by John Keegan
As the fighting in the Devil’s Den reached its climax, the combatants were passed to the south by the 15th Alabama Regiment, which was heading for Little Round Top, via the higher Round Top. Meade’s chief engineer, General Gouverneur K. Warren, had spotted the danger just in time. Little Round Top, if taken, would have allowed the Confederates to position artillery in enfilade and drench the whole length of the Union line with fire. With minutes to spare, he sent the 20th Maine to join the Union signal party on the summit to oppose the Confederate advance. The 20th Maine was commanded by one of the outstanding regimental officers of the Union army, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, who in peacetime taught rhetoric and foreign languages at Bowdoin College. Refused permission by the college authorities to join the army, he had taken study leave and joined up anyhow. At Little Round Top, with 386 men, he took steps, under withering enemy fire, which saved the Union left flank and probably Meade’s entire army from defeat. His two brothers were officers in the regiment. Sending one ahead to seek out a place to collect the wounded and the other to the rear to keep the ranks closed up, he arrived on the summit of Little Round Top as the 15th Alabama was appearing. He deployed his B Company at an angle to the regimental line, to protect the flank, and then ordered sustained fire. His regiment also received heavy fire from the Alabamans. Very rapidly the 20th suffered 125 casualties out of its strength of 386 and was running out of ammunition. Chamberlain then ordered those still standing to fix bayonets and led a charge which swept the enemy off the hill and took 300 prisoners.
The success at Little Round Top and the preceding success in the Devil’s Den and the Wheatfield achieved the effect of blunting the whole Confederate offensive that was intended to collapse the Union line. Much of the credit belongs to General Daniel Sickles, who, in disobedience to orders, had brought his Third Corps down from Cemetery Ridge to occupy the Peach Orchard-Wheatfield salient, thus deepening the Union line precisely at the point where Lee planned to breach it—creative disobedience, since it frustrated a most dangerous stroke by the enemy. Another small regiment, the 1st Minnesota, only 262 strong, turned the tide here, losing 216 of its soldiers killed or wounded in its counter-charge to the Confederate attack. The 1st Minnesota had taken part in every major battle fought thus far in the east, which perhaps explains the effect of its action. By 7:30 p.m. the Union units had just succeeded in holding the northern end of its line on Cemetery Hill, but its line had been so weakened by the need to move units about that Meade began to fear that it could not be held the following day, July 3, when he expected Lee to attack again. As the Confederates had made their first effort at the northern end of the Union front and the second at the southern end, he expected the danger area on the morrow to be in the centre. He told General John Gibbon, commanding the division which held the ground exactly in the middle, “Gibbon, if Lee attacks tomorrow, it will be in your front.” Lee had no option but to attack; if he broke off action now, he would have conceded defeat and risked severe loss in retreating from the field. Meade nevertheless had his own anxieties about carrying on the action and during the evening held a council of war to seek the opinion of his corps and some of his divisional commanders.
Eighteen years after the battle, a minute of the discussion was found among General Meade’s papers. Three questions had been asked: 1. Whether to stay and fight or to retreat to a position nearer the army’s base of supplies? 2. If to stay, whether to attack or await attack? 3. If to wait, for how long? Nine replies were noted. There was general agreement to stay, though some of the generals wanted to “correct” or “rectify” the army’s deployment. Gibbon, who knew that his position was likely to be the focus of the Confederate attack, wanted to “correct the position of the army but not retreat,” and thought the Union “in no condition to attack” but that it should wait “until [Lee] moves.” Slocum, commanding Twelfth Corps, was the most succinct and resolute. He is recorded simply as answering “stay and fight it out.” Meade announced “such then is the decision.” The minute also records the remaining strength of the Army of the Potomac, after two days’ fighting. The corps had 9,000, 12,500, 9,000, 6,000, 8,500, 6,000, and 7,000 respectively, totalling 58,000. The Confederates had also suffered seriously but retained their cohesion and offensive spirit.
The morning of July 3 was hot and humid. Firing at the northern end of the line began early. The Union troops were attacking to regain the trenches lost to the enemy on the first day. Elsewhere on the battlefield there was only sporadic fire, though much movement as commanders on both sides realigned their forces. Lee spent the morning riding along the crest of Seminary Ridge, keeping the Union line opposite under observation. He had decided that Pickett’s division of Longstreet’s First Corps should lead the attack, beginning in the shelter of the Seminary Ridge woods and then moving across the open and unprotected fields of the valley up the slope of Cemetery Ridge facing. Most of Pickett’s men were Virginians; the brigades assigned to support his division included Alabamans and Texans. Pickett’s men were entirely fresh, having come from guarding the army’s wagon train during the days preceding the battle. Longstreet persisted in his reluctance to attack. Riding with Lee in the last hour before the battle, he again suggested changing the front of attack to the Federal left. “No,” Lee answered, “I am going to take them where they are on Cemetery Hill. I want you to take Pickett’s division and make the attack.” He would reinforce him with six brigades from Heth’s and Pender’s divisions (under Pettigrew and Trimble, respectively) of the Third Corps. Longstreet, to what must by then have been Lee’s irritation, sustained his objection. “That will give me fifteen thousand men. I have been a soldier, I may say, from the ranks up to the position I now hold. I have been in pretty much all kinds of skirmishes, from those of two or three soldiers up to those of an army corps, and I think I can safely say there was never a body of fifteen thousand men who could make that attack successfully.” “The general,” Longstreet observed, “seemed a little impatient at my remarks, so I said nothing more. As he showed no indication of changing his plan, I went to work at once to arrange my troops for the attack.”
Longstreet positioned the army’s artillery batteries so as to silence those of the Union—there were about forty batteries or 160 guns on each side to cover the march of the infantry as they advanced. He also ordered that there was to be no firing or movement until a double signal shot was fired. He remained tense with nerves throughout the period of waiting. The signal was fired at seven minutes past one and the bombardment that began lasted for two hours. The Confederates fired at the Union battery positions. The Union artillery commander, General Henry Hunt, ordered his batteries to slacken their fire towards the end of the bombardment, in order to give the impression that they were running out of ammunition. The din and smoke were shattering during the artillery exchange, which did less harm than appeared, much of the Confederate fire going too high. The Union salvoes did little harm either, as long as the Confederate infantry remained under cover of the tree line along the crest of Seminary Ridge. Eventually, as the Union fire slackened, Pickett rode up to Longstreet to ask permission to advance. Longstreet, by his own later account, could not speak, “for fear of betraying my want of confidence.” He merely nodded.
The nod translated into an order to set out across the 1,400 yards of shallow valley that separated the two ridges. Lieutenant Colonel Edmund Rice of the 19th Massachusetts was standing near the clump of trees on Cemetery Ridge which Pickett had chosen as the objective of his attack. As the long lines of Confederate infantry appeared, one behind another, a third body of troops in battalion column in the third rank, Rice heard the Union men call out, “Here they come! Here they come! Here comes the infantry!”
They came forward with an “easy, swinging step,” a line of skirmishers in front. They exchanged fire with the Union skirmishers, who quickly reached the fence of the Emmitsburg Road running along the foot of Cemetery Ridge. Colonel Rice had
an excellent view … and could see
the entire formation of the attacking column, Pickett’s separate brigade lines [his division was composed of three brigades] lost their formation as they swept across the Emmitsburg Road, carrying with them their chain of skirmishers. They pushed on toward the crest and merged into one crowding, rushing line, many ranks deep. As they crossed the road, Webb’s infantry, on the right of the trees, commenced an irregular, hesitating fire, gradually increasing … while the shrapnel and canister from the batteries tore gaps through those splendid Virginia battalions.
The men of our brigade, with their muskets at the ready, lay in waiting. One could plainly hear the orders of the officers as they commanded, “Steady, men, steady! Don’t fire!” and not a shot was fired at the advancing hostile line, now getting closer every moment. The dense line of Confederates was for a moment lost to view in a dip of the ground. An instant after they seemed to rise out of the earth, and so near that the expression on their faces was distinctly seen. Now our men knew that the time had come, and could wait no longer. Aiming low, they opened a deadly concentrated discharge upon the moving mass in their front. Nothing human could stand it. Staggered by the storm of lead, the charging line hesitated … and then all that portion of Pickett’s division which came within the zone of this terrible close musketry fire appeared to melt and drift away in the powder smoke of both sides. At this juncture, some one behind me gave the quick, impatient order, “Forward, men! Forward! Now is your chance.”
I turned and saw that it was General Hancock, who was passing the left of the regiment. He checked his horse and pointed toward the clump of trees to our right and front. I construed this into an order for both regiments to run for the trees, to prevent the enemy from breaking through … With a cheer the two regiments left their position … and made an impetuous dash, racing diagonally forward for the clump of trees … Many of Webb’s men were still lying down in their places in ranks, and firing at those who followed Pickett’s advance which, in the meantime, had passed over them.
One battle flag after another, supported by Pickett’s infantry, appeared along the edge of the trees, until the whole copse seemed literally crammed with men.
Rice’s description became one of a long confused fight, with Blue and Gray intermingled at close quarters, men falling at close intervals, and no one in charge.
This was one of those periods in action which are measurable by seconds. The men near seemed to fire very slowly. Those in rear, though coming up at a run, seemed to drag their feet. Many were firing through the intervals of those in front in their eagerness to injure the enemy. This manner of firing … sometimes tells on friend instead of foe. A sergeant at my side received a ball in the back of his neck by this fire … The grove was fairly jammed with Pickett’s men, in all positions, lying and kneeling. Back from the edge were many standing and firing over those in front. By the side of several who were firing, lying down or kneeling, were others with their hands up, in token of surrender. In particular I noticed two men … one aiming so that I could look into his musket barrel, the other, lying on his back, coolly ramming home a cartridge. A little farther on was one on his knees waving something white in both hands.
