Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg (4 page)

One of the Union regiments that fought here was the Eleventh Pennsylvania. Their monument has a small bronze dog at its base on the side away from the road. Like several other Civil War regiments, the Eleventh had a canine mascot, named Sallie. When the Eleventh was finally driven back along with the rest of the Union forces in late afternoon, Sallie stayed behind with the dead of the regiment. She guarded them faithfully through the next four days until the survivors returned to bury them on July 5. Sallie continued with the regiment until she herself was killed in action at the battle of the Wilderness ten months later. For her faithfulness, veterans of the Eleventh honored Sallie when they erected their monument in 1890.

We'll backtrack two hundred yards and climb the observation tower built in the 1890s by the War Department when it administered the battlefield. (The National Park Service, created in 1916, took over Civil War battlefields in 1933.) From here we get a panoramic view of the first day's battlefield— especially if we are here between November and April when the leaves are off the trees. Looking south we can also see the town of Gettysburg, with Cemetery Hill rising to its south and Culp's Hill to the southeast. On a clear day in winter we can also see, through the bare branches of several oak trees, the Round Tops four miles to the south.

For an understanding of the battle, the most important view from this tower is to the east over the open, flat fields defended by two undersized Eleventh Corps divisions (about six thousand men, smaller than a single Confederate division). Known as the “Dutch Corps” because half its regiments were composed mainly of German-Americans, this corps had been part of the Army of the Potomac for only six months. On May 2 at the battle of Chancellorsville, it had borne the brunt of Stonewall Jackson's flank attack, and had buckled under the onslaught. It buckled again at Gettysburg about 4:00
P.M.
on July 1, setting off a sort of chain reaction in which the Union line of two miles in length caved in from right to left. The First Corps west of town, despite being worn down
by hours of fighting, gave ground grudgingly while several Eleventh Corps regiments were again routed. This happened mainly because Jubal Early's division of Ewell's corps had arrived from the northeast on the Harrisburg Road (sometimes called the Heidlersburg Road) a mile east of our observation tower. This route brought them in fortuitously on the right flank of the Eleventh Corps in a whirlwind attack that the brigade on that flank could not withstand.

That brigade was in a division commanded by Brigadier General Francis Barlow, a boyish-looking New York lawyer before the war, who had enlisted in 1861 as a private. Barlow demonstrated extraordinary courage and military aptitude that brought him repeated promotions and a reputation as one of the army's best combat leaders. But July 1, 1863, was not one of his better days. He suffered his second serious wound of the war on what came to be called Barlow's Knoll at the extreme right flank of the Union line, and was left for dead when his troops retreated.

We shall proceed out to Barlow's Knoll along Howard Avenue, lined with Eleventh Corps monuments, to examine yet another of Gettysburg's many myths. This one was probably made up out of whole cloth by Confederate General John B. Gordon, who, like Barlow, was a lawyer (in Georgia) before the war and rose by merit and courage to high command.
Gordon led the brigade that attacked the Barlow's Knoll position and, as he later told the story, spotted Barlow lying wounded and apparently dying. Gordon gave him water and had him carried to a shady spot. Gordon fought on through the rest of the war (wounded six times himself) thinking that Barlow had died. Some fifteen years after the battle, Gordon and Barlow happened to meet at a dinner party in New York, according to Gordon's account in his memoirs. When they were introduced, Gordon supposedly asked, “General, are you related to the Barlow who was killed at Gettysburg?” “Why, I am the man, sir,” replied Barlow. “Are you related to the Gordon who killed me?” “I am the man, sir.”

It is a great story, very much in keeping with the sentimental “brother against brother” reconciliationist tradition in vogue when Gordon published his memoirs in 1903 (seven years after Barlow's death). But there is no evidence except Gordon's account to support it. Barlow's letters written at the time mention no such incident. And Gordon's memoirs are in other respects notoriously unreliable. His sword was mightier than his pen—or at least more truthful. Nevertheless, the story has persisted to this day, told by some guides and swallowed by tourists because they want to believe that the Civil War was an unfortunate disagreement between good and honorable men, not a cataclysmic
Armageddon. The interpretive marker at Barlow's Knoll quotes from Gordon's account and implicitly endorses it, even though the current park historians do not.

