its place. Its commander speedily fell, mortally wounded. Barksdale
rushed upon Graham, followed by Wofford. This onset brought the
whole Confederate force into action. The odds were as two to one.
That part of the enemy whom we left working their way up the hollow
to Little Round Top also met with stubborn resistance, and as this
was more and more seen to be the critical point, the enemy redoubled
their efforts to force their way through. Our soldiers who had
gone into ambuscade behind the bowlders there were being gradually
driven back from cover to cover, so yielding up as they retired the
approaches to Little Round Top.
[Sidenote: Devil's Den taken.]
Having gained this vantage-ground the Confederates now made a
second onset against Ward and De Trobriand. This time it proved
more successful. After an hour's obstinate fighting, Ward was
driven out of his fastness,[66] De Trobriand forced back across
the wheat-field. Sickles' left was thus completely broken up, the
fragments drifting backward in search of some point of support.
[Sidenote: Little Round Top in Peril.]
Little Round Top was about to fall into the enemy's hands. Once
in his possession, the Union line on Cemetery Ridge would have to
be abandoned or swept to the winds. Fortunately the turning-point
had been reached before the rebels could reap the reward of Ward's
repulse. Shortly before Hood's onset began, General Warren, of the
Engineers, had seen from his signal-station on Little Round Top the
enemy's line advancing to the attack. In one moment his experienced
eye took in all the danger. Ordering the signal officers to keep
on waving their flags, Warren first sent for and then dashed off
in search of assistance himself. Indeed, not a moment was to be
lost. By a fortunate chance some troops were met moving out to
reinforce Sickles. Detaching a regiment, Warren hurried it off to
the threatened point. Meantime, in response to his request, though
without his knowing it, Vincent's brigade was climbing the rearmost
slopes off Little Round Top, arriving just in time to save the hill
with the bayonet.[67]
A murderous hand-to-hand conflict now began among the rocks and
trees, with those of the enemy who were trying to scale the slopes
regardless of death or wounds. Sometimes the assailants were firing
at each other from behind the same bowlder; sometimes both fell
at the same instant. The strife was still unequal. A battery was
dragged to the summit;[68] three of the cannoneers were shot in
succession before the fourth succeeded in firing off the piece.
Another regiment was brought up. The rebels fought as if determined
to take that hill or die: the Union soldiers as if they had made
up their minds to perish to the last man in its defence. On
both sides men fell fast, the bravest first of all. Vincent was
killed outright, Weed mortally wounded, and only a moment later
Hazlett, who had so gallantly scaled with his guns slopes seemingly
inaccessible, was struck down while in the act of stooping over his
commander's prostrate body. O'Rorke was killed while encouraging his
men. All the superior officers were down. Never were rifles wielded
by such deadly marksmen as those Texans of Hood's!
[Sidenote: Little Round Top saved.]
Finding all their efforts to carry the hill by storm useless, the
rebels next made a rush up through the little valley separating the
two Round Tops, with the view of taking the defenders in the rear.
The 20th Maine met this assault. "Stand firm, men!" was the command.
As if maddened to desperation, the enemy flung themselves upon
the hardy backwoodsmen from the Pine Tree State. Twice they were
forced backward over the crest, and twice they rallied and drove
their assailants back in their turn. But the emergency had now been
perceived and was being provided for. Fresh troops dashed over the
hill to the aid of those who were fighting. A final charge sent the
rebels reeling down into the hollow, and out of it by the way they
came, leaving five hundred prisoners in the hands of the defenders,
through whose gallantry the danger, though perilously imminent, had
been averted.
[Sidenote: McLaws assaults.]
[Sidenote: Sickles wounded.]
Meantime the peach orchard was being furiously attacked. Exposed
here to a severe cross-fire, the Union line crumbled away at every
discharge. The resistance was stubborn, as might be expected from
such good soldiers as Graham's, but even they could not long
maintain such a disadvantageous position, and though the attacking
brigades were badly cut up, the enemy broke through there after a
bloody contest. Barksdale swept on over the guns, Wofford gathered
up what he left behind. All that men could do to stem the tide
was done, and all in vain. Graham was wounded and taken prisoner,
Sickles himself carried off the field, shot through the leg. In less
than two hours Birney's line was clean gone.
As the infantry fell back from the orchard, the artillery posted
along the cross-road behind them became, of course, the enemy's
object. Many of these guns had to be abandoned, some sacrificed in
the effort to delay the enemy's progress. Bigelow's battery obeyed
the order to fight to the last with a constancy as worthy of lasting
commemoration as Perry's famous "Don't give up the ship!"
Though the position itself was scarcely worth the sacrifice of a
single soldier, it was felt that Sickles' troops must be extricated
at any cost; and since a battle had been forced we must not be the
losers.
[Sidenote: Efforts to help Sickles.]
So after sending Vincent's brigade to Little Round Top, the rest
of Barnes' division went out to help maintain the line where De
Trobriand had been fighting; and Caldwell's division of the Second
Corps also went to Ward's assistance.
Repulsed from Little Round Top, the enemy fell upon Caldwell. The
struggle was brief but bitter. Half a score of general and field
officers went down on the Union side. But Caldwell finally succeeded
in driving the enemy back across the ravine from which Ward had been
dislodged, and two brigades of regulars firmly closed the gap toward
Little Round Top.
But the point of support at the orchard being gone, all these troops
were in turn driven back after repeated charges and countercharges
made across the wheat-field had piled it with the slain of both
armies.
Anderson's Confederate division now advanced to perform its share
of the work cut out for it; namely, of continuing the assault from
right to left.
[Sidenote: Humphreys driven off.]
One side of the angle being swept away, being violently assaulted
both in front and flank, Humphreys also had to fall back from the
Emmettsburg road to the main position, or be cut off from it.
Everything that had been fighting on Sickles' new line was now going
to the rear in more or less confusion. The enemy were now masters of
the whole of that line, had inflicted serious losses upon the Third
and Fifth Corps, and had taken some of Sickles' guns. We had only
Round Top to show for the terrible struggle resulting from Sickles'
advance.
[Sidenote: Crumbs of Comfort.]
These disasters could not make our generals give up beaten yet.
Crawford's "Pennsylvania Reserves," a splendid body of well-seasoned
soldiers, were now ordered to drive the victorious enemy beyond the
wheat-field. Seizing a color, the general himself led the charging
column across this thrice-fought field, clearing it in the most
gallant manner. Two brigades of the Sixth Corps followed this
movement. These prompt measures completely discouraged all further
efforts on the enemy's part in this quarter. Longstreet withdrew
his shattered forces to the peach orchard. In these unavailing
assaults he had lost upwards of five thousand men. Hood was wounded,
Barksdale killed, and Semmes mortally wounded.[69]
After this repulse, some of Doubleday's division went out to the
Emmettsburg road, capturing the enemy's post at the Rogers house on
that road.
It was now growing dark. Lee's brilliant plan of consecutive attack
from right to left had dwindled to a series of isolated combats--a
blow here and a blow there, instead of those combined and telling
strokes he had designed giving all along the Union line.[70]
[Sidenote: Cemetery Ridge pierced.]
In falling back upon Cemetery Ridge, which was done in admirable
order, Humphreys was followed up by three of Hill's brigades, one of
which, Wright's, actually succeeded in reaching the crest, and had
even seized some of the guns there, before troops could be brought
up to check it. The other brigades having failed to support it, this
one was easily driven off, though its having pierced the Union
centre with so little opposition undoubtedly led Lee to think the
thing not so difficult, after all. We think it was the controlling
motive for his attack on the third.
[Sidenote: Culp's Hill deserted.]
[Sidenote: And is occupied.]
One other conflict remains to be noticed. The peril menacing his
left had induced Meade to nearly strip Culp's Hill of its defenders.
All of the Twelfth Corps, which, it will be remembered, held Culp's
Hill and its approaches, had been hurried over to the left, except
one brigade, thus abandoning the rude but substantial breastworks
that these troops had raised with felled trees, earth, or loose
stones, against an attack. As yet all seemed quiet on this side;
but when, shortly after sunset, Ewell's corps tardily began the
part assigned it by pouring out of the woods in which it had lain
concealed, to begin a furious assault upon Culp's Hill, his men
found nothing before them except the undefended works just spoken
of on that part of the hill bordering upon Rock Creek. Finding the
door standing open, as it were, they had only to walk in and take
possession.
