by Rod Gragg
At about three P. M. a dozen Confederate batteries opened upon us in a most furious manner, and Smith’s guns in our rear, and a number of Federal batteries in the vicinity, forthwith began to reply. Presently long solid lines of infantry appeared advancing directly against us.... “At length the enemy appeared in heavy columns of battalion advancing on us from the opposite slope. As we held the position by a single line of battle unsupported, the enemy’s superiority in numbers, as seen at a glance, seemed overwhelming. As they approached they deployed in four distinct lines of battle, and came resolutely on under a rapid fire from our batteries. All seemed lost but in the steady lines of the Third corps not a man flinched, and among them all, none were more ready for the fierce encounter than Major Cromwell....”
When the enemy’s advance line drew near the base of the hill we were on, it appeared to almost halt for a minute, and then started rapidly forward again, and with fierce yells began ascending the slope; and there was heard an opening crash of riflery all along our front, which was the death knell of hundreds; yet on, on they came, but very slowly, only a few feet at a time. Now Cromwell hurries to Colonel Ellis, who stands behind the color company and asks him to order a charge; but the Colonel shakes his head and tells the Major to go back to his place again.
Now the enemy has been brought to a stand, but he is only a few rods away. Again Cromwell walks toward Ellis. This time he is accompanied by Adjutant Ramsdell. Once more he requests the Colonel to charge, and is again told to go back to the left of the regiment; yet a moment later their horses are brought up and ... they mount. The Major’s only reply is, “The men must see us to-day,” and he rides slowly to and wheels his horse about in rear of the centre of the left wing; where with drawn sword and eyes fixed on the Colonel, he impatiently awaits his superior’s pleasure.
Presently Ellis by a simple nod gives the desired permission; at which Cromwell waves his sword twice above his head, makes a lunge forward, shouts the charge, and putting spurs to his horse, dashes forward through the lines. The men cease firing for a minute and with ready bayonets rush after him. Ellis sits still in his saddle and looks on as if in proud admiration of both his loved Major and gallant sons of Orange, until the regiment is fairly under way, and then rushes with them into the thickest of the fray.
The conflict at this point defies description. Roaring cannon, crashing riflery, screeching shots, bursting shells, hissing bullets, cheers, shouts, shrieks and groans were the notes of the song of death which greeted the grim reaper, as with mighty sweeps he leveled down the richest field of scarlet human grain ever garnered on this continent. The enemy’s line, unable to withstand our fierce onset, broke and fled, and Cromwell—his noble face flushed with victory, and his extended right arm waving his flashing sabre—uttered a shout of triumph. But it had barely escaped his lips when the second line of the foe poured into us a terrible fire which seemed in an instant to bring down a full quarter of our number.
Once more we hear our beloved Cromwell’s shout, and once again we see, amid the fire and smoke, his noble form and flashing blade; but the next instant his brave heart is pierced by a rebel bullet, his right arm drops powerless, his lifeless body falls backward from his saddle, and loud above the din of battle we hear Ellis shout, “My God! My God, men! Your Major’s down; save him! save him.” Again the onset of Orange County’s sons becomes irresistible, and the second line of the foe wavers and falls back; but another and solid line takes its place, whose fresh fire falls with frightful effect on our now skeleton ranks. So terrible is it that two-thirds of the artillerymen in our rear are either killed or wounded, and the balance driven from their guns, by the shells and bullets which pass over and through our line.
A tough, foul-mouthed New Yorker, Colonel Augustus Van Horne Ellis led the 124th New York Infantry into battle on horseback. “The men must see us today,” he gallantly announced. Soon afterwards, he took a bullet in the forehead.
