THE GETTYSBURG CAMPAIGN
When the campaign of Chancellorsville ended in defeat for the Federals,
the two armies returned to their former positions at Fredericksburg,
confronting each other with a river between--a river which neither of
them was for the time being disposed to cross with fighting intent.
Hooker, as his orders issued at that time showed, was content as
McClellan had been the year before, that he had saved his great
army from disastrous defeat and capture. He was glad to escape with
what remained of his army from a position which he had brilliantly
achieved in the confident expectation of there completely crushing Lee,
compelling his surrender, and marching unopposed into Richmond. His
escape had been a very narrow one, made possible only by the exhaustion
of the Confederate ammunition, but at any rate he had escaped, and he
was disposed to congratulate himself on that.
Lee, on the other hand had good reason to be satisfied with the results
of his work. With one man to his enemy's three he had so brilliantly
maneuvered as to strike his foe at each point with a superior force; he
had, by virtue of superior genius alone inflicted disaster upon an army
vastly greater than his own in numbers, and possessed of commanding
strategic positions; he had beaten that army in a succession of
battles, and driven it into hurried and uncertain retreat; he had saved
Richmond and again made himself master of the military situation.
His army needed rest after its arduous work, and to give it rest he lay
still for some weeks.
But in the meanwhile he did not lose sight of that supreme purpose
which had inspired him from the beginning of his career as the
commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. That purpose was to
transfer the seat of war northward, to press the enemy, to protect
Richmond by putting Washington on its defense.
There were special reasons for the adoption of this policy now.
Operations at the West had been disastrous and discouraging to the
Confederates. Their armies had been driven out of Kentucky and
Tennessee. The fall of Island Number Ten and Memphis a little later in
the northern reaches of the Mississippi and Farragut's capture of New
Orleans at its southern end had left the Southerners only a small hold
upon the great river at Vicksburg, Port Hudson and the space between.
Grant was insistently hammering at Vicksburg, with every prospect
of soon capturing that key to the river and completely cutting the
Confederacy in twain. But if Lee could capture Washington or compel
its evacuation by pushing himself into its rear and perhaps seizing
upon Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, the disasters at the West
would count for nothing in the reckoning. Europe at least would accept
the successful invasion of the North and the conquest of its capital
as events decisive of the war in behalf of the South; and European
intervention was still the one thing most dreaded at the North and most
ardently hoped for at the South.
Again there was a strong party at the North, embracing a minority
so great that a small influence might easily convert it into a
majority, which was opposed to the war in every way and bitterly
antagonistic to the Lincoln administration. That party held the war
upon the seceding states to be wrong, wicked and without adequate
constitutional warrant. It contended also that the conduct of the war
had been recklessly wasteful of life and treasure, and that in point
of fact it had failed of its purpose. In support of this view the
people opposed to Mr. Lincoln cited the Manassas panic, the defeat
of McClellan before Richmond, the utter overthrow of Pope, the drawn
battle at Sharpsburg, the defeat of Burnside at Fredericksburg, and
finally the all-conspicuous defeat of Hooker at Chancellorsville. If
Lee could add to such a list of achievements the conquest of Washington
or Philadelphia or if he could win a great battle anywhere north of
the Potomac, this minority of protesting and complaining malcontents
at the North, must be quickly converted into an overwhelming majority,
clamorous for the ending of the war by the concession of all that the
Confederates demanded.
Still another influence had its bearing upon Lee's mind. His army,
after its experiences in the Seven Days' battles, in the second
Manassas campaign, at Antietam, at Fredericksburg, and finally in the
campaign of Chancellorsville, had come to regard itself as absolutely
invincible when led by Robert E. Lee. It was ready and more than ready
for any enterprise that he might direct it to undertake. It believed in
itself. Still more confidently it believed in Lee. It wanted to fight.
It was restlessly eager for whatever Lee might prescribe of daring and
endurance. Probably there was never an army, great or small, whose
spirit gave to its leader a stronger inducement to desperate endeavor.
Those men wanted war. They courted battle. They welcomed hardship,
exposure, fatigue, starvation--if only at the end of it all they might
come face to face with the enemy, under the leadership of Lee.
A skilled military critic on the Northern side has characterized them
as the best soldiers on earth. The phrase is not an extravagant one, as
every close student of the Confederate war must clearly see, and their
spirit meant more to the enlightened mind of Lee than a hundred guns
and a score of infantry divisions could have signified.
