from the army after the secession of Tennessee, but was put in command of the 9th Alabama, where he caught the eye of James Longstreet. He made brigade command, but there he languished, despite being what one of his Alabamians described as “one the best … in our army.” As the lead brigade of Anderson’s division, Wilcox had been instructed to “advance when the troops on my right [Hood, then McLaws] should advance” and “report this to the division commander” so that Anderson could start the other brigades forward himself.
The firing over by Little Round Top had died away by now, but Caldwell’s and Kershaw’s men were grappling for control of the wheat field and the Massachusetts artillery’s final stand at the Trostle farm was reaching its crescendo. In order to avoid crowding in on Barksdale’s Mississippi regiments, Wilcox formed his Alabamians in column and started forward toward the Emmitsburg Road. Unlike Hood and McLaws, Anderson did not stack his brigades in pairs; he had a long front to cover and the sun was dipping toward South Mountain, and Anderson wanted every brigade except Mahone’s Virginians at the front. David Lang’s three Florida regiments would move up alongside Wilcox, and Wright’s Georgians would hitch their right flank to the Floridians—so that, for once, Virginians in the Army of Northern Virginia would be compelled to take a backseat to other parts of the Confederacy.26
Unlike Hood and McLaws, they would be able to get over the ground quickly. From the oak groves on Seminary Ridge, Wilcox had less than half a mile to cover to Emmitsburg Road, and moving in column would make that passage even faster. Humphreys’ skirmishers—nine companies of the 1st Massachusetts—saw “the enemy’s advancing columns,” and decided that the “tornado of whizzing missiles” made them “a little tremulous.” They scampered back to the road, forming up in front of the 26th Pennsylvania, in Joseph Carr’s brigade. The “lively popping” of the skirmishers reminded one of Humphreys’ staffers of the beginning of a rain squall, an odd association until it was connected with “the heavy sulphurous” smoke clouds drifting in from farther down the road. Being hit in column by the Massachusetts skirmishers brought the 11th Alabama to an unplanned halt, so Wilcox moved them into line and picked the pace up again.
“The first line of the enemy in front gave way precipitately,” wrote a soldier in the 11th Alabama, and the 8th Alabama (Wilcox’s right-hand regiment) “swept like a hurricane over cannon and caissons.” The Floridians, likewise, “charged splendidly,” and made it a “grand sight to see.” Not quite all of it was grand, though. Hilary Herbert, the colonel of the 8th Alabama, remembered years afterward “one little boy in blue, apparently not more than fifteen years old,” mounted “on the lead front horse” of a limber but unable to get his own horse to pull away because the two horses behind him were dead in their traces. “I was near enough to have touched him with my sword,” remembered Herbert, wincing with the thought. And then “the dust flew from his jacket just under his shoulder blade, and he fell forward dead.”27
Even as Joseph Carr’s brigade struggled to fend off Wilcox’s and Lang’s assault, William Brewster’s Excelsior Brigade, which Humphreys had drawn back at a right angle to Carr, gave way before the relentless pounding of Barksdale’s 13th, 17th, and 18th Mississippi. Capt. Henry Blake, drawn up with his 11th Massachusetts along the road, saw “the batteries and infantry which were posted on the extreme left” bend and break “before the yells and bullets of the enemy.” Carr tried to stem the tide and protect his own line by whipping back one of his regiments, the 11th New Jersey, to act as a breakwater. In later years, the survivors of Brewster’s and Carr’s brigades would announce that not “a single man” in any of their regiments had shown “the least cowardice under … the fierce charge which we met.” But the painful truth was that Brewster’s brigade—Sickles’ own favorites—simply disintegrated, and trying to get Carr’s regiments to change front while being hit from two sides was an impossibility which only “a veteran can possibly understand.” To a watcher in the 2nd Corps, “the Excelsior Brig. and the men were running back before the enemy as if they were but a line of skirmishers.” Andrew Humphreys “could not hold his men, for as soon as they found themselves assailed both in front and flank they broke and retreated.” Joseph Carr was blown off his horse by an exploding shell, and the dead horse “fell on him and crushed his leg.”