We now continue to the end of Howard Avenue, named for Major General Oliver Otis Howard, commander of the Eleventh Corps. A pious Congrega-tionalist from Maine, a graduate of Bowdoin College as well as of the U.S. Military Academy, Howard was a strong antislavery man. Known as “the Christian General”—a phrase sometimes uttered with disdain by officers who were neither religious nor antislavery— Howard, like his adversary Richard Ewell, had lost a limb earlier in the war—in Howard's case an arm. When he sent two divisions of the Eleventh Corps north of Gettysburg, Howard kept a third small division in reserve on the high ground south of town, known as Cemetery Hill because the town burial ground was located there. Howard fortified the hill with artillery and infantry breastworks as a rallying point for Union troops if they were driven back—a foresighted action that later earned him the official Thanks of Congress. There were those in the army, scornful of Howard because his corps had again been routed, who attributed this award not to Howard's military skill but to his political influence with antislavery Republicans. In any case, the retreating survivors of the First and Eleventh Corps did rally on Cemetery Hill. Ironically, the sign on the cemetery gate stated that “All persons
found using firearms on these grounds will be prosecuted with the utmost rigor of the law.”

Almost 9,000 of the 20,500 Union soldiers who fought on July 1 (against 27,500 Confederates) would have no opportunity to use firearms on Cemetery Hill. Nearly 5,500 of them were killed or wounded and 3,500 captured. One of those who didn't make it, however, was neither killed nor captured: Brigadier General Alexander Schimmelfennig, a brigade commander in the Eleventh Corps. Schimmelfennig has achieved minor fame as a Civil War general for reasons he would not have found flattering. A veteran of the Prussian army who immigrated to the United States in 1853, Schimmelfennig saw little action as colonel of the Seventy-fourth Pennsylvania in the war's first year. The Lincoln administration was eager to solidify German-American support for the war effort; one way to do so was to give commissions to visible German-American leaders. Poring over a list of colonels eligible for promotion in the fall of 1862, Lincoln came across Schimmelfennig's name. “The very man!” the president exclaimed. When the secretary of war protested that better-qualified officers were available, Lincoln insisted on Schimmelfennig. “His name will make up for any difference there may be.” After Gettysburg, however, Schimmelfennig's name became something of a byword. As his routed brigade retreated through town, Schimmelfennig saved himself from capture by hiding between a woodshed and a pigsty
behind a house on Baltimore Street a few blocks south of the main square. There he stayed for the next three days while the Confederates occupied the town, hidden and fed by the woman of the house.

The house (but not the woodshed or pigsty) is still there, identified by one of sixty interpretive markers that are scattered throughout the town to indicate buildings and sites connected with the battle. Virtually every public building and church, as well as several homes, became hospitals during the battle. Considerable fighting took place in Gettysburg's streets during the retreat of the First and Eleventh Corps through the town. A walking tour of these sites, guided by a map available at the town visitor center next to the movie theater on Carlisle Street a block north of the town square, is a must for every visitor who desires a full understanding of the battle and its local impact.

One site in town has special significance. As the Eleventh Corps broke in late afternoon, General Howard sent one of the brigades he had kept in reserve into Gettysburg to slow the Confederate advance. They established a defensive position in a brickyard a couple of blocks east of Pennsylvania College (today Gettysburg College) on what is now Coster Avenue, named for the colonel who commanded the brigade. This is the next stop on our tour. We will gather between the monument to the 154th New York and the mural on the side of a warehouse portraying the action at this site.

Amos Humiston was a sergeant in the 154th New York. Thirty-two years old when he enlisted in 1862, Humiston had apprenticed as a harness-maker in his youth. At age twenty, however, he had succumbed to the temptation for adventure and travel as a hand on a whaling ship. After a three-year voyage marked by hardships, dangers, and minimal earnings, he decided that the life of a harness-maker was not so bad after all. He settled down in western New York, married, and fathered three children. When war came in 1861, parental responsibilities prevented him from enlisting. But in 1862 he could no longer hold back.

