Gettysburg (67 page)

Night found Gettysburg’s residents in the dark in every way. They dared not light too many lamps lest they draw friendly fire, and as to news, they were getting nil. “The Confederates maintained a clam-like silence on all matters concerning the battle,” recalled Daniel Skelly. “We gain no information from the Rebels, and are shut off from all communication with our soldiers,” seconded Sarah Broadhead. Attorney William McClean tried without success to find out how things were going: “I engaged in a little conversation with the Rebel soldiers in front of the house and was asked about the road and distance to Baltimore, which they seemed anxious to reach,” he later recollected.

Somehow Tillie Pierce had mustered the inner strength to endure the experiences of this day on the Jacob Weikert farm, on the eastern side of Little Round Top. Its proximity to the fighting made it a natural collecting point for the wounded, who had begun flooding in. “They were laid in different parts of the house,” Pierce would remember. “The orchard and space around the buildings were covered with the shattered and dying, and the barn became more and more crowded. The scene had become terrible beyond description.” She did everything in her limited power to provide comfort. One patient in particular caught her attention, a badly wounded man who stared earnestly at her. “‘Will you promise me to come back in the morning to see me?’” he asked. Pierce could only answer, “‘Yes, indeed.’”

Back in town, Liberty Hollinger’s father argued with some Confederate soldiers who were standing outside the family’s house and demanding food. The Rebels’ angry frustration vanished, however, when Hollinger’s daughters came out onto the porch; suddenly polite, they asked if the girls would sing for them. Liberty’s sister, Julia, was not intimidated. She would sing, she said, but not to please them; rather, she would sing Union songs in the hope that some of the boys in blue might hear her and be cheered. For each song the girls presented, the Confederates answered with one of their own, until finally an officer rode into the yard. “‘Cap,’” he said to the leader of the soldiers, “‘you’d better be careful about these songs.’” “‘Why that’s all right,’” the one named Cap replied. “‘They sing their battle songs, and then we sing ours.’”

It was past 9:00
P.M.
when, after being briefed by George Sharpe and sending his summary to Washington, George Meade brought all his
senior officers together at the Leister house. Sometimes styled a war council, this was in fact more of an executive session, the most efficient way for Meade to learn his army’s condition and gauge the fighting spirit of his key subordinates. Somehow they all managed to squeeze into the twelve-foot-square room: Meade, Warren, Butterfield, Slocum, Hancock, Gibbon, Williams, Birney, Sykes, Howard, Sedgwick, and Newton. The conversation ambled about for a while, during which time an exhausted Gouverneur Warren fell asleep.

Everyone wondered about the condition of the Third Corps. Had Sickles been present, he probably would have bluffed his way through with easy assurances, but the acting commander, David Birney, was no Daniel Sickles. His corps had been badly chewed up, and he doubted it was fit for much more. The generals next reviewed the supply situation, which, while tight, was not critical. The discussion moved on to events of the day, the merits of the present position, and the fate of a few officers. Then, for his own reasons, Daniel Butterfield decided to encapsulate the commentary into three questions, which he put to the group:

Everyone was for staying in place, though three (Gibbon, Newton, and Hancock) advocated some alterations in the line to improve the defenses.

No one favored attacking Lee. The opinions ranged from Alpheus Williams’“Wait attack,” to John Newton’s “By all means not attack.”

If we wait attack, how long?

The consensus was that the Federals should wait for one more day. According to Meade’s recollection, “The opinion of the council was unanimous, which agreed fully with my own views, that we should maintain our lines as they were then held, and that we should wait the movements of the enemy and see whether he made any further attack before we assumed the offensive. I felt satisfied that the enemy would attack again.”

Among the thousands who suffered physical wounds after this day’s fighting were many whose scars would be as much inner as outer. Certainly one of the most self-tortured was Lieutenant Gulian V. Weir, commanding the six-gun Battery C, 5th United States Light Artillery, part of Henry Hunt’s Artillery Reserve. Weir’s crew had seen extensive action, beginning the instant they were ordered to assist Humphreys’ division along the Emmitsburg Road.

It started when Weir was intercepted by Winfield Hancock and given new orders: he was to place his cannon in the area vacated by Caldwell’s division and from there fire on the Rebel formations approaching the Emmitsburg Road from the west. Not fifteen minutes later, Hancock reappeared and directed the lieutenant to move his battery closer to the road to help support the infantry and artillery units near the Codori farm. Weir did so under protest, pointing out that there were no friendly infantry units to support him. Once in this position, his six Napoleons fired across and south along the Emmitsburg Road.

Weir’s gunners were there when Humphreys’ line gave way to their left front, followed by Ambrose Wright’s attack on the units near the Codori farm. A battery retreating from the Third Corps’ sector passed through Weir’s position in a near panic, disrupting some infantry coming up from the rear. Mistaking this outfit for Weir’s, Hancock cursed the out-of-control unit and later filed a disparaging report based on his wrong identification.

