Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

by Allen C. Guelzo

  31. Rittenhouse, “The Battle of Gettysburg as Seen from Little Round Top,” 42–43; Henry Hunt to J. B. Bachelder (January 20, 1873), in Bachelder Papers, 1:428–29, 430; “Reports of Brig. Gen. Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery” (September 27, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):238–39; Gottfried, The Artillery of Gettysburg, 196–97; Hunt, “The Third Day at Gettysburg,” Battles & Leaders, 3:372, 374.

  32. “Will the infantry endure so effective a fire without some of its leaders calling out in anger, ‘What is the use of our artillery if it cannot keep that of the enemy from us?,’ ” wrote the Prussian artillery specialist Prince Kraft zü Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen. “ ‘Get on, you artillery, and go on firing!’ ” See Hunt, “The Third Day at Gettysburg,” Battles & Leaders, 3:374; “Reports of Brig. Gen. Henry J. Hunt, Chief of Artillery” (September 27, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):239; Edward H. Rogers, Reminiscences of Military Service in the Forty-Third Regiment, Massachusetts During the Great Civil War, 1862–1863 (Boston: Rand, Avery, 1883), 67; Karl Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, Letters on Artillery, trans. N. L. Walford (London: Edward Stanford, 1898), 307.

  33. Gambone, Hancock at Gettysburg, 134–35; “Report of Lieut. Col. Freeman McGilvery” and “Report of Capt. Patrick Hart, Fifteenth New York Battery” (August 2, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):884, 888; Hunt to J. B. Bachelder (January 20, 1873) and William Tecumseh Sherman (February 1882), and Patrick Hart to J. B. Bachelder (February 23, 1891), in Bachelder Papers, 1:432–33, 2:825–27, and 3:1798; Eric A. Campbell, “A Brief History and Analysis of the Hunt-Hancock Controversy,” in The Third Day: The Fate of a Nation, 254, 270; Edward Longacre, The Man Behind the Guns: A Military Biography of General Henry J. Hunt (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003), 172; Charles S. Wainwright, diary entry for July 4, 1863, in A Diary of Battle, 253.

  34. Gottfried, The Artillery of Gettysburg, 208; Brown, Cushing of Gettysburg, 241; Hunt to J. B. Bachelder (January 20, 1873), in Bachelder Papers, 1:428–29; Gibbon, Personal Recollections of the Civil War, 149–50.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE The shadow of a cloud across a sunny field

  1. Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate, 418; Beecham, Gettysburg, The Pivotal Battle of the Civil War, 230; “Reports of General Robert E. Lee, C.S. Army” (January 1864), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 2):320; Wright, No More Gallant a Deed, 306; Rollins, “Lee’s Artillery Prepares for Pickett’s Charge,” 50; Murray, “Cowan’s, Cushing’s and Rorty’s Batteries in Action During the Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble Charge,” 46, and “Brig. Gen. Alexander Hays’ Division at Gettysburg,” 87; John H. Rhodes, The History of Battery B, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, in the War to Preserve the Union (Providence, RI: Snow & Farnham, 1894), 209–13; Hess, Pickett’s Charge, 163.

  2. Alexander to J. B. Bachelder (May 3, 1876), in Bachelder Papers, 1:489–90, “The Great Charge and Artillery Fighting at Gettysburg,” in Battles & Leaders, 3:364, and Fighting for the Confederacy, 246, 258; Rollins, “Lee’s Artillery Prepares for Pickett’s Charge,” 50–51; Priest, Into the Fight, 77.

  3. Twemlow, Considerations on Tactics and Strategy, 28; Kinglake, Invasion of the Crimea, 3:90; Alexander, “The Great Charge and Artillery Fighting at Gettysburg,” 364, and Fighting for the Confederacy, 258, 259.

