Gettysburg (55 page)

The 44th New York took its place first, with its fellow regiments snapping into place successively to its left: the 83rd Pennsylvania, the 20th Maine, and the 16th Michigan. Skirmish lines eased forward from each regiment, filtering southward into the trees until they were lost from sight. After surveying his deployment, Vincent made up his mind to shift the 16th Michigan from his extreme left to his extreme right. He would never record his reasons, but his shrewd assessment of his brigade’s situation may have suggested to him that the open western face of Little Round Top offered more advantages to the enemy than did the more wooded southern flank, meaning it would make sense to prolong his line in that direction.

Below Vincent and to his right, the southern crest of Houck’s Ridge was wreathed in the smoke of Smith’s cannon and the musketry of Ward’s brigade. Vincent moved along his line, giving each regimental commander a hasty tactical briefing and offering encouragement. When he reached Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain and his 20th Maine, he told the former Bowdoin College professor that, in Chamberlain’s words, “this was the extreme left of our general line, and that a desperate attack was
expected in order to turn that position, [and he] concluded by telling me I was to ‘hold that ground at all hazards.’”

Like Vincent’s other regiments, the 20th held a position that was hardly parade-ground-straight but instead wiggled back and forth so as to “best secure the advantage of the rough, rocky, and stragglingly wooded ground,” as Chamberlain later related. Not subsequently recorded in the colonel’s official report was his decision to detail his two brothers, Tom and John, both serving under him in the regiment, to opposite ends of his line. Chamberlain feared that if they fought side by side, a single Rebel shell “might make it hard for mother.”

It was around this time that the 3rd Arkansas and 1st Texas closed on Devil’s Den from the east, to find the Yankee boys of Ward’s brigade waiting for them. The Federals held their fire until the two Rebel regiments came within two hundred yards, then loosed an aimed volley that staggered the Confederates so badly as to let Ward’s men get off a second blast without a serious reply. While Smith’s four cannon on the crest continued to hurl canister into the Texas ranks, Ward adroitly swung his two right regiments out to enfilade the Arkansas troops. More Union help came from the north, where de Trobriand’s brigade was posted on the western edge of Rose’s wheat field. The 17th Maine marched across and set itself along a wall bordering the field’s southern side, thus gaining a clear shot into the flank of the 3rd Arkansas.

With his men being hit in front and flank, and no evident support coming from behind or to his left, Jerome Robertson called for reinforcements. His request reached Evander Law, who was as yet unaware that with Hood out of the action, command of the division had devolved to him. Concluding that the obstructions on his right would continue to constrict his movement there, Law pulled his rightmost regiment (the 44th Alabama) off the line and ordered it to wheel left and proceed north toward Devil’s Den. Almost as soon as the 44th moved off, Law added the 48th to the assistance he was sending to Robertson.

The Federal line along Houck’s Ridge was also shifting around. Artilleryman James Smith had realized that portions of the enemy line seemed to be heading toward the Plum Run Gorge, to his left and rear, a point not covered by his guns. Wanting infantry down there, he tried to persuade the officer commanding the 4th Maine, then directly
supporting his battery, to move off the ridge into the valley. When he refused, Smith immediately went over his head to J. H. H. Ward, who agreed with the cannoneer.

Once the 4th Maine had begun to descend from the rocks, Smith’s closest support became the 124th New York. On returning to his guns, the artillerist learned that the first wave of Rebels had already slipped through his net. A second line (Benning’s Brigade) was appearing along the edge of Warfield Ridge, and it now became the priority target. When Smith called for spherical case, however, he was informed that the available supplies of long-distance munitions had been exhausted. He was beside himself with frustration. “Give them shell; give them solid shot,” he screamed. “D—n them, give them anything!”

In planning his assault, John B. Hood had backed up Law’s Brigade with the all-Georgia outfit of Brigadier General Henry L. Benning. According to Benning, Hood’s orders specified that his “brigade would follow Law’s brigade at the distance of about 400 yards.” By the time Benning reached his jumping-off point, though, Hood was down, and there seemed to be no one in overall command of the operation. Catching sight of a line of battle ahead of him in the distance, he assumed it was Law’s and so set his course by it.

Had what Benning saw actually been Law’s Brigade, his four regiments (some 1,400 muskets) would have pushed into Plum Run Gorge, bringing their power to bear against Little Round Top. But Benning was
not
following Law; he had mistaken Robertson’s line for the one he was to guide on, so his blow would land against Devil’s Den and Rose’s wheat field, leaving the troops already battling against Vincent’s brigade without any support.

“As soon as we cleared the woods we were in full view of Round Top Hill, some half mile in our front,” recalled one of Benning’s Georgians. “We had not got out of the woods before the guns from the hill top were turned on us.” “Down the plunging shot came,” scribbled a reporter covering the battle for Georgia’s
Savannah Republican
, “bursting before and around and everywhere tearing up the ground in a terrific rain of death. … [As Benning’s Brigade] approached the [Yankee] guns, the rain of grape and canister began, mingling their sharp cries with the shrill whistle of the mad minnie balls which seemed to come in showers.”

With some of the pressure off them due to Smith’s having switched targets, the men of the 1st Texas managed to lurch forward in a semblance of a charge that brought them into the open just below the four guns in Devil’s Den, at the southwestern edge of a three-acre triangular field. Their surging, screaming scramble up the hill scattered some of Smith’s gunners and brought the battery’s support at a run. The 124 th New York advanced to a barrier marking the field’s northeastern border and from there poured two volleys into the Texas troops, who fell back under cover. This in turn drew the New Yorkers into an impetuous charge down the hill, straight into a steady Rebel volley that ripped great rents in the Federal line, killing the regiment’s major, twenty-two-year-old James Cromwell.