[Sidenote: The Danger of it.]
Trifling as it seems when relating it, this was by far the most
important, we might say the only real, advantage gained by the enemy
in all this day's fighting, with its frightful losses in men and
material--and for this reason: The point seized was within short
musket-shot of the Baltimore pike, and quite near that part of it
where the reserve Union artillery was parked. This might be seized
or stampeded. More than this, the pike led first to Westminster,
where Meade had fixed his base of supplies before moving up to
Gettysburg, so making it from necessity his line of retreat in case
of a reverse to the army. In short, this was one of those desperate
cases that admit only of desperate remedies; either the Confederates
must be driven out before they could look about them, or the army
must retreat. Again, night undoubtedly saved the Union army from a
great disaster.
Farther to the left Greene's brigade met and repulsed every assault
made upon them. The combat took place in the thick woods, already
darkened by the approach of night.
[Sidenote: Cemetery stormed.]
While this was happening at Culp's Hill, the rest of Early's
Confederate division came on in the early twilight to the assault of
Cemetery Hill. The day had worn itself out, the west only glowed a
sullen red upon the battlefield. Early's dusky lines could scarce be
made out except by the flashes of musketry seen here and there. One
of his brigades struck the side nearest Culp's Hill (the gap side),
where the Union infantry were kneeling behind stone walls, waiting
with guns cocked for them to get up nearer; the other brigade, with
a third in reserve, marched on the right of the first. Thirty odd
guns flamed and thundered upon them from the Cemetery. The hillside
was lighted up by flashes of musketry. It was one incessant blaze
and roar. The left brigade was mowed down in swaths, and had to give
way; but that on the right forced its way through the ranks of the
infantry, swarmed up around the guns that were dealing death among
them, and began a hand-to-hand fight with the artillery-men, in
which men were beaten to death with handspikes and rammers.
[Sidenote: Enemy is repulsed.]
The Confederates enjoyed a short-lived triumph. An ominous silence
succeeded the struggle around the guns. Word was passed that the
enemy was in our works. Orders were given in whispers, for it was
now too dark to tell friend from foe. The steady tramp, tramp of
armed men was now heard approaching. Presently, out of the darkness,
a brigade of the Second Corps rushed in with a cheer. Being joined
by other troops, all fell upon the exultant Confederates, who,
finding themselves left without support, saved themselves as they
could. As it was, not half of them got back to their own lines.
This ended the fighting for the day. Darkness and exhaustion
summoned the weary soldiers of both armies to a much-needed rest.
Thus far the two days' fighting had proved indecisive. On the left
the enemy had taken a somewhat closer hold, yet the Union position
was everywhere practically intact except at Culp's Hill.[71] It
is true that both armies were much weakened from loss of blood,
although their relative strength remained much as before. Perhaps
the Union army had suffered most, because its reinforcements were
thrown in piecemeal, and badly cut up before they could render
effective assistance.
It now began to be understood that if the Union army had not
sustained a defeat, it was not so much because of any natural
strength of the ground, since the Confederates had twice forced a
way to it, as because its form enabled troops to concentrate upon
the threatened point with great rapidity. To lengthen it out, as
Sickles had done, was to throw away this advantage. He had finally
been forced to retake his natural position. Herein, we think, lies
the whole secret of Meade's successful defence. The first of July
was an accident: the second, a blunder.
[63] The two roads, Emmettsburg and cross-road, lay on converging
ridges, which formed the angle at the orchard. It was a very
irregular line, however, running first round the orchard, then
along a ravine at the edge of the wheat-field to the Devil's Den,
and again across this to the hollow, where it swung back so as to
embrace the Den.
[64] Lee's order of battle had been made in the belief that by
throwing Longstreet across the Emmettsburg road he would envelop the
Union army's proper left, whereas we have seen that he was wholly at
fault, until Sickles made a condition where it did not exist before.
[65] In their effort to keep out of sight the enemy lost two hours.
Two hours sooner they would have occupied the orchard without
hinderance.
[66] The enemy took three guns here that could not be got off.