Library of Congress
* * *
“The Slope in Front Was Strewn with Our Dead”
* * *
Lieutenant Colonel Cummins, with the experience and eye of an old soldier, realizes that a skirmish line without reserves, be the men who compose it never so brave, must eventually be swept away by a continually renewed solid battle line, and unwilling the regiment should be disgraced by the loss of guns it is expected to protect, attempts to get them started to the rear, and while in the act is so badly injured by a shell—which striking a gun-carriage hurls it against him—that he is carried from the field. But our brave Ellis yet remains, now seen in bold relief, now lost amid the clouds of powder smoke. A moment longer the central figure, he directs his regiment. Again the rebel line begins to waver and we see his proud form rise in his stirrups; his long sharp sword is extended upward, a half uttered order escapes his lips, when suddenly his trusty blade falls point downward, his chin drops on his breast, and his body with a weave pitches forward, head foremost among the rocks; at which his wounded beast rears and with a mad plunge dashes away, staggering blindly through the ranks of the foe, who is now giving ground again, firing wildly as he goes.
But we are too weak to follow him, yet with desperate effort the Orange Blossoms struggle forward and gather up such as they may of the wounded, and with them and the bodies of Ellis and Cromwell, we fall slowly and mournfully back to the main line, from which we never should have advanced—and there reform our shattered bleeding ranks, and prepare to receive as best we may the next onset of the foe. Three times we have beaten him back, but now we are exhausted....
General Sickles has been seriously wounded. Birney now commands our corps, Ward our division, Berdan our brigade, and I find myself, who twenty minutes before was fourth officer in rank, in command of what is left of our regiment. The battle has now become general, and is raging nearly all along the line. Three hundred cannon are rending the air and shaking the earth. From every knoll and hill-top, in front and rear, there come flashes of fire, and buffing clouds of smoke.
Our immediate foes keep up a brisk fire but do not again attempt to ascend the hill in front of us. My ten little companies, now numbering but a trifle over a hundred, all told, are gathered together in little squads like picket posts along the front they are yet expected to hold; but their deliberate aim is not without its effect on the solid Confederate battle line at the foot of the hill below them.... The slope in front was strewn with our dead, and not a few of our severely wounded lay beyond the reach of their unscathed comrades, bleeding, helpless, and some of them dying.... The lifeless remains of Ellis and Cromwell were now lying on a huge boulder but a few yards in our rear, and in plain sight of all those remaining in our battle line, who chanced to look that way.
But the gallant boys fought on. If there were any cowards in our ranks when the battle began they were not there then. Every few moments a man would drop a rifle which had become clogged or so hot that he could not hold it steadily, and bidding those beside him be careful where they fired, rush forward and pick up, in place of it, one that had fallen from the hands of a dead or wounded comrade.
* * *
“His Lifeless Body Falls Backward from His Saddle”
* * *
Presently the foes in our front slackened their fire, and turning for a moment to view the bodies of our late leaders, I saw the brains protruding from a small round hole in Ellis’ forehead, and discovered glistening on Cromwell’s blood-stained breast a gold locket, which I knew contained the portrait of one who but a few moments before was his beloved young wife, but then alas! though she suspected it not—his widow.
As I wheeled about toward the regiment, I heard some one ahead of me say, “they are advancing,” and glancing to the left saw that the 40th New York was retiring before a heavy battle line, and that a column of the foe had already moved past their flank. The 99th Pennsylvania too was giving ground. The next instant an aide rode up, (Captain Cooney, I think it was) with orders to fall back without a moment’s
delay.... As soon as I could get these men together, I started with them after the regiment which was now some distance away, but the enemy had in the mean time advanced to the top of the ledge our regiment had occupied, and it was by mere chance that we escaped capture....
The active part that the 124th was to play in this great three days’ battle, had now been performed. Moving to a piece of woods about a mile in the rear of the Union battle line, we prepared, and with saddened hearts and gloomy thoughts, quietly partook of our evening meal....2
“O, the Awful, Deathly Surging Sound of Those Little Black Balls”
McLaws’s Confederates Are Pummeled by Federal Artillery Fire
It was almost five-thirty when General McLaws sent his division into the battle—one brigade after another against the Federal line to the north of Hood’s attack. Major General Lafayette McLaws was a short, stout Georgian—another West Pointer with ample experience in the Mexican War and on the Western frontier. He was late getting his troops up for battle, and debate would continue for generations to come whether the delay was his fault or Longstreet’s. To McLaws, it was Longstreet’s failure. “General Longstreet is to blame for not reconnoitering the ground,” he confided in a letter to his wife, “and for persisting in ordering the assault when his errors were discovered.... I consider him to be a humbug—a man of small capacity, very obstinate, not at all chivalrous, exceedingly conceited and totally selfish.”
Despite McLaws’s resentment of Longstreet, when his troops went forward, they did so with ferocious enthusiasm and a bloodcurdling Rebel Yell. First, three brigades advanced into battle—Brigadier General J. B. Kershaw’s South Carolinians, Georgia troops led by Brigadier General Paul J. Semmes (brother of Raphael Semmes, the famous commander of the CSS Alabama), and a reserve brigade of Georgians led by Brigadier General William T. Wofford. They rushed the protruding angle of Sickles’s unauthorized line, which was deployed just east of the Emmitsburg Road and north of Devil’s Den in a peach orchard and a field of wheat.
Obscure cropland before the battle, the two landmarks would be fore known as the Wheatfield and the Peach Orchard due to the bloody, furio combat that enveloped them on the afternoon of July 2. Defending the Peach Orchard and the Wheatfield were troops of Major General David B. Birney’s division—a brigade of Pennsylvania infantry commanded by Brigadier General Charles K. Graham and a brigade of troops from Michigan, Maine, New York, and Pennsylvania under Colonel P. Régis de Trobriand. Birney’s men fought tenaciously, but at this point much of the bloody work of defending the Federal line was accomplished by the Federal artillery. The fighting intensified quickly both in the Wheatfield and the Peach Orchard, as the Confederate brigades piled into the smoky, deadly chaos with both sides killing each other in close quarters and almost face-to-face in places.
Major General Lafayette McLaws’s attack on the Federal left was ferocious—but it was late. Some faulted McLaws, but he blamed Longstreet: “I consider him to be a humbug,” he stated.
Library of Congress
On the Federal side, while his troops were engaged in the Peach Orchard, General Graham was struck down by a head wound, left for dead by his soldiers, and captured by the Confederates. General Sickles, meanwhile, was struck by a Confederate shell fragment, which mangled his right leg and knocked him off his horse. The flamboyant general quickly wrapped a saddle strap around his thigh as a tourniquet. As a show of defiance and to boost troop morale, he puffed away on a cigar as stretcher-bearers bore him to the rear. On the Southern side, General Semmes had no opportunity for such heroics. He, too, was shot down, toppled from his horse by the searing Federal fire. He would not live long enough to think about troop morale or to congratulate his famous seafaring brother: his wound was mortal.
As the Confederate en echelon attack piled one brigade after another into battle, the Federal line crumbled at the Sickles’s Salient and did indeed “come tumbling back” in retreat as General Hancock had predicted. A huge gap opened in Sickles’s section of the line near the Peach Orchard, threatening the entire Federal line on Cemetery Ridge. Bolstered by Wofford’s Brigade, sent in from reserve, McLaws’s Confederates appeared on the verge of breaking the Federal line that afternoon as they pushed through the Peach Orchard, through Rose Woods, and across the Wheatfield. They were stopped short of Cemetery Ridge, however, by skillful, deadly fire from the Federal artillery and by the timely arrival of Federal reinforcements—the newly arrived Sixth Corps, other troops pulled from the right side of the Federal line, and, especially, the Pennsylvania Reserve Division under Brigadier General Samuel W. Crawford. The surging Southern tide was finally slowed, stopped, and reversed—and the hard-fighting Confederates reluctantly fell back from the Federal left to a line that extended along part of the Emmitsburg Road and through Devil’s Den.
A civil engineer before the war, Brigadier General Charles K. Graham helped lay out New York City’s sprawling Central Park. In a much smaller spot at Gettysburg—the deadly Peach Orchard—he was wounded and captured by the enemy.
Library of Congress
At the forefront of the afternoon struggle on the Federal left flank was Private John Coxe of the 2nd South Carolina Infantry, which belonged to Kershaw’s Brigade and McLaws’s division. From his home in California a half-century later, Coxe would craft a vivid account of the gory contest in the Peach Orchard and in the Wheatfield.
At Gettysburg, I was a private in Company B, 2nd South Carolina Volunteers, Kershaw’s Brigade, McLaws’s Division, Longstreet’s Corps.... Soon after sunrise [on July 2] we were called into ranks and marched slowly forward on the pike. Just before reaching the seminary we passed a brigade cooking breakfast on the left of the pike, and some of the men told us that they were in the fight on the day before. Coming to the foot of the seminary hill, we debouched to the right down a slight declivity and soon afterwards reached Willoughby Run in the woods directly west of the seminary. Here we halted and lay around for at least two hours, during which Gen. A. P. Hill and staff rode over from the west of the Run and then slowly on up through the woods toward the seminary. General Hill was an interesting personality. A slight but very pleasant smile seemed to light up his face all the time, while his eagle eyes took in everything about him. His flowing whiskers were red, but his hair was a little darker....
At last we were brought to attention and marched in column through open woods down the east side of the Run. Proceeding about half a mile, another halt was called and we lay around another hour. Meanwhile we hear desultory picket firing in the distance to our left. With several others I walked to the left about one hundred yards to an opening in the woods. We looked across a field and road and saw the famous peach orchard beyond. To the right of the orchard and farther away we saw two cone-shaped hills partly covered with scrubby timber. These were the now celebrated Round Tops, the smaller of the two being on the left. The field to the right of the peach orchard extended as far as we could see from that point. The light skirmishing was going on in the peach orchard, which was so densely green that we couldn’t see the men of either party. We were sharply called back to ranks and cautioned not to expose ourselves to the view of the enemy.
Soon after this, hearing a noise in the rear, we looked and saw General Hood at the head of his splendid division riding forward parallel to us about fifty yards to the left. This explained our last halt. Hood, who had marched to Gettysburg in the rear of McLaws, was to take position on our right and therefore on the extreme Confederate right. Why this great loss of time at that important juncture to get Hood and his artillery on the extreme right and thus delay the battle of the 2nd of July could never be understood by us private soldiers, but General Longstreet was responsible for it, doubtless believing that it would be better to have the great fighter Hood on his right. But, in fact, it was a very bad error for two reasons—namely, it allowed the Federals time to bring up tremendous forces of arms to meet us, and as it happened, Hood was wounded and disabled right at the beginning of his fight o
n the extreme right.
It seemed to take an age for Hood’s men and train of artillery to pass us, and when finally it did get by, our division followed, Semmes’ Brigade leading. But it didn’t take us long to reach the open near the Emmitsburg Pike and in plain view of both Round Tops and the peach orchard. I looked and saw a Yankee flag waving signals from the apex of Little Round Top. Indeed, we were so much exposed to view that the enemy had no trouble counting the exact numbers under Hood and McLaws. However, we were placed behind a stone fence along the west side of the pike and ordered to lie down. Immediately in our front and to the left, extending to the peach orchard, was an open field, then mostly in buckwheat. At the farther side of this field and in front of the Round Tops was a thick woods, mostly of heavy oaks.
About fifteen field guns under Cabell were brought up and unlimbered on the pike in front of an oak grove a little to our right, and a little later a Federal battalion of many guns galloped from the woods into the field near the peach orchard and somewhat to the left of our front, followed by a heavy Federal line of battle, but the latter soon after about-faced and returned to the woods. The Federal batteries quickly deployed and unlimbered guns, but didn’t open fire. By this time, the sun was observed to be getting down toward the top of South Mountain to the west and to our rear. Then suddenly we heard Hood’s cannon under Latimer open on the right and the furious reply of the Federal guns. Then pretty soon a few sharp bugle noises were heard and then boom! boom! boom! blasted away Latimer’s guns at the Federal batteries near the peach orchard.