Like so many others, Humphreys afterward claimed that the collapse was all calm and orderliness, thanks to him: “Twenty times did I [bring] my men to a halt & face about, myself & … others of my staff forcing the men to do it.” But at the moment, Humphreys, whose “indignation often flamed up” under stress, seems to have lost all self-control. Francis Seeley, who was desperately trying to move his battery from the Emmitsburg Road, glimpsed Humphreys, “bareheaded, and unattended” and “endeavoring to rally (with only partial success, I judge) the retreating infantry of the 3rd Corps.” Every time Humphreys looked to the rear, “no other guns or a solitary soldier could be seen … The Fed. Army” had been sliced “in twain.”28
Humphreys could not repair a disaster this serious singlehanded. Some of the 71st New York, on their own hook, “would fire at the enemy, walk to the rear, loading as they went, then turn, take deliberate aim and fire again.” But for the rest of Brewster’s Excelsiors, “there was no commanding officer to collect them and form a second line; nor use them to cover the long gap in the lines.” As one officer in the 73rd New York admitted, “the shattered line was retreating in separated strea
ms … leaving their dead and dying under their feet.” A 2nd Corps regiment had to open up and allow “many of them, to the number of thousands,” pass “between our files” to the rear. Their officers “undertook to stop and put them in line, but found it impossible,” and several Confederates stopped to watch in horrified fascination as desperate Union officers, “standing in the rear of their line of battle,” were seen to “slash” their fleeing men “across their faces, pull them by the collars, and kick them back to their positions.”29
The worst of these offenders was Humphreys. Fumbling through the confused mob of retreating soldiers, he washed up against the 19th Maine, another 2nd Corps regiment Winfield Hancock had sent to cover, as best they could, the gap between the 2nd Corps at the rear of Cemetery Hill and the 3rd Corps out at the Emmitsburg Road. Humphreys “rode back to the Nineteenth” and, in manic rage, ordered the colonel of the 19th Maine, Francis Heath, to fix bayonets “and stop with the bayonet the soldiers of his command.” Francis Heath was a fair-haired twenty-five-year-old who had left his father’s law office in 1861 to become a lieutenant in the 19th. He was aghast at Humphreys’ order, and refused to obey, offering instead that if Humphreys would get out of the way, Heath’s Maine regiment would stop the avalanche to the rear by example. But Humphreys was past reasoning with. He hysterically ordered Heath “to the rear,” and “rode down the line of the Nineteenth, giving the order himself.” Heath indignantly took after Humphreys, “closely countermanding his orders” and telling the men to ignore the general. Heath had not come to make war on his own people, and he was certainly not taking orders from some madman from another corps. Soon enough, Humphreys and his broken-down division disappeared “in the smoke and confusion.”30
What was despair for Humphreys was joy to Wilcox’s Alabama brigade. “Never perhaps in all its history did the men of the 8th Alabama feel the thrill of victory so vividly,” wrote Hilary Herbert. Like Porter Alexander, Herbert “felt that the supreme moment of the war had come—that victory was with our army and we ourselves were the victors.”31 All that remained was for Ambrose Wright and Carnot Posey to trample down the last Federal regiments behind Cemetery Hill, and they could snap the Army of the Potomac’s spinal cord at the nape of its neck. It would be the end of the battle, and of the war.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Remember Harper’s Ferry!
ANDREW HUMPHREYS once swore that he would never, under any circumstances, serve under David Birney, and George Meade was fully determined, after he had been informed of Dan Sickles’ disablement, that Humphreys would not have to. Rather than allow Birney to succeed Sickles, Meade ordered Winfield Scott Hancock (in a reprise of his designation of Hancock as his authority on Cemetery Hill the night before) to take charge of whatever was left of the 3rd Corps and somehow stave off a complete collapse until the coming of darkness could bring the fighting to a standstill.
How, exactly, Hancock was to accomplish this was anyone’s guess. He was having more than enough problems in the 2nd Corps without adding Sickles’ mess to his responsibilities. Of the three divisions the 2nd Corps began the day with, one (Caldwell’s) was already gone past recall. That left John Gibbon’s division, and then Alex Hays’ wobbly-legged division, which was butting up against the left flank of what remained of the 11th Corps on Cemetery Hill. As it was, Hancock had already begun handing out regiments from other 2nd Corps brigades to hold up the forlorn ends of Humphreys’ division—first the 15th Maine and 82nd New York, then the 19th Maine—and in fairly short order Hancock realized that he had sent away an entire brigade from Gibbon’s division. Barksdale had wheeled and was driving up the Emmitsburg Road; Wofford was roaring down the wheat field lane in pursuit of Ayres’ Regulars. And now, coming against what was left of Humphreys’ division along the Emmitsburg Road, were Wilcox’s Alabama and Lang’s Florida brigades, bent on delivering the coup de grâce to Humphreys. And it was while that last gray cloud was rolling toward Humphreys that “General Meade informed me that General Sickles had been wounded, and directed me to assume command of the Third Corps in addition to that of my own.”1
John Gibbon heard Hancock growl “some expressions of discontent.” But discontent or not, Hancock wasted no time in taking charge. He wanted artillery, and sent an aide off to the artillery reserve to get some; he wanted infantry, and more aides were sent off to find Otis Howard and Henry Slocum and beg troops from their corps; he rode into Humphreys’ “depleted command” (and the distracted Humphreys, unable to get Francis Heath’s Maine men to obey him, had no more than what was “scarcely equal to an ordinary battalion” standing with him) and told him “that I was commanding that front, including the 3rd Corps.” Hancock even managed to find David Birney. “General, you are nearly surrounded by the enemy,” Hancock announced, as though this was news to Birney. “I know it,” Birney irritably shot back; wasn’t Hancock aware that “we have been contending against a superior force all the afternoon”? No matter, replied Hancock, “I have seen this,” and he was there to save the day.2
The first priority was to string together some sort of fallback line between the loose end of the 2nd Corps and the artillery line Freeman McGilvery was struggling to amass east of the Trostle farm. In addition to the three regiments he had already posted in that gap, Hancock got a small dribbling of help from the depleted artillery reserve. The help consisted of only two batteries, the six Napoleons of Evan Thomas’ Battery C, 4th U.S., and another half-dozen Napoleons in the form of Gulian Weir’s Battery C, 5th U.S. Artillery, but they would have to do. Hancock personally situated them to anchor the three regiments, Weir in the middle and Thomas on the left flank of the 19th Maine—and then, for good measure, he pulled in yet another regiment, the 1st Minnesota, to cover Thomas’ battery.
