that Ewell did not feel able to undertake anything further that
night with the two divisions that had been in action.
[48] While conveying the idea that the position was good, Hancock's
message was, in reality, sufficiently ambiguous. It, however, served
Meade's turn, as his mind was more than half made up already.
[49] The Seventh Indiana brought up five hundred men; Stannard's
brigade two thousand five hundred more.
[50] The Union corps would not average ten thousand men present in
the ranks, although the Sixth bore sixteen thousand on its muster
rolls. Some corps had three, some two divisions. There were too many
corps, and in consequence too many corps commanders, for the best
and most efficient organization.
[51] This was Pickett's, left at Chambersburg to guard the trains.
[52] Lee's corps commanders in council seem more like a debating
society: Meade's more like a Quaker meeting.
VII
THE SECOND OF JULY
[Sidenote: Deliberating.]
With similar views each of the other's strength or weakness, Meade
and Lee seem to have arrived at precisely the same idea. For
instance, we have Lee seriously thinking of giving up Gettysburg,
after hearing Ewell's objections to attacking from this side; and
we have Meade first meditating a stroke against Lee from this very
quarter, until dissuaded from it by some of his generals. Yet no
sooner has Lee turned his attention to the other flank, than, as if
informed of what was passing in his adversary's mind, Meade sets
about strengthening that flank too. Wary and circumspect, each was
feeling for his adversary's weak point.
[Sidenote: Little Round Top deserted.]
[Sidenote: Union Line, Morning.]
With the first streak of day the hostile camps were astir. Meade was
riding along the ridge, giving orders for posting his troops. All
of the Twelfth Corps (Geary's division having vacated the position
it had held during the night) planted itself still more firmly
on the slopes of Culp's Hill, at the extreme right of the line.
Wadsworth's division of the First Corps carried the line across the
dip toward Cemetery Hill, where the Eleventh Corps had stood since
the afternoon before. The Second Corps now fell in along the ridge,
at the left of the Eleventh, resting its right on Ziegler's Grove,
a little clump of trees hardly worth the name, growing out at the
edge of the ridge, and where it bulges out somewhat brokenly. Next
to the Second, the Third Corps lay massed behind the ridge, awaiting
orders; it now held the left. The First was in reserve. The Fifth
and Sixth were nearing the ground, but the pace was telling on the
men.
Since this day's battle was to be fought mostly on ground lying to
the left (or south) of Hancock's position, it may be well to glance
at its general features.
[Sidenote: Left Flank Features.]
[Sidenote: Emmettsburg Road.]
[Sidenote: Baltimore Turnpike.]
Three roads leave Gettysburg by way of Cemetery Hill, for Baltimore,
Taneytown, and Emmettsburg, respectively. Those going to Baltimore
and Emmettsburg part just as they begin to mount the slope of
Cemetery Hill, the first keeping off to the left over the hill,
past the Cemetery, and down the opposite slope, or wholly within
the Union lines; the last bearing off to the right, along the
foot of the hill, or wholly outside the Union lines, though at
first within musket range. All of the Union army, now assembled,
lay between these two roads except that part posted at the east
of the Cemetery and along Culp's Hill. As for these troops, the
Baltimore pike passed close by their rear, the line here taking
such a sharp backward sweep that the soldiers posted on Culp's
Hill actually turned their backs on those forming the front line.
While the Baltimore pike cut the Union position in two, or nearly
so, the Taneytown road traversed it from end to end, thus greatly
facilitating the moving of troops or guns from one part of the line
to the other.
Though the Emmettsburg road closely hugged the Cemetery Heights in
going out of Gettysburg, its general direction carried it farther
and farther off, in proportion as it went on its way; so that,
although actually starting from Cemetery Hill, this road, in going
two or three miles, eventually struck across to Seminary Ridge, or
from the Union right to the enemy's right.[53] On the morning of the
second it therefore formed debatable ground belonging to neither
army, though offering a hazardous way still to belated troops,
because the enemy had not yet occupied it. This Emmettsburg road was
destined to play an important part in the events of this day.
[Sidenote: Little Round Top. See Chap. I.]
[Sidenote: Big Round Top.]
