Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

by Allen C. Guelzo

  Longstreet divined what had happened before Lee, probably because he was expecting it. Arthur Fremantle arrived at where Longstreet had settled himself, “at the top of a snake fence at the edge of the wood,” and unwisely bubbled with enthusiasm, “I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.” Longstreet rounded angrily on the Guards officer: “The devil you wouldn’t! I would like to have missed it very much; we’ve attacked and been repulsed: look there!” Fremantle cast his eye over the “open space between the two positions, and saw it covered with Confederates slowly and sulkily returning towards us in small broken parties.” They moved no “faster than a walk … in irregular and small groups, trailing their arms,” limping in “bleeding swarms.” Staffers who had gone forward with Pickett now came dribbling back in disarray—one “on foot, carrying his saddle, having just had his horse killed,” another “in the same predicament.” Then there was Pickett, “his dark dusty begrimed face bowed almost to his saddle and his horse at a walk … motioning men towards the rear with his hand” and howling to the first of Longstreet’s staff he met, Where, oh! Where is my division? He found Longstreet and poured out his heart “in terrible agony”: General, I am ruined; my division is gone—it is destroyed. Then it was the turn of Pettigrew, “his arm shattered,” to make the same dismal report, and apologize for being “unable to bring his men up again.” Never mind, Longstreet replied, “just let them remain where they are: the enemy’s going to advance and will spare you the trouble.”2

  Powell Hill, who was observing the attack with Lee, “burst into tears … when the charging column was repulsed and streamed back from the enemy’s works.” Eventually, he collected himself sufficiently to walk down to Porter Alexander’s batteries, where he seemed to one of Alexander’s artillerymen “as if he were dazed, if not confounded at the scene before him.” Hill moved over to Carnot Posey’s skirmish line, ordering Posey’s Mississippians “to stop the retreating men and make them form.” But neither Posey nor Hill could make them rally, and beaten rebels continued back into the woods and beyond. Joe Davis came up “with his sword in his hand” and was stopped by one of Posey’s men: “General Davis, where is your brigade?” Davis looked up at him, then “pointed his sword at the skies,” and wordlessly “walked on.”3

  Robert E. Lee had spent most of the attack with “the light of battle … in his eyes, and it was plain he longed to be with the charging column.” If Raglan had been right at the Alma, and Napoleon III had been right at Solferino, then Lee had every expectation of being right in sending Pickett and Pettigrew into this great attack. And then, in the manner of some Southern Agave come suddenly to a realization of what he had done, Lee “ordered his horse and rode forward to meet the retreating divisions.” He met Pickett and took him “by the hand,” saying as apologetically as he could, “General, your men have done all that men could do, the fault is entirely my own.” Pickett should place his division “in rear of this hill, and be ready to repel the advance of the enemy should they follow up their advantage.” Pickett angrily interrupted him: General Lee, I have no division now. But Lee missed the point of Pickett’s anguish completely. “General Pickett,” he struggled soothingly, “you and your men have covered yourselves with glory.” Glory, Pickett replied, was not going to have the weight in the balances of loss that victory might have had. “Not all the glory in the world, General Lee, can atone for the widows and orphans this day has made.” Nor was Pickett the only one refusing to be consoled. Cadmus Wilcox stumbled up to Lee, complaining that he “came into Pennsylvania with one of the finest brigades in the Army of Northern Virginia and now my people are all gone.” It is all my fault, General, Lee repeated, and when Johnston Pettigrew found Lee, he received the same assurance, General Pettigrew, it is all my fault.4

  Yet the battle was not, strictly speaking, over. Early on the morning of July 3rd, J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry, now reinforced by Albert Jenkins’ brigade (which had remained attached to Ewell’s corps throughout the invasion) moved east along the York Pike, “pursuant to instructions from the commanding general.” Just what those instructions might be never was spelled out; Stuart implied in his official report that he “hoped to effect a surprise upon the enemy’s rear” while Longstreet’s great attack was under way. Stuart’s loyal aide Henry B. McClellan insisted two decades later that Stuart intended “to make a diversion which might aid the Confederate infantry to carry the heights held by the Federal army,” and perhaps even launch an attack on “the enemy’s rear.” How Stuart was to accomplish this with the 4,800 weary troopers he had brought into Gettysburg the afternoon before, plus Jenkins’ 1,100, is still anyone’s guess. Lee, a cavalry officer himself in the 1850s, had never used light cavalry for anything beyond the customary duties of scouting and screening, so it is far from likely that Lee was ready to sanction the use of Stuart’s horsemen for an infantry-cracking juggernaut-task in the spirit of Joachim Murat or the Prussian uhlans. It is remotely possible that Lee—or Stuart—might have had some notion of looping the cavalry far out to the east and then turning south to cut the Baltimore Pike somewhere east or south of Gettysburg. But the idea that Stuart meant to commit his small cavalry force to an attack on infantry belies every tactical lesson the Civil War afforded.5