Here on this spot in the late afternoon of July 1, Humiston was in line with 950 other Union infantrymen facing the onslaught of 2,300 yelling Confederates. Coster's tiny brigade stemmed the attack for a few vital minutes, buying time for other Eleventh Corps soldiers to escape, but were soon overwhelmed. Sometime during this firefight, Amos Humiston was mortally wounded. His body was found a few days later a quarter-mile south of the action, near today's fire-house on Stratton Street. There stands a monument to Humiston, the only monument to an individual enlisted man on the battlefield.

When Humiston's body was discovered, it had no identification save an ambrotype of three children (two boys and a girl, ages eight, six, and four) clutched in his hand. It was the last thing he gazed on as he
died. “Whose Father Was He?” asked a Philadelphia newspaper. Other papers picked up this question, which soon spread through the North accompanied by woodcut illustrations of the three children. The story plucked at the nation's heartstrings. In November 1863, four months after Amos Humiston's death, a religious weekly carrying the story and picture made its way to Humiston's hometown of Portville, New York, where Philanda Humiston finally learned that she was a widow and her children were fatherless.

That was not the end of the story. Poems and songs about “The Unknown Soldier” and “The Children of the Battlefield” swept the North.
Carte de visite
copies of the ambrotype sold widely. The publicity inspired the founding of a “Homestead Association” to raise money for the establishment in Gettysburg of a home for widows and orphans of Union soldiers. The National Soldiers’ Orphan Homestead opened in November 1866 with Philanda Humiston as wardrobe mistress and the three Humiston children as its first residents. Over the eleven years of its existence, the orphanage sheltered and raised hundreds of children. The original buildings still stand on Baltimore Street just north of the entrance to the National Military Cemetery. Today they cater to tourists as the Homestead Lodging Inn and the Soldiers’ National Museum.

By 5:00
P.M.
on July 1 the Confederates appeared to
have won a great victory. Gettysburg was shaping up as another Chancellorsville. Lee was aware, however, that the triumph was incomplete so long as Union forces held Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill, to which the remnants of the First and Eleventh Corps were retreating. Lee also knew that the rest of the Army of the Potomac must be hurrying toward Gettysburg (indeed, three divisions of the Twelfth and Third Corps were only a few miles away). Lee thought his best chance to complete the victory was to gain the hills before Union reinforcements got there.

Lee turned to Ewell, whose two divisions had sustained fewer casualties than Hill's during the fighting, and whose third division was arriving. Nearly three hours of daylight remained. Lee gave verbal orders to Ewell to attack Cemetery Hill “if practicable.” Ewell reconnoitered the position, consulted subordinates, and then hesitated. His troops were tired and disorganized from chasing Yankees through town and rounding up prisoners. They were suffering from lack of water on a warm day after a long march and intense fighting. Ewell could see in the fading light that the Union position on Cemetery Hill was formidable. He suspected correctly that newly arriving Union troops were within reinforcing distance. So he decided it was not practicable to attack.

Because the Confederates failed to take Cemetery
and Culp's Hills on July 1, Union troops were able to consolidate their position there and on the ridge extending south from Cemetery Hill during the night. General Meade arrived after midnight and decided to stay and fight from this strong defensive position. Ewell's failure to attack has thus been one of the biggest of many ifs concerning the battle of Gettysburg over the years, if Jackson had still been alive and in command of this corps, would he have attacked? And
if
he—or Ewell—had done so, would the Confederates have carried the position? Would the battle—and perhaps the war—then have come out differently?

No one can know. Ewell could probably have sent no more than ten or twelve thousand men of his own corps into such an attack, and Lee had told him he could expect no support from any other part of the army. Union forces defending the hills were almost as numerous, dug in and less disorganized than critics of Ewell assume them to have been. General Howard perhaps deserved those Thanks of Congress after all. The best historians of the battle believe that Ewell made the right decision. And as one of those historians put it, “responsibility for the failure of the Confederates to make an all-out assault on Cemetery Hill on July 1 must rest with Lee.” He was the commanding general. He was present on the ground. If he wanted an attack, he should have organized and ordered it.