Acting on his own authority, Weir pulled his battery out of its exposed position and reestablished it closer to Cemetery Ridge, about five hundred yards east of the Codori farm. From there he fired on the Florida brigade, lending some help to the 19th Maine in its counterattack. The place soon came under direct fire, however, so Weir ordered his guns pulled back to the ridge. It was then that his real troubles began. Some of Wright’s Georgians were closing as the lieutenant rode off, having seen two of his guns away and feeling confident that the rest were out of danger. Glancing back to where the four cannon had been, Weir was horrified to see them still in place and now surrounded by the enemy. Just as he registered this dispiriting image, his horse went down. As Weir struggled to his feet, he was hit in the head by a spent bullet that knocked him senseless.

Bleeding, confused, and filled with shame, Weir somehow made it to his battery park, where he was unable to locate the two guns he had withdrawn. At this emotional nadir, he still managed to look after those of his
battery who were still with him. “I saw that the men had something to eat and then I went to sleep,” Weir recollected. He little realized that his saga would have more twists and turns before it was over.

The extension of the fighting to the southern portions of the battlefield also visited the consequences of combat on the homes and farmsteads in that area. The John Edward Plank farm, located along Willoughby Run on the afternoon route taken by Longstreet’s Corps, became the central receiving station for Hood’s casualties. According to a family member, Confederate medical staff commandeered the Plank home with the statement, “‘Now don’t be frightened[;] this house will be a hospital and you can expect many wounded men here!’” It was said that the injured John B. Hood was first treated there.

Likewise pressed into emergency use was Francis Bream’s Black Horse Tavern and farm, which became a triage area for McLaws’ men. A surgeon attached to E. P. Alexander’s battalion later recalled visiting the site. “The wounded appeared to be everywhere,” he related. “They lay on blankets or on the bare ground; some were waiting their turn at the operating tables. A few screamed in their delirium, calling for their wives, sweethearts, or mothers. Others in shock were quiet and pale.”

union medical teams, too, claimed all suitable space. The Michael Frey farm, on the Taneytown Road near the turnoff for George Weikert’s place, was used by the Third Corps. A Michigan soldier saw surgeons “busily at work probing for bullets and amputat[ing] Limbs. … [I]t requires a man with a steel nerve and a case-hardened heart to be an Army Sergeon.” The nearby Jacob Hummelbaugh farm was appropriated by Second Corps’ doctors. It was here that the captive William Barksdale was brought and where he died on July 3.

While the evidence is not conclusive, it seems likely that Daniel Sickles was transported by ambulance to the Daniel Sheaffer farm, off the Baltimore Pike about halfway to Two Taverns. Whether or not this was where his shattered leg was taken off will probably never be known for sure. One thing
is
known, however: after his leg was amputated, Sickles insisted on keeping it with him.
^*

The man who ran the military telegraph office in Washington would remember that Abraham Lincoln spent “hour after hour” there monitoring the news from Gettysburg. It was where Navy Secretary Gideon Welles found him this morning. The reports, noted Welles, indicated that there “was a smart fight, but without results, near Gettysburg yesterday.” Returning in the evening, the cabinet member learned that John Reynolds was dead. Meade’s July 1 dispatch from Taneytown, in which he declared that he could see “no other course than to hazard a general battle,” was likely the most recent direct communication yet received in the Union capital. “The tone of Meade’s dispatch is good,” Welles pronounced.

There was a panic of modest proportions in Richmond this day, an indirect result of Lee’s operations. In an effort to apply some “big picture” strategy to the eastern theater, military planners in Washington had instructed the man commanding the Federal enclaves along the Virginia and North Carolina coasts to concentrate his forces with a view to threatening the Confederate capital. This he had done, albeit reluctantly and cautiously, and already the expedition’s first effort, a cavalry raid against railroad bridges north of Richmond, was having its effect. War clerk John Beauchamp Jones, while noting the enemy actions, felt certain that the Federal commander was wasting his time. “He cannot take Richmond,” Jones wrote in his diary, “nor draw back Lee.” From Lee himself there had been no recent report, only silence.

After two days of battle witnessed from inside the town of Gettysburg, there was little that could surprise Daniel Skelly, or so he thought. Skelly and a buddy were exploring when, as he recalled it, “we were halted by two Confederate soldiers who had a lady in their charge. She was on horseback and proved to be the wife of General Barlow who had come through Confederate lines under a flag of truce looking for her husband who had been severely wounded on July 1.” The indefatigable Mrs. Barlow, having managed to cross the lines, was now riding around following up every lead she was given. Her husband, Francis Barlow, was in fact alive and being nursed in the home of Jane Smith, who lived near the almshouse on the northern side of town; none of the people Arabella
Barlow spoke with knew this, though, and their attempts to be helpful just sent her from one wrong house to another. She was no more successful on July 2 than she had been on July 1.