Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

by Allen C. Guelzo

  23. Powell, “Rebellion’s High Tide,” National Tribune (July 5, 1900); “Report of Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Kane” (July 6, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):847; Morse, “The Twelfth Corps at Gettysburg,” 37; Charles P. Horton to J. B. Bachelder (January 23, 1867), in Bachelder Papers, 1:297; Paul Truitt, “The 7th Indiana Fighters,” National Tribune (November 11, 1925); Lawrence Wilson, “Charge up Culp’s Hill,” Washington Post (July 9, 1899); George K. Collins, Memoirs of the 149th Regt. N.Y. Vol. Inft., 3d Brig., 2d Div., 12th and 20th A.C. (Syracuse, NY: G. K. Collins, 1891), 148–49. Leigh, the son of a Virginia senator, was twenty-two years old. He was reburied in Richmond after the war in Shockoe Hill Cemetery.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Are you going to do your duty today?

  1. Meade to Margaretta Meade (July 3, 1863), George G. Meade Papers [box 1, folder 10], Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Meade, Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, 2:102–3; Gibbon, Recollections of the Civil War, 145; Meade to Halleck (July 2, 1863), Meade to French (July 3, 1863), and “Report of Brig. Gen. John C. Robinson” (July 18, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):72, 284, 290, and (pt. 3):501; Bruce, Twentieth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 286–87. Meade’s telegram to Halleck is time-marked “8 p.m.” in Meade’s report in the O.R., but George Meade, Jr., fixed the time in 1883 as “11 P.M.” See Meade, Did General Meade Desire to Retreat at the Battle of Gettysburg?, 22.

  2. Ernsberger, Paddy Owen’s Regulars, 1:530, 2:575, 583; David Shields to J. B. Bachelder (August 27, 1884), in Bachelder Papers, 2:1068.

  3. Sheldon, The “Twenty-Seventh”: A Regimental History, 79; Gambone, Hancock at Gettysburg, 114; Frassanito, Early Photography at Gettysburg, 234–35; Smith, Farms at Gettysburg, 13.

  4. Campbell, “ ‘Remember Harper’s Ferry’: The Degradation, Humiliation, and Redemption of Col. George L. Willard’s Brigade,” 73–74; R. L. Murray, “Cowan’s, Cushing’s and Rorty’s Batteries in Action During the Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble Charge,” Gettysburg Magazine 35 (July 2006), 39–40; Gottfried, Stopping Pickett, 151; Zachery A. Fry, “ ‘Boys, Bury Me on the Field’: The Forlorn and Forgotten 59th New York on Cemetery Ridge,” Gettysburg Magazine, 36 (January 2007), 110; Lash, “Duty Well Done: The History of Edward Baker’s California Regiment (71st Pennsylvania Infantry), 336.

  5. “Three Days’ Fighting—One of Stannard’s Men Tells of His First and Last Battle,” National Tribune (August 30, 1894); Leehan, Pale Horse at Plum Run, 85; “2d Regiment, N.Y.S. Militia (82d Volunteers),” (July 2, 1890), in New York at Gettysburg, 2:664; Waitt, History of the Nineteenth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 234–35; “Address of Capt. John E. Reilly,” in Pennsylvania at Gettysburg, 1:408; Robert, “The 72nd Pa.—The Trying March from Falmouth to Gettysburg,” National Tribune (September 1, 1887); “John W. Plummer’s Account,” in Rebellion Record, ed. Moore, 10:180.

  6. Gibbon, Personal Recollections of the Civil War, 146; Bruce, Twentieth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 289; Ford, Story of the Fifteenth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 272; Frank Aretas Haskell, “Gettysburg,” in Pickett’s Charge: Eyewitness Accounts at the Battle of Gettysburg, ed. Richard Rollins (Redondo Beach, CA: Rank & File Publications, 1994), 67–69; Ernsberger, Paddy Owen’s Regulars, 2:583; Nelson, The Battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, 157; Walter Harrison, Pickett’s Men: A Fragment of War History (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1870), 95–96; Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, 253; James T. Carter, “Flag of the Fifty-Third Va. Regiment,” Confederate Veteran 10 (June 1902), 263; Albert Walber, “From Gettysburg to Libby Prison,” in War Papers Read Before the Commandery of the State of Wisconsin, 4:194.

