Chapter XVIII: The Battle of Gettysburg (2)

It was five minutes past one when the signal-gun for the opening of the battle was given by the Rebels on Seminary Hill. Instantly the whole line of Rebel batteries, an hundred and fifty guns, joined in the cannonade. All of the guns northeast, north, and northwest of the town concentrated their fire upon the cemetery. Those west and southwest opened on Hancock's position. Solid shot and shells poured incessantly upon the cemetery and along the ridge. The intention of Lee was soon understood,--to silence Howard's batteries because they enfiladed the attacking force ready to move over the fields toward the centre, our weakest point. If they could give to the living who held the burial-place a quiet as profound as that of the sleepers beneath the ground, then they might hope to break through the thin line of men composing the Second Corps.

But Howard was not a man to be kept quiet at such a time without especial cause. His horses were knocked to pieces, the tombstones shivered, iron railings torn, shrubs and trees cut down, here and there men killed, but his batteries were not silenced.

Mr. Wilkenson of the New York _Tribune_, who was at General Meade's head-quarters when the fire was severest, thus describes the scene:--

"In the shadow cast by the tiny farm-house, sixteen by twenty,
which General Meade had made his head-quarters, lay wearied staff
officers and tired correspondents. There was not wanting to the
peacefulness of the scene the singing of a bird, which had a nest
in a peach-tree within the tiny yard of the whitewashed cottage.
In the midst of its warbling a shell screamed over the house,
instantly followed by another, and another, and in a moment the
air was full of the most complete artillery-prelude to an
infantry battle that was ever exhibited. Every size and form of
shell known to British and to American gunnery shrieked, whirled,
moaned, and whistled, and wrathfully fluttered over our ground.
As many as six in a second, constantly two in a second, bursting
and screaming over and around the head-quarