by Rod Gragg
As I started with my men to the rear I found Edwin Aylesworth mortally wounded, who begged me not to leave him. I stopped, and with Sergt. Peter Shuttz, assisted him to his feet, and tried to carry him; but I could not, and had to lay him down. His piteous appeal, “Don’t leave me, boys,” has rung in my ears and lived in my memory these five and twenty years. Sergeant Shuttz was killed soon after near Oak Ridge. The time spent in assisting Aylseworth delayed me, so I was among the last to leave the field.
Finding the enemy so close upon us and the way open—the route we came in by—I followed several of my men into the railroad cut. A squad of Confederates were at the west end of the cut, behind some rails, and as we struck the bottom of that railroad cut, they saluted us with all their guns, and each one loaded with a bullet. I did not stay to dispute possession, for they evidently intended “to welcome us Yanks with bloody hands to hospitable graves,” and I climbed up the rocky face of the cut, on the south side, and made my way with many of our men across the meadow between the railroad cut and the Chambersburg Pike....
Lieutenant Colonel Rufus R. Dawes, commander of the 6th Wisconsin Infantry, later described how his Black Hat troops reversed the Federal retreat and defeated Davis’s Confederate brigade.
We could see that the thin regiments of Cutler’s brigade, beyond the turnpike, were being almost destroyed. The rebel line swayed and bent, and the men suddenly stopped firing and ran into the railroad cut, which is parallel to the Cashtown turnpike. I now ordered the men to climb over the turnpike fences and advance upon them. I was not aware of the existence of a railroad cut, and mistook the maneuver of the enemy for a retreat, but was soon undeceived by the heavy fire which they began at once to pour upon us from their cover in the cut. Capt. John Ticknor, a dashing soldier, one of our finest officers, fell dead while climbing the second fence, and others were struck, but the line pushed on.
Stunned by searing fire from the 6th Wisconsin, scores of Confederates from Davis’s Brigade sought shelter in a deep railroad cut alongside the Chambersburg Pike—and found themselves trapped like sheep in a pen.
Adams County Historical Society
When over the fences and in the field, and subjected to an infernal fire, I saw the 95th New York Regiment coming gallantly into line upon our left. I did not then know or care where they came from, but was rejoiced to see them. Farther to the left was the 14th Brooklyn Regiment, but we were ignorant of the fact. The 95th New York had about 100 men in action. Maj. Edward Pye appeared to be in command. Running hastily to the major, I said, “We must charge,” and asked him if they were with us. The gallant major replied, “Charge it is,” and they were with us to the end. “Forward, charge!” was the order given by both the major and myself.
We were now receiving a fearfully destructive fire from the hidden enemy. Men who had been shot were leaving the ranks in crowds. Any correct picture of this charge would represent a V-shaped crowd of men with the colors at the advance point, moving firmly and hurriedly forward, while the whole field behind is streaming with men who had been shot, and who are struggling to the rear or sinking in death upon the ground. The only commands I gave, as we advanced, were “Align on the colors! Close up on that color! Close up on that color!” The regiment was being broken up so that this order alone could hold the body together. Meanwhile the colors were down upon the ground several times, but were raised at once by the heroes of the color guard. Not one of the guard escaped, every man being killed or wounded. Four hundred and twenty men started as a regiment from the turnpike fence, of whom 240 reached the railroad cut....
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“Surrender, or I Will Fire on You”
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Every officer proved himself brave, true, and heroic in encouraging the men to breast this deadly storm, but the real impetus was the eager, determined valor of the men who carried muskets in the ranks. The rebel colors could be seen waving defiantly just above the edge of the railroad cut. A heroic ambition to capture it took possession of several of our men. Corporal Eggleston, of Company H, a mere boy, sprang forward to seize it, and was shot dead the moment his hand touched the colors. Private Anderson, of his company, furious at the killing of his brave young comrade, recked little for the rebel colors, but he swung aloft his musket and with a terrific blow split the skull of the rebel who had shot young Eggleston.... Into this deadly melee rushed Corp. Francis A. Waller, who seized and held the rebel battle-flag....
My first notice that we were immediately upon the enemy was a general cry from our men of: “Throw down your muskets. Down with your muskets.” Running quickly forward through the line of men, I found myself face to face with at least a thousand rebels, whom I looked down upon in the railroad cut, which was here about four feet deep. Adjutant Brooks, equal to the emergency, had quickly placed men across the cut in position to fire through it. I shouted: “Where is the colonel of this regiment?” An officer in gray, with stars on his collar, who stood among the men in the cut, said: “Who are you?” I said: “I am commander of this regiment. Surrender, or I will fire on you.” The officer replied not a word, but promptly handed me his sword, and all his men, who still held them, threw down their muskets.... It was a short, sharp, and desperate fight, but the honors were with the boys in blue.10
CHAPTER FOUR
“We Must Fight a Battle Here”
About midday on July 1, the vicious fighting that had covered McPherson’s Ridge with smoke and fallen bodies abruptly ceased. The battered survivors of General Davis’s brigade were now back inside the Confederate rear line on Herr Ridge, catching their breath and counting their depleted numbers. Meanwhile, scores of their fellow soldiers were trudging to the Federal rear, without weapons, as prisoners of war. General Archer’s surviving troops were being reformed in the Confederate rear—minus their commander: General Archer had become the first general officer in Lee’s army to be captured by the enemy. Both sides now stepped back from the morning’s fierce first combat and reformed their ranks. Both sides tended to their wounded. Both sides waited for reinforcements to arrive. And both sides expected to resume the battle.
In Gettysburg Major General Oliver O. Howard arrived at the head of the Federal army’s Eleventh Corps and took command of Federal forces until General Meade could reach the battle with the rest of the army. “General Reynolds is dead,” Howard was told bluntly, “and you are the senior officer on the field.” A quick look at the field told Howard that General Buford’s stubborn defense of Gettysburg’s westside ridges and General Reynolds’s “bold front”—as Howard put it—had given the Federal army the advantage of choosing the battlefield. Howard left the army’s First Corps troops in line on the western side of Gettysburg, and he deployed most of the Eleventh Corps troops in a defensive battle line on the northern side of town, along a ridgeline called Oak Ridge.
Major General A. P. Hill, commander of Lee’s Third Corps, was known for his red shirts and decisive action. On July 1, 1863, it was his decision to allow a Confederate reconnaissance-in-force to go forward that ignited the battle of Gettysburg.
Library of Congress
Major General Oliver O. Howard was a corps commander in the Army of the Potomac, and had been passed over when a new commander was chosen. When he reached Gettysburg on July 1, he was greeted with blunt news: General Reynolds was dead, and he was now the senior Federal commander on the field.
National Archives
Back on Herr Ridge, General Heth also had to make critical decisions in the absence of his army’s commander. He had been ordered not to fully engage the enemy yet, but his trip to Gettysburg had triggered a serious battle with the Army of the Potomac. So what to do now? He decided that “the safe and soldierly thing to do”—as one man put it—was to keep his troops in a line of battle, supported by artillery and prepared to resume the attack, while he summoned instructions from his immediate superior, General A. P. Hill. The general arrived on Herr Ridge in the early afternoon. Partial to long locks and red calico shirt
s, Ambrose Powell Hill was cocky and impulsive to some, but most were inclined to admit that he was a bold, brilliant officer. At times, his potential was undermined by poor health—the effects of a much-regretted case of venereal disease contracted while he was a cadet at West Point. Even as he stepped down from the saddle, Hill appeared pale and sickly. Upon consulting with Heth, he reached a conclusion: they would wait on General Lee.1
“The Enemy Poured into Us a Withering Fire”
The Battle Resumes with Increased Ferocity
Lee and his staff reached the Confederate line on Herr Ridge soon after General Hill. Lee appeared concerned, even frustrated. He had stated his intention not to engage in battle before his forces were fully reunited, but serious fighting had occurred outside Gettysburg. What should he do now? Despite the morning’s setback, Hill’s corps was in line and ready for battle, but Longstreet’s corps was still spread out on the Chambursburg Turnpike to the west, and Ewell’s corps had not yet arrived from the north. Meanwhile, Lee had still heard nothing from Stuart’s cavalry and was thus still suffering from limited reconnaissance. “In the absence of reports from him, I am in ignorance as to what we have in front of us here,” Lee admitted to a subordinate. “It may be the whole Federal army, or it may be only a detachment. If it is the whole Federal force we must fight a battle here.”
General Hill advised Lee that his corps, largely replenished with fresh troops, was ready to once again assault the Federal line on McPherson’s Ridge, but still Lee waited. Until more of his army arrived, he did not want to engage the enemy again. Then, at about two-thirty in the afternoon, on the faraway ridges to the north, lines of Confederate troops began spilling out of the woods and deploying for battle. It was Ewell’s corps—two divisions thus far—who had been recalled by Lee from York and from Carlisle. Leading the troops, General Ewell saw Federal forces advancing toward Oak Ridge, believed this to be an attack, and ordered Major General Robert Rodes to put his 8,000-man division into battle. A graduate of Virginia Military Institute, the thirty-four-year-old Rodes was an aggressive, capable combat commander who had so distinguished himself at Chancellorsville that on his deathbed, General “Stonewall” Jackson had recommended the valiant commander for promotion. As his artillery unlimbered and opened fire, Rodes rushed his troops into action.
General Robert E. Lee hoped to avoid battle until all of his forces were on hand and ready to engage. However, when he saw an opportunity for victory at Gettysburg, he took it.
National Archives
It was a costly assault. General John Buford’s Federal cavalry had alerted General Howard of Ewell’s approach, so Federal forces were not taken by surprise. Rodes’s attack struck between the right flank of the Federal First Corps and the left flank of the Federal Eleventh Corps and encountered fierce resistance. A brigade of Alabama troops commanded by Colonel Edward A. O’Neal was stunned by well-aimed Federal volley fire and was driven back with severe casualties. Nearby, a brigade of North Carolinians commanded by Brigadier General Alfred Iverson stumbled into the killing zone set up by a brigade of Federal First Corps troops under Brigadier General Henry Baxter. A tough former California gold miner and veteran army officer, Baxter deployed his troops behind a stone wall alongside the Mummasburg Road, and delivered such savage fire that Iverson’s brigade was almost annihilated.
A U.S. senator’s son who had fought Comanche and Kiowa warriors in the prewar U.S. Army, Iverson was a competent and courageous officer who had shown his mettle on various fields of fire during the Civil War. On this day at Gettysburg, however, he succumbed to an extreme case of combat fatigue and stayed back while his troops engaged in battle—perhaps affected by a near-death experience at Chancellorsville where he had been shot in the groin. His men were sent forward without skirmishers—and fell into General Baxter’s deadly trap. A Federal soldier later counted seventy-nine dead North Carolina soldiers lying in a straight row. “They had all evidently been killed by one volley of musketry,” he reported, “and they had fallen in their tracks without a single struggle.” Of approximately 1,400 soldiers in Iverson’s Brigade, more than 800 were killed, wounded, or captured. When General Iverson learned what had become of his brigade, he broke down into hysterics.
A survivor of Iverson’s Brigade, Sergeant H. C. Wall of the 23rd North Carolina Infantry, would later recall the horror of that afternoon assault on Oak Ridge.
Leaving Carlisle on Tuesday, the last day of June, we marched swiftly southward. Cherries were ripe along the rock-walled lanes. Bringing camp hatchets out, fruit ladened limbs were severed and we regaled ourselves as we swung onward. The spirit and morale of the army were then superb. Many German-descended members of our regiment ... were in this region amid, or not far from, their kin. From here their ancestors had emigrated to North Carolina about one hundred years before. But I doubt if many of them thought of it at that time. Little did the families at the separation imagine that the descendants of the emigrants should in a generation or two return as invaders to the old home....
Sounds of strenuous battle reached us early on the morning of Wednesday, 1 July, as we pressed forward towards Gettysburg .... Our brigade (Iverson’s) led Ewell’s corps and was the first to become engaged as he hurried forward to succor A. P. Hill, then hard pressed. At Willoughby Run our Field Officers dismounted. Approaching from the north by the Heidelburg road till within about a mile of the field of battle, we were filed off by the right flank to the Mummersburg road. As we emerged from the woods and moved down the slope to the latter road twenty pieces of artillery opened on us with grape, from the left, inflicting some loss.
The Mummersburg road here runs east and west. Very close to the road on the south side stands the Forney house.... Along the path or eastern side of the field and on a ridge ran a stone fence, which formed part of the enemy’s line. Behind this fence, alone, lay hidden from view, more men than our assaulting column contained. A body of woods extended from the southeastern corner of the field for about two hundred yards along its southern side.
A flint-hard Northern combat commander, Brigadier General Henry J. Baxter had been seriously wounded three times before Gettysburg. On the battle’s first day, his extensive combat experience showed itself.
Library of Congress
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“There Too, Fell Every Commissioned Officer Save One”
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The brigade about 1,450 strong, advanced under artillery fire through the open grass field in gallant style, as evenly as if on parade. But our brigade commander (Iverson) after ordering us forward, did not follow us in that advance, and our alignment soon became false. There seems to have been utter ignorance of the force crouching behind the stone wall. For our brigade to have assailed such a stronghold thus held, would have been a desperate undertaking. To advance southeast against the enemy, visible in the woods at that corner of the field, exposing our left flank to an enfilading file from the stronghold was fatal. Yet this is just what we did. And unwarned, unled as a brigade, went forward Iverson’s deserted band to its doom. Deep and long must the desolate homes and orphan children of North Carolina rue the rashness of that hour.
An aggressive, capable combat officer, Major General Robert Rodes was used to winning. On Gettysburg’s first day, however, he and his Southern soldiers were surprised by the fierce resistance they received from Federal troops on the north side of town.
Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University
When we were in point blank range of the dense line of the enemy rose from its protected lair and poured into us a withering fire from the front and both flanks.... This effected, the enemy moving under cover of the ridge and woods, disposed his forces to enfilade our right from the woods just as our left was enfiladed from the stone fence.
Pressing forward with heavy loss under deadly fire our regiment, which was the second from the right, reached a hollow or low place, running irregularly north, east and southwest through the field. We were then about
eighty yards from the stone fence to the left and somewhat further from the woods to the right, from both of which, as well as from the more distant corner of the field in our front, poured down upon us a pitiless rifle fire.
Unable to advance, unwilling to retreat, the brigade lay down in this hollow or depression in the field and fought as best it could. Terrible was the loss sustained, our regiment losing the heaviest of all in killed, as from its position in line the cross enfilading fire seems to have been the hottest just where it lay. Major C. C. Blacknall was shot through the mouth and neck before the advance was checked. Lieutenant-Colonel R. D. Johnson was desperately, and Colonel D. H. Christie mortally wounded, as the line lay in the bloody hollow. There, too, fell every commissioned officer save one....
The carnage was great along our whole line which, except the Twelfth Regiment on the right, was at the mercy of the enemy....
The wary foe aware of this, swarmed over the wall and rushed down upon our weakened line. Leaving the wounded they drove off with bayonets and clubbed muskets 49 prisoners and carried our flag with them.... General Rodes said that Iverson’s men fought and died like heroes. When the brigade went from its position in the hollow its dead and wounded lay in distinctly marked line of battle from one end to the other.