  4. Cowan, “Cowan’s New York Battery,” National Tribune (November 12, 1903); Alexander, “The Great Charge and Artillery Fighting at Gettysburg,” 364–65, and “Causes of the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg,” 107–8; Bright, “Pickett’s Charge,” 263; Alexander to J. B. Bachelder (May 3, 1876), in Bachelder Papers, 1:489–90; Priest, Into the Fight, 82, 189–93; Longstreet, Manassas to Appomattox, 392, and “Lee in Pennsylvania,” in Annals of the War, 431; Atkinson, “Seminary Ridge on July 3,” in The Third Day: The Fate of a Nation, 133–34; McLaws, “Gettysburg,” SHSP 7 (February 1879), 80; de Trobriand, Four Years with the Army of the Potomac, 508; Page, History of the Fourteenth Regiment, Connecticut Vol. Infantry, 150; Wright, No More Gallant a Deed, 306; Scott, “Pickett’s Charge as Seen from the Front Line,” 9–10; Waitt, History of the Nineteenth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 238.

  5. Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, 264; “Notes on the 24th Michigan and Col. Henry Morrow,” in Bachelder Papers, 1:333–34; Asa Sleath Hardman, “As a Union Prisoner Saw the Battle of Gettysburg,” Civil War Times 51 (August 2012), 40; Henry Jacobs, “How an Eye-Witness Watched the Great Battle,” Adams County Historical Society; “A.J.B.,” Emmitsburg Chronicle (March 25, 1976), in John Allen Miller, “Signal Operations of Emmitsburg During the Civil War,” Emmitsburg Historical Society.

  6. Coddington, The Gettysburg Campaign, 502; Tucker, High Tide at Gettysburg, 357; Noah Andre Trudeau, Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 479; Winthrop Sheldon, The “Twenty-seventh,” 79–82; de Trobriand, Four Years with the Army of the Potomac, 508; Thompson, “A Scrap of Gettysburg,” 102, 104; Gates, diary entry for July 3, 1863, in The Civil War Diaries of Col. Theodore B. Gates, 93; Capt. Winfield Scott, “Pickett’s Charge as Seen from the Front Line” (1888), in Civil War Papers of the California Commandery of the Loyal Legion, 60:9–11; “Testimony of Major General Abner Doubleday” (March 1, 1864) and “Testimony of General John Gibbon” (April 1, 1864), in Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 4:309, 443. The conflicting descriptions of the emergence of the Confederates from Spangler’s Woods raise the interesting question of whether the initial movement of Pickett’s division, if not Pettigrew’s and Trimble’s, might have been in column rather than line. In the 24th Virginia, one captain reported that the “first movement” of Kemper’s brigade out of the wood line was “by the left flank to the depth of a regt. & then by the front” (in other words, in column of regiments), while William Swallow insisted that the “nine brigades” of Pickett’s division were formed “in the direct column of attack.” On the other side of the fields, a soldier in the 149th Pennsylvania saw Pickett’s division “come out of the woods in column of fours,” and Norman Hall wrote (two weeks after the battle) that the grand charge involved groups of infantry in line of battle in front and rear, but “opposite the main point of attack was what appeared to be a column of battalions.” (Hall actually drew a diagram showing the main body of the Confederates attacking in column.) Charles Devens reminded the veterans of the 15th Massachusetts at the dedication of their battlefield monument at Gettysburg in 1886 that “the enemy … formed for the attack in two lines, which, as they move, contract their front … thus having the appearance and to some extent the formation of columns.” Especially to the Vermont brigade, Pickett’s division “looked … like a column and a very wide and deep one,” and George Stannard “insists that it was a column … massed by regiments.” Otis Howard, from his vantage point on Cemetery Hill, agreed with Stannard: “It was more like a closed column,” spread across “a mile of frontage.” See Capt. W. W. Bentley to Capt. W. Fry (July 9, 1863), in Rollins, ed., Pickett’s Charge: Eyewitness Accounts, 163, 167; J. W. Nesbit, “Sketches and Echoes—Recollections of Pickett’s Charge,” National Tribune (November 16, 1916); “Reports of Col. Norman J. Hall, Seventh Michigan Infantry, Commanding Third Brigade” (July 17, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):437; Swallow, “The Third Day at Gettysburg,” Southern Bivouac 4 (February 1886), 566–67; Charles Devens, “Address to the Fifteenth Regiment Association on Their Visit to the Battlefield of Gettysburg, June 1886,” in Orations and Addresses on Various Occasions, Civil and Military, A. L. Devens, ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1891), 190–91; Benedict to J. B. Bachelder (December 24, 1863), in Bachelder Papers, 1:48–50, and Vermont at Gettysburgh, 16; Howard, Autobiography, 1:438.