[67] Vincent's and Weed's brigades of the Fifth Corps were thrown
upon Little Round Top in succession, each regiment going in under
fire.
[68] "The battery went up that rocky hill, through the woods on the
east side, at a trot, with spurs and whips vigorously applied. I do
not believe a piece barked a tree ... we went there at a trot, each
man and horse trying to pull the whole battery by himself."--_Lieut.
Rittenhouse._
[69] Kershaw and Semmes were both driven back to the Rose house,
the former losing over six hundred men, the latter being killed;
but Barksdale, supported by Wofford, bore down all opposition, thus
allowing the defeated brigades to rally and come up again.
[70] The whole history of this day shows that Hill's corps had
been too badly hurt on the first to take any efficient part on the
second. Practically Longstreet was left to fight it out alone.
[71] At the close of the day the enemy held, on the left, the base
of the Round Tops, Devil's Den, its woods, and the Emmettsburg road;
on the right he had effected a lodgement at Culp's Hill.
IX
THE THIRD OF JULY
The events of the second seem to have impressed the two generals
quite differently. In Lee the combative spirit rose even higher.
To Meade the result seemed, on the whole, discouraging. The enemy
held a strong vantage-ground on his right; his line had been twice
pierced. Would he be better able to hold it now that the army was
weakened by the loss of eight to ten thousand men?
[Sidenote: Meade's council.]
At nightfall a council of war was called, and the situation
discussed. Meade desired to know first the condition of the
troops, and next the temper of his officers. To this end they were
separately asked whether they favored a removal of the army to some
other position, or waiting another attack where they now were. The
general voice was in favor of fighting it out to the bitter end, and
it was so determined.
A strong force of infantry and artillery was therefore moved over to
the right, in readiness to expel the enemy there at break of day.
[Sidenote: Lee not beaten yet.]
Deeming the result of the day's operations to be on the whole
favorable to him, Lee was equally determined to fight to a finish.
As Napoleon had said before him, in a similar spirit of impulsive
exultation, when satisfied that Wellington was awaiting his
onslaught at Waterloo, "I have them now, those English!" so Lee now
replied to all Longstreet's remonstrances by shaking his clenched
fist at Cemetery Hill, exclaiming as he did so, "The enemy is there,
and I am going to strike him!"
[Sidenote: Plan of Attack.]
He too, therefore, strongly reinforced his left at Culp's Hill,
with the view of having a heavy force well in hand there, ready
to strike in upon the Union right and rear, while a formidable
column of wholly fresh troops, charging it in the centre, should
cut that in two, seize the Baltimore pike, and with Ewell's help
crush everything on that side. In order to reap to the utmost the
advantages looked for as certain, Stuart's cavalry, now back with
the army, was sent far round to the Union rear, with orders to
strike the Baltimore pike as soon as the retreat should begin.
To guard against some such movement, or in fact any demonstration
towards its rear, the Union cavalry was posted on this pike, a
few miles back of Cemetery Ridge. Still another cavalry force was
guarding the Union left, beyond Round Top.
These dispositions present, in brief, the preparations both generals
were making for the third day's conflict.
[Sidenote: Pickett to lead it.]
Lee had silenced Longstreet's objections by ordering him to get
ready Pickett's fresh division for the decisive charge on Cemetery
Ridge. These soldiers, Virginians all, bitterly complained because
they were only the rear-guard of that army which they were told was
driving the Yankees before them in utter rout. Their charge was to
be preceded and sustained by turning every gun in the Confederate
army upon the point of attack.
With the first streak of day the struggle for the possession of
Culp's Hill began again. As both sides had orders to attack, there
was no delay in commencing. Soon from every commanding spot the
Union batteries were sending their shot crashing and tearing through
the woods in which the Confederates lay hid, smiting the forest
with a tempest of iron, throwing down branches, and plowing up the
earth in great furrows.[72] Stirred up by this shower of missiles,
Ewell's men poured forth from the valley of Rock Creek, and rushed
up the hillside in front, to begin anew the sanguinary struggle they
had only ceased from on the previous night. Here among the gray
rocks and aged oaks--the pleasure-ground, in fact, of the people of
Gettysburg--a contest raged for hours, similar to that which Little
Round Top had witnessed on the previous afternoon.
