Gettysburg (84 page)

The portion of Hood’s Division that held that sector was mostly posted up the slope a bit, so as the yelling, slashing cavalry column snaked over to their rear, the unpanicked Rebel infantrymen were able to turn and begin firing on the troopers from above. Evander Law now came hustling back from the Emmitsburg Road, having disposed of Merritt’s threat, and ordered the regiment closest to the intruders to block the lane they were using. The nearest unit was the 4th Alabama, which threw its line across the lane too late to cut off Wells’ men but just in time to be hit by Parsons’ column. The first infantry section was still trying to form when the support group rode into its line, scattering many of the Alabamians.

Farnsworth and Wells crossed Plum Run and, after turning away from the boulder-strewn area around Devil’s Den, headed toward the Bushman farm, crossing Rose Run. On the crest of the ridge line west of the farm, they spotted the Rebel batteries that had dueled with Merritt’s small column, all of them pointed toward the south. Even as Farnsworth paused to consider his next move, a double-quicking enemy infantry regiment, the 9th Georgia, moved among the guns and formed to confront the troopers. With them was Evander Law, who would later admit to having been “‘in hot water’ for a few minutes, while watching to see what direction the cavalry would take.” Around the same time, a portion of the 4th Alabama that had not been routed by Parsons’ men began shooting into the rear of Wells’ column.

Clearly, it was time to go. Most of the Yankee cavalrymen charged southward, broke through the rear of the 1st Texas skirmish line, and regained their starting point near Bushman’s Hill. Not with them was Elon Farnsworth. Some of the Confederate cannon had been wheeled around to shell the intruders, and one of the first shots knocked him off his horse. With the 1st Texas rapidly closing that route, the 9th Georgia moving purposefully toward them, and the 4th Alabama still causing trouble, the only recourse for Farnsworth’s small contingent seemed to be to return the way they had come in. An unlucky trooper on the lower end of the food chain surrendered his horse to the boy general, and he and the few riders with him pushed back toward Big Round Top, hoping to link up with Parsons’ command.

Some did make it, but others, including Farnsworth himself, were felled by rifle fire from different Alabama troops, among them William Oates’ 15th Regiment. Parsons and Wells, though badly wounded, escaped;
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Farnsworth, shot several times, did not. Whether he was killed after refusing to surrender or shot himself when surrender became inevitable would be hotly debated after the battle. The testimony of two Federal surgeons who viewed his body and reported no head wounds tended to support the former scenario.

As for Kilpatrick, his hopes of disrupting the Confederate right flank or abetting a countermove by Meade were not to be realized this day. Drawn to the area by reports of the fight, James Longstreet found Evander Law and was informed by him that the danger was past. Law would proudly recollect how Longstreet “warmly congratulated me on the manner in which the situation had been handled.”

“As soon as the assault [against Cemetery Ridge] was repulsed,” George Meade would afterward testify,

Robert E. Lee’s first tasks were to see that his troops were rallied and his officers prepared to meet any contingency. The English observer Fremantle pronounced Lee’s comportment at this time “perfectly sublime. … His face … did not show signs of the slightest disappointment, care, or annoyance; and he was addressing to every soldier he met a few words of encouragement, such as, ‘All this will come right in the end: we’ll talk it over afterwards; but in the mean time, all good men must rally.’” A wounded officer being helped to the rear remembered passing “General Lee, who was forming a line of the slightly wounded,” while another in retreat found strength in the army commander’s composure, which he termed “ineffably grand.” Noting how intently Fremantle was watching him, Lee commented to the foreign observer, “‘This has been a sad day for us, Colonel—a sad day; but we can’t expect always to gain victories.’”

Generals Longstreet and Hill were kept busy as well. “I sent my staff officers to the rear to assist in rallying the troops,” remembered Longstreet, “and hurried to our line of batteries, as the only support that I could give them, knowing that my presence would impress upon every one of them the necessity of holding the ground to the last extremity.” He also tried to calm George Pickett, who exclaimed, “‘General, I am ruined. My division is gone; it is destroyed.’” A. P. Hill, for his part, went out to his skirmish line and ordered those troops to reform along Seminary Ridge. Another retreating soldier came across Joseph R. Davis, who seemed to be in shock; when asked where the brigade might be found, Davis “pointed his sword up to the skies, but did not say a word, and stood there for a moment knocking pebbles out of the path with the point of his sword,” the soldier recalled. “He could not talk, and neither could I.”

Lee, too, endured some personally painful moments. When he encountered George Pickett and began telling him where to regroup his division, a grief-stricken Pickett interjected, “‘General Lee, I have no division now, Armistead is down, Garnett is down, and Kemper is mortally wounded.’” “‘Come, General Pickett,’” Lee replied, “’this has been my fight and upon my shoulders rests the blame. The men and officers of your command have written the name of Virginia as high today as it has ever been written before.’” He also met briefly with James Kemper, who was convinced (wrongly, as it developed) that he was dying from his wound, and Cadmus Wilcox, whose nerves had been badly shaken by two days of desperate combat. The former was the recipient of Lee’s sympathy, and the latter of his best efforts at providing some comfort, as he claimed all responsibility and asked for Wilcox’s help in setting things right.

One colorful thread of the Gettysburg legend has Lee apologizing to his soldiers and telling them that the whole debacle was his fault, and his alone. While such recollections may have been helpful in the postwar climate of factional healing, and while they may have promoted adulation of Lee, they must be docketed alongside Gettysburg’s other myths. He had nothing to apologize for, as he had fully discharged his duties by crafting a well-considered plan and carefully weighing the odds. Nothing in life was certain, and unfortunate though the events of this day were, and however much it pained him to see his men suffer, he had no cause for self-recrimination.