[Sidenote: Cavalry gone.]
After keeping its high level for some distance, Cemetery Ridge
falls away for the space of several hundred yards, to rise again by
a gradual slope to a rugged, bowlder-strewn, rather thinly wooded
hill, called Little Round Top, which finely overlooks all that
part of the field. Thus, what Culp's Hill was to the right Little
Round Top was to the left of the Union position--at once bulwark
and warder. Still beyond Little Round Top, out across a little
valley opening a passage between them, rose a much loftier eminence,
called Big Round Top. Strangely enough, neither of these commanding
hills was occupied in the morning; for though Geary's pickets lay
out before Little Round Top all night, they had been called in at
daybreak, when the division itself marched off to rejoin its corps
at Culp's Hill.[54] Most unfortunately, too, the Union cavalry was
no longer there to watch the enemy's movements in this quarter and
promptly report them at headquarters, as Meade himself had sent off
Buford to the rear of the army.[55] In military phrase, the whole
Union left was in the air.
Up to nine in the morning, therefore, this part of the field where
Lee designed to strike his most telling blow was anybody's position,
so far as the dispositions for its defence are concerned; but at
that hour Sickles[56] began deploying the Third Corps toward Round
Top. Presently two of his brigades that had been left behind were
seen marching down the Emmettsburg road, under fire from the enemy's
skirmishers;[57] so giving them sharp notice that this road was no
longer open.
Little Round Top, however, still remained unoccupied, save by a
handful of men belonging to the Signal Corps of the army.
[Sidenote: Dangerous Marching.]
The men of the Third Corps watched the march of their comrades in
breathless expectation of hearing the enemy's cannon open upon
them, or of seeing some body of infantry suddenly pour a withering
volley into them from the cover of the woods. But whether the enemy
were too much confounded by the very audacity of the thing, or
purposely refrained from hostilities that might expose and frustrate
their own movements, now in progress under the mask of these very
woods, neither of these things happened. These two lost brigades
of Kearney's Peninsula veterans simply closed up their ranks, and
strode steadily on between the two armies, without quickening their
pace. In vain Sickles looked round him for some cavalry to escort
them into his lines. There was no longer a single sabre on the
ground.
[Sidenote: Sherfy Place.]
[Sidenote: The Cross-road.]
Those of Sickles' soldiers who had thrown themselves down upon the
grass behind the stacks now breathed more freely at seeing their
comrades turn off from the main road, at a short mile out, where
the roofs of a farmhouse and out-buildings glistened in the morning
sun. This was the Sherfy place--a very paradise in appearance to
these fasting and footsore soldiers, to whom its ripening fruits and
luxuriant golden wheat, tall and nearly ripe for the sickle, seemed
the incarnation of peace and plenty. Many a wistful glance was cast
at the peach orchard, as these troops turned the corner where it
stood. The cross-road then came straight down toward Little Round
Top, so that in a quarter of an hour more the marching column heard
the welcome orders to "Halt!" "Stack arms!" "Rest!"
[Sidenote: The Enemy covet it.]
If the comparison be not too far-fetched, this Sherfy farm and the
angle formed by these two divergent roads were destined to be the
La Haie Sainte of this Waterloo. One word more is essential to
the description. The ground out there, over which the cross-road
passed on toward the Union lines, swells handsomely up to a rounded
knoll that makes a very pretty as well as noticeable object in the
landscape. The field-glasses of General Lee and of his staff had
already determined this knoll to be a splendid position for their
artillery.
That peach-orchard angle with the adjoining knoll--in reality the
highest point lying between the two armies--was, for this reason,
the first object of the Confederates' attention on this day. It was
a stepping-stone toward Cemetery Ridge. It was now in possession of
Sickles' skirmishers, posted there the night before, and already
exchanging shots with those of the enemy.[58]
[Sidenote: The Swale again.]
