Gettysburg (27 page)

Harriet Bayly, who lived on a farm north of Gettysburg, was overcome by curiosity. Accompanied by her uncle Robert, she walked along a ridge line that ran southwest, hoping to find something interesting. After half an hour the two met a weary squad of Federal cavalrymen, one of whom asked Harriet if she had seen any Rebels. Before she could answer, there was a distant cannon boom that seemed to tell the riders all they needed to know. Suddenly many more men rose from the fields on either side, readying themselves for combat. Someone yelled to Harriet that it was not safe for her to be here.

But Harriet Bayly had not come all this way just to turn tail at the first sign of danger. She and her uncle pressed on toward the Chambers-burg Pike and before long encountered another mounted party. This time the riders were Confederate soldiers, who promptly focused their attention on Robert, permitting Harriet to sidle away without challenge. She had almost made it past the group when she heard one of their number ask her uncle what he knew about Yankees ahead of them. Harriet could not help herself: “You go on and you will soon find out,” she said with some spunk. “I didn’t stop to count them.” A bemused officer finally waved the pair off toward the north, where he said they would be out of harm’s way.

On the western slope of Herr’s Ridge, skirmishers from the 5th Alabama Battalion passed a small wooden cabin guarded by an aggressive dog. A few of the Alabama boys were trying to quiet the animal when its owner appeared and asked, “What are you here for?” The riflemen told the farmer that a battle was about to be fought. “By whom?” the man asked. “By General Lee and the Yankees,” was the reply. “Tell Lee to hold on just a little until I get my cow in out of the pasture,” the man shouted as he ran off.

The members of the 5th Alabama Battalion laughed and moved along. A follow-up wave from the 13th Alabama was less accommodating: when the dog snarled at the soldiers, one of them shot it.

Obeying John Buford’s instructions to disperse his firepower, Lieutenant John Calef escorted two of his guns to a position southeast of the Herbst Woods. Once there, he could clearly hear “the enemy’s skirmishers open upon our pickets, who were retiring.” A noise coming from much closer snapped Calef’s head toward the Chambersburg Pike, where Lieutenant John Roder, left in charge of the four guns, had caught sight of a mounted Rebel party off to the north, at extreme range. Roder commanded that one gun be fired. With that, Buford’s force was fully engaged.

Signalman Aaron Jerome was enjoying his bird’s-eye perspective from the cupola of the Lutheran seminary. He had sent an initial sighting report to Buford at about 7:00
A.M.;
now he could impart the positive news that help was on its way. It was around 9:15
A.M.
when Jerome turned his telescopic glasses toward Emmitsburg and spied what he recognized as “an army corps advancing some two miles distant.” The wind threw the unit’s flag broad to view, allowing Jerome to identify it as the insignia of Reynolds’ First Corps. He sent word to Buford.

When they later reflected on this morning, the young members of John Reynolds’ staff would agree that it seemed as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from their commander’s shoulders. Some of this could be credited to Reynolds’ trust in and respect for George Meade, but a greater share stemmed from his having discovered a kindred spirit in John Buford. Noted one First Corps staff officer, “Buford and Reynolds were soldiers of the same order, and each found in the other just the qualities that were most needed to perfect and complete the task entrusted to them.” It was a composed and confident John Reynolds who rode at the head of Wadsworth’s leading brigade (Cutler’s) and at one point took part in an impromptu strategy session, studying some maps while being briefed on scouting reports. A sergeant standing nearby heard the general react to news that Rebel troops had been seen near Gettysburg; he remembered Reynolds’ saying “they were probably after cattle.”

Reynolds nevertheless gestured for his First Division commander to join him. “It was a matter of momentary consultation between General Reynolds and myself,” Wadsworth later testified, “whether we would go into the town or take a position in front. … He decided that if we went into the town the enemy would shell it and destroy it, and that we had better take a position in front.” Also around this time, Reynolds detailed his aide Captain Joseph G. Rosengarten to gallop ahead and warn Gettysburg’s citizens to remain indoors.

Reynolds and his party had covered about half the distance between Moritz Tavern and Gettysburg when they saw a rider approaching from the town. As Reynolds’ orderly Charles H. Veil remembered it, the courier brought a note from John Buford to the effect “that the enemy was advancing on the Cashtown road, [though Buford] did not state what the force was supposed to be.” This was intelligence that Reynolds could not ignore. Riders were dispatched with messages for George Meade (providing a hasty summary) and Oliver Howard (telling him to hurry). Then, wrote Veil, “the Genl sent an aid[e] to Genl Wadsworth … to close up his div[isio]n and come on, while the Genl rode to the front.” Probably included with the hurry-on message to Wadsworth was a directive to halt his command near the Codori farm and await further instructions.

The routes that Richard S. Ewell had selected for his corps’ march toward Cashtown would allow him to alter course to the south if necessary. Just
before Ewell passed through Middletown
^*
with Robert Rodes’ division, a courier from A. P. Hill’s headquarters rode up, bringing word that the Third Corps was marching against Yankee cavalry at Gettysburg. Although he had no solid information regarding the enemy’s strength, Ewell wasted little time in deciding that his place was with Hill. While riders carried new orders to Rodes and Early, one aide was sent to tell Hill and another—Ewell’s stepson, Campbell Brown—dispatched to inform Robert E. Lee.