These guns would do little more than make up the loss of Humphreys’ last two batteries on the Emmitsburg Road, which were at that moment making a singularly disorganized exit. Careening toward the 19th Maine, they forced Francis Heath to order “files broken to the rear to let the guns & horses pass.” They also triggered a crack of profane thunder from Hancock, who roared, “If I commanded this regt. I’d be God Damned if I would not charge bayonets on you”—which, considering that Heath had refused an order from Humphreys to do just that, might have had interesting consequences. But neither Weir nor Thomas, or the 1st Minnesota, were enough to cover the toothless gap of 400 yards that the flight of the 3rd Corps had opened up, much less to protect McGilvery from the still oncoming crush of Barksdale’s yowling, triumphant Mississippians. Hancock looked to his right, to Alex Hays’ division, and sent off an aide to Hays, at the far north end of the 2nd Corps line. “General Hancock sends his compliments,” the staffer reported, “and wishes you to send one of your best Brigades over there,” pointing to the Trostle farm, where the Mississippians had just overrun Malbone Watson’s battery.3
At that moment, Alexander Hays, who was the rare man in this army who loved fighting and brawling more than anything else in life, had been chatting with Col. George Willard. Hays turned a cocked eye on Willard and snorted: “Take your Brigade over there and knock Hell out of the rebs.” Hardly anyone would have regarded George Willard’s brigade as Hays’ “best.” These were the notorious “Harpers Ferry Cowards”—the 39th, 111th, 125th, and 126th New York. But the supercharged Hays had adopted the New Yorkers as his pet rehabilitation project and by mid-May 1863, he was able to boast that “the Harper’s Ferry boys have turned out trumps, and when we do get a chance look out for blood.” It was nearly eight o’clock, and the sun was “declining behind the hills in the west.” But to Willard, who had been a captain in the Regulars until taking over the 125th as its colonel, it was high noon, and he was about to lead them to the reclamation of their honor.4
Willard took them forward with fixed bayonets in “close column by division,” waiting until he had reached “the rear of a bushy swale” which ran across the front of the Mississippians. Through the swale ran a meandering little stream
, hardly more than a drainage ditch, known as Plum Run, and there Willard deployed his regiments out into a line, the 125th New York on the left, the 126th in the center, and the 111th on the right. (Willard wanted to leave the 111th behind as a reserve, but Hancock, who rode part of the way with Willard, had no patience with observing the niceties of reserves at a time like this and “in great haste” ordered the 111th to close up on the others.) Barksdale’s Mississippians, who could see little in front of them “because of the smoke covering the field,” had barely enough time to collect themselves and get off one “deadly volley at less than ten paces” before the “Cowards” were on top of them, shouting deliriously Remember Harper’s Ferry! Remember Harper’s Ferry! “A short but terrible contest ensued in the bushes in the swale,” and then the Mississippians’ “fire slackened and they began to give back.” As they did, “large numbers” of them, staring at “the very points of our bayonets,” surrendered and “lay down in ranks.” The 126th New York was “scarcely able to step without treading on them.”5
The last of Willard’s regiments, the 39th New York, had been consolidated into only four companies, and was posted on Willard’s left flank as a guard against unlooked-for flanking movements by any other lurking Confederates. But the 39th had scores of their own to settle. An artillery lieutenant, Samuel Peeples, who had been knocked loose from Watson’s battery when the 21st Mississippi captured it, appealed to the 39th’s four companies to retake the battery. “If those Confederates are able to serve my guns, those troops you have just been forming … won’t stay there a minute,” Peeples added as a warning. So, “without drum or bugle, but with a single Hurrah,” the 39th surged forward, with the forlorn lieutenant picking up a rifle to join the charge. In minutes, they were “driving the enemy from the guns” and “the battery was ours.” The whooping New Yorkers promptly began “hauling the guns off the field by hand” toward McGilvery’s gun line.6
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