  7. Jacobs, Notes on the Rebel Invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania, 41; Bane, History of the Philadelphia Brigade, 187; Waitt, History of the Nineteenth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 234–35; History of the First Regiment, Delaware Volunteers, 81; Charles W. Cowtan, Services of the Tenth New York Volunteers, National Zouaves, in the War of the Rebellion (New York: Charles H. Ludwig, 1882), 207; “2d Regiment, N.Y.S. Militia (82d Volunteers),” (July 2, 1890), in New York at Gettysburg, 2:665; Thomas Galwey, The Valiant Hours (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1961), 112; H. E. Jacobs, Lincoln’s Gettysburg World-Message, 32.

  8. Thomas D. Houston, “Storming Cemetery Hill—An Account of Pickett’s Charge as Preserved in an Old Letter,” Philadelphia Weekly Times (October 21, 1882); Alexander to J. B. Bachelder (May 3, 1876), in Bachelder Papers, 1:484–85; Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, 253–54; “Letter from Col. J. N. Walton” (October 15, 1877), SHSP 5 (January–February 1878), 50–51; Joseph R. Cabell to Peyton Randolph (July 11, 1863) and W. R. Aylett (July 12, 1863), in Armistead/Barton/Steuart Brigade, Pickett’s Division, Letter Book, Eleanor S. Brockenbrough Library, Museum of the Confederacy; Alexander, “Causes of the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg,” SHSP 4 (September 1877), 102, 103.

  9. “Reports of Brig. Gen. Joseph R. Davis, C.S. Army,” in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 2):650.

  10. J. N. Turney, “The First Tennessee at Gettysburg,” Confederate Veteran (December 1900), 535–36; Johnston, Story of a Confederate Boy, 203–4; Divine, 8th Virginia Infantry, 21; Lee E. Wallace, 3rd Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1986), 36; Busey and Martin, Regimental Strengths, 184, 298–99; Ernsberger, Also for Glory Muster, 44–45, 47 48, 50–51, 52, 56, 62, 65, 71, 76; Hess, Pickett’s Charge, 38–39, 48, 72; Harrison, Nothing but Glory, 5–6, 13; Frederick M. Colston, “Gettysburg as I Saw It,” Confederate Veteran 5 (November 1897), 551–52. The estimates on the numbers of men in Pickett’s division, as well as in the overall attack commanded by Longstreet, have varied widely. Walter Harrison estimated that Pickett’s division had only 4,700 “rank and file” (Harrison, Pickett’s Men, 100). Charles Pickett, who served on his brother’s staff, put the number at a low of 4,800 in a letter to Henry T. Owen in February 1878 (Henry Thweatt Owen Papers, Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA), and Owen himself fixed the number in 1881 as 4,761 (“Pickett at Gettysburg,” in New Annals of the War, 300); Busey and Martin (Regimental Strengths and Losses, 217) set the number of Pickett’s infantry at around 5,000, after subtracting the division’s artillery battalion; K. G. Harrison counts “some 5,800 infantrymen,” but includes in that figure “those on detail as teamsters, drovers, cooks, aids, and ambulance drivers” (Nothing but Glory, 4).

  11. William Henry Morgan, Personal Reminiscences of the War of 1861–5, 166; Clark, “Wilcox’s Alabama Brigade at Gettysburg,” Confederate Veteran 17 (May 1909), 229–30; Edmund Berkeley, in John Warwick Daniel Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia; Alexander, “Causes of the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg,” SHSP 4 (September 1877), 105; Kimble, “Tennesseeans at Gettysburg—The Retreat,” 460; Alexander to J. B. Bachelder (May 3, 1876) and Fry to J. B. Bachelder (December 27, 1877), in Bachelder Papers, 1:486, 517; Randy Bishop, The Tennessee Brigade: A History of the Volunteers of the Army of Northern Virginia (Bloomington, IN: Rooftop Publishing, 2007), 201; Robert A. Bright, “Pickett’s Charge,” SHSP 31 (January–December 1903), 229; Ernsberger, Also for Glory Muster, 85; Harrison, Nothing but Glory, 16, 17; Bowden and Ward, Last Chance for Victory, 449–50; Robertson, 18th Virginia Infantry, 21.

