Gettysburg (24 page)

Just ten minutes after dispatching that message, Buford composed another summary, this one for his immediate superior, Alfred Pleasonton. After noting with a touch of poetic license that Hill’s pickets “are in sight of mine,” he reported that the roads north of town were “terribly
infested with roving detachments of [enemy] cavalry.” Buford could breathe a little easier now, thanks to the arrival in Gettysburg, just before dark, of Lieutenant John Calef’s six-gun Battery A, 2nd United States Light Artillery, whose three-inch ordnance cannon added some welcome punch to his carbines. But still, the combat-experienced cavalry commander was far from overconfident. In a briefing with one of his brigade commanders, Buford offered a sober assessment of the coming day: “‘You will have to fight like the devil to hold your own until [infantry] supports arrive.’”

The man immediately responsible for bringing those supports to Buford was wrapped in a blanket on the floor of Moritz Tavern, trying to sleep. John Reynolds had fretted throughout the day that the Rebels might push through Gettysburg, sweep south with the mountain passes safely behind them, and smash his exposed flank, itself the extreme left wing of the Army of the Potomac. Reynolds had kept that thought in mind as he selected the camps for his First Corps divisions,
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and when he advised Oliver Otis Howard on where to position the Eleventh Corps outside Emmitsburg. While their commander lay awake worrying about the next morning’s possibilities, Reynolds’ military aides, young men with a spirit of adventure, snored away in another room of the tavern, deep in the sleep of the innocent.

This night found James Wadsworth’s two-brigade division of the Union First Corps camped between Moritz Tavern and Gettysburg, where the Emmitsburg Road crossed Marsh Creek. Nothing in their orders, or even in the rumors they had heard, gave the approximately 1,800 men of Wadsworth’s celebrated First Brigade any indication that a desperate struggle awaited them just a few hours into the future. As so often was the case, the bliss of ignorance offered these soldiers their only protection: by sunset tomorrow, nearly 1,200 members of the cocky black-hatted Iron Brigade would be dead, wounded, or captured by the enemy.

Lieutenant Loyd G. Harris of the 6th Wisconsin seemed to have not a care in the world as he entertained his fellow lieutenant Orrin Chapman with a harmonica rendition of “Home, Sweet Home.” A mile or so closer to Gettysburg, the division’s picket line, manned by four companies of the 19th Indiana, stretched across the gently rolling Pennsylvania
landscape. The rest of the regiment was settled down in reserve near the tiny village of Green Mount, where the men were made welcome. “We lived high here,” recalled Lieutenant George H. Finney. “People brought in everything in the way of eatables.”

A few letters were started, and some even finished in the fading light. Lieutenant Colonel Rufus Dawes’ missive fell into the former category. “I am kept full of business …,” he scribbled, “scarcely from morning to night getting a moment I can call my own.” Lieutenant Colonel William Dudley of 19th Indiana was able to complete his message: “[We] shall soon be engaged,” he prophesied, “deciding this thing one way or the other.”

Brigadier General John C. Robinson’s First Corps division was camped a few miles west of Moritz Tavern, covering a road that led to Fairfield, just in case the Rebels tried to use it. The division’s First Brigade, commanded by Brigadier General Gabriel R. Paul, included the nearly 300-strong 16th Maine. The next afternoon, the New Englanders would make a suicidal last stand that would save their division while costing them more than 230 casualties. This night, however, they were savoring the moment. They had marched only a short distance today, getting into camp around noon. Lieutenant George D. Bisbee was grateful for the “much needed rest” everyone got. One exception was the regimental adjutant, Major Abner R. Small, who took the opportunity to catch up on his paperwork and file away a copy of George Meade’s stirring address to the army. “If we had any lingering doubts about the probability of a battle in the near future …,” he later reflected, “they were promptly dispelled.”

The 157th New York, part of Carl Schurz’s division in the Eleventh Corps, was among the units camped on the northern side of Emmitsburg, near St. Joseph’s College. The regiment’s members hailed mostly from the middle part of New York, especially Cortland and Madison counties. When the 157th had first marched off to war, its proud ranks had counted 1,000 souls, but this night, after less than a year of service, fewer than 400 were ready to advance in the morning. At the end of the next day’s road for these boys lay a nondescript field north of Gettysburg, where more than 300 of them would fall. Most of the veterans likely gave little thought to that possibility. A few shared a survivor’s sense of invincibility, as voiced by the regiment’s second in command, Lieutenant Colonel George Arrowsmith: “I have come to feel that the bullet is not molded which is to kill me.”

Fellow New Yorkers in the 154th Regiment (Steinwehr’s division, First Brigade) had enjoyed the hospitality of Emmitsburg’s nuns after their arrival on June 29. Today they marched closer to the Pennsylvania line. These Yankees came from the southern part of their state, primarily Cattaraugus and Chautauqua counties. This relative proximity prompted one lovesick private to write to his wife this day, “We are within two miles of [the] Pennsylvania line … so you see that I am not more than 300 miles from you (maybe, much less), so you can get a horse and buggy and drive down to see me. It would not take you only
3 or 4 days!!
” In store for these Union boys was an intersection with fate near a brick-making plant in Gettysburg. There they would help save their corps and in doing so lose 200 out of 239 men. Among those destined to fall was Sergeant Amos Humiston, whose deep love for his children, while not sparing his life, would make them national celebrities.

The man whose orders meant life or death for all these soldiers got little sleep this night at army headquarters, now located in Taneytown, Maryland. George Gordon Meade had spent the day studying reports from his engineers regarding the placement of a possible defensive line, which he finally resolved to adopt if Lee began to move south looking for a fight. Meade’s weary aides were subsequently kept busy drafting copies of an important circular intended for all corps commanders. It identified what would become known as the Pipe Creek Line and spelled out the specific conditions that would trigger a general retrograde movement to that position. The plan had been conceived to address something that Meade saw as a very real concern: the danger that his widely spaced corps alignment could be chewed up in a piecemeal fashion if the Rebel army moved against any discrete portion of it. The Pipe Creek trigger would allow any corps commander subjected to such pressure to initiate the withdrawal process. Once that process was begun, all other corps commanders would be compelled to follow suit.

These instructions would not be distributed until after dawn on July 1. Several hours before sunrise, a bone-tired telegrapher arrived from Frederick with an important message from Harrisburg, sent via Washington.
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“Lee is falling back suddenly from the vicinity of Harrisburg, and is concentrating all his forces,” it read. “The concentration appears to be at or near Chambersburg.” Meade likely felt a surge of relief at this news, for it validated his decision to allow John Reynolds to continue to advance the left wing as far as Gettysburg. The chance of a fight’s erupting and getting out of hand before all his corps commanders received the Pipe Creek circular now seemed very remote.

What Meade could not know was that a follow-up message, written less than two hours after the first, was also on its way to him. Unfortunately, it was being held in Frederick until a courier could be found to carry it, and would not reach him until late in the afternoon of July 1. This note, from the same source as the first, began, “Information just received … leads to the belief that the concentration of forces of the enemy will be at Gettysburg rather than Chambersburg.”

J
ohn Reynolds had been asleep for perhaps four hours when an aide just returned from army headquarters regretfully woke him. Reynolds did not get up immediately but instead lay quietly with one hand under his head while Meade’s orders were read aloud, a recitation he had repeated twice to make sure all the details had registered. The most important item was the final confirmation of today’s left wing movements: First Corps backed by Eleventh to Gettysburg, Third Corps to Emmitsburg. The next nearest unit would be the Twelfth Corps, marching to a hamlet named Two Taverns.

Meade’s intelligence assessment put two Rebel corps between Chambersburg and the area west of Gettysburg. Ewell’s Corps was likely spread north and east of the town. While the orders seemed clear enough, their intent was less so. On the one hand, Meade believed that his broad front advance had arrested the enemy’s reach toward Harrisburg, so the urgency of past days was abated. On the other hand, his instructions contained the unmistakable warning that each corps should be “ready to move to the attack at any moment.” That latter advice matched Reynolds’ sense of the situation. He waved away a fourth reading as he got to his feet. There was much to be done.

Men were moving about the encampments of Henry Heth’s division well before the sun rose at 4:36
A.M.
Already it was not Heth’s day. Either
forgotten from the previous evening’s discussions with A. P. Hill or only just received were orders to begin the march at 5:00
A.M.
There was a haste to the early morning’s preparations that caught some off guard. Notable in this category was Colonel John A. Fite of the 7th Tennessee, in Brigadier General James J. Archer’s brigade. Fite went out to his picket line while it was still dark for a home-cooked breakfast at the farmhouse being used by his outpost officers. He was enjoying a chat with the farmer’s daughter when, as he later recalled, “a courier came and ordered all of my pickets in.” After making hasty apologies, Fite hurried off.

Not stirring this morning was A. P. Hill. Lee’s Third Corps commander lingered indoors, and even when he felt well enough later to move about, he looked, according to one observer, “very delicate.” For reasons that he never explained, Hill had resolved that this day’s expedition to Gettysburg was not going to be a halfhearted affair. On his orders, Pender’s entire division would follow Heth’s, boosting the force committed to this reconnaissance to almost 15,000 men.

The mixed signals Hill was sending perhaps reflected his own confusion and uncertainty. The very size of the force and the nature of the troops he assigned indicated that the Gettysburg foray would not be easy. Yet Hill’s admonition to Heth was clear: “Do not bring on an engagement.” Managing the fine balance between aggressively executing the assignment and avoiding a full-blown encounter would have taxed the judgment of the most experienced combat officer, and Henry Heth was not at that level.

Hill’s incapacity left Heth without any sage counsel, and he promptly made his first bad decision of the day. Even though Pettigrew’s Brigade was camped closest to Gettysburg, Heth decided it would remain in place until most of the division had marched past. He saw no reason to take advantage of Pettigrew’s recent familiarity with the terrain; possibly he was still smarting over the lack of initiative Pettigrew had shown the day before, in not more actively challenging the enemy. The capstone to Heth’s morning arrived with a message that, when recollected years later, would be wrapped up in the pleasant mythology of his search for shoes. As Heth remembered it, “A courier came from Gen. Lee, with a dispatch, ordering me to get the shoes even if I encountered some resistance.” This unsubstantiated exhortation meshed well with Heth’s understanding of Lee’s prime motive for entering Pennsylvania: “General Lee’s … intention was to strike his enemy the very first available opportunity that offered—believing he could, when such an opportunity offered, crush him.”