There was still another fact to be taken into account. Under the
mistaken system of short-term enlistments which had been adopted at the
North, more than thirty thousand of Hooker's best and most seasoned
soldiers were about this time going home. Enlistments at the North had
well-nigh ceased under the discouragement of repeated failure, while
at the South the conscription law--extended as to age--had resulted in
putting pretty nearly every able-bodied white man in all that region
into the army. The Army of Northern Virginia was being rapidly swelled
in numbers, while the Army of the Potomac was losing many of its best
fighting regiments and brigades. The Army of Northern Virginia was
flushed by recent and conspicuous victory; the Army of the Potomac was
sadly disheartened by a defeat which, in view of its vast superiority
in numbers, it could in no wise account for or understand. The Army
of Northern Virginia had unbounded confidence in itself and limitless
belief in its commander; the Army of the Potomac had no longer any
reason to trust itself, and it had utterly lost confidence in the
general who had so badly handled it as to subject it to humiliating
defeat where it had justly expected to achieve victory quick, certain
and decisive.
Moved by these considerations Lee at once planned a new invasion of
the region north of the Potomac. The enemy confronting him was still
superior in numbers, equipment and everything else except spirit
and fighting quality and its general. It would not do for Lee to
move northward, leaving that army in his rear with full opportunity
to destroy his communications, rush upon Richmond and possess the
Confederate capital. He must so maneuver as to compel Hooker to fall
back upon Washington, precisely as he had done in McClellan's case the
year before.
Again he successfully played upon the excessive concern felt at the
North for the safety of Washington. Having brought Longstreet with
two strong divisions from the south side of the James river for his
reinforcement, and having brought up every battery and battalion that
could be spared from any other position, Lee played again the game
he had played against McClellan. While still strongly and securely
holding his position at Fredericksburg, he began detaching forces in a
way to threaten Washington with an attack in the rear, and to compel
Hooker to retire upon the national capital for its defense.
First he sent Stuart with his splendid cavalry to Culpeper Court House.
Then, a little later, he sent Ewell's and Longstreet's corps to the
same point, retaining only A. P. Hill's corps to hold the works at
Fredericksburg. Should Hooker deem this an opportunity and seek to
seize it, it would require fully three days at the very least for him
to lay pontoon bridges and push a column across the river for purposes
of assault. In the event of such a demonstration two days would amply
suffice Lee to bring his two detached corps back to the works at
Fredericksburg, there to defend them irresistibly. Hooker was much too
discreet a general not to see this, and so he undertook no crossing of
the river.
Lee was thus left in complete control of the military situation.
The transfer of two of his army corps to Culpeper was a threat to
Washington and Washington promptly responded--as Lee intended that it
should do--by calling upon Hooker for the retirement of his army for
the defense of the National capital.
Hooker ordered all his cavalry, under Pleasanton, to move against and
assail the Confederate horsemen under Stuart at or near Culpeper. The
two forces met at Brandy Station, where for the first time in the
history of the Confederate War a strictly cavalry contest of great
proportions ensued. The Confederates had distinctly the better of it.
They repelled the assault, with losses about equal on either side, and
left the Federals with no further information as to the Confederate
movement than they had had before the action. As the acquisition of
such information was precisely all that Pleasanton had fought to
secure, it must be reckoned that he had failed in his purpose. But he
had at any rate proved that the Federal cavalry men had at last learned
how to ride their horses, an art in which they had proved themselves
distinctly inferior to the Confederates in all previous conflicts
between horsemen of the two sides.
On the thirteenth of June Ewell's corps was in the Valley of the
Shenandoah marching northward; Hill was still holding the entrenchments
at Fredericksburg, while Longstreet was in a position near Culpeper,
from which he could reinforce either at will.
Hooker had by this time recovered the sanity which he had so completely
lost during the campaign of Chancellorsville and he at once asked
permission of Washington to push the whole of his vastly superior force
in between the separated fragments of Lee's army and destroy them in
detail. This was obviously the right thing to do, but Halleck was still
in supreme control at Washington, and Hooker, by his phenomenal failure
at Chancellorsville, had justly lost Halleck's confidence. Moreover Lee
knew all about this situation, and, knowing Halleck quite as well as he
knew Hooker, he was reckoning upon that general's character.
Halleck forbade Hooker to make the bold move he proposed, precisely as
Lee had expected him to do, and Lee was thus left free to direct the
course of the campaign as he pleased.
Hooker, under orders, retired toward Washington, leaving Lee free to
add Hill's corps to the forces with which he was advancing northward.