One piece of hopeless heroism deserves commemoration in all accounts
of this battle. In the height of the engagement an order was brought
for two regiments, the Second Massachusetts and the Twenty-seventh
Indiana, to charge across the meadow stretching between Culp's Hill
and McAllister's Hill, on the other side of which the enemy lay in
the old intrenchments. To try to pass that meadow was rushing to
certain destruction. "Are you sure that is the order?" was demanded
of the officer who brought it. "Positive," was the reply. "Up,
men--fix bayonets--forward!" was the ringing command. One regiment
reached the works, the other faltered midway under the terrible
fire. As many were lost in falling back as in going forward. Only
half the men got back to the lines unhurt.
[Sidenote: Culp's Hill retaken.]
After seven hours of this kind of fighting, the assailants were
finally driven beyond Rock Creek again, leaving five hundred
prisoners, besides their dead and wounded, behind them. Again an
essential part of Lee's plan of attack had signally failed, and once
more the whole Union line stretched unbroken from Culp's Hill to
Round Top.
But it was only eleven o'clock; and though the battle had gone
against him on this side, Lee seems to have felt, like Desaix at
Marengo, that there was still time to gain another. Was it here
that Lee lost that moral equipoise which seems born in really great
commanders in moments of supreme peril?
[Sidenote: The Cannonade.]
Be that as it may, the order was given for his artillery to
open. Longstreet had massed seventy-five guns in one battery,
Hill sixty-three, and Ewell enough more to bring the number up to
one hundred and fifty in all. At precisely one o'clock the signal
guns were fired. Before their echoes died away the whole line of
Confederate batteries was blazing like a volcano. There seemed to
be but one flash and one report, and their simultaneous discharges,
pealing out deafening salvos, went rolling and rolling on through
the valleys, and echoing among the hills, in one mighty volume of
sound, vying with the loudest thunder. It was sublimely grand,
sublimely terrifying. Without a moment's warning, as if the heavens
above had opened and the earth below yawned beneath their feet, the
Union soldiers found themselves in the midst of the pitiless storm.
A tornado of shot and shell burst upon Cemetery Hill, tearing the
air, rending the rocks, plowing up the ground, and dealing death on
all sides at once.
This terrific cannonade, under which the solid earth shook, the
sky was darkened at noonday, the valley filled with thick-rolling
smoke, the air with explosions and nameless rubbish, and which
seemed announcing the coming of the Last Day, is thus described by
an eye-witness:--
"The storm broke upon us so suddenly that soldiers and officers
who leaped, as it began, from their tents, or from lazy siestas
on the grass, were stricken at their rising with mortal wounds,
and died, some with cigars between their lips, some with pieces of
food in their fingers, and one at least--a pale young German from
Pennsylvania--with a miniature of his sister in his hands. Horses
fell shrieking out such awful cries as Cooper told of, and writhing
themselves about in hopeless agony. The boards of fences, scattered
by explosions, flew in splinters through the air. The earth, torn
up in clouds, blinded the eyes of hurrying men; and through the
branches of the trees and among the gravestones of the cemetery a
shower of destruction crashed ceaselessly. The hill, which seemed
alone devoted to this rain of death, was clear in nearly all its
unsheltered places within five minutes after the fire began."
Eighty guns replied from the Union position almost as soon, so
that the very air between the two armies was alive with flying
missiles.[73] During the cannonade the Union infantry were lying
down in open ranks behind the crest, taking it, for the most part,
with remarkable steadiness. As the enemy's artillerists mostly
overshot the ridge, the ground behind was a place of even greater
danger. The little farmhouse standing on the Taneytown road,
occupied as army headquarters, was so riddled that the general
was compelled to seek a safer spot. Even as far back as Culp's
Hill, where the Twelfth Corps were still facing their assailants,
the enemy's shot came plunging and plowing through the ranks from
behind, thus killing men by a fire in the rear.
After this indescribable uproar had lasted upwards of two hours, the
Union batteries were ordered to cease firing in order to husband
their ammunition for what every man in the army knew was coming.
It was now three o'clock. The moment had come for the supreme effort
of all.