Gettysburg (31 page)

After riding down the eastern slope of the Cashtown Pass, Robert E. Lee and his staff reached Cashtown proper at about 11:00
A.M.
According to one of the officers with Lee, “The sound [of firing coming from the direction of Gettysburg] had become heavy and continuous, and indicated a severe engagement.” Lee met with A. P. Hill, who had no details about any action involving Heth’s Division; he could confirm only that Heth’s instructions had been “to ascertain what force was at Gettysburg, and, if he found infantry opposed to him, to report the fact immediately, without forcing an engagement.” Fully cognizant of how inadequate his report was, Hill sought and received permission to ride toward the town to find out what the situation was.

Shortly after the ailing Third Corps commander departed, Lee learned that R. H. Anderson’s division of that corps was nearby. He summoned the general, hoping that
someone
had news of what was happening, but Anderson could add nothing to what little Lee already knew. Nevertheless, his presence occasioned a monologue from the army commander: “‘I cannot think what has become of [General] Stuart,’” Lee said (“more to himself than me,” Anderson noted). “‘In the absence of reports from him, I am in ignorance as to what we have in front of us here. It may be the whole Federal army, or it may be only a detachment. If it is the whole Federal force, we must fight a battle here.’”

Rufus Dawes and the 6th Wisconsin (plus the brigade guard) had been standing in reserve on southern Seminary Ridge for no more than a few minutes when a First Corps staff officer galloped up and shouted, “‘General Doubleday directs that you move your regiment at once to the right.’” The well-drilled soldiers evolved smoothly into a column of fours that wriggled north along the western base of the ridge. Another staff officer now reined up alongside Dawes and breathlessly summarized the disaster that had befallen Cutler’s brigade north of the pike. The officer looked ahead, then turned to Dawes again and spoke with redoubled urgency: “‘Go like hell. It looks as though they are driving Cutler.’”

Nothing Dawes could see in front of him was encouraging. “The guns of Hall’s battery could be seen driving to the rear,” he wrote afterward, “and Cutler’s men were manifestly in full retreat.” A sergeant in Company C recognized the 147th New York “flying before the enemy,” while the two regiments in the field north of the road were “scattering like sheep, … and outrunning” the Rebels. Reacting to the situation unfolding before his eyes, Dawes called out orders that brought the 6th Wisconsin into a line of battle “parallel to the turnpike and R.R. cut, and almost directly upon the flank of the enemy.” With their commander leading on horseback, the double-ranked line advanced toward the Chambersburg Pike.

All at once a rifle ball hit Dawes’ horse in the chest, causing it to fall heavily onto its haunches. Dawes was able to scramble clear even as his regiment passed him in grim combat formation. “‘I am all right, boys,’” he called out. By the time he made it back to its front, the line had reached a rail fence that ran along the pike’s southern side. The open field beyond the railroad cut seemed to be full of enemy soldiers. “‘Fire by file, fire by file,’” Dawes yelled.

The success enjoyed by Joe Davis’ three regiments north of the Chambersburg Pike had not come without cost. Most critical was the loss of two of the three regimental commanders. The 55th North Carolina’s John Connally had fallen early on in the fight with the two Yankee units in the field, while Colonel John Marshall Stone of the 2nd Mississippi had been punched down by a bullet soon after. In the absence of these strong leaders, the two regiments had fallen prey to the heady tonic of victory, letting discipline fall away as they chased after the beaten Yankees. Davis, in the midst of the delirium, was unable to rein in his men, so it was something approaching an armed mob that swept Cutler’s rear guard from the field. In that context, the ordered, raking fire that tore into the mass from along the Chambersburg Pike came as a rude shock.