Ewell swept down the valley and assailed Winchester, where he
completely broke and destroyed Milroy's force of ten thousand men,
capturing four thousand of them and driving the rest into disorderly
retreat upon Harper's Ferry.
Lee promptly threw Hill's corps into the Shenandoah Valley, while
Longstreet moved northward upon parallel lines, east of the mountains.
Presently the Confederate cavalry crossed the Potomac and reached
Chambersburg in Pennsylvania. The infantry and artillery promptly
followed, and by the twenty-second or twenty-third of June, the
whole Confederate army was in Pennsylvania--threatening Washington,
threatening Baltimore, threatening Philadelphia, and gravely menacing
even New York.
A great panic ensued among the Northern people, to whom the fact of war
had not often before been brought home in this intimate and terrifying
fashion. Women and children fled as refugees. Horses and cattle were
driven away into hiding. Silverware and jewels were hastily buried,
and all food stuffs that could be carried away were hidden. For the
first time the people at the North had some small realization of what
war means to those who dwell in an invaded country. They suffered no
such desolation as that which for years overspread northern Virginia.
They learned no such lesson of havoc as that which Sheridan afterwards
mercilessly taught the people of that fruitful valley of Virginia over
which, after his desolating march, he picturesquely said that "the
crow that flies must carry his rations with him." But at the least
they learned that to a people whose land is invaded, war is truly "all
hell," in General Sherman's phrase.
There was a hurried calling out of militia in the threatened states,
quite as if militia could be expected to stand against the veterans
who had fought at Richmond, at Antietam, at Fredericksburg and at
Chancellorsville. Half a million of militia, if so many could have been
brought together, would have been able to oppose no obstacle to the
determined will of such veteran soldiers as these. At that stage of
the war, the militia and raw, untrained volunteers on either side, had
ceased to be regarded as forces to be reckoned with.
A more important fact was that Hooker was moving with his veteran army
to meet Lee, keeping himself always between the great Confederate and
the National capital.
Again as during the former invasion, there were eleven thousand Federal
troops holding Harper's Ferry. Again, as a year before, the general
commanding the Army of the Potomac wanted to save them to his army by
ordering them to evacuate the place and join him in the field. Again,
as on the former occasion, Halleck refused to sanction this, in spite
of the obvious fact that the Confederates must certainly and easily
capture the whole of that force unless it should save itself by timely
retreat.
About this time Hooker, in disgust at the restraints to which he was
subjected, asked to be relieved of the command of the Army of the
Potomac, and General Meade, a very much abler man, was appointed
to succeed him. Meade instantly ordered the evacuation of Harper's
Ferry--the very thing that Hooker had been forbidden to order, and thus
saved eleven thousand seasoned troops to the Army with which he must
presently confront Lee.
On the twenty-eighth of June Lee's army lay at Chambersburg, York, and
Carlisle, in Pennsylvania. In that position it threatened Baltimore,
Harrisburg and Philadelphia about equally. It might move upon either
at will and in either case cut off Washington. The problem of the Army
of the Potomac was to find out its adversary's intention and interpose
itself at whatever point interposition might seem to be most necessary.
In the course of this advance, Lee made one capital blunder. It was his
courteous custom, in giving orders to his higher lieutenants, to leave
much to their discretion, if only by way of emphasizing his confidence
in them. In this case he left much to the discretion of Stuart, who
had no discretion, although he had every other good quality of the
soldier. Lee ordered Stuart to make certain movements if they commended
themselves to his judgment, but left him in effect free to do as he
pleased, assuming that he would please to do that which was discreet,
bearing in mind that the cavalry are the eyes and ears of the army.
It was Stuart's chief business to find out and report every movement
of the Army of the Potomac, to follow its every march, to learn what
it was planning to do, and at every step to find out and report to Lee
the force employed in each maneuver. Stuart was an adept in this work.
No man then living--probably no man who ever lived--knew better than
he did how to find out the purposes of an enemy or to estimate his
strength or to determine where and when that enemy meant to strike.
But by virtue of his orders, Stuart was free to do what he pleased; and
it pleased him to find out how nearly his cavaliers could ride into
Washington, to throw shells into that city and generally to impress
himself dramatically and theatrically upon the Federal administration
as a terror.
As a consequence Lee was left without that information as to his
adversary's movements which he depended upon the cavalry to furnish.
While Stuart was trying to throw shells into Washington, Meade was
concentrating his forces toward Gettysburg, to meet his opponent there
and Lee was left in ignorance of the fact.