Uneasy at seeing no enemy in front of him, Sickles decided to push
his skirmishers still farther out. They accordingly went forward
into the woods of Seminary Ridge, where the enemy was supposed to
be. They had scarcely arrived there when they fell in with some
Confederates, by whom, after a sharp encounter, they were driven
back, but not before they had seen heavy columns moving off to gain
the Union left under cover of the woods. This information made
Sickles still more uneasy, impressed as he was with the belief that
an attack upon him was imminent, and that he would have to receive
it where the low ground he then occupied[59] offered little chance
for making a successful defence. Little Round Top rose on his left,
his front stretched across the adjoining hollow, the peach-orchard
knoll loomed threateningly before him in the distance, the skirmish
fire was growing hotter out there, his orders were either vague
or unsatisfactory, and so Sickles, commanding a single corps of
the army, having convinced himself that the line, as formed, was
defective, determined in his own mind to abandon it for one of his
own choosing, orders or no orders.
[Sidenote: Longstreet at Work.]
This movement to the left, first detected by Sickles' skirmishers,
was Longstreet getting into position for the attack that Lee had
ordered. When Longstreet's guns should be heard, Ewell was to
assault Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill; while Hill, in the centre,
was to follow up Longstreet's attack as it progressed from right to
left. In short, a simultaneous assault on the two wings of Meade's
army was to be connected by a second and cumulative wave gathering
headway as it rolled on, until this billow of fire and steel should
engulf and sweep the whole Union line out of existence.
By this plan of battle Lee expected to disconcert any attempt to
reinforce either flank, or should Meade dare weaken his centre for
that purpose, Hill could then push in there, and cut the Union army
in twain.
Splendid conception! magnificent plan! none the less because too
complicated for the execution of generals who either could not or
would not comprehend what was required of them. Consoling thought,
that not all the stupidity or blundering was on the Union side!
Lee had pointed out the peach orchard to Longstreet, with the
injunction that it should be seized first of all.
[Sidenote: 3.30 P.M.]
Though he had received his orders at eleven o'clock, it was not
until after half-past three that Longstreet was ready to open the
battle. Sluggish by nature, he was well described by his chief as
slow to act: once in the thick of the fight, he rose with commanding
power as the peerless fighter of that army; and in that part of the
field where Longstreet fought, the dead always lay thickest. The
confidence reposed in him by Lee is fully attested by the fact of
his having assigned the conduct of the battles, both on the second
and third, to General Longstreet.
[Sidenote: Sickles' Idea.]
We have seen how, after some hours of wavering, Sickles had at
length decided to choose a new position for himself. Yesterday he
had not been able to convince himself that it would be right to
move his corps out of line, even that he might go to the aid of his
immediate chief and when his doing so would have saved the day.
Restrained then by the strict letter of his orders,[60] he had
remained in a state of feverish uncertainty for some hours, though
at length concluding to disobey them. To-day when he was without
real responsibility, being now in the presence of the general
commanding the army, Sickles sets both orders and chief at defiance.
The acts of the two days are, however, in striking accord. Sickles
disobeys orders in both instances.
[Sidenote: The Third Corps moves out.]
At about three o'clock the Union army saw with astonishment, not
unmixed with dismay, the whole of the Third Corps moving out to
the front in magnificent order, not as troops go into battle
with skirmishers well advanced to the front, but as confidently
as if going to a review with two grand armies for spectators. It
was indeed a gallant sight to see these solid columns go forward,
brigade after brigade, battery following battery, as, with flags
fluttering in the breeze and bayonets flashing in the sun, the
two divisions of Humphreys and Birney began deploying along the
Emmettsburg road in front and taking position between the peach
orchard and the Devil's Den to their rear, thus putting an elbow in
the general line.
In vain we try to imagine one of Napoleon's or Wellington's marshals
taking it upon himself to post his troops independently of his
commander. It now appears that General Sickles did this regardless
of whether he was thwarting the plans of the general-in-chief or
not, or whether indeed by so doing he was overthrowing the whole
theory of delivering a strictly defensive battle. Instead of
allowing Meade his initiative, we find Sickles actually compelling
his superior to follow his lead,[61] not under the stress of some
sudden emergency, but deliberately, defiantly. Not that he had
penetrated Lee's designs. By no means. Had he done so we should
be all the more amazed at his hardihood in going out with his ten
thousand men to resist the onslaught of twenty thousand or more.
But the whole corps was not enough to occupy the ground selected.