Perhaps most important and significant was that Lee abandoned any further thought of offensive action at Gettysburg. All of his actions on July 2 and through the assault of July 3 had eschewed defensive concerns in favor of a single-minded focus on the offensive. Now, however, it was time for him to think of protecting his army. To ensure that there would be no misunderstandings, Lee met separately with each of his corps commanders.

His first conference was with James Longstreet, who recalled that his superior “remained with me for a long time.” Together they decided to pull the First Corps back to its preassault positions of July 2. Lafayette McLaws received subsequent instructions to “retire to your position of yesterday,” while Evander Law was told “to withdraw the division from the lines it had held since the evening of the 2d to the ridge near the Emmitsburg Road, from which it had advanced to the attack on that day.” Edward P. Alexander was also directed to return “to the position from which the attack began on the 2d.”
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Lee spoke with Richard Ewell around sunset. No longer would Ewell’s Corps hold its positions in and east of the town; the divisions under Rodes and Johnson were ordered to that part of Seminary Ridge where the Union First Corps had made its final stand on July 1, while Early’s Division was posted to the low ground behind them, over which Scales’ and Perrin’s Brigades had attacked. Some of Johnson’s men were misdirected in their march and did not find the way until early the next morning. Those who did reach the designated encampment on time were less than pleased with the conditions that greeted them there, as few of the dead Federal soldiers had been buried. The smell was horrendous in places.

It was well after dark when Lee met with A. P. Hill, whose corps was essentially to hold its positions along lower Seminary Ridge. A cavalry officer reporting to Lee for instructions found him and Hill “seated on camp-stools with a map spread upon their knees”; the two were very likely drawing up a plan for Hill’s men to lead the army’s withdrawal from Gettysburg, set to begin twenty-four hours later, unless the enemy attacked before that time.

Newsman Charles Coffin rode slowly along Cemetery Ridge. “The dead were everywhere thickly strewn,” he observed. Such sights were not what the editors back home wanted their field men to dwell upon. Coffin and Whitelaw Reid were among those who found their way to Meade’s headquarters, moved near to but not back into the Leister house, which was now filled with wounded. Reid thought Meade looked “calm as ever,” while Coffin described him as “stooping, weary, his slouched hat laid aside, so that the breeze might fan his brow.”

At 8:35
P.M.,
Meade sent off a note to Henry Halleck reporting the repulse of the enemy assault. “The loss upon our side has been considerable,” he conceded. His efforts to determine whether Lee was retreating, he noted, had led him to conclude that the enemy remained in force. “At the present hour all is quiet,” he summarized, adding that the “army is in fine spirits.”

This long day of combat made it impossible even for the indomitable Mrs. Barlow to cross the lines as she had done on July 2. The determined Arabella was thwarted but not discouraged. She would try again tomorrow to find her wounded husband, Francis. This time she would succeed.

When he went to bed this night, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles was as up to date on Gettysburg as anyone in Washington—meaning that he knew what the situation had been as of 3:00
P.M.
the previous day, the time of the last dispatch received from Meade. Everything Welles had been hearing indicated that “there will be a battle in the neighborhood of Gettysburg.” He had barely turned out the light when a courier arrived from the War Department to tell him that news was arriving via Hanover Station from a source using his name as a reference. Welles hurried over to the telegraph office, where he found Lincoln waiting. “‘Who is Byington?’” the president asked. Someone using that name was sending the latest Gettysburg news, and when instructed to identify himself had replied only, “‘Ask the Secretary of the Navy.’”

Welles thought for a moment, recalling the man. He confirmed that Homer Byington was a Connecticut newspaperman who also freelanced for the
New York Tribune.
With the bonafides established, those present read over Byington’s reports, which conveyed the understanding, by Welles’ account, that a “great and bloody battle was fought, and our army has the best of it, but the end is not yet.” Even as Welles and Lincoln were digesting this news, rumors were trickling into the city by other means. The officer commanding Washington’s defenses heard this evening that “we had a decided success near Gettysburg. The Rebel Generals Longstreet and Barksdale were killed and General Sickles lost a leg.”

In Richmond, the prevailing mood this day was relief over the fact that the Yankee force that had been threatening the capital from the east was withdrawing. War Department clerk John B. Jones added his own optimistic spin, expressing the hope that the troops had been summoned to Washington, “where they may be much needed.” Although there was real concern about the health of President Jefferson Davis, Jones believed that affairs in Richmond would have very little impact on Lee’s northern expedition. “Gen. Lee’s course is right onward,” Jones noted in his diary, “and cannot be affected by events here.”

Army of the Potomac Provost Marshal Marsena Patrick had his hands full in the wake of the Cemetery Ridge assault. Making do with what he had, Patrick organized “a guard of Stragglers” to watch over the prisoners his mounted units were bringing in to a temporary stockade near Rock Creek. To a cavalryman who saw them, this crowd of POWs—Patrick put their number at around 2,000—”looked sorry.” Mississippi officer William Peel was among those who were herded into an open field and subjected to a little speech designed both to reassure and to subdue them. After promising that they would be treated kindly, the provost marshal made it clear that any disturbances would be handled by his “splendid cavalry,” under orders “to charge you, cutting & slashing, right & left, indiscriminately.”