Wisconsin officer Loyd Harris later recalled that when “the enemy discovered us coming, they gave up the pursuit of Cutler’s men and wheeled to the right to meet [us]. … I could not help thinking, now, for once, we will have a square ‘stand up and knock down fight.’ No trees, nor walls to protect either, when presto! their whole line disappeared as if swallowed up by the earth.” Rushing to meet this new threat, the Mississippi and North Carolina troops had come upon the unfinished railroad cut, which offered all the security of a good trench. Few hesitated to avail themselves of its cover; the senior officer in the Confederate mass, Major John A. Blair of the 2nd Mississippi, would later write that “all the men were jumbled together without regard to regiment or company.” Jumbled they might be, but they still could shoot, and soon, recollected a Wisconsin soldier, “they opened a tremendous fire on us.”

The soldiers of the 6th Wisconsin either scaled or wiggled through the fence lining the southern side of the pike, then knocked down most of the one that paralleled it across the road. The Union line of battle pushed slowly into the open ground between the pike and railroad bed, advancing in bloody half steps, firing the whole time. Rufus Dawes glanced to his left, saw a ragged line of battle taking shape, and ran over to its commander, Major Edward Pye of the 95th New York.

“‘Let’s go for them, Major!’” Dawes yelled. Pye nodded: “‘We are with you,’” he shouted in reply, signaling to his men to make ready. By the time Dawes returned to his regiment, several in the ranks were chanting, “‘Charge! Charge! Charge!’” “‘Forward!’” Dawes called out. “‘Align on
the Colors!’” The battle line surged forward, straight into the sheets of gunfire that rippled from the improvised trench. “Men were being shot by twenties and thirties and breaking ranks by falling or running,” remembered a Wisconsin boy. All, wrote another, “seemed to be trying to see how quick they could get to the railroad cut.”

Wounded Badgers propped themselves up to take another shot or two at the Rebel line, even as enemy bullets continued to knock down their comrades. Lieutenant Orrin Chapman, who had so enjoyed Loyd Harris’ harmonica performance of “Home, Sweet Home,” was writhing in mortal agony, and Harris himself was bleeding from a neck wound. The first Wisconsin color-bearer was shot, then the second, then the third. Dawes later recalled that the once-neat battle line became a “V-shaped crowd of men, with the colors at the point, moving hurriedly and firmly forward, while the whole field behind [was] streaming with men plunging in agony to the rear or sinking in death upon the ground.” Some Rebel officer in the railroad cut got things organized so the men delivered one solid volley that exploded in the faces of the yelling Wisconsin soldiers when they were no more than thirty-five feet away. “The volley had been so fatal that it seemed half our men had fallen,” wrote one survivor.

Then suddenly the Wisconsin troops, who were soon joined on their left by the 95th New York, were at the cut’s edge. Soldiers clubbed, stabbed, and shot one another at close range. “The men [were] black and grimy with powder and heat,” remembered one of them. “They seemed all unconscious to the terrible situation, they were mad and fought with a desperation seldom witnessed.” More and more Yankee voices repeated the chant: “Throw down your muskets!” An alert Wisconsin officer directed a dozen or so men to close off the eastern end of the cut and begin shooting into the mob. There were more Confederates than Wisconsin men in the melee, but the union troops had the initiative.

“‘Where is the colonel of this regiment?’” Rufus Dawes shouted. John Blair identified himself, then asked Dawes who
he
was. “‘I command this regiment,’” Dawes responded. “‘Surrender or I will fire.’” Blair hesitated a moment and then handed over his sword, prompting the men around him to fling down their muskets. Even as this was happening, not twenty-five feet away soldiers were locked in a vicious melee for the flag of the 2nd Mississippi. The Confederate color guard were all shot down, and the standard’s staff was hit two or three times. Several Wisconsin soldiers
lost their lives grabbing for the flag before Corporal Francis A. Waller of Company I, who at five foot eight and a half was considered a big man in the regiment, finally enveloped the color-bearer and the colors.
^*

The 95th New York, followed by the 14th Brooklyn, joined the 6th Wisconsin at the railroad cut, but not before a large number of Mississippi and North Carolina soldiers fled out its western end. The Confederate effort that might have compensated for Archer’s disaster had itself been rebuffed, leaving the Federals in possession of McPherson’s Ridge. When Joe Davis reassembled his brigade, he would have 600 fewer men than had marched with him this morning. Cutler, for his part, had lost perhaps 660 in this action, with the 6th Wisconsin and its brigade guard adding another 190 or so to the casualty list.