When the right division (Humphreys') reached the road, it had left
a space of not less than three-fourths of a mile between itself
and the left of the Second Corps. That flank was therefore in
the air. The left division (Birney's), or most of it, was formed
nearly at right angles with the first, showing a front of three
brigades facing south, and posted in a line much broken by the
natural features of the ground, which grow more and more rugged in
proportion as Round Top is neared. Though stronger, by reason of the
natural defences, this flank was a fourth of a mile from Round Top.
While this was going on out at the front, the Sixth and last Union
Corps (Sedgwick's) was coming up behind the main position, worn down
with marching thirty-six miles almost without a halt. The Fifth had
already arrived, also with its men greatly fatigued. The situation,
therefore, had so far improved, in that the enemy's delays[62] had
given time for the whole Union army to assemble, though the two
belated corps were scarcely in fighting trim.
Scarcely had Birney's men time to look about them when the booming
of a single gun gave notice that the long-expected battle had begun.
[53] On the night of the first, the Confederate right did not extend
much, if any, south of the Hagerstown, or Fairfield, road. As the
fresh troops came up they were used in extending the line southward.
Anderson's division was the first to move down to Hill's left. It
was his skirmishers that first became engaged with Sickles'.
[54] We have seen Meade first planning an attack on that side, which
was why he was drawing troops over there. He designed having the
Third Corps occupy the position vacated by Geary, however, and so
directed.
[55] In consequence of his exhausted condition, from incessant
marching and fighting, Buford was to be relieved by other troops.
[56] General Daniel E. Sickles, commanding the Third Corps.
[57] The enemy were seeking to mask their movements to the Union
left behind these skirmishers.
[58] The peach-orchard knoll was Sickles' bugbear. He thought it
much to be preferred to the position he was in. It was, however,
fully commanded from Little Round Top.
[59] This refers to the swale next north of Little Round Top.
[60] Though forming part of Reynolds' command, Sickles was halted
between Taneytown and Emmettsburg by Meade's order.
[61] Sickles claimed at first that he could not find the position
assigned him, namely, that vacated by Geary. The force of this plea
will be best appreciated by old soldiers. But in the following
remarks all such clumsy pretexts are thrown to the winds; he here
takes praise to himself for ignoring his commanding officer. It
might be called a plea for insubordination.
"It may have been imprudent to advance and hold Longstreet at
whatever sacrifice, but wasn't it worth a sacrifice to save the key
of the position? What were we there for? Were we there to count the
cost in blood and men, when the key of the position at Gettysburg
was within the enemy's grasp?" (How did Sickles know this?) "What
little I know of conduct on a battlefield I learned from Hooker
and Kearney." (Kearney was a strict disciplinarian.) "What would
Hooker or Kearney have done, finding themselves in an assailable,
untenable position, without orders from headquarters as to their
dispositions for battle, when they saw masses of the enemy marching
to seize a vital point? Would they have hesitated? Would they have
sent couriers to headquarters and asked for instructions what to do?
Never, never! Well, I learned war from them, and I didn't send any.
I simply advanced on to the battlefield and seized Longstreet by the
throat and held him there."--_Sickles' Music Hall Speech, Boston,
1886._
[62] John Stark's famous maxim, that one fresh man in battle is
worth two fatigued ones, will be heartily endorsed by all who have
seen it put to the test.
VIII
THE SECOND OF JULY--_Continued_
[Sidenote: Fighting begins.]
At this signal all the enemy's batteries opened in succession, and
for a space a storm of shot and shell tore through Sickles' lines
with crushing effect. His own guns, posted partly in the orchard,
partly along the cross-road, on the high knoll behind it,--that
is to say, in the very spot selected by Lee in advance for his
own,--began to lose both horses and men, nor were the infantry able
to shelter themselves from the cross-fire of fifty-four pieces of
artillery, some of which were killing men at both sides of the angle
with the same shot.[63]
Not many minutes had elapsed before every man on the ground, from
general to private soldier, felt that a wretched blunder had been
committed in thrusting them out there.
[Illustration: Explanation--R., Round Top; L. R. T., Little Round
Top; D., Devil's Den; P. O., Peach Orchard; P. H., Power's Hill; G.,
Gettysburg.]
