Gettysburg (81 page)

While some of Kemper’s men went to cover in the rough ground just south of the copse to begin sniping at Cowan’s gunners, others headed north to join those portions of Garnett’s and Archer’s commands that were pressing into the gap marked by Cushing’s silent guns. The increasingly disorganized formation was within fifty feet of the stone wall when most of the 69th, obedient to O’Kane’s fire discipline, popped up on one knee to unleash a devastating volley. “The slaughter was terrible,” testified a soldier in Company K. Frank Haskell would vividly recall how the opposing volleys blazed and rolled, “as thick the sound as when a summer hailstorm pelts the city roofs; as thick the fire as when the incessant lightning fringes a summer cloud.”

The 71st Pennsylvania pitched in as well but soon found itself in trouble, as Archer’s Brigade, driving hard toward the outer angle, began filling in the meadow just to its north. Under this pressure, the portion of the 71st along the front wall pulled back to its original position in the rear. Some of Garnett’s men, along with a few of Archer’s, quickly scrambled into the breach, taking control of the outer angle.

There was no doubt now in Winfield Hancock’s mind as to where the main blow would fall. It said much about Robert E. Lee’s perspicacity that the thousands of men who had debouched not twenty-five minutes ago from the woods to the west were converging on what Hancock knew to be the weakest part of his position. But there was no time for such reflections. Hancock had seen how thoroughly Alexander Hays had disrupted Davis’ Brigade by flanking it. In the way the Rebel thrust at his center was taking shape, Hancock could see a similar opportunity emerging to the south. He had already sent an aide, Captain Henry H. Bingham, to find George Stannard and alert him to the possibility, but now he determined to go himself.

Riding south along his line, Hancock first encountered Colonel Arthur F. Devereux, whose regiment, part of Colonel Norman J. Hall’s small brigade, fronted some rough ground that the Confederates appeared to be avoiding. Military courtesies fell by the wayside as Hancock pointed to the Copse of Trees and ordered Devereux to “‘get in God Damn quick.’” Hancock likely also spoke with the brigade commander, Norman Hall, before riding on toward the sector held by the Second Vermont Brigade, then attached to the First Corps.

Earlier this day, Stannard had disposed his regiments in such a way as to take advantage of the protection offered by the ground, which deployment had placed the 13th and 14th Vermont somewhat in advance of the rest of the Cemetery Ridge line. Skirmishers sent forward by him had been among the first to challenge Pickett’s advance as his battle lines approached the Emmitsburg Road. When the Rebel forces veered across his front toward his right, Stannard saw a chance to rip into the enemy’s right flank by directing the 13th Vermont to pivot to face north. By the time Hancock rode up, the brigadier general (possibly further encouraged by the Second Corps commander’s suggestion through his aide Bingham) had decided to raise the ante by ordering the 16th Vermont forward to extend the left flank of the 13th.
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This repositioning seemed to open up a large hole in the Union line, even as it exposed the left flank of the 16th Vermont to an enfilade. Hancock, displeased about the risks Stannard was taking, complained as he arrived that the Vermont officer had “gone to hell.” At first taken aback by the censure, Stannard retorted, “‘To hell it is then, as it is the only thing that can possibly save the day.’” One of Stannard’s aides, Lieutenant George G. Benedict, observed the exchange but could not hear what was said over the din of the firing. He was just thinking that Hancock was “the most striking man I ever saw on horseback, and magnificent in the flush and excitement of battle,” when, to his horror, he saw the corps chief start and then reel in the saddle.

A pair of nearby officers sprang toward the stricken general, catching him as he toppled from his horse. There was a frantic moment as the men searched for the wound before Hancock finally pointed to his thigh. Blood had begun flowing from it at an alarming rate. “‘Don’t let me bleed to death,’” Hancock pleaded. “‘Get something around it quick.’” George Stannard produced a large handkerchief and with Benedict’s assistance fashioned a tourniquet that stanched the flow. Someone went to fetch a doctor. Winfield Hancock lay dazed and in a mild state of shock, no longer a factor in the events that were roaring to a climax around him.

After Robert Bright brought him Longstreet’s permission to call up Wilcox, an anxious George Pickett dispatched three orderlies in succession, in the hope that at least one might make it through the enemy fire. In the event, all three managed to get through, so that when the third one, Bright, rode up, the exasperated brigadier could only throw up his hands and exclaim, “‘I know; I know.’” By Wilcox’s account, “My brigade … then moved forward.” To his left, David Lang also put the Florida brigade in motion, “in accordance with previous orders to conform to [Wilcox’s] … movements.” With Pickett’s Division well out of sight and no one on hand to direct him, Wilcox struck off in the direction he believed Pickett had gone in, more due east than northeast. To the men in the ranks, it appeared as if they were going to take on the Federal army all by themselves. A soldier with Wilcox recalled that “one could hear frequent expressions from the men to the effect: ‘What in the devil does this mean?’”

Due to the awkward way Pickett’s Division had initially been deployed, Kemper’s Brigade had had to execute a series of difficult maneuvers in order to take up its proper place on the right of the front line. After making that first sharp left oblique to close the gap with Garnett’s Brigade, Kemper’s men had marched toward the Rogers farm, seemingly on a collision course with the section of Cemetery Ridge held by George Stannard’s Vermont Brigade. Once he was across the Emmitsburg Road, however, Kemper had stayed with the plan and again obliqued to the left to link with Garnett. This radical move would later allow some boastful Vermont soldiers to claim that their musket fire had turned the head of the Rebel column.

As Kemper’s Brigade passed south of the Codori farm buildings, its commander took stock of the fact that he still had not caught up with Garnett. Spying Armistead’s ranks coming up some two hundred yards behind Garnett’s, James Kemper decided to coordinate with that brigade instead. Accordingly, he rode over to find Armistead, who, following orders, was on foot. “‘Armistead, hurry-up, my men can stand no more,’” Kemper said. “‘I am going to charge those heights and carry them, and I want you to support me.’” “‘I’ll do it!’” Armistead declared, passing along the order to double-quick. As Kemper was turning to rejoin his command, Armistead pointed to his brigade with obvious pride. “‘Did you ever see a more perfect line than that on dress parade?’” he inquired.

On his way back to his men, Kemper rode by the Codori farm buildings, where he spotted a wounded officer from Garnett’s Brigade. Kemper asked the officer if his wound was serious. The man replied that it was but explained that he expected to be captured soon. When Kemper expressed some surprise, the officer responded, “‘Don’t you see those flanking columns the enemy are throwing out on our right to sweep the field?’” This reference to Stannard’s maneuver brought Kemper up short; he had never even considered the possibility of such a threat to his flank but had simply assumed that the necessary flank protection for his brigade would be in place. Now recognizing that the danger was a very real one, he spurred on to reach his advancing columns, convinced that only a rush could save them from being chopped up by the enemy flankers. “‘There are the guns, boys,’” he shouted. “‘Go for them!’” His sentence was punctuated by a Yankee bullet that struck him in the groin before ranging upward on an agonizing course that Kemper would later describe as having been “excruciatingly painful.” He tumbled to the ground, no longer capable of command. Through the red haze of his pain, he was conscious of enemy soldiers’ attempting to carry him into captivity, only to be driven off by his own men, who hauled him a short distance to the rear. The first of George Pickett’s division commanders had fallen.

Control of the brigade devolved to Colonel Joseph Mayo of the 3rd Virginia, but by the time he gave his first orders, Colonel William R. Terry of the 24th Virginia and Colonel William T. Fry of Kemper’s staff had already addressed Stannard’s threat by pivoting portions of two regiments to confront the flankers. All who remained of the 1,781 men who had begun the charge—Mayo later termed it a skirmish line—rushed toward the Copse of Trees. “Our men are falling faster now,” recollected John Dooley, “for the deadly musket is at work.” Thirty yards from the wall, Dooley himself went down, a bullet having pierced both of his thighs. As the yelling mob of men pressed past and over him, he had an odd thought: “Oh, how I long to know the result, the end of this fearful charge!”

The slaughterously efficient Alexander Hays was ready for all that Pettigrew and Trimble might bring on against him. “When within 100 yards of our line of infantry, the fire of our men could no longer be restrained,” Hays later reported. “As soon as they got within range we poured into them and the cannon opened with grape and canister[, and] we mowed them down in heaps,” wrote a member of the 125th New York. It was the recollection of John Brady of the 1st Delaware that the “grape, canister, minnie, buck and ball were simultaneously poured in one incessant stream, into the advancing column of the enemy.” Some in the 14th Connecticut were firing their Sharps breech loaders so fast that they had to pour water “from their canteens … upon the overworked guns.” The buck-and-ball charges spit out by the 12th New Jersey’s Springfield smoothbores spread their own brand of devastation: “I doubt whether anywhere upon that field a more destructive fire was encountered,” the regiment’s commander bragged. Alexander Hays, given to taking occasional literary excursions in writing his reports, ventured to suggest that the “angel of death alone can produce such a field as was presented.” Another Connecticut soldier would never forget how the “shrieks of the wounded and groans of the dying filled the air.”

Pettigrew’s Brigade was shredded by this fusillade. Lane’s Brigade meanwhile drove in from the left, only to meet an all-too-familiar fate: like all the troops ahead of them, these North Carolinians had a difficult and deadly time getting over the stout fencing along the Emmitsburg Road. “Our loss in this vicinity was fearful,” recorded an officer in the 7th North Carolina, “the dead and wounding lying in great numbers both in the field and road.”

The vicious crossfire and sheeting musketry that swept the open meadow east of the road rendered patently suicidal any Confederate attempt to make it across to the stone wall shielding the enemy. Still, some brave souls tried. The single cannon from Arnold’s Rhode Island battery that remained in action along that wall was loaded with canister when a group of Rebels tried to rush it. The crewman holding the lanyard cord stared open-mouthed at the oncoming attackers until the battery’s sergeant screamed, “‘[W]hy the d—l don’t you fire that gun! pull! pull!’” His words served as a bitter epitaph for the handful of soldiers blown away in the blast—who, though often afterward identified with the 26th North Carolina, were more likely members of the 16th.

Two days earlier, the 26th had marched into battle some 800 strong. Following the regiment’s terrible struggle with the Iron Brigade in McPherson’s Woods, fewer than 300 were left to make the assault against Cemetery Ridge. Another 100 or more were added this day to the rolls of the killed, wounded, and captured. Among those taken prisoner were Sergeant James M. Brooks and Private Daniel Boone Thomas, who together bore the proud flag of the 26th forward until they stood nearly alone, just feet from the stone wall. Then, instead of gun muzzles, hands were extended. “‘Come over on this side of the Lord!’” a Yankee called as the two were hauled over by members of the 12th New Jersey.

Back on the western side of the Emmitsburg Road, James Lane was trying to reorganize his brigade in response to a message from James Longstreet, who wanted him to clear the Yankee flankers away from the left of that deadly pocket fronting the stone wall. When he passed the word along to one of his regimental commanders, however, the man exploded, demanding, “‘My God, General, do you intend rushing your men into such a place unsupported, when the troops on the right are falling back[?]’” Lane thought for a moment and then, as he later wrote, “seeing it was useless to sacrifice my brave men, I ordered my brigade back.”

It appears that the majority of Scales’ Brigade, commanded here by Colonel W. Lee Lowrance, never crossed the Emmitsburg Road but instead took position along it to fire at the enemy on the hill. The soldiers from North Carolina who two days before had marched without flinching into the maw of Wainwright’s cannon on Seminary Ridge could not repeat the performance; Lowrance would later report that “without orders, the brigade retreated.” Isaac Trimble could only watch the suffering of Lane’s men and the faltering of those under Lowrance. He shared the fate of many Southern officers this day when a bullet hit him, in the left leg. Lying on the ground, racked by pain, the otherwise combative commander was approached by an aide who asked if he should try to rally the demidivision. “‘It’s all over! let the men go back,’” Trimble instructed before allowing himself to be helped to the rear.