“‘My God! My God men!’” shouted Colonel Augustus van Horne Ellis, commanding the 124th. “‘Your Major’s down; save him! save him!’” A second downhill charge that erupted spontaneously was no more successful than the first. When the shocked survivors pulled back this time, it was their colonel who lay dead on the Pennsylvania soil. For a terribly brief moment, the New Yorkers thought their sacrifice had won a respite, but they soon realized that was not the case. No sooner had the 1st Texas fallen back out of range than a second line appeared off to the left of the 124th. It was a portion of the 44th Alabama, one of the two regiments sent over from the right by Evander Law to help Robertson’s men. A soldier in the 124th would always remember the enemy’s appearing “not more than 150 yards from us, on our left flank, [who] … opened an enfilading fire. No troops could long stand such a storm.”

The fourth brigade in Hood’s Division was an all-Georgia unit commanded by Brigadier General George T. Anderson. Anderson, nicknamed Tige (from “Tiger”) for his aggressiveness, believed that his men were the designated reserve, so he did not automatically advance when Benning’s Brigade, to his right, did so. Only minutes after Benning’s Georgians departed, however, Anderson received Jerome Robertson’s call for help. Lacking any other orders, or even a sense of whom to turn to for direction, Anderson led his brigade to Robertson’s aid. Thus, by chance and well-intentioned instinct, the full weight of Hood’s second wave was moving toward the center of Sickles’ position, leaving the units struggling against Little Round Top to fend for themselves.

The 44 th and 48th Alabama Regiments of Law’s Brigade had begun their advances on the extreme right of that line, but thanks to a series of position shifts, they were now moving on a tangent to the left flank, which brought them into the opening of the Plum Run Gorge. Colonel William F. Perry, commanding the 44th, was navigating by the sound of the fighting at Devil’s Den. “The enemy were as invisible to us as we were to them,” he later recollected. “The presence of a battery of artillery of course implied the presence of a strong supporting force of infantry. Of its strength, its position, and the nature of its defenses, we were in total ignorance.” He knew only that with the 48th Alabama advancing parallel to him, on his right, he was not alone.

After a spate of individual shots alerted Perry’s men to the proximity of the enemy, the veteran Rebel soldiers hugged the ground, allowing most of the first aimed volley to pass harmlessly overhead. The two Alabama regiments had come up against the 4th Maine, now positioned at the entrance to the gorge. While the 48th, more sheltered by virtue of being in the woods, maintained its regimental cohesion, the 44th, already thinned by straggling throughout the day’s hot march, was further reduced when each wing focused on a different, divergent objective. The left wing slid along the eastern side of the triangular field to enfilade the 124 th New York, even as the right tackled the 4th Maine.

Despite assistance provided by the 48th, the thin right wing of the 44th Alabama enjoyed scant success at first. When the time later came for the commander of the 4th Maine to write his report, Colonel Elijah Walker would term this formation “a strong skirmish line.” Yet even as the left wing of the 4th Maine stopped the Alabama troops in the gorge, the left wing of the 44th was scattering the 124th New York and surging to the crest of Devil’s Den, where the Alabamians got in among Smith’s artillery. The New York cannoneers fled, taking their firing implements with them to deny the enemy the use of their tubes. Just as the Alabama soldiers were savoring their moment of victory, artillery shells began bursting among the captured guns, forcing them to seek cover.
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The commotion was not enough to deter a few determined members of the 1st Texas, who slipped in among the abandoned guns and thereby laid
the groundwork for a series of postwar arguments with 44th Alabama survivors over which regiment had actually taken possession of Smith’s three cannons.
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A Federal counterattack boiled up almost at once, undertaken by the right wing of the 4th Maine, a portion of the 124th New York, and the 99th Pennsylvania, which had just been hustled over from its place on the extreme right of Ward’s line. A corporal in the ranks of the Pennsylvania regiment would describe the moment when his unit entered the fray: “Above the crack of the rifle, the scream of shell and the cries of the wounded, could be heard the shout for ‘Pennsylvania and our homes,’” he recalled. It took only minutes for the 99th Pennsylvania to regain control of Smith’s guns. A member of the regiment later proudly recollected how the men stood “as firm as the rocks beneath their feet and poured volley after volley into the gorge below.”

It was the nature of this close-in fighting that an advantage along one part of the line was often secured at the expense of another part. Dedicating its right wing to the effort to retake Smith’s guns so diminished the 4th Maine’s firepower that the 48th Alabama was able to press past its flank into the more open area of the Plum Run valley, whence it could sweep in behind the Federal line along Houck’s Ridge. James Smith’s decision to position his two extra guns about midway to the rear of the valley now paid a dividend, as the pair blasted the Alabama troops. “The enemy are taken by surprise,” Smith noted. “Their battle flag drops three different times from the effect of our canister.” The Alabama men, exhausted beyond measure, fell back into the woods.

The cost had been high, but union arms still held Houck’s Ridge. Sergeant Harvey May Munsell, the color-bearer for the 99th Pennsylvania, somehow made it through the tempest unhit, even though he had conspicuously borne the united States flag. Munsell put on a brave front, but inwardly he felt real fear. Only afterward did he learn that others in the ranks “thought I was the only man in the regiment not frightened half out of his senses.”