Gettysburg (70 page)

Alone in her room, Gettysburg resident Jane Smith noted in her diary “a silence around us now that is ominous of to-morrow’s struggle.” It was just as keenly felt by Sarah Broadhead, who also described the fear that kept the civilians in the town in a high state of suspense. In contrast, young William Bayly was thinking about the sword and pistol that had been left hanging outside the door of the spare room in his family’s house, commandeered for the night by several Rebel officers. Bayly “marveled that a man should be so careless when in the home of an enemy,” but he decided not to liberate the items for fear of what might happen to the rest of his family “if I should confiscate the trappings.”

After spending much of the night listening at their street window to catch what the Confederate soldiers were saying about the day’s events, Daniel Skelly and his friends at last fell into “a sound sleep as boys do who have few cares and sound health.” Sleep was more elusive for ten-year-old Charles M. McCurdy, whose dreams were invaded by images of what he had seen at the Lutheran church near the college, now being used as a hospital. “The church yard was strewn with arms and legs that had been amputated and thrown out of the windows and all around were wounded men for whom no place had yet been found,” McCurdy recollected. Likewise haunted by troubling visions this night was Henry Jacobs, still reeling from the death of the young Johnny Reb on his family’s back cellar door. Jacobs did take time to record that the “courteous, considerate Georgians” who had been posted in his neighborhood had since been replaced by “North Carolinians and Louisiana Tigers.”

Diarist Jane Smith ended her early-morning entry with a prayer for all the young men who she knew were “girded for the conflict” coming with the sun: “Oh, make it, thou Almighty, to deliver down even to the eleventh hour, to them, the beginning of glory!”

As they had done countless times before, the 5,830 men of Brigadier Generals Robert B. Garnett’s, James L. Kemper’s, and Lewis A. Armistead’s brigades filed into marching order, this day aligned along the Chambersburg Pike. “The usual jests and hilarity were indulged in …,” remembered one of Garnett’s men, “and … no gloomy forebodings hovered over our ranks.” The captain temporarily commanding one of Kemper’s regiments had a personal contact at Lee’s headquarters who had assured him that Pickett’s men would be used merely to mop up an already broken Federal army.

The sun had not yet risen when Pickett’s fifteen Virginia regiments began marching east along the pike toward Gettysburg. Kemper’s Brigade led the way, followed by Garnett’s and Armistead’s, each comprising five regiments. About half a mile had gone by under their feet when the head of the column turned south off the pike onto a glorified trail that passed for a local road. Tramping along with the 1st Virginia, John Dooley spotted a mounted figure watching the column, whom he understood to be Robert E. Lee. “I must confess that the General’s face does not look as bright as tho’ he were certain of success,” Dooley reflected. “But yet it is impossible for us to be any otherwise than victorious and we press forward with beating hearts.”

Robert E. Lee’s orders to James Longstreet were to “attack the next morning” according to the “general plan” of July 2. The army commander offered no further specifics in any of his post-Gettysburg reports, and Longstreet’s various recollections are equally ambiguous regarding what was expected of him. Nevertheless, Edward P. Alexander’s account suggests that Longstreet’s thinking must have changed not long after he set his cannon to support an effort centered on Sherfy’s peach orchard.

Longstreet’s first response to Lee’s directive was to begin preparations to renew the attack from the line of the Emmitsburg Road against Cemetery Ridge. Then, as he had done on July 2, the corps commander began pondering the possibilities offered by his superior’s broader instruction to envelop the enemy’s flank. That flank now rested on Big Round Top, whose western base was under Confederate control. In one memoir, Longstreet would declare, “I sent to our extreme right to make a little reconnaissance in that direction, thinking General Lee might yet conclude to move around the Federal left.”

Alpheus S. Williams, still operating as acting commander of the Twelfth Corps, returned to his headquarters after the high-level discussion at the Leister house. He reckoned the time to be “near midnight” when he heard two pieces of information. First, he was told that the Yankees now held the trenches his men had dug on the lower summit of Culp’s Hill. Williams received that intelligence “not with great surprise.” What astonished him was the news that John Geary had marched off somewhere with two brigades, leaving only George Greene’s men to hold Culp’s Hill. “The rebels, of course, walked in and took possession of the right of our deserted line, and began a severe attack upon Greene, who … manfully held the left, aided to some extent by reinforcements from Wadsworth … and [the] 11th Corps,” he related.

Once he had determined that no one had a clue as to the whereabouts of Geary, Williams called on Henry Slocum, who was still presuming the authority of a right-wing commander, and explained what was happening on Culp’s Hill. “‘Well!’” Slocum replied. “‘Drive them out at daylight.’” Williams came away muttering that Slocum’s order “was more easily made than executed.” After he thought matters through, he realized that his biggest advantage was his artillery: the Rebels had none, while he had a number of batteries on hand, and there were good positions for them along the Baltimore Pike and near Powers Hill.

Fortunately for Williams, by the time he returned from Slocum’s headquarters, John Geary had reappeared with a sheepish story about being led astray by a group of stragglers. His troops were not far behind, so Williams could deploy them as well as his own three brigades. With all these pieces now in order, his plan quickly came together. He posted ten cannon along the pike with a clear shot at lower Culp’s Hill, supporting them with Lockwood’s brigade of his division. One of his two remaining brigades (Colonel Silas Colgrove’s) was placed along Rock Creek just south of the occupied trenches, while the last (Colonel Archibald McDougall’s) extended Colgrove’s line to the Baltimore Pike. In like fashion, the two brigades with Geary were positioned to prolong Greene’s line in a southwesterly direction toward the pike. This created a deadly gallery, whose sides were firm with infantry and whose end was a wall of cannon.

Come dawn, Williams intended to have the artillery soften up the enemy for fifteen minutes before Geary attacked. He did not dare underestimate the strength of the Rebels, who had “two lines of strong defenses against a frontal attack and the flank toward the creek [that] could not be turned, as a morass and impassable stream protected it; and across the creek they had filled the woods with sharp-shooters behind rocks and in a stone house near the bank.” Nevertheless, his orders were to attack at first light.

Williams completed his preparations by about 3:30
A.M.
That left him about thirty minutes in which to get some sleep, which he did “on a flat rock sheltered by an apple tree.”

Edward P. Alexander was awake and about well before sunrise, moving his artillery units into a firing line that stretched northeastward from Sherfy’s peach orchard. No sooner had he finished the task when the first light of dawn revealed to him a potentially disastrous error: he had mis-gauged the layout of the enemy’s defenses, and set his row of batteries in a position that completely exposed them to deadly flanking fire. “But fortunately they did not seem to be able to see us clearly,” Alexander recalled, “& by quick work I got the line broken up, & thrown back in such a way as not to present a good target.” The young artilleryman failed to share Robert E. Lee’s positive assessment of possessing Sherfy’s peach orchard. In Alexander’s opinion, it was “very unfavorable ground for us, generally sloping toward the enemy.”

The populations of most Northern cities were still unaware of the fighting at Gettysburg. It was not for lack of effort on the part of the correspondents on the scene, but there was no reliable telegraphic communication within easy distance, and few were willing to leave the field for fear of missing the battle’s conclusion. For two of the more resourceful reporters, however, the communication difficulties proved to be just one more obstacle to overcome. Uriah H. Painter of the
Philadelphia Inquirer
reached the battlefield on July 2 and stayed just long enough to get a full accounting of the first day’s fight before heading back to Westminster, where he caught the government train to Baltimore. His succinct summary of July 1 was approved by the censors that same evening and appeared on the streets of Philadelphia in his paper’s July 3 issue.

Even more remarkable were the efforts of the
New York Tribune’s
Homer Byington, who, though something of an amateur compared to the veteran newspapermen on the scene, was not one whit less intrepid. He spent most of July 1 near Hanover, where he talked and bribed the local telegrapher and some workmen into helping him restring the sections of the telegraph line east of town that had been torn down by Stuart’s cavalrymen. The gap turned out to be five miles long, but the experienced workers had it bridged by late afternoon. Then, with the promise of much money forthcoming from his paper, the canny reporter got his crew to agree to reserve the repaired stretch exclusively for traffic from the
Tribune
or
Philadelphia Press.

From there Byington rode to Gettysburg, arriving in time personally to witness some of the July 2 action and to pick up the story of July 1. Turning around immediately, he telegraphed the news that night from Hanover to New York, enabling the
Tribune
to publish a Friday-morning extra that contained the most comprehensive account yet available of the two days’ fighting.

Other reporters such as the
Boston Journal’s
Charles Coffin preferred to remain on the scene until the outcome of the battle was known. Along with a few kindred spirits from the correspondents’ fraternity, Coffin settled down this morning “in an old farmhouse, near the Baltimore Pike.” Against the backdrop of the steady rumble of wagons and cannon on the move, Coffin noted that “lights were gleaming in the hollows, beneath the shade of oaks and pines, where the surgeons were at work, and where, through the dreary hours, wailing and moanings rent the air.” Notwithstanding the cacophony, he slipped into a refreshing slumber, “expecting that with the early morning there would be a renewal of the battle.”

B
y his own reckoning, Alpheus Williams slept for about half an hour. There was just enough daylight to see nearby objects when he turned to Lieutenant Edward
D.
Muhlenberg, commanding the Twelfth Corps’ artillery, and gave him “the order to open fire.” Between the cannon along the Baltimore Pike and those spread about Powers Hill, there were some twenty-six guns in all, going into action at ranges of eighteen hundred to twenty-four hundred feet. Williams watched approvingly for the next fifteen minutes as the “woods in front and rear and above the breastworks held by the rebels were filled with projectiles from our guns.” A cannoneer on Powers Hill recalled that the Yankee batteries “poured shot & shell into the Rebel lines.”

Given the relatively primitive nature of Civil War artillery ordnance, the effect on the Confederates nestled behind the Union-built earthworks was more nuisance than anything else. The trees overhead took a lot of punishment, recorded a Maryland Confederate, “and the balls could be heard to strike the breastworks like hailstones upon the roof tops.” The way the shells exploding above made the leaves flutter brought comforting thoughts of autumn’s pleasures to another hunkered-down Rebel.

Some units, finding themselves exposed to the firing, were able to shift position without great difficulty. The Federal shelling also failed to upset Confederate offensive plans, though it likely delayed them. When the artillery curtain lifted after the programmed fifteen minutes, John Geary’s troops on the upper summit were supposed to spring into action. Instead, it was Edward Johnson’s Rebels who moved first.

Johnson had no time for finesse. His plan, such as it was, called for the brigades on Culp’s Hill to bludgeon through the enemy positions before them. The hope was that a weak point could be found and recognized as such, and that there would be troops enough on hand to exploit it. So almost the moment the Union barrage ended, the musketry crackled alive all along Johnson’s front as his troops began pressing gamely forward in search of a chink—any chink—in the enemy’s wood-and-dirt armor.