Accordingly when the head of Lee's somewhat scattered and straggling
column came upon a Federal force occupying a strong position at
Gettysburg which it had been Lee's intention that his own advance
forces should seize and hold, there were all the elements of surprise
in the situation.
Neither army was as yet sufficiently concentrated to deliver a blow
that might be decisive. Lee had in all about 73,500 infantry and
artillery--the largest army he ever commanded. Meade had about 82,000
effective infantry and artillery. The cavalry on each side numbered
ten or eleven thousand sabers, but Lee's horsemen were absent, trying
to make a display of themselves, while Meade's were in front, where
they ought to have been, trying to secure for their commander full
information and promptly to seize upon the best positions that might
avail to give him advantage in the approaching fight. This difference
gave to Meade about 93,000 fighting men against 73,000 on the other
side.
Lee's army was strangely scattered. A part of it was at York; a part
of it at Carlisle; a part of it at Chambersburg, and another part in
front of Gettysburg. Because of Stuart's aberration Lee knew nothing
of his enemy's movements until the head of his column ran against
Meade's forces at Gettysburg. He seems to have expected Meade to
remain south of the Potomac, or at the most to cross that river and
place himself in the northern defenses of Washington. He had ordered
the concentration of the Confederate forces at Gettysburg without the
smallest expectation of finding the Army of the Potomac there to meet
him in full force.
A glance at a map will show the reader how completely the position at
Gettysburg dominates the military geography, and how perfectly his
mastery of it would have enabled Lee to dictate the further course of
the campaign.
It is greatly to the credit of General Meade as a strategist that
he quickly saw all this and hurried his army forward to occupy that
commanding position before Lee could seize upon and control it.
He did this masterfully. When Lee's advance reached Gettysburg on the
first of July, it found itself opposed by a force too great for it
to deal with in any summary fashion. And that force had seized upon
positions of the utmost strategic value before the Confederates reached
Gettysburg.
Here a little topographical information is necessary to a clear
understanding. With the aid of any good map of the region it may be
condensed into brief space.
The town of Gettysburg was itself of no consequence to either side. The
military position among the hills surrounding it was vitally important.
Many roads converge at this point. A trifle over two miles south
of the town there are two bold and commanding hills--Round Top and
Little Round Top. From these a line of hills extends toward the town,
commanding the lower ground to the east and west. This is called
Cemetery Ridge, and is not to be confounded with Seminary Ridge,
presently to be mentioned. Cemetery Ridge, just before it reaches the
town, trends off to the east and ends in Culp's Hill.
West of the town is another and higher ridge, also running north and
south, called Seminary Ridge. Just west of these high grounds is
Willoughby Run, a little creek which afforded opportunity for attack
and defense.
When Lee learned that Meade, instead of sitting down to the defense of
Washington, was advancing against his communications, he ordered his
army to concentrate at Gettysburg for a decisive battle. Meade in the
meanwhile was pushing his columns to that point. Here were two masters
of the game of war, who, while opposing each other, were agreed that
Gettysburg was the key to the situation. The strategic value of that
point was equally apparent to both.
Lee, being left in the dark by Stuart's absence, was slowly advancing
in detachments, in order to subsist his army upon the country,
confident that his enemy was still lingering around Washington and that
he had himself ample time in which to seize the commanding positions in
advance of the foe's approach. Meade, meanwhile, was perfectly informed
of Lee's movements and was hourly quickening his march.
When the head of Lee's column under Ewell reached the neighborhood of
Gettysburg on the first of July, it encountered not only the Federal
cavalry, which it had expected to find there and to brush aside without
difficulty, but the whole of Meade's advance corps--artillery and
infantry--under Reynolds, while another corps under Howard was hurrying
up in support.
Seizing upon the line of Willoughby Run the Federals undertook to hold
it and the hills in rear of it against the enemy's assault. Ewell,
expecting to encounter no resistance except such as the cavalry and
perhaps some brigades of Pennsylvania militia, could offer, advanced
confidently only to find his way disputed by some of the best veteran
corps of the Army of the Potomac.
Reynolds, commanding the Federal advance, was killed early in the
action and Doubleday succeeded him. Howard presently superseded
Doubleday in chief command and later Hancock replaced Howard.