  Still, if Stuart was looking for a fight, or merely to renew the brushfire encounter of the afternoon before at Hunterstown, he did not have to go far to find it. Three miles east of Gettysburg, Stuart’s four brigades brushed up against George Armstrong Custer’s Michigan cavalry brigade and a battery of artillery, and a spattering of artillery fire was traded back and forth along yet another undulating rise known as Cress Ridge, between the York Pike and the Hanover Road. In short order, a second Federal cavalry brigade, under John McIntosh, came up to reinforce Custer, followed by yet another brigade, this one belonging to John Irvin Gregg, followed by the overall division commander, John Gregg’s brother, David McMurtrie Gregg. McIntosh’s brigade was supposed to be Custer’s relief (Custer belonged to Judson Kilpatrick’s division, and Kilpatrick had moved the bulk of his division to the south end of the battlefield), but David Gregg easily persuaded Custer, who “conjectured” that some rough play was in the offing, to stay and the fight was on.

  For almost an hour, from 12:30 to 1:30, both sides jockeyed for advantage in a long-range duel between dismounted cavalry, fighting with carbines, and artillery. Stuart tried to dislodge the stalemate with an aggressive mounted attack across the farm of John Rummel, which in turn was met by a furious saber-swinging mounted counterattack by Custer and his Michigan cavalry, Custer at their head crying, “Come on, you Wolverines!” For an hour, the Rummel farm was turned into a smaller-scale version of the cavalry scrum at Brandy Station a month before. In the end, both sides drew off with little to show for it except for some minor casualties—less than 5 percent for Stuart, and half that for David Gregg, except for Custer’s brigade (where 32 men were killed and 147 wounded, a pattern of heedless bloodletting which Custer would carry to a more famous spot on a dusty hillside in Montana thirteen years later).6

  There was another cavalry action, this one involving a poorly calculated mounted attack on some of John Bell Hood’s infantry down by Big Round Top. As battered as Hood’s men had been by the fighting on July 2nd, they illustrated how little hope there was of light cavalry doing anything even remotely harmful to infantry by shooting the Union brigade apart. “We called out for them to throw down their sabres and get off their horses,” wrote an infantryman in the 1st Texas, “but they still kept on until shot.” The entire business got the brigade’s commander and twenty of his men killed, and on the whole it has to be said that the battle of Gettysburg would not have ended five minutes sooner or later if either affair had never happened.7

  Lee did have one other use for the cavalry, however. That night, he summoned John Imboden, whose rough-edged Virginia cavalry brigade had only just arrived the night before from Chambersburg. Imboden knew that “the day had gone against us,” but he assumed �
�that with to-morrow’s dawn would come a renewal of the struggle.” Lee, “who betrayed so much physical exhaustion” that Imboden “stepped forward to assist him,” knew that he had nothing left to fight with. The Army of Northern Virginia had fought enough in three days to equal three separate battles, where Lee had only been prepared, at most, to fight one, and if he asked any more of it, the entire army might fall apart. “The unsuccessful issue of our final attack” determined Lee’s mind to withdraw “to the west side of the mountains.” If the Federals attempted to follow him, he did not mind taking the chance of a strictly defensive fight, “if the enemy offers it.” But once on the far side of South Mountain, he would continue his retreat until the Confederates were once again on the south side of the Potomac.8

