Gettysburg (62 page)

South to north, Anderson’s brigades were lined up as follows: first Wilcox’s Alabamians, then the brigade of three Florida regiments under David Lang (named Perry’s Brigade for its absent regular commander), next the all-Georgia brigade of Ambrose R. Wright, the Mississippi brigade of Carnot Posey, and finally the Virginia brigade of Brigadier General William Mahone. One Floridian vividly recalled the tension as the men “caught the roar of the cannon and rattle of musketry, coming nearer and nearer, [and] we soon see brigade after brigade going in to charge the enemy’s line of defenses.” He further recollected that the “men who had been playing cards immediately tore them up and threw them away.”

Little unfolded today as advertised. When the moment arrived to advance, Wilcox realized that he could not proceed straight on without entangling his men with some from McLaws’ Division who had veered north in their charge; he thus had to shift his brigade four hundred yards to the north before turning it east to attack. Somehow the 8th Alabama missed getting the word, so when the advance sounded, it moved ahead with a gap of some two hundred yards between its left and the rest of the brigade.

Since Andrew Humphreys’ division had yet to be pried from the Emmitsburg Road, there were still cannon positioned opposite Wilcox. They began slinging shells into the human lines as soon as they appeared. An Alabamian recorded that he could barely hear himself and his comrades cheering for “the sound of the shells that were bursting above and around us.”

Cued by the forward movement of Wilcox’s men, David Lang led his three Florida regiments up the slight slope that had sheltered them, only to be “met at the crest … with a murderous fire of grape, canister, and musketry.” Wright’s Georgians, next in line, stepped off soon after Lang’s Floridians, but almost at once they were slowed by enemy fire and by numerous obstacles blocking their way.

The Union officer of superior rank who came closest to matching George Meade’s activities this day was Winfield S. Hancock. Ever since Andrew Humphreys marched his division out to the Emmitsburg Road, Hancock had been closely monitoring events in his sector. Like most on the field, he had only the sketchiest idea of what was happening off to the left. When, at Meade’s request, he dispatched Caldwell’s division, he did so believing that it was a temporary measure to take up a part of the line until the Fifth Corps arrived. He expected that the division would return to him in good condition.

As the battle racket continued without pause, Hancock grew anxious. Still, he could take some comfort in the fact that with the exception of Caldwell’s men and the two regiments Gibbon had sent forward to cover Humphreys’ right flank, his Second Corps had not been drawn into the Third Corps’ fight. Then a courier arrived with instructions from Meade, directing Hancock to send another brigade to assist Birney. He decided that his Third Division, Hays’, would be the most capable of providing it. Hancock’s aide found Alexander Hays on Cemetery Ridge, watching the fields to his front and left with George L. Willard, commander of the socalled Harper’s Ferry Brigade. After the staffer delivered the message, Hays turned to Willard and said, “‘Take your Brigade over there and knock the H— out of the rebs.’”

No sooner had Willard begun marching than Hancock received news from another headquarters orderly: Daniel Sickles was wounded, and Meade wanted him to assume command of the Third Corps. It was not exactly the directive he had been expecting. As Hancock turned over the Second Corps to John Gibbon, Gibbon “was not surprised [to hear him] utter some expressions of discontent at being compelled at such a time to give up command of one corps in a sound condition to take command of another which, it was understood, had gone to pieces.”

Hancock overtook Willard’s brigade, which was advancing not in a standard linear formation but rather in a four-column spread, with the regiments marching abreast. In another unusual move, their commanding officer had ordered bayonets fixed, an action generally reserved for the moments just before close contact, since it was difficult to load and fire a rifle quickly with the long bayonet attached to the muzzle. On reaching the head of the columns, Hancock slowed down, and the men in turn set their pace on him. Near the George Weikert farm, they began to encounter fragments of the Third Corps, and then saw David Birney himself.

Birney, thinking only of the fate that had overcome his division, informed Hancock that “the 3d Corps had gone to pieces and fallen to the rear.” His new corps commander allowed the discouraged officer to continue in that direction to help rally his shattered unit. “The enemy’s advancing musketry shots were falling at that point,” Hancock later recalled, “and their artillery shots as well.” He turned to Willard and told him to prepare his brigade for battle.

Even now, a few Federal batteries were still scrambling to escape the collapsed peach orchard salient. If conditions were hard on the cannoneers, however, they were hell itself on the horses. The last tubes to go were those farthest east along the Wheatfield Road from Barksdale’s breakthrough. Most left the field by prolonge—that is, jerked backward by manhandled ropes in synchrony with the recoil as the guns were fired. This technique was used when the enemy was so close that the gunners could not cease firing to limber up, or when there were not enough live horses left to do the job. In the case of a piece in Battery E, 5th Massachusetts Light Artillery, the crewmen brought the limber team in to help with the hauling, but by the time they got the horses turned and the tow attached, all five animals had been shot.

After the departure of the 5th Massachusetts, only the 9th Massachusetts Light Artillery, commanded by John Bigelow, remained. These gunners had drawn the interest of both the freelancing 21st Mississippi and some skirmishers from Kershaw’s left wing, who targeted the exposed battery. Relying on a combination of manpower and horsepower, Bigelow hauled his six guns by prolonge in a northerly direction from the Wheatfield Road toward the Trostle farm.

“No friendly supports of any kind, were in sight,” Bigelow remembered, “but Johnnie Rebs in great numbers. Bullets were coming into our midst from many directions and a Confederate battery added to our difficulties.” Harassing him from his left front were Kershaw’s South Carolinians; to his right front were the more compact formations of the 21st Mississippi. Bigelow kept both at bay by firing canister from his left section and solid shot from his right.

Somehow the battery survived this gauntlet, making it over the crest and into a natural amphitheater near the Trostle farm that provided enough cover for Bigelow to hook the guns to his surviving horse teams.
His men were frantically bent to this task when Lieutenant Colonel Freeman McGilvery arrived from Cemetery Ridge, his horse bleeding from four wounds received in the course of the short journey. McGilvery had discovered that the section of the union line just to the east along Cemetery Ridge was devoid of organized troops. He had conceived a plan to plug the hole with cannon—any cannon he could grab out of those retreating or those arriving from the reserve. He would need time, however, to accomplish this.

“‘Captain Bigelow,’” McGilvery said, “’there is not an infantryman back of you along the whole line which Sickles moved out; you must remain where you are and hold your position at all hazards, and sacrifice your battery, if need be, until at least I can find some batteries to put in position and cover you.’” Bigelow promised McGilvery that he “would try to do so.”

Bigelow’s retreat had brought him to a point just south of the east-west-running Trostle Lane, almost directly opposite the farmhouse and barn. A stone wall extended southward behind him, from the road into a marshy area; the ground sloped down toward him from the south and west, the swell forming a crest line about a hundred yards distant. He had his caissons dump their munitions next to the cannon before clearing out. After sending a few solid shots bounding blindly over the bowl rim, Bigelow ordered his four right guns to load with double canister charges. With the grand battle still raging in the distance, Bigelow’s battery and the 21st Mississippi were about to engage in a very private little war.

From the south to the north, Confederate units either were completing their victories or had run out of offensive power. All supports were in, so whether or not these efforts would prove decisive would depend in large measure on how much fight the enemy had left in him. In the area of Rose’s wheat field, a composite force drawn from the brigades of Tige Anderson, Semmes, Kershaw, and Wofford drove out the U.S. regulars to take control of the sector. Directly east of them was the lower portion of Cemetery Ridge, ending on the northern slope of Little Round Top. Alone among the four brigadiers, Wofford believed that his men had enough strength remaining for one last thrust.

Farther north, Andrew Humphreys’ Third Corps division had completed its punishing withdrawal from the Emmitsburg Road to a section
of Cemetery Ridge to the left and rear of the Second Corps.
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As Winfield Hancock passed this command on his way to the left, he thought “there seemed nothing left of the division but a mass of regimental colors still waving defiantly.” Except for some fragments of units and a few guns still struggling to find a way out, the area formerly held by Humphreys’ division was now Confederate territory.

Through this arena William Barksdale now led three of his Mississippi regiments. Closing with him off his left rear was Cadmus Wilcox with four Alabama regiments. George W. Hosmer, covering the battle for the
New York Herald
, reported that the Rebels “came forward in their usual magnificent style. They had difficult ground to come over; but on they came, over rocks and through low wood, until within a fair distance, when they made a rush with all possible yells roared out in one. They did not keep their lines very even, but they were scarcely less impetuous as a mass than they would have been in line.”

The combat between John Bigelow’s cannon and the 21st Mississippi (with help from Kershaw’s South Carolinians) lasted for almost thirty minutes. The veteran Rebels used the thin cover provided by the swell of the depression sheltering the gunners to snipe viciously at the Federal cannoneers and their animals. Bigelow would remember that “men and horses were falling like hail. … Sergeant after Sergt., was struck down, horses were plunging and laying all around.” Yet whenever an organized body of Confederates tried a rush, it was scattered by canister blasts. With antipersonnel ammunition stock running low, Bigelow took a chance and ordered his men to fire case shot with its fuses cut so it would explode near the gun muzzle. Still the patient Rebels kept extending their perimeter, until shots began coming from the rear, near the Trostle farm.

Bigelow ordered his guns to get out. The first to leave overturned just beyond the narrow gate opening in the stone wall, blocking the only exit until the crew could right it again. In a panic, the crewmen assigned to the next gun simply drove at the wall, crashing their team and equipment through it. These two were the only cannon saved, as exultant Mississippi troops swarmed the remaining four. “We fired with our guns until the rebs could put their hands on [them],” wrote a young artilleryman. “The bullets flew thick as hailstones.” It was every man for himself. Bigelow had been wounded twice and would have been captured had not his bugler (and amateur artist), Charles Reed, helped him onto his horse and, mounted alongside, led it toward safety at a walk.
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Approaching the line of cannon that Freeman McGilvery had cobbled together along lower Cemetery Ridge, Reed and Bigelow were almost blown away by friendly fire, but by following a course that their experience told them would skirt the kill zone, they succeeded in passing through the smoking guns. Behind them, along McGilvery’s line, Union cannon blasted at anything that moved, the gunners wholly conscious that they were the only line of defense for this portion of Cemetery Ridge.