So completely had Lee been left in the dark by the vagaries of his
cavalry leader that in ordering Ewell's advance upon Gettysburg he had
intended only that his lieutenant should brush away the cavalry and
militia there, seize upon the strategic positions and hold them easily
until the Confederate army could come up and plant itself impregnably
to receive the attack which the foe must make in sheer desperation.
But when Ewell approached the town and found himself confronted by
the strongest corps of Meade's army instead of merely having cavalry
and militia to deal with, it was imperative upon him to bring on a
general action at once, in disobedience of Lee's order to avoid such
an action until the other Confederate army corps should come up. Ewell
was much too wise a soldier not to see the necessity of striking at
once and with all the force he could command in the hope of securing
for Lee some at least of the strong positions and thus giving to the
Confederates an opportunity to fight the great and inevitable battle
with a reasonable hope of winning it.
So Ewell struck hard with what force he had, and the enemy struck back
with equal vigor. Hour after hour the conflict endured, the men on both
sides fighting with determination and calmly enduring a slaughter that
only veterans could have stood.
When Lee heard the roar of the conflict and, with practised ear
measured its severity, he hurried forward reinforcements as fast as
possible, and meanwhile sent a messenger to ask Ewell "What are you
fighting there?" In response Ewell answered, "The whole Yankee army, I
think."
Here at last the advance forces of the two greatest and gallantest
armies ever assembled on this continent had met, each under a leader in
whom it had confidence. Here at last, with approximately equal numbers
those two armies faced each other with intent to fight out to a finish
the question which of them was the better organized for the work of
war. The Federals outnumbered the Confederates by no more than 15,000
men or so, and the _élan_ the Confederates had brought with them out
of recent victories, together with their limitless confidence in Lee's
superiority to any living man as a general, served adequately to offset
that small advantage.
The courage of the men on both sides was matchless. Their endurance was
superb. Their heroism was such as poets rejoice to celebrate in song.
The drama, with all its arts and all its accessories has no "effects"
to offer, that can for one instant compare in masterfulness with those
presented by the story of this struggle of Americans against Americans
for the mastery.
Toward the end of the day, the Confederate onsets proved irresistible
and the Federal forces in large part at least, fell into retreat. But
with the cavalry standing fast and with a brigade of infantry strongly
posted on Cemetery Ridge, Hancock, who had assumed command on the
field, succeeded in stopping the flight and forming a new line along
the crest of Cemetery Ridge.
Thus ended the first day's fight. The Confederates had had the better
of it in certain ways. They had been taken by surprise, not in the
usual way by being unexpectedly set upon by an army whose assault they
were not anticipating, but by finding in their path, when seeking to
occupy an advantageous position, a veteran army skilfully handled and
well commanded, where they had expected to meet only light bodies of
cavalry and militiamen whose resistance they might regard as lightly as
they would the small embarrassment of a field of ripening grain. They
had lost heavily in the ensuing conflict, but they had driven their
foes--or most of them--into retreat and had occupied positions from
which the great battles of the ensuing days might be waged with hope
and confidence.
During all the night that followed, as during all that first day of
fighting, the army corps and divisions and brigades on both sides
marched ceaselessly in an endeavor to put themselves into their places
on the line in time for the final struggle. Some of them, on either
side, marched eighteen miles, some twenty-five, and one at least on
the Federal side tramped wearily over thirty-three miles of distance
without sleep or rest, in its eagerness to bear its part in what
promised to be the crowning conflict of the war.
But each side having secured a strong position neither desired to bring
on the conflict until its forces should be fully up, and so the two
armies did not fall a-fighting again until about four o'clock in the
afternoon of the second day--July 2, 1863. Then Longstreet with his
Confederates fell upon Sickles with a fury that only a seasoned corps
could have withstood for a moment. Sickles occupied a line of rather
low-lying hills that stretched diagonally across between the Federal
and Confederate positions. His left wing having no natural obstacle to
rest upon, was bent back toward Little Round Top, thus presenting an
angle to the enemy.
Upon this angle Longstreet's veterans were hurled with determination,
while a part of his corps--Hood's fierce fighting Texans, and that most
desperate of rowdy corps, Wheat's Louisiana Tigers--passing around the
flank of it, made a determined attempt to seize Little Round Top, a
position from which, had they secured it, their guns could have swept
a large part of the Federal line with a destructive enfilade fire.
General Warren saw the danger in time and moved a heavy force toward
the coveted hill, including a battery whose guns the men dragged by
hand up the steep and into position.
Hood's men pressed on in face of the fire opened upon them, and with
a desperate determination rarely equaled even in this war, endeavored
to conquer the position in a hand to hand struggle. The men on both
sides saw the vital importance of the position and fought for its
possession like so many war-drunken demons. They fought hand to hand,
using bayonets when too close together to load and fire. They brained
each other with the butts of their muskets. They assailed each other
with bowie knives. They even resorted to the use of stones, hurling
them in each other's faces and breaking each other's skulls with heavy
boulders.
In the end Hood's attack was baffled, and Warren held the hill. But for
his alertness in seeing the necessity and his wonderful determination
in seizing the opportunity, the battle must have been lost then and
there; for, with his guns planted on Little Round Top, Lee could
quickly have compelled the whole Federal line to retire and seek some
other field of fighting.
Probably in all the course of the war the margin between victory and
defeat was never at any point narrower than it was in that desperate
struggle for possession of Little Round Top, about sunset on the
second day of July, 1863. Never anywhere, before or since, was there
fiercer fighting. Never anywhere did soldiers give a better account of
themselves. Officers, from lieutenants to generals, fell in numbers by
the side of their enlisted men, and over the whole slope the ground was
strewn with the dead and the dying. Some of them wore the blue, and
some of them the gray--about equal numbers in each uniform--but all
of them were Americans and the memory of their heroism is the common
heritage of all the people of the great Republic.
During these two days of terrific fighting the Federals had got
distinctly the worst of it. The Confederates had not won a victory,
but they had at any rate secured advantages that might well give their
adversaries pause.
General Meade called a council of war after the firing ceased on the
night of the second. He has himself declared that he had no thought of
retreating after the fashion that had been established by usage in
the Army of the Potomac. General Meade's truthfulness is wholly above
suspicion. But General Doubleday has pretty conclusively shown that
General Meade's memory was at fault in this and that his object in
calling the council of war was to take the opinions of his lieutenants
as to whether he should withdraw from the Gettysburg position--as the
Army of the Potomac had withdrawn from so many others after being
worsted in battle--or should stay there and fight the matter out.
However that may be--and historically it does not matter--it was
decided to stay there, and the night was spent by both armies in
diligent preparation for a renewal of the desperate and not unequal
conflict on the morrow. Every man and every gun that was within reach
was brought into position. Every inch of advantageous ground that
either side commanded was occupied to the full. Every preparation
that either of those titanic forces could make for the morrow was
made. It was at last the fixed purpose of each of these great armies
to give battle to the other in a final contest for supremacy, in
full conviction that the whole question at issue between the warring
sections was deliberately staked upon the outcome of this one desperate
struggle.
And indeed the stake was no whit less than that. It was obvious that
should Meade beat and crush Lee on this decisive battlefield, the very
existence of the Southern Confederacy would be at an end; the road to
Richmond would be open to any single army corps that might be sent
to undertake the conquest of the Confederate capital, while a dozen
or a score of strong divisions could easily be sent on that task if
necessary. On the other hand if Lee could have crushed Meade in this
battle Washington would have been his for the taking, while Baltimore,
Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and New York would have been helpless to
offer any resistance which need in the least check or embarrass him. In
either case the war must have come to a hurried end.
Thus, when it was decided to renew the battle on the field of
Gettysburg on the third of July, 1863, the stakes of the war game
included all that there was of a cause on either side.
Lee was in a position in which he must take supreme risks. Therein only
lay his hope. Meade was in a very different case. He might fall back
and still reserve to himself the opportunity to fight again with hope
of success. It is in no way astonishing that Meade hesitated, called
a council of war, and asked for the advice of his major generals as
to whether he should risk the whole Federal cause upon the issue of
a single and very uncertain battle with such an adversary as Lee, or
should withdraw and adopt a defensive attitude.
On the other side Longstreet strongly advised Lee against giving battle
in this position. Longstreet thought Lee had accomplished enough. He
thought also that by shifting the position it was easily possible for
Lee to put himself in better and his adversary in much worse case, for
fighting, before bringing on the battle.
Whether Longstreet's counsels were wise or otherwise, only skilled
military critics are competent to determine; and even their
determination must always be open to doubt, especially as Longstreet's
support of Lee's plan of battle seems to have lacked something of
efficiency--the lack of which may have been determinative of results.
At any rate Lee decided to give battle, and he made his dispositions
accordingly. He had already assailed both flanks of the Federal army
and found both too strongly posted to be successfully turned or
crushed. He decided, therefore, to hurl his entire strength directly
against the Federal line in the hope of breaking it and thus driving
his enemy into disorderly retreat.