  The notion of “active operation” Lee now had in mind for Imboden was for the unstylish cavalryman (whom J.E.B. Stuart had deemed “inefficient”) to take immediate charge of the logistics of the retreat. “We must return to Virginia,” Lee began. “I have sent for you because your men are fresh, to guard the trains back to Virginia.” There were two routes open: the Cashtown Pike, leading back the way they had come, to Greenwood and thence south to Maryland and Williamsport on the Potomac, and the Fairfield Road, which led through the village of Fairfield and crossed South Mountain at Monterey Pass, and reached Waynesboro before also turning down toward Williamsport. The Fairfield route was twenty miles shorter, but the Chambersburg route had better roads, and so rather than risk piling the entire army onto just one thoroughfare, Lee wanted Imboden to take all the army’s ammunition, supply, and ambulance wagons by the more northerly Cashtown-to-Greenwood route. The infantry would use the Fairfield-to-Waynesboro route, with Powell Hill’s corps in the lead, followed by Longstreet’s, and then Ewell’s. Screening would be provided by Stuart and the cavalry, Fitz Lee’s brigade accompanying Imboden, and the rest covering the infantry’s tail.9

  This was not going to be an ordinary chore. “The wagons and ambulances and the wounded could not be ready to move till late in the afternoon,” Imboden wrote. Maps would have to be drawn up and distributed; orders would have to be written and sent off as far as Winchester to have empty wagons brought to meet the trains at the Potomac crossing; lists of names would have to be compiled and a rough triage would have to be performed by the surgeons, separating the wounded who could be accommodated by the existing transport from those who would have to be left behind for the Yankees to pick up. But Imboden did better than Lee could have hoped, and the head of his hastily organized train began rolling westward fifteen hours later. “The wagons and ambulances were loaded with all the wounded that could be moved,” wrote one of Fitz Lee’s troopers, “but we had to leave many of our poor fellows that we never saw again.”10

  It began to rain that night, “in blinding sheets,” and horses and mules “were blinded and maddened by the wind and water.” Longstreet’s men found “the roads muddy, wagon ruts deep, the night awful,” and Longstreet’s chief of staff, Moxley Sorrel, remembered a night of “rain in torrents, howling winds, and road almost impassable.” The gloom of the weather was matched by the slumping spirits of the army. “The battle of Gettysburg was … as clear a defeat as our army ever met with,” admitted Franklin Gaillard, the lieutenant colonel of the 2nd South Carolina. In the North Carolina and Georgia regiments, the misery fanned dissent. “The men from North Carolina … believe they will go back in the Union,” warned a soldier in the 53rd Georgia, while “the men from Georgia say that if the [Union] army invades Georgia they are going home. I don’t believe our army will fight much longer.” Even Lewis Armistead’s parting comment to Henry Bingham before Armistead was carried off—about doing an injury to “you all” which he would “repent”—sounded to Bingham like an admission that “the sentiment” of repentance now prevails “among some of the leading men of the South.”11

  There was more bad news the next morning. On July 4th, the 29,000 Confederate soldiers who formed the garrison of Vicksburg “marched out of their works, and formed line in front, stacked arms”—and surrendered. Bobbing in the waters of Chesapeake Bay, Alexander Stephens’ truce boat waited in Hampton Roads for permission to proceed up the Potomac, but with the news that “Lee is on the retreat,” Stephens’ request to come to Washington was deemed by Lincoln and his cabinet to be “inadmissible.” In Pittsburgh, the newspapers exulted that “the peace-at-any-price leaders … are trimming their sails to the fresh gale of success favoring the Union cause.” In New York City, “soon after daylight,” church bells “began clanging, and cannon firing … in Union Square,” and New York’s Democratic governor was persuaded to omit from a scheduled speech “a fierce attack upon the war management of the Government and its generals and a eulogy of McClellan.” Everything Robert E. Lee had hoped to gain by coming north had been lost.12

  At first, George Gordon Meade had no idea that Pickett’s final attack had been repulsed. Having taken himself, in a worst-case scenario, down to the artillery redoubt on Powers Hill, Meade had “only a few orderlies” with him and it was only after “the enemy’s artillery fire ceasing, heavy musketry firing being heard, and … meeting many men moving to the rear,” that it occurred to Meade that defeat had not descended upon him after all. He started off for the Taneytown Road, meeting his son, Capt. George G. Meade, Jr., and telling young George to join him “at his Head Qrs. or on the line.” Meade came up behind the right flank of the 2nd Corps, and gradually worked his way up the line, looking for Alex Hays or anyone who could tell him what had happened. (Meade was, for a moment, surrounded by “a large body of prisoners” who recognized that “he was someone in authority” and began asking him “where they should go.”)

