Gettysburg (38 page)

The attack plan had no frills. The two brigades were to cross the swale between McPherson’s and Seminary Ridges in a rush, without stopping to fire, and close with the enemy, who were expected to be in no better condition than Pettigrew’s men. Like many plans this day, this one lasted only until the first soldier stepped forward. Perrin and Scales were supposed to move together, but no sooner had they started than Perrin’s Brigade was retarded by a serious enfilade fire from the Yankee cavalry across the Fairfield Road. Lane’s Brigade was assigned to handle this problem, but his North Carolina troops were late getting organized, so Perrin was slowed while Scales was not.

Scales’ North Carolina battle line at once became the target for every Federal musket and cannon on Seminary Ridge. Charles Wainwright watched approvingly as one of his alert cannoneers obliqued half his battery so as partially to enfilade the Rebel line. “His round shot, together with the canister poured in from all the other guns, was cutting great gaps in the first line of the enemy,” noted the colonel. “Never have I seen such a charge. Not a man seemed to falter.” For a member of the 38th North Carolina, in contrast, “Every discharge made sad loss in the line.” Rufus Dawes and his 6th Wisconsin, supporting three cannon posted just north of the railroad bed, had a good view of the field to their left. “The rebels came half-way down the opposite slope,” Dawes recollected, “wavered, began to fire, then to scatter and then to run, and how our men did yell, ‘come on Johnny, come on.’” The wall of fire was horrifying in its sudden attrition; Alfred Scales later observed that afterward, “only a squad here and there marked the place where regiments had rested.” The adjutant of the 13th North Carolina would report, for example, that his tiny unit had lost 150 out of 180 men in advancing just 125 yards. A survivor of the 34th North Carolina would never forget having to face “this thunderous fire.” “They threw shells, grape and canister as thick as hail,” recorded another soldier in the regiment.

Although Abner Perrin’s troops came forward later than expected, they were no less determined and initially enjoyed no more success than Scales’ men. Like the maw of a living thing, the Yankee fire now turned away from the dazed and broken North Carolina regiments to seek out the South Carolinians. “We were met by a furious storm of musketry and shells,” Perrin attested. His two left regiments, the 14th and 1st South Carolina, were rudely shoved together by the sheer force of the lead and iron blast that hit them, then, if by some force of physics, they were compressed into an inert mass that stalled before a rail-fence barricade. “We were fired upon from right, left, and centre, and to retreat would have been complete destruction,” testified a member of the 14th.

As the two right regiments, the 12th and 13th South Carolina, drew near the ridge, they took hits from their right. The nettlesome Federal cavalrymen on the other side of the Fairfield Road had not been chased away by Lane’s troops and were now maintaining a steady carbine fire into the flanks of Perrin’s regiments. Perrin desperately ordered the 1st South Carolina to veer around the exposed southern side of the rail barricade, then directed his two rightmost units to oblique right toward the cavalry.

Perrin’s men received little useful support from Lane’s Brigade, which was supposed to be advancing parallel to them along the southern side of the Fairfield Road. Lane had marched his men across the road just east of Willoughby Run, then turned toward Seminary Ridge, only to
become entangled with troopers from Gamble’s brigade, in Buford’s cavalry division, who were fighting dismounted from behind a stone wall. At the same time, the 8th Illinois Cavalry, by threatening charges against Lane’s right flank, succeeded in drawing the 1,700-man force far enough south as to sever any practical connection between it and Perrin’s regiments. Witnesses on the Union side attested that some of Lane’s regiments were “forming against cavalry” while a few stragglers from the Eleventh Corps reported witnessing Lane’s men “forming squares against some of our cavalry.” In a private letter written not long after this battle, William Gamble proudly noted that his brigade had “fought the Rebels on the Seminary Ridge and saved a whole division of our infantry from being surrounded and captured—nothing of this … is mentioned in newspapers or dispatches.” The net result of all of this, in any case, was that Perrin’s troops advanced alone.

By chance and courage, Perrin’s men struck at the weakest point in the Seminary Ridge line. After outflanking the barricade in front of the seminary, the 1st South Carolina began rolling up the line north of it. Simultaneously, the 12th and 13th South Carolina drove toward the Fairfield Road, shaking loose the few Federal units (cavalry and artillery) that were posted there.

The stubborn determination that had held the First Corps together throughout the bloody trials of this day was finally overcome by fatigue and Rebel opportunism. Abner Doubleday would recall that “the enemy were closing in upon us and crashes of musketry came from my right and left” as he gave the bitter command to all his units to retreat to Cemetery Hill.

The solitary brigade that Oliver Howard had detached from his reserve to delay the enemy advance north of Gettysburg was commanded by Charles R. Coster. It consisted of four regiments, two from New York (the 134th and 154th) and two from Pennsylvania (the 27th and 73rd)— perhaps 1,200 men altogether. Following Howard’s orders, Coster’s soldiers double-quicked down the Cemetery Hill slope to Baltimore Street, which they took toward the town square. Already the avenue was crowded with wounded and defeated men. Carl Schurz intercepted the relief force as it reached High Street. He sent the 73rd Pennsylvania (290 strong) straight into town to deploy near the railroad station, then led the rest along Stratton Street to Kuhn’s brickyard, just north of Stevens Run.

While officers called out orders and the flood of blue-uniformed refugees around them swelled, the three regiments spread into a line of battle with the 27th on the left, the 154th in the middle, and the 134th on the right. The position was far from ideal, as there was high ground both to their left and in their front, the latter feature comprising a tall wheat field ready for harvesting. If the Rebels had become sufficiently disorganized thanks to their success, and if they advanced in loose enough formations, then Coster’s small but tight line might turn them back. If, however, the enemy came forward in good order and in strength, the union brigade would have no chance.

July 1 was proving to be one of Jubal Early’s better days. He had been handling his units with a calm dexterity that made the most of his initial advantages of strength and position. Finding John Gordon’s brigade winded by its effort at Blocher’s Knoll and poorly positioned to confront the fresh Federal line that had suddenly appeared on the town’s outskirts, he turned to the brigades of Hays and Avery. These two, he later recounted, “were then ordered forward, and advancing while exposed to a heavy artillery fire of shell and canister, encountered the … line and drove it back in great confusion into the town.”

A New York soldier in the 154th would never be able to erase the image of the advancing Confederate brigades from his thoughts. “It seemed as though they had a battle flag every few rods,” he remembered. In a pattern that had been repeated throughout this desperate afternoon, the Confederate lines overlapped the Federal ones, enabling Rebel units to rush around the union flanks and shoot into the side and rear of the Yankee regiments. “I never imagined such a rain of bullets,” exclaimed the 134th’s commander. Both of Coster’s flanks were turned, causing each of those regiments to fall back, which left the 154th on its own. A courier sent to coordinate their withdrawal never reached the New Yorkers, who fired another volley before realizing that the enemy had them nearly surrounded. They had no choice but to fight their way to safety, which they did as individuals or in small groups. One corporal later noted that the “few that did get away were the best runners and the most exposed to danger.” In the utter confusion of the retreat, the flags of the 134th were saved by a member of the 154th, while a soldier of the 134th recovered the Stars and Stripes belonging to the 154th.

Sergeant Amos Humiston of the 154th, whose thoughts in quieter times were often of his three children, fled the brickyard, ran south along Stratton Street, crossed Stevens Run, and got over the railroad tracks
before a Rebel bullet brought him down. The wound was mortal. Humiston dragged an ambrotype from his pocket, a picture of his young ones. It was in his hand when he died, unseen and unnoticed by anyone nearby.

“Word was sent to the citizens to go to their cellars, as the enemy were driving our men and the fighting would probably be from house to house on our streets,” remembered Mary Horner. While the combat never reached that scale, the town’s streets were filled with soldiers from both sides, and violent incidents were without number. “Four of our men were carrying a wounded soldier on a stretcher down the street when a [cannon] ball came along and took the legs off the two front men,” testified Jennie McCreary. Other shells caused casualties when they struck buildings, and Rebel musketry reaped even more lives. One of Cutler’s regimental commanders noted that he “lost 8 or 10 men by falling bricks and infantry fire in the streets.” Writing right after the battle, a member of the 2nd Wisconsin recalled that the Rebel shells “made drains & bricks fly around quite promiscuously.”

Watching wide-eyed from his cellar window, Henry Jacobs “saw a Union soldier running, his breath coming in gasps, a group of Confederates almost upon him. He was in full flight, not turning or even thinking of resistance. But he was not surrendering, either. ‘Shoot him! Shoot him!’ yelled a pursuer. A rifle cracked, and the fugitive fell dead at our door.” Looking back on the moment, Charles McCurdy, all of ten years old, would declare, “If there is a more thrilling spectacle than an army in frenzied retreat through the narrow streets of a town, I cannot imagine it.”

Charles Wainwright never expected to get himself, much less most of the First Corps artillery, safely off Seminary Ridge. To his amazement, he did both. Even in the midst of the deteriorating situation that enveloped him, Wainwright maintained his professional aplomb. His stern orders to his gunners were to limber up and “move at a walk towards the town. I would not allow them to trot for fear of creating a panic among the infantry with which the road was now crowded.” That same pride demanded that Wainwright himself be the last artillery officer to leave. “As I sat on the hill watching my pieces file past, and cautioning each one not to trot, there was not a doubt in my mind but that I should go to Richmond [as a prisoner],” he reminisced. Only when the last of his guns were moving off and he saw that the road was clear did Wainwright call out “Trot! Gallop!” and then put the spurs to his horse. Counting heads later, the astonished colonel found that he had lost just one gun. “The more I think of it, the more I wonder that we got off at all,” he marveled.

Years after the fighting had ended, both Carl Schurz and Abner Doubleday would resolutely deny that their respective commands had succumbed to widespread panic. “That there were a good many stragglers hurrying to the rear in a disorderly fashion as is always the case during and after a hot fight, will not be denied,” was Schurz’s only concession. “The First Corps was broken and defeated, but not dismayed,” swore Doubleday. “There were but few left, but they showed the true spirit of soldiers.” (One exemplar was Edward Fowler, commanding the 14th Brooklyn, who gave the order, “‘Fall back, boys, but do not make a run of it.’”) Schurz, for his part, proudly maintained that “in whatever shape the troops issued from the town, they were promptly reorganized, each was under the colors of his regiment, and in as good a fighting trim as before, save that their ranks were fearfully thinned by the enormous losses suffered during the day.”