It was a desperate thing to do, but Lee knew the fact, which has since
been recorded by a historian on the other side, that the soldiers under
his command were "the best infantry on earth" and he hesitated not to
exact of them the most desperate and terrific work. He knew at least
that these men would do and dare anything and everything in an attempt
to carry out his will and achieve the ends he purposed.
He assembled a hundred guns on Seminary Ridge, each so well manned as
to be capable of firing from four to six times a minute. In answer
the Federals on Cemetery Ridge assembled about a like number of guns,
equally well served.
The greatest artillery duel that had ever occurred was waged on that
morning. Nearly a thousand shells a minute were launched upon their
life-destroying career. Guns were knocked from their carriages, only
to be replaced by other guns for which there had been no firing room
before. Cannoneers were swept away like flies, and their places were
promptly taken by other cannoneers who eagerly and clamorously claimed
the privileges of the conflict. Caissons were exploded by bursting
shells and other caissons moved into their places with the precision of
mathematics itself.
The Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac had learned
their business. The men who composed them now were soldiers, drilled,
trained, battle-seasoned and thoroughly hardened to their work by
long and varied experience. Whatever it was possible for courage and
endurance to accomplish, that they were ready to undertake. They no
more thought of reckoning the personal danger than of calculating the
wanderings of the stars in their courses. They stood their ground,
nothing daunting them and nothing suggesting to their minds a thought
of running away. Is it any wonder that when such men composed the
opposing armies, the fighting was such as to make men admire and angels
weep?
The one thing that made the greater battles of the Confederate war
terrible was this fact that the two armies were equally American in
their composition, equally determined, equally heroic in daring and in
enduring.
While all this fury of artillery fire continued, the infantry on either
side lay flat on their bellies, taking advantage of every smallest
inequality of the ground, and waiting for the serious work of war to
begin. For by this time every soldier in either of these armies knew
all there was to know about war's work, and every one of them knew
that this terrific artillery bombardment--the greatest that had ever
occurred since cannon were invented--was merely preliminary to that
onset of the infantry which was presently to determine which of these
two great armies should have the mastery and which should be destroyed.
After two hours or more of this work with the guns, there came
Pickett's charge--one of the very gallantest endeavors in all the
history of war--having for its only rival in heroic determination
the six successive charges of Federal troops up Marye's Heights at
Fredericksburg.
Fourteen thousand of Lee's "best infantry on earth" were set to make
this onslaught. Their task was about the most difficult and terrible
one that had been anywhere undertaken during the war. There was a full
mile of open country lying between the line from which they moved and
the line which they were called upon to assault. Every inch of that
mile of open space was swept by the fire of a hundred guns served
as guns were rarely served before or since. It was in face of this
veritable "fire of hell" that these fourteen thousand men were required
to traverse a mile of space and then assail an entrenched and strongly
posted enemy like unto themselves in courage, determination and all
soldierly qualities.
They went to this work with unfaltering courage, and at the end of it
all a new chapter had been added to the history of heroism.
The moment Pickett's men began their mile long charge, the Federal
cannon--about a hundred guns--resumed their fire while the Confederate
artillery must of course cease firing lest their shells plow through
the ranks of their own infantry. In spite of all, and in face of a
hailstorm of shot and shell the Confederates steadily advanced. Great
rents were made in their lines by the explosion of shells, but the
gaps thus made were instantly closed up, and not for one moment did
the assaulting force recoil, or halt or slacken the eager rapidity of
its advance. As it drew near to the enemy's lines the Federal fire
was changed from shell and shrapnel to canister in double and triple
charges--each gun hurling from a quart to a gallon of balls every
few seconds into the faces of the still advancing and still cheering
Confederates. Presently, when the Southerners drew still nearer to the
lines, a great body of Federal infantry that had been lying down and
sheltering itself, rose and poured murderous volleys into the ranks of
the assailants.
Those ranks were withering now, under the destructive fire, but still
they faltered not nor failed. Still they went forward to execute Lee's
will, which meant to them quite all that the will of God means to the
devotee.
They trampled over the advance lines of the enemy. They pushed forward
to the breastworks. They even crossed the fortifications and for a
brief space held the lines they had been sent to conquer.
But so depleted were their ranks by this time, and so strangely
unsupported were they by those other divisions which they had expected
Longstreet to send in after them, and which he did not send in, that
they were at last forced back by sheer weight of numbers.