  7. Kemper to Rev’d A. L. Pollock, Papers of the Janney and Pollock Families, Special Collections, University of Virginia; Wallace, 3rd Virginia Infantry, 37–39; Harrison, Nothing but Glory, 39, 47; Johnston, Story of a Confederate Boy, 207–8; “Colonel Rawley Martin’s Account,” 186–87; Bright, “Pickett’s Charge,” 229–30; Papers of Ran
dolph Abbott Shotwell, 2:11; William A. and Patricia C. Young, 56th Virginia Infantry (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1990), 82–83; Priest, Into the Fight, 83; Allen, Under the Maltese Cross, 173; James H. Walker, in Rollins, ed., Pickett’s Charge: Eyewitness Accounts, 171; Henry T. Owen, “Pickett at Gettysburg,” in New Annals of the War, 300.

  8. Bright, “Pickett’s Charge,” 229–30; Wallace, 3rd Virginia Infantry, 37–38; James Robbins, Last in Their Class: Custer, Pickett and the Goats of West Point (New York: Encounter Books, 2006), 251; Robert Emmett Curran, ed., John Dooley’s Civil War: An Irish American’s Journey in the First Virginia Infantry Regiment (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012), 160; Divine, 8th Virginia Infantry, 22; Mayo, “Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg,” 332; Cook, “Personal Reminiscences of Gettysburg,” 334. Porter Alexander, an “old friend” of Garnett’s, insisted that Garnett was “buttoned up in an old blue overcoat, in spite of the heat of the day” (see Alexander, “Causes of the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg,” 108), but Henry Thweatt Owen, a captain in the 18th Virginia, countered that Garnett was wearing his “fine, new gray uniform … when killed in the charge at Gettysburg” (see Owen, “Error in Hon. James W. Boyd’s Speech,” Confederate Veteran 12 [January 1904], 7), as did James W. Clay of the 18th Virginia, in “About the Death of General Garnett,” Confederate Veteran 13 (February 1906), 81.

  9. Loehr, “The ‘Old First’ Virginia at Gettysburg,” 33–34; Robert H. Moore, The Richmond Fayette, Hampden, Thomas, and Blount’s Lynchburg Artillery (Lynchburg, VA: H. E. Howard, 1991), 78; Charles Teague, “Right Gone Awry: ‘We broke, tearing back pell-mell … in full, breathless flight,’ ” in The Third Day: The Fate of a Nation, 205; Papers of Randolph Shotwell, 2:10; W. Gart Johnson, “Reminiscences of Lee and of Gettysburg,” Confederate Veteran (August 1893), 246; Thomas D. Houston, “Storming Cemetery Hill,” Philadelphia Weekly Times (October 21, 1882); “Captain John Holmes Smith’s Account,” SHSP 32 (Richmond, VA: Southern Historical Society, 1904), 190–91; Scott, “Pickett’s Charge as Seen from the Front Line,” 6–7, 11–12; Webb interview with Alexander Kelly (November 26, 1905), in Generals in Bronze, 154.

  10. Thompson, “A Scrap of Gettysburg,” 102, 104; “Report of Lieut. Col. Freeman McGilvery” and “Report of Capt. Patrick Hart” (August 2, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):884, 888; “Address by Col. Andrew Cowan,” in In Memoriam, Alexander Stewart Webb, 66; Cowan to J. B. Bachelder (August 26, 1866), in Bachelder Papers, 1:282–83; Allen, Under the Maltese Cross, 172–73; H. Seymour Hall, “At Gettysburg with the Sixth Corps” (November 6, 1896), in War Talks in Kansas, 264. Cadmus Wilcox estimated the distance even more closely; the “Federal artillery opened after Pickett had gone 150 yards” (Scrapbook, p. 128, Cadmus Wilcox Papers [box 1], Library of Congress).