“This success,” Abner Doubleday later wrote, “… enabled us to regain the gun which Hall had been obliged to abandon. The enemy having vanished from our immediate front, I withdrew the Iron Brigade from its advanced position beyond the creek, reformed the line on the ridge where General Reynolds had originally placed it, and awaited a fresh attack, or orders from General Meade.”

S
tephen Weld, carrying the message entrusted to him by John Reynolds, located George Meade’s Taneytown headquarters at 11:20
A.M.
According to Weld, Meade “seemed quite anxious about the matter.” When he conveyed Reynolds’ uncertainty about holding the “heights on the other side of the town,” Meade exclaimed, “‘Good God! if the enemy get Gettysburg we are lost!’” In almost the next breath, the army commander “roundly damned the Chief of Staff … for his slowness in getting out orders.” Weld finished his report by relaying Reynolds’ determination to fight street by street if necessary. This seemed to settle Meade, who remarked, “‘Good! This is just like Reynolds.’” He immediately sent orderlies riding with messages for all his other corps commanders, urging them—especially Hancock—to hurry along. He had no message, however, for Weld to take back to Reynolds—or if he did, the officer did not remember it.

Carl Schurz’s Eleventh Corps division was on the Taneytown Road, just crossing the pennsylvania state line, when its bespectacled commander received Oliver Howard’s order “to hurry my command forward as quickly as possible.” Suspecting this meant trouble ahead, Schurz gave the necessary instructions, then rode on with his staff to investigate. As he and his party drew closer to Gettysburg, they encountered clots of civilians, most beset by fear and uncertainty. One woman gestured for the uniformed men to halt, crying loudly, “‘Hard times at Gettysburg! They are shooting and killing! What will become of us!’”

Schurz reached Cemetery Hill at about 11:30
A.M.
There he found Oliver Howard and learned that since his superior had assumed overall command of the field, he himself (as senior officer) was now in charge of the Eleventh Corps. The fighting along McPherson’s Ridge was over for the moment, with at least one report from that sector (Schurz recalled it as coming from James Wadsworth) indicating that the enemy was
threatening the right flank of the Union line. Working with the information in hand, Howard and Schurz settled on a plan. As Schurz remembered it, he was to take the “First and Third Divisions of the Eleventh Corps through the town and … place them on the right of the First Corps, while he [Howard] would hold back the Second Division … and the reserve artillery on Cemetery Hill and the eminence east of it, as a reserve.” A staff officer present recollected Howard’s saying quite clearly, “‘We must hold this hill.’”

Robert Rodes had a decision to make. The handsome and likable Confederate officer, commanding one of the two divisions that Ewell had moving toward Gettysburg from the north, reached Keckler’s Hill (by now cleared of Yankee cavalry vedettes) at about 11:30
A.M
. This was Rodes’ first action as a division commander, and fate had placed him at a critical juncture. From Keckler’s Hill the road stretched down a gentle slope to Gettysburg, but a ridge line branched off toward the southwest, in the direction of the gunfire he and his men had been hearing for more than half an hour. Rodes’ dilemma was this: should he remain on the road and march into Gettysburg, or angle off toward the sound of the guns?

As Rodes later explained it, “By keeping along the wooded ridge … I could strike the force of the enemy with which General Hill’s troops were engaged upon the flank, and [I reasoned] that, besides moving under cover, whenever we struck the enemy we could engage him with the advantage in ground.” Richard Ewell, who was riding with him, concurred, so as Rodes’ units reached Keckler’s Hill, they peeled off to their right, making their way warily along the wooded ridge.

Abner Doubleday’s resolution to maintain the position selected by John Reynolds seemed to be validated by events. The enemy showed no inclination to renew the infantry fight (though the Rebel artillery never let up), and shortly after 11:30
A.M.,
the rest of the First Corps began to reach McPherson’s Ridge.