  Finally, John Gibbon’s aide Frank Haskell came up and Meade began pummeling him with questions. “How is it going here?” Meade asked, “earnest and full of care.” Haskell replied, “I believe, General, the enemy’s attack is repulsed.” Meade was astonished: “What! Is the assault already repulsed.” “It is, sir,” Haskell delightedly answered. Thank God, Meade marveled. Meade pushed on farther to find Hays, and instead found an officer commanding Woodruff’s battery who also assured Meade that the rebels had just turned and fled. Meade sat himself down “on a great bowlder” as reports began to stream in—he was particularly curious about the rumor “that General Longstreet had been killed … at the head of the charge”—and a band struck up “Hail to the Chief” and “Yankee Doodle.” Major Mitchell, Winfield Hancock’s aide, finally found Meade with Hancock’s message about “a great victory gained,” and he dictated a reply, thanking Hancock “for the service he has rendered the Country and me this day.”13

  It eventually occurred to Meade that he needed to find out if anything was in the offing elsewhere, and so he rode first up to Cemetery Hill, and then down to Little Round Top. From the ambulance which carried him from the field, Hancock sent Meade a follow-up message, explaining to Meade as delicately as a subordinate dared that “nothing is wanting” in the victory they had won but “to make it decisive,” which Meade could easily do if “the Sixth and Fifth Corps” are “pressed up.” Alf Pleasonton, who joined Meade at “the top of the mountain,” also begged Meade “to order a general advance of his whole army in pursuit of the enemy.” This was, Pleasonton argued, Meade’s once-in-a-lifetime chance “to show yourself a great general” and destroy Lee’s army the same way Wellington had Napoleon’s at Waterloo. (The Federal officers were not the only ones expecting Meade to attack; Longstreet, for one, shuddered at the possibility of seeing “Meade ride to the front and lead his forces to a tremendous counter-charge,” and so did Lee, who “expected Meade to follow the fugitives of Pickett’s division.”) But Meade only had the 6th Corps as his reserve, and only Crawford’s Pennsylvania Reserves from the 5th Corps were in any kind of useful shape, and though he ordered George Sykes to have Crawford and the Reserves “clear the woods” in front of Little Round Top where Hood’s and McLaws’ depleted divisions lay, he added that if Crawford
“found too strong a force I was not to engage them.” Crawford’s Reserves actually gained a good deal of ground, pushing disheartened rebel skirmishers past the wheat field and the stony ridge and bagging “over two hundred prisoners” before enough resistance forced Crawford to call it off. Otherwise, Meade was not in a mood to jeopardize what he was now beginning to realize was the first clear-cut victory the Army of the Potomac had enjoyed. And so although “Meade ordered demonstrations in front of our line,” a sighing Gouverneur Warren said, “they were very feebly made.”14

  When the morning of the 4th came, the rain was still plunging down in torrents, “but all was quiet,” and to the relief of the Confederates, “no enemy was in sight.” That afternoon, David Birney summoned the band of the 114th Pennsylvania “to play in honor of the National Anniversary” up on the “line of battle.” They played the usual “national airs, finishing up with ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’ At that moment, the rebels sent a shell over our lines.” It was the last shot of the battle of Gettysburg.15

  That night, Meade called another council of war. Despite the weather, Union signalers had spotted the movement of Lee’s wagons on the Fairfield and Cashtown roads, and on the strength of those reports Meade issued a congratulatory order to the Army of the Potomac, announcing that the enemy “has now withdrawn from the contest … utterly baffled and defeated.” On the other hand, he had word from Francis Barlow, who turned out to be quite alive after his ordeal on July 1st and was convalescing at the Josiah Benner farmhouse, warning that “the movement of the enemy” was “a mere feint.” So, Meade added to his order, “our task is not yet accomplished,” and he looked to “the army for greater efforts to drive from our soil every vestige … of the invader.” He followed the order with a circular to the corps commanders that no “present move” would be made by the Army of the Potomac, “but to refit and rest” and “get the commands well in hand.”16