Gettysburg (80 page)

Lee would write three reports on the Battle of Gettysburg. The first, composed on July 4, would be brief and very incomplete; the last, dated January 1864, would be the most comprehensive of the trio. The middle one, finished on July 31, offers more opinions and impressions than the others. It contains, among other things, hints as to the doubts Lee may have felt as he worked through, in his mind, the parts of his plan that had not been implemented, and searched for early signs of the disaster that had befallen the attacking force. Pondering the capabilities of his troops in that second report, Lee was to admit that “more may have been required of them than they were able to perform.”

And George G. Meade? After shifting his headquarters to Powers Hill, away from the harassing enemy fire, Meade had checked in with both flanks and become ever more convinced that Lee’s objective was an attack on his center. At almost the same instant that Henry Hunt concluded that a gradual cessation of artillery counterfire might lure out the Rebel infantry, Meade had the identical thought; his orders authorizing Hunt to take such action passed the courier from Hunt announcing that he had already done so. Meade simultaneously issued directives that would better position his infantry reserves to support the center, should it come to that.

It took a self-important civilian to lay bare some of the stress Meade was feeling. The local buttonholed the general to complain that his house had been turned into a hospital and his property was being used as a graveyard. Who would pay for all this damage? he wanted to know. “‘Why, you craven fool,’” Meade snapped. “‘Until this battle is decided, you do not know, neither do 1, if you will have a government to apply to. … If I hear any more from you, I will give you a gun and send you to the front line to defend your rights.’”

The termination of the Confederate bombardment signaled to Meade that the infantry assault was beginning, so he left Powers Hill to return to Cemetery Ridge. On the way, he met an aide from Alexander Hays, who reported that the enemy was indeed advancing. After ordering forward the closest reserve units, Meade rode toward where the Second Corps was defending his line.

S
till pacing ahead of the rest of Pettigrew’s left wing, the four regiments of Joseph
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Davis’ brigade poured across the Emmitsburg Road and surged up the slope toward the barn and house of Abraham Brien. They were in a tight spot: from their left front, Woodruff’s battery was blasting canister at them; farther back on their left, several Yankee regiments had taken up enfilade positions;
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and ahead of them, the portion of the line held by the 12th New Jersey was vomiting bullets and pellets as the sixty-nine-caliber smoothbores spewed out their shotgun blasts. “We opened on them and they fell like grain before the reaper, which nearly annihilated them,” recollected a New Jersey soldier. What remained of the regiments quickly devolved into mobs fighting more for survival than for cause or country. None penetrated the Federal positions in an offensive capacity. “All that came as far as our line of battle came as prisoners,” boasted a New Jerseyman. Joseph Davis had seen enough: convinced that “any further effort to carry the position was hopeless,” he spread the word “to retire to the position originally held.”

Lieutenant William Peel and a few members of his company in the 11th Mississippi made it as far as the Brien barn, where they forted themselves and braced for the rest of the brigade to sweep over them. Glancing anxiously to the rear, Peel could scarcely believe what he saw. “The state of my feelings may be imagined, but not described,” he wrote, “upon seeing the line broken, & flying in full disorder, at the distance of about one hundred & fifty yards from us.” With enemy fire ripping across the ground behind them, and every chance of success lost, Peel and the other officer in the group decided to surrender. After showing a white flag, they were hustled to the rear, while behind them Cemetery Ridge shuddered with cannon and musket fire.

Captain Robert A. Bright was having a very busy afternoon. One of several aides to George Pickett, he had been sent to ask Longstreet for reinforcements. On the ride back to Seminary Ridge, he came across some soldiers in a category usually written out of postwar reminiscences. The aide recorded them as “small parties of [men] … going to the rear; presently I came to quite a large squad.” Recognizing the stragglers for what they were—unwounded men not willing to face the enemy fire on Cemetery Ridge—Bright could not restrain himself: “‘What are you running for?’” he asked them hotly. One of the soldiers eyed the young officer and considered the direction from which he had come. “‘Why, good gracious, Captain,’” he said with a mix of amusement and accusation, “‘ain’t you running yourself?’” Realizing that he had no good answer to that question, Bright continued on his mission.

He found the First Corps commander sitting alone on a fence. As he began delivering his message, Fremantle, the British observer, came up and interjected, “‘I would not have missed it for the world.’” “‘I would, Colonel Fremantle; the charge is over,’” Longstreet replied. Turning to the aide, he instructed, “‘Captain Bright, ride to General Pickett and tell him what you have heard me say to Colonel Fremantle.’” Bright started to reverse course but was checked by Longstreet. “‘Captain Bright!’” he called, pointing toward the Sherfy farm area. “‘Tell General Pickett that Wilcox’s Brigade is in that peach orchard, and he can order him to his assistance.’”

By the time the mile-long files of the Rebel assault reached the Emmitsburg Road, the line had been compressed enough by maneuver and casualties that the soldiers of the Philadelphia Brigade knew they were going to be hit. It may not have occurred to many that they would be at the very focal point of the attack, but they certainly sensed that a life-and-death struggle was only minutes away.

At the moment the bombardment began, Cushing’s six cannon had been covering the area of the outer angle, with the 69th Pennsylvania manning 250 feet of the stone wall fronting the Copse of Trees. Given the importance that this section of the front line would shortly assume, the company deployment was carefully recorded. From north (nearest the outer angle) to south, the order of companies was I-A-F-D-H-C-E-B-K-G. Lieutenant Colonel Martin Tshudy commanded the regiment’s right wing, and Major James Duffy the left. Colonel Dennis O’Kane, in overall command of the regiment since Chancellorsville, was a fighter who, in the words of one of his officers, “above all despised a coward.”

Two more of the brigade’s regiments—the 71st and 72nd Pennsylvania—supported the first line from behind a second stone wall some 150 feet to the right and rear of the 69th. The final regiment in the outfit— the 106th Pennsylvania—had eight of its companies off on Cemetery Hill bolstering the Eleventh Corps, while the remaining two supplied men for the skirmish line near the Emmitsburg Road.

During the brief lull following the bombardment, Alexander Webb, to whose division the Philadelphia Brigade belonged, gave in to the wishes of the determined Alonzo Cushing by allowing him to push his two operational tubes down to the wall. Before the cannonade, the six guns had enjoyed the support of a regiment on either flank; now the surviving pair had more than a hundred feet of unoccupied wall to their right. To fill this gap, Webb ordered the 71st Pennsylvania forward and into it. The 71st’s colonel, R. Penn Smith, doubted there was room enough for the whole regiment, however, and so sent only a portion of it out. The recollections of men and officers differ as to whether two companies manned the first wall and eight the second or vice versa, with many of the enlisted men recollecting the former deployment. In addition, some fifty men from the 71st replaced those from Cushing’s crews who were too severely wounded to fight on. Welcome artillery reinforcement reached this sector in the form of Captain Andrew Cowan’s 1st New York Independent Battery, which placed five guns just south of the copse and one north of it.

Events were unfolding quickly along the Confederate battle line. Even as Davis’ Brigade retreated, its two companions pushed forward. The center brigade, Pettigrew’s (under James K. Marshall), aimed for the open meadow just north of the outer angle, while the right, Archer’s (under Birkett Fry), achieved one of its tactical objectives by linking with the left of Pickett’s line. It was not Armistead’s Brigade (still two hundred yards to the rear) but rather Garnett’s that, following its orders to keep sidling to its left, made the connection. Fry saw Garnett giving orders to his men, “which amid the rattle of musketry I could not distinguish. Seeing my look or gesture inquiring he called out, ‘I am dressing on you.’”

Making matters worse were visibility problems. “The smoke was dense,” noted a Tarheel officer in Pettigrew’s brigade, “and at times I could scarcely distinguish my own men.” Getting across those sturdy railings was also murderous. “How like hail upon a roof sounded the patter of the enemy’s bullets upon that fence!” a Tennessee man declared.

Fry had no sooner turned away than his luck ran out, and he fell, shot in the thigh. When a few of his men tried to carry him off, Fry waved them away, intent only on victory. “Go on,” he urged through the pain, “it will not last five minutes longer!” Garnett’s brigade, to the right of Fry’s men, kept pressing ahead. Thus far, Garnett, who was mounted, had not been touched. He kept station in the rear of his line, cheering his men on. “Steady men! Close up! A little faster; not too fast! Save your strength!” Farther to the left, as Pettigrew’s brigade charged up the slope from the Emmitsburg Road, their acting commander paused at the fence to wave them forward. Two Yankee bullets smashed into this head, killing him. Just minutes before, James Marshall had remarked to an aide: “We do not know which of us will be the next to fall.”

As the Rebel lines maneuvered across the fenced fields west of the Emmitsburg Road, the Union skirmishers fell back. Once they crossed the road they really hustled, aware that they were in the primary kill zone for the riflemen along Cemetery Ridge. The soldiers on duty from the 106th Pennsylvania passed through the 69th Pennsylvania to rejoin their companions in the support line. Officers moved among the men, offering a mix of encouragement and threats. Dennis O’Kane told the soldiers of the 69th that he was confident their courage would win “the plaudits of our country,” but just in case, he added that “should any man among us flinch in our duty,” the soldier alongside was authorized to “kill him on the spot.” O’Kane wanted his men to hold their fire until they “could distinguish the white of their eyes.”

Straddling the Emmitsburg Road was a stretch of stout fencing that was too well seated to push over, leaving the Confederate soldiers the option of either squeezing through the rails or going over the top. For many, it proved to be a fatal impediment. An engineer observing from the north noted that as “soon as the top of the fence was lined with troops the whole line tumbled over, falling flat into the bed of the road, while the enemy’s bullets buried themselves into the bodies of the falling victims.” A Union soldier would recollect that as the Rebels began climbing the fence, “we opened fire on them with all the energy that each man could put forth.”

On crossing the road, Garnett’s formation was thrown into some disorder after his right regiment, the 8th Virginia, had to divide to get around the Codori farm. As the brigade pushed ahead, musketry blasts exploded from its ranks, many of them aimed at the section of the wall harboring Cushing’s two guns. The young officer was struck twice, taking a terribly painful wound to the genitals. Despite his pain, Cushing kept monitoring the effect of each shot, calling out corrections all the while. A soldier in the 69th remembered hearing him declare, “‘That’s excellent, keep that range,’” just moments before an infantryman commented that “that artillery officer has his legs knocked from under him.” Cushing was yelling another order or correction when a Rebel bullet entered his mouth, killing him instantly.
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Soon after this, his two guns exhausted their supplies, thus creating an inviting chink in the Union line.