  12. Edmund Berkeley, “Rode with Pickett,” Confederate Veteran 38 (May 1930), 175; Alexander, “Causes of the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg,” SHSP 4 (September 1877), 105–6; “Colonel Rawley Martin’s Account,” SHSP 32 (January–December 1904), 184–85; Crocker, Gettysburg—Pickett’s Charge: Address by James F. Crocker, before Stonewall Camp, Confederate Veterans, Portsmouth, Virginia, November 7th, 1894 (Portsmouth, VA: W. A. Fiske, 1905), 14.

  13. Ernsberger, Also for Glory Muster, 84; Fry to J. B. Bachelder (December 27, 1877), in Bachelder Papers, 1:518, and “Pettigrew’s Charge at Gettysburg,” SHSP 7 (February 1879), 91–92; Frank E. Fields, 28th Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1985), 25–26; Martin Hazlewood, “Gettysburg Charge,” SHSP 24 (January�
��December 1896), 232, 233, 235; Hess, Pickett’s Charge, 167–68.

  14. “Letter from Col. J. N. Walton” (October 15, 1877), SHSP 5 (January–February 1878), 50–51; Hess, Pickett’s Charge, 125; Longstreet, Manassass to Appomattox, 390–91, and “Lee in Pennsylvania,” in Annals of the War, 430; Alexander, “Causes of the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg,” SHSP 4 (September 1877), 106, and Military Memoirs of a Confederate, 421.

  15. Henry Knollys, The Elements of Field-Artillery: Designed for the Use of Infantry and Cavalry Officers (Edinburgh, U.K.: William Blackwood, 1877), 147, 151; William Miller Owen, “Recollections of the Third Day at Gettysburg,” The United Service: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Interests of the Military, Naval, and Civil Service 13 (August 1885), 149, and In Camp and Battle with the Washington Artillery of New Orleans: A Narrative (Boston: Ticknor & Co., 1885), 248–49, 253; “Reports of Maj. B. F. Eschleman, Washington (Louisiana) Artillery” (August 11, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 2):434; E. T. Bouldin to J. W. Daniel (May 23, 1906), John Warwick Daniel Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia.

  16. William E. Birkhimer, Historical Sketch of the Organization, Administration, Matériel and Tactics of the Artillery, United States Army (Washington, DC: James J. Chapman, 1884), 6–7; Robert K. Wright, The Continental Army (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1986), 103–4; K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 210–11; Sears, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign, 311, 319, 332–33; Hill, “McClellan’s Change of Base and Malvern Hill,” in Battles & Leaders, 2:394; Wise, The Long Arm of Lee, 1:305, 308.

  17. W. W. Jacobs, “Custer’s Charge—Little Hagerstown, the Scene of Bloody Strife in 1863,” National Tribune (August 27, 1896); Teague, “Right Gone Awry,” in The Third Day: The Fate of a Nation, 210; “Artillery Heard at Gettysburg,” Washington Daily National Republican (July 3, 1863); “Battle of Friday—Confirmation of the News via Harrisburg,” New York Herald (July 4, 1863); Harper, “If Thee Must Fight,” 251; George Clark, A Glance Backward; or, Some Events in the Past History of My Life (Houston, TX: Rein, 1914), 39; Gottfried, The Artillery of Gettysburg, 207.

  18. Johnston, The Story of a Confederate Boy, 206; McCreary, “Gettysburg: A Boy’s Experience,” 246; Bennett, Days of “Uncertainty and Dread,” 64; John C. West to Charles S. West (July 27, 1863), in A Texan in Search of a Fight, 95; James Huntington, in Edward C. Browne, “Maj. Thomas Osborn’s Artillery Line on July 3, 1863,” Gettysburg Magazine 41 (July 2009), 93; Benedict, Army Life in Virginia, 176; Charles Blinn, diary entry for July 4, 1863, in “1st Vermont Cavalry,” in GNMP Vertical Files [#6VT1-CAV]; Chauncey L. Harris to “Dear Father” (July 4, 1863), in George H. Washburne, A Complete Military History and Record of the 108th Regiment N.Y. Vols., from 1862 to 1864 (Rochester, NY: Press of E. P. Andrews, 1894), 52; Bane, History of the Philadelphia Brigade, 188.