Henry Heth’s decision fully to deploy his two leading brigades was having its desired effect. It was convincing proof that he meant business, and it amplified the pressure exerted by Archer’s skirmishers, who began to force Buford’s men off the crest of Herr’s Ridge.

Union officer John Beveridge watched the determined Rebel advance. “Presently the boys of the 8th Illinois with the led horses were seen coming over the ridge west of Willoughby Run, in our immediate front,” he recalled. “Then a line of smoke along and beyond the crest of the hill; then our pickets; then another line of smoke, then the (enemy) skirmishers; then twelve guns wheeled into line, unlimbered, and opened fire.” Wanting at once to shield his two deployed brigades and to unnerve the opposition, Henry Heth had instructed William Pegram “to fire at the woods in his front for half an hour.”

North of the Chambersburg Pike, another, similar effort undertaken by Davis’ Brigade was causing Thomas Casimir Devin’s dismounted cavalrymen to scramble back. A former housepainter who had found his true calling leading men in combat, Devin was tagged by some “Buford’s Hard Hitter.” He was known to all as a man who could be counted on to make the most of what he had. McPherson’s Ridge offered fewer defensive possibilities north of the pike than it did to the south, so Devin resolved to make his stand in front of the Wills Woods, on the northern branch of Seminary Ridge, also known as Oak Ridge. As Devin’s men began to concentrate, John Buford sought out his Second Brigade leader. Striving to impress upon his subordinate the strategic importance of that post, Buford confided, “‘Devin, this is the key to the army position. We must hold this if it cost every man in our command.’”

Once Heth’s skirmishers had cleared Herr’s Ridge and Pegram’s cannon could unlimber, the Confederates achieved an artillery superiority that they would not relinquish this day. There were five batteries under Pegram’s command, totaling nineteen or twenty guns. With one exception—the Pee Dee Artillery of South Carolina—these were Virginia gunners belonging to Crenshaw’s, Letcher’s, Purcell’s, and Marye’s Fredericksburg batteries. Despite their sheer numerical advantage, the artillerists encountered stubborn resistance from the four Yankee guns posted along the Chambersburg Pike. Giving credit where it was due, one of Marye’s men conceded that the enemy’s shooting was “steady and well aimed, though none of our battery was struck in this position.”

There was little that John Calef could do to better the odds. “Seeing the battery so greatly outnumbered,” he later wrote, “I directed the firing to be made slowly and deliberately and reported to Buford what was in my front. The battle was now developing, and the demoniac ‘whir-r-r’ of the rifled shot, the ‘ping’ of the bursting shell and the wicked ‘zip’ of the bullet, as it hurried by, filled the air.”

This first artillery exchange marked the start of the battle for many of Gettysburg’s citizens. Northwest of the town square, Sarah Broadhead was in her kitchen when she heard the cannon fire. “People were running here and there, screaming that the town would be shelled,” she later remembered. “No one knew where to go or what to do.” Recollected Salome Myers, “Many of us sat on our doorsteps, our hearts beating with anxiety, looking at one another mutely.”

A small group of spectators gathered on the southern reach of Oak Ridge, near a cut that had been made for the proposed railroad extension. Enough wood had been cleared to provide a relatively open observation area on high ground. That was not good enough, however, for Daniel Skelly, who climbed up a tree and got a view of Pegram’s guns arrayed against Calef’s. Evidently no one in the crowd was aware that it was not uncommon for the cannon to overshoot their targets. Suddenly a shell whizzed by, seemingly only inches over the onlookers’ heads. Then “there was then a general stampede toward the town,” according to Skelly.

Leander Warren, who earlier had helped water the cavalrymen’s horses, had prudently left the immediate area when the assembly bugles
sounded, though he had retreated only as far as the railroad cut. He would recall that there were a number of boys in the trees when that first rogue shell screamed past. The boys “did not climb down, but some fell down,” he declared. A lawyer named William McClean, standing with the observers, admitted that the overshoot “had the effect of utterly removing all the curiosity I had entertained, and I beat a hasty retreat, not in the best order either, to my home, where I found my wife and children in tears over my absence, and in fear for my safety.”

Not far from Gettysburg, a panicked civilian waved down John Reynolds. By Charles Veil’s account, the noncombatant “stated that our Cavalry was fighting.” Another staffer, Captain Stephen Weld, recorded the message slightly differently, as “The rebels are driving in our cavalry pickets.” After hearing this information, Reynolds and his party set off again at “a fast gallop.” They stopped at the first occupied house to get directions to the Lutheran seminary. The instructions led the riders toward the center square, and as they entered the town, Veil noted that “there was considerable excitement.” Anxious not to make a wrong turn, Reynolds asked a local named Peter Culp to guide them.

Still posted in the seminary’s cupola, Aaron Jerome spotted Reynolds and his party and sent word to John Buford, who rode over from McPherson’s Ridge. Arriving before Reynolds, Buford improved the moment by making his own survey from the cupola. He was doing this when the left wing commander came riding up below.