A Confederate battery, near the Peach Orchard, commenced firing … A cannon shot tore a horrible passage through the dense crowd of men in blue, who were gathering outside the trees.
Rice recognised that if he could get his soldiers’ attention he could lead them quickly to a position where they would be out of the line of fire of both Confederate artillery and rifles, but, as he was stepping backward with his face to the men, he “felt a sharp blow as a shot struck me, then another; I whirled round, my sword torn from my hand … As I went down our men rushed forward past me, capturing battle flags and making prisoners.
“Pickett’s division lost nearly six-sevenths of its officers and men. Gibbon’s [Union] division, with its leader wounded, and with a loss of half its strength, still held the crest.”8
Lewis Armistead’s brigade of Pickett’s division had reached the crest, with Armistead in the front rank, waving his cap on the point of his sword, to encourage his men forward. He reached the stone wall running along the crest, stepped over, and put his hand on the muzzle of a Union gun, as if to claim its capture. Then he was hit and fell mortally wounded. Armistead had last been with Union troops at the Presidio of San Francisco in 1861, when, at secession, he had bade farewell to some fellow West Pointers, then left to go with his state. Three hundred men followed him onto Cemetery Ridge, many falling in the final confusion of the charge. Their bravery came to be remembered as the “high water mark of the Confederacy.” The Confederate army was never to penetrate farther into Union territory.
As the survivors of Pickett’s charge were making their way back across the valley to Seminary Ridge, Robert E. Lee appeared on horseback. As he met the returning survivors, he called out, “All this will come right in the end. We’ll talk it over afterwards. But in the meantime, all good men must rally. We want all good and true men just now!” He was joined by Pickett, who, riding up with tears streaming down his face, stumbled out, “General Lee, I have no division now.” “Come, General Pickett,” Lee answered. “Your men have done all that men can do. The fault is certainly my own.”
Later, after night fell, Lee was met by General John Imboden, who commanded an independent brigade of cavalry. He helped Lee to dismount and then said, “General, this has been a hard day on you.” Lee answered, “Yes, it has been a sad, sad day to us. I never saw troops behave more magnificently than Pickett’s division of Virginians did today … And if they had been supported … we would have held the position and the day would have been ours.” Then, after a pause, he cried out in a voice of agony: “Too bad! Too bad! OH! TOO BAD!”
How bad would be revealed as the armies took stock of their losses on the days following the battle. The Army of Northern Virginia had lost about 22,600 men, killed, wounded, and missing, the Army of the Potomac about 22,800. The worst loss in Hancock’s Second Corps was in Gibbon’s division, which had held Cemetery Ridge. Its First Brigade lost 768 altogether, of whom 147 were killed and 47 missing. One of its regiments was the 1st Minnesota, which began the battle only two hundred or so strong and was then almost extinguished by the energy of its own counter-attack. Another to lose heavily was General Reynolds’s First Corps, which suffered 6,000 total casualties, 2,000 of them captured or missing, mostly during the first day of the battle. Figures for the missing were large in most Civil War battles, partly because soldiers did not wear identity tags, making the identification of bodies haphazard. Others missing no doubt included those lost in the hospital system or lack of system and the opportunity provided by wounding to the war-weary to slip back into civilian life. General John Sedgwick’s Sixth Corps, by contrast, lost very few men, only eleven men wounded in one brigade, one killed and four wounded in another, only two wounded in a third.
Yet despite the sparing of some formations from heavy loss, Gettysburg had been a landmark, if not exactly a decisive, battle. It restored belief in the certainty of final victory to the Union, and dispirited the Confederacy, perhaps terminally. It was the largest battle of the war so far and would not be surpassed in scale. Those who had taken part, either as victors or losers, knew that they had participated in a historic event, the recollection of which they would carry within their memory for the rest of their lives.
On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln came to Gettysburg to take part in the dedication of the new national cemetery already created by extending the existing municipal cemetery. The principal speaker was to be Edward Everett, a former governor of Massachusetts and a noted orator. Lincoln had been asked merely to add a few words to the main oration.
Everett spoke for two hours, from a carefully prepared script, flowery and verbose in style. He evoked the funeral ovations of ancient Athens, subjecting his listeners to a display of laborious classical learning. When he eventually came to an end, Lincoln rose and spoke for two minutes. His words hav
e become as remembered and as celebrated as the opening of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He began,
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
Lincoln was dissatisfied with his two hundred and seventy words. “It’s a flat failure,” he said. The London Times correspondent agreed. “The ceremony,” he wrote, “was rendered ludicrous by the sallies of that poor President Lincoln.” Edward Everett, however, later wrote to Lincoln to say, “I shall be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.” Perhaps the genius of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address lies less in his magnificent words than in his refusing to differentiate between the sacrifice of the North and the South.