  19. J. W. Anderson, “Scenes About Gettysburg—A Brave Boy,” Confederate Veteran 16 (May 1908), 230; Leehan, Pale Horse at Plum Run, 87; Small, The Sixteenth Maine Regiment, 122; Kimble, “Tennesseans at Gettysburg—The Retreat,” 460–62; Patrick, Knapsack and Rifle, 236; Priest, Into the Fight, 72–73; Andrew Cowan, “When Cowan’s Battery Withstood Pickett’s Splendid Charge,” Buffalo Sunday Morning News (July 2, 1911); “This Hell of Destruction: The Benjamin Thompson Memoir, Part 2,” Civil War Times Illustrated 12 (October 1973), 12; Kent Masterson Brown, Cushing of Gettysburg: The Story of a Union Artillery Commander (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 235; R. L. Murray, “Brig. Gen. Alexander Hays’ Division at Gettysburg,” Gettysburg Magazine 42 (July 2010), 86.

  20. L. A. Smith, “Recollections of Gettysburg,” 303–4; William P. Haines, History of the Men of Co. F, with Description of the Marches and Battles of the 12th New Jersey Vols. (Camden, NJ: C. S. McGrath, 1897), 41; Waitt, History of the Nineteenth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 237.

  21. “The Battlefield at Gettysburg—Mr. Thomas W. Knox’s Despatch,” New York Herald (July 6, 1863); “Report of Lt. Col. Charles H. Morgan,” in Bachelder Papers, 3:1360.

  22. Hanifen, History of Battery B, First New Jersey Artillery, 81; Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, 2:106; Hess, Pickett’s Charge—The Last Attack at Gettysburg, 134–36; Meade to J. B. Bachelder (December 4, 1869), in Bachelder Papers, 1:378–79; Theodore Lyman, diary entry for September 9, 1864, in Meade’s Army: The Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman, 32–33; “Thursday’s Doubtful Issue—Friday’s Victory” (July 4, 1863), in A Radical View: The “Agate” Dispatches of Whitelaw Reid, 2:52–54.

  23. Ernsberger, Paddy Owen’s Regulars, 2:584; David Shields to J. B. Bachelder (August 27, 1884), in Bachelder Papers, 2:1069; Washburn, A Complete Military History and Record of the 108th Regiment N.Y. Vols., 52; “Civil War Letters of Samuel S. Partridge of the ‘Rochester Regiment,’ ” in Rochester in the Civil War, Blake McKelvey, ed. (Rochester, NY: Rochester Historical Society, 1944), 43; Brown, Cushing of Gettysburg, 235; Small, Sixteenth Maine Regiment, 123–24; J. W. Chase to Samuel S. Chase (August 5, 1863), in Yours for the Union: The Civil War Letters of John W. Chase, 266–67; Browne, “Maj. Thomas Osborn’s Artillery Line on July 3, 1863,” 101.

  24. “Remarks by Capt. John D. Rogers, 71st Pa. Vols.,” in In Memoriam, Alexander Stewart Webb, 89; Haskell, The Battle of Gettysburg, 53; Benedict, Vermont at Gettysburgh, 14; Cook, “Personal Reminiscences of Gettysburg,” 136; Scott, “Pickett’s Charge as Seen from the Front Line,” 6–7; David X. Junkin, The Life of Winfield Scott Hancock: Personal, Military, and Political, 105; Gambone, Hancock at Gettysburg, 118–19; Tucker, Hancock the Superb, 150–51; Walker, General Hancock, 139; Washburn, A Complete Military History and Record of the 108th Regiment N.Y. Vols., 52

  25. Howard, “Campaign and Battle of Gettysburg, June and July, 1863,” 63; Browne, “Maj. Thomas Osborn’s Artillery Line on July 3, 1863,” 101; J. B. Hardenburgh to Theodore B. Gates (October 9, 1878), in Theodore Gates Miscellaneous Manuscripts [folder 1], New-York Historical Society; Newell, “Ours”: Annals of the 10th Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, 223; James Lorenzo Brown, History of the Thirty-Seventh Regiment, Mass. Volunteers, in the Civil War of 1861–1865 (Holyoke, MA: Clark W. Bryan & Co., 1884), 185; Judson, History of the Eighty-Third Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, 136–37.

  26. Kinglake, The Invasion of the Crimea, 3:95; Ernsberger, Paddy Owen’s Regulars, 2:584–88; “Letter of Brig. Gen. Alexander S. Webb to His Wife” (July 6, 1863), in Bachelder Papers, 1:18; “Reports of Col. Norman J. Hall, Seventh Michigan Infantry” (July 17, 1863) and “Reports of Sylvanus W. Curtis, Seventh Michigan Infantry” (August 6, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):437, 449; Haskell, The Battle of Gettysburg, 55; Wright, No More Gallant a Deed, 305–6; Waitt, History of the Nineteenth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1861–1865, 235–36; Rollins, “Lee’s Artillery Prepares for Pickett’s Charge,” 50; Barnett, “Robert E. Lee and the Cannonade of July 3,” in The Third Day: The Fate of a Nation, 99.

  27. Browne, “Maj. Thomas Osborn’s Artillery Line on July 3, 1863,” 94, 95; Joseph C. Mayo, “Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg” (1906), in SHSP 34 (Richmond, VA: Southern Historical Society, 1906), 330; James L. Speicher, The Sumter Flying Artillery: A Civil War History of the Eleventh Battalion, Georgia Light Artillery (Gretna, LA: Pelican, 2009), 194; Redwood, “A Boy in Gray,” Scribner’s Monthly 22 (September 1881), 646–47; Howard, “Campaign and Battle of Gettysburg, June and July, 1863,” 67.

  28. Edmund Berkeley, in John Warwick Daniel Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia; Ernsberger, Also for Glory Muster, 90; Kemper to E. Porter Alexander, Dearborn Confederate Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University; Wert, General James Longstreet, 290; “Letter from an Unknown Member of the Quitman Guards to His Sister,” in The 16th Mississippi Infantry, 178.

  29. McCarthy, Detailed Minutiae of Soldier Life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 107; John T. Winterich, “Elizabeth Allen,” in Notable American Women, 160
7–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Edward T. James (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 2:37; Joseph C. Mayo, “Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg,” 331; Johnston, The Story of a Confederate Boy, 206, 217–18; Harrison, Nothing but Glory, 24, 27, 29, 30, 31.

  30. Hunton, in Bowden and Ward, Last Chance for Victory, 453–54; “Reports of Brig. Gen. Joseph R. Davis, C.S. Army,” in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 2):650; The Papers of Randolph Shotwell, ed. J. G. D. Hamilton (Raleigh: North Carolina Historical Commission, 1931), 2:8; “Reports of Brig. Gen. Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery” (September 27, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):232; Hunt to J. B. Bachelder (January 20, 1873), in Bachelder Papers, 1:426. Hunt understood his role as chief of artillery to be “to make the necessary dispositions and to give all directions I considered necessary” for the artillery of the Army of the Potomac “during the rest of the battle.” This was an assumption on Hunt’s part: during the Chancellorsville campaign, Joe Hooker had decided to dispense with a chief of artillery, leaving the fussy, self-important Hunt to spin as an unneeded wheel at headquarters, and only with Meade’s appointment on June 28th did Hunt reassert himself and begin once more behaving as the artillery chief. Or at least, that was how Meade had decided to allow Hunt to behave. There was, in truth, no actual reappointment. But Hunt insisted that Meade had told him during his wee-hours inspection of Cemetery Hill on July 2nd that the artillery “is your affair, take the proper measure to provide against the attack, and make the line safe with artillery.”