[Sidenote: See his Troops described, p. 26.]
By and by the cannonade slackened. This was sufficient notice to old
soldiers that something more was coming. Before its echoes had
died away Longstreet's first assaulting column, led by Hood himself,
came down with a crash upon Birney, three lines deep.
The enemy was about to repeat his old tactics, employed at
Chancellorsville with so much effect, of getting around the Union
left and then rolling it up endwise.[64] That his calculations in
this case were not quite accurate was soon made manifest.
Since noon Longstreet had been working his way round through the
woods toward Little Round Top, making a wide circuit to avoid
discovery.[65] Having remonstrated in vain against this movement, he
was probably in no great hurry to execute it. It was therefore four
o'clock before he was ready to begin. But if slow he was sure.
Longstreet's line crossed the Emmettsburg road at an acute angle
with it, Hood's division stretching off to the right, McLaws' mostly
to the left. Longstreet was thus about to throw eight brigades,
or, by his own account, thirteen thousand men, against the three
brigades of Ward, De Trobriand, and Graham, numbering about five
thousand men. Hood was to begin by attacking from the wheat-field
to the Devil's Den, McLaws to follow him up from the wheat-field to
the orchard. It was not until they had got into line, however, that
the Confederates were undeceived about the Union force before them.
Until then they thought the Union left stopped at the orchard.
At four o'clock the Union signal-station on Little Round Top saw and
reported these movements to headquarters. The Confederate advance
began soon after four. By the first fire Hood was wounded and had to
leave the field almost before his troops had fairly come into action.
[Sidenote: Combat at Devil's Den.]
The first shock fell upon Ward's brigade, which held the extreme
left at the Devil's Den. Ward's line would not reach to Little Round
Top, so that there was a wide space between him and this hill, with
not a man in it--a fact that Hood's men were not slow either in
perceiving or taking advantage of. But, what was far worse, it led
to the discovery of the defenceless condition of Little Round Top
itself, and, quickly grasping its commanding importance, the enemy
instantly sent one of his brigades to seize it.
The conflict thus established at this point, which Sickles had so
imprudently vacated, became of supreme importance to the Union army,
while that about to begin at the peach orchard degenerated into a
struggle to save Sickles' corps from annihilation.
Fortunately for Ward, the ground he held was just the place for a
protracted defence, provided he should not be out-flanked. Weird and
grisly, it looked as if some huge excrescent mass of earth, rocks,
and trees had some time slid off the flank of Little Round Top into
the low ground below, whence its own momentum had carried it still
farther on--a misshapen heap, deeply seamed by rents and splits,
thick-set with bowlders and filled with holes and hiding-places,
among which Ward's men now found excellent cover.
[Sidenote: The Danger Point.]
Ward was firmly planted on and around the Devil's Den, with his
sharp-shooters loading and firing from behind the scattered
bowlders, when the enemy made their rush upon him, whooping and
yelling like so many fiends come to reoccupy their own legitimate
abode. Some portion soon found themselves in the unguarded hollow
below. Seeing the enemy crowding into it, Ward sent first one
regiment there, and then another, on the run. A combat at close
quarters ensued.
The regiments of Hood's division were now either trying to scale
Little Round Top, push through the hollow, or capture the Devil's
Den with its guns. The left brigade, however, which extended beyond
the Den, was being very roughly handled; the centre only had made
progress, while the right was engaged in a murderous conflict, to be
presently described. Hood's effort had, therefore, exhausted itself,
and his division had to halt simply because it could advance no
farther.
[Sidenote: At the Wheat-field.]
McLaws now came to Hood's assistance. His right brigade (Kershaw's)
now struck De Trobriand's, which stood next in line along the
edge of a wheat-field, back of and adjoining the Devil's Den. De
Trobriand had a little muddy ravine in front of him, into which the
enemy boldly plunged. His men waited until their assailants had got
within twenty yards, when they poured in such a close and deadly
fire that the gully was speedily vacated by all save the dead and
the dying. The attack here not only completely failed, but three of
Kershaw's regiments were nearly destroyed while attacking the peach
orchard. This brigade fell back and was rallied about the Rose house.