A small remnant of that splendid charging column returned to Lee's
lines under a withering fire. The rest of it lay dead or dying on the
hillside.
It has always been a fact highly creditable to American armies that the
killed and wounded among their officers of high rank in every severe
conflict relatively outnumber the casualties among the enlisted men.
At Gettysburg, on both sides, this was conspicuously the case. On the
Federal side General Reynolds was killed early on the first day of the
fight. Later General Weed was mortally wounded; General Vincent and
Colonel O'Rorke were killed. So were General Zook and Colonel Cross,
while General Sickles lost a leg. In the third day's fighting Generals
Hancock, Doubleday, Gibbon, Warren, Butterfield, Stannard, Brooke and
Barnes were wounded; General Farnsworth was killed. On the Confederate
side the number of killed and wounded among officers of high rank was
equally great. General Barksdale fell, leading his men in terrific
assault. General Armistead was shot to death as he laid his hand upon
a Federal gun, and in Pickett's matchless charge, very nearly every
officer, high and low, was either killed or wounded. Their men were not
sent into the conflict; they were led into it, and between those two
things there is a world of difference.
Longstreet has criticised Lee for ordering Pickett's charge. On the
other hand Longstreet has been severely criticised for not having
supported that charge with all his might, pushing forward every man he
could command to take the places of Pickett's killed and wounded and
to crown their superb endeavor with compulsory success. Again Lee has
been criticised for having given Ewell, in command of his left wing,
uncertain and discretionary orders, instead of directing him, at the
time of Pickett's charge, to hurl his whole force upon the enemy in his
front, regardless of all other considerations. These matters are open
questions that belong to military criticism rather than to history.
They need not be discussed in these pages. But it belongs to history
to relate that when the struggle was at an end, and the people of the
South manifested a disposition to hold Longstreet responsible for its
failure to accomplish the results intended, Lee promptly and definitely
took upon himself all there might be of blame for the miscarriage of
his plans. In a letter to President Davis he wrote protesting that the
responsibility was all his own, and asking that some younger and fitter
man than himself should be appointed to succeed him in command of that
splendidly devoted and unfaltering army which he had so often led to
victory but on this occasion had led to something akin to defeat and
disaster.
There could scarcely be a stronger contrast than that between Lee's
generous refusal to have any of his lieutenants held responsible
for the results of a battle which he had authority to direct and
Hooker's endeavor to shift to the shoulders of his subordinates the
responsibility for his phenomenal failure at Chancellorsville. Lee was
a great man, Hooker fell far short of that measure.
Gettysburg was, like Sharpsburg or Antietam, technically a drawn
battle. Neither side had won a recognizable victory. Neither army had
driven its adversary from the field. Neither had destroyed or even
seriously impaired the fighting capacity of the other. Neither had
triumphed over the other. But the result at Gettysburg as at Antietam
was that Lee's invasion of the North was brought to naught. In the one
case as in the other the Confederate hope of compelling terms of peace
was defeated by successful resistance. To that extent at least the
battle had resulted in victory for the Federal arms.
When the fourth of July dawned, neither army cared to assail the
other. All day they confronted each other sullenly, as they had done
at Sharpsburg. Then Lee slowly and deliberately withdrew, as he had
done on the former occasion, his enemy not having confidence or
strength enough to interfere in any active way with his retirement.
Lee's ammunition was so far exhausted that many of his divisions had
only one round of cartridges, while many of his batteries had none at
all. But so terrible had been his onset, and so greatly did his foe
dread a further conflict with him, that after taking his own time in
the enemy's country in which to determine what he would do, he moved
to the Potomac practically unmolested, rested there because of high
water, still unmolested, and finally returned to Virginia. Meade slowly
and quite inoffensively followed. The two armies resumed their old
positions on the Rappahannock and the Rapidan and neither ventured to
assail the other during the remainder of that summer or autumn.
Here was another of those strange pauses in the war which history
finds it difficult to explain. The first battle of Manassas was fought
on the twenty-first of July, 1861. There was no further battling of
consequence during that summer or autumn. The battle at Sharpsburg
was fought at the middle of September, 1862; there was no further
fighting until the middle of December following. The Gettysburg battle
was fought during the first three days of July, 1863, and throughout
the long summer and autumn that followed there was no activity on
either side. Not until May of the following year did the armies that
confronted each other in Virginia meet again in conflict.
The wherefore of this inactivity has never been explained.
But meanwhile events of the utmost importance were occurring at the
South and West, which claim attention in another chapter.