  11. “Civil War Letters of Francis Edwin Pierce of the 108th New York Volunteer Infantry,” in Rochester in the Civil War, 170; Lt. Theron Parson’s diary, in Washburn, A Complete Military History and Record of the 108th Regiment N.Y. Vols., 50, 52; Scott, “Pickett’s Charge as Seen from the Front Line,” 9–11; “The 126th in Battle!—Heroic Valor and Its Fearful Cost!,” Geneva Gazette (July 10, 1863).

  12. Crocker, Gettysburg—Pickett’s Charge, 16, 18; “Report of Maj. Charles S. Peyton, Nineteenth Virginia Infantry” (July 9, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 2):386; W. B. Robertson to “Dear Mother” (July 28, 1863), in John Warwick Daniel Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia; “To Dear Brother Evans” (December 2, 1909), in Christiancy and Pickett Family Papers [box 1, file 3], Library of Congress; “Colonel Rawley Martin’s Account,” SHSP 32 (January–December 1904), 187–88; Report of Maj. Joseph R. Cabell, 38th Virginia (July 11, 1863), Armistead/ Barton/Steuart Brigade, Pickett’s Division, Letter Book, Eleanor S. Brockenbrough Library, Museum of the Confederacy.

  13. Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, 262; “Report of Capt. William Davis, Sixty-Ninth Pennsylvania Infantry” (July 12, 1863) and “Report of Maj. Charles S. Peyton, Nineteenth Virginia Infantry” (July 9, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):431, and (pt. 2):386; J. B. Hardenburgh to Theodore B. Gates (October 9, 1878), in Theodore Gates Miscellaneous Manuscripts [folder one], New-York Historical Society; Frey, Longstreet’s Assault—Pickett’s Charge, 126; R. L. Murray, “Brig. Gen. Alexander Hays’ Division at Gettysburg,” 89; Cowtan, Services of the Tenth New York Volunteers, 211–12.

  14. Atkinson, “Seminary Ridge on July 3,” in The Third Day: The Fate of a Nation, 117; Bright, “Pickett’s Charge,” 232; Waters and Edmonds, A Small but Spartan Band, 76; Priest, Into the Fight, 89; Hess, Pickett’s Charge, 175–76; Divine, 8th Virginia Infantry, 22, 24; Harrison, Nothing but Glory, 42–43; William R. Driver, “Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg” (1879), in Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, 3:353–54; James Risque Hutter, in John Warwick Daniel Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia; Reardon, Pickett’s Charge, 21, 23; Teague, “Right Gone Awry,” 207–8.

  15. Papers of Randolph Abbott Shotwell, 2:13, 23–24; J. H. Moore, “Longstreet’s Assault,” Philadelphia Weekly Times (November 4, 1882); Joseph Hayes and Alexander Webb interview with Alexander Kelly (November 26, 1905), in Generals in Bronze, 135, 154; Priest, Into the Fight, 111–12; Swallow, “The Third Day at Gettysburg,” 567; Capt. R. H. Douthat to J. W. Daniel (January 14, 1905) and Erasmus Williams, “A Private’s Experience in the 14th Virginia at Gettysburg,” in John Warwick Daniel Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia; Fields, 28th Virginia Infantry, 26; Teague, “Right Gone Awry,” 211; Driver, “Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg,” 355; John W. H. Porter, “The Confederate Soldier,” Confederate Veteran 24 (October 1916), 460.

  16. R. Penn Smith, “The Battle—The Part Taken by the Philadelphia Brigade in the Battle,” Gettysburg Compiler (June 7, 1887); “Address by Col. Andrew Cowan,” in In Memoriam, Alexander Stewart Webb, 65–66; “Colonel Rawley Martin’s Account,” SHSP 32 (January–December 1904), 188.

  17. Alexander Webb interview with Alexander Kelly (November 26, 1905), in Generals in Bronze, 159; Anthony W. McDermott to J. B. Bachelder (June 2, 1886), in Bachelder Papers, 3:1410–11; Ernsberger, Paddy Owen’s Regulars, 2:600; Swallow, “The Third Day at Gettysburg,” 572.

  18. Edmund Berkeley, in John Warwick Daniel papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia; Winfield Peters, “The Lost Sword of Gen. Richard B. Garnett, Who Fell at Gettysburg,” SHSP 33 (January–February 1905), 28–29; Brown, Cushing of Gettysburg, 250–51; Bruce, The Twentieth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 293; Cowan to William Spencer (January 17, 1911), in R. L. Murray, Hurrah for the Ould Flag! The True Story of Captain Andrew Cowan and the First New York Independent Battery at Gettysburg (Wolcott, NY: Benedum Books, 1998), 91; Henry N. Hamilton to J. B. Bachelder (April 22, 1864) and Birkett D. Fry to J. B. Bachelder (December 27, 1877), J. B. Bachelder to Fitzhugh Lee (December 1892), in Bachelder Papers, 1:179, 519, and 3:1899; “Report of Capt. Henry L. Abbott, Twentieth Massachusetts Infantry” (July 16, 1863) and “Reports of Sylvanus W. Curtis, Seventh Michigan Infantry” (July 16, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):445, 450; Mayo, “Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg,” 333; Fry, “The Forlorn and Forgotten 59th New York,” 112; Murray, “Cowan’s Cushing’s and Rorty’s Batteries,” 52; “Address by Col. Andrew Cowan,” in In Memoriam, Alexander Stewart Webb, 67.

  19. Second Vermont Brigade, “Extract from General Stannard’s diary,” George G. Benedict to J. B. Bachelder (March 16, 1864), and J. L. Kemper to William Swallow (February 4, 1886) in Bachelder Papers, 1:55–57, 96, and 2:1192; Benedict, Vermont at Gettysburgh, 15–16, 17–18; Joseph Mayo, “Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg,” 333; Gottfried, Brigades of Gettysburg, 469–70; Hess, Pickett’s Charge, 229; Dreese, The Hospital on Seminary Ridge, 122.

  20. Fuger, “Cushing’s Battery at Gettysburg,” Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States 41 (January–February 1908), 408; Bane, History of the Philadelphia Brigade, 193; Lash, “Duty Well
Done,” 345; B. L. Farinholt [53rd Virginia] to J. W. Daniel (April 15, 1905) and F. M. Bailey [9th Virginia] to J. W. Daniel (December 22, 1904), John Warwick Daniel Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia; Robertson, 18th Virginia Infantry, 23; “Address by Col. Andrew Cowan,” in In Memoriam, Alexander Stewart Webb, 68; James T. Carter, “Flag of the Fifty-Third Va. Regiment,” Confederate Veteran 10 (June 1902), 263; Swallow, “The Third Day at Gettysburg,” 566–67. Andrew Cowan had one word for the melodramatic accounts of Cushing crying, “I will give them one more shot,” or struggling to hold together his bullet-torn intestines as he pulled his final lanyard—“absurd!” See Andrew Cowan, “When Cowan’s Battery Withstood Pickett’s Splendid Charge,” Buffalo Sunday Morning News (July 2, 1911) and Alfred E. Lee, The Battle of Gettysburg, 136.

  21. “Reports of Col. Norman J. Hall” (July 17, 1863), in O.R., series one, 27 (pt. 1):439; Anthony W. McDermott, A Brief History of the 69th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers (Philadelphia: D. J. Gallagher, 1887), 32; McDermott to J. B. Bachelder (August 2, 1886), in Bachelder Papers, 3:1411–12; Frey, Longstreet’s Assault—Pickett’s Charge, 139–40; Young, 56th Virginia Infantry, 85–86; Twemlow, Considerations on Tactics and Strategy, 74; Jacob Hoke, Historical Reminiscences of the War; or, Incidents which Transpired in and Around Chambersburg During the War of the Rebellion (Chambersburg, PA: M. A. Foltz, 1884), 83; Fuger, “Cushing’s Battery at Gettysburg,” 408; Gibbon, Personal Recollections of the Civil War, 152, and “Testimony of General John Gibbon” (April 1, 1864), in Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 4:443–44.

  22. B. L. Farinholt [53rd Virginia] to J. W. Daniel (April 15, 1905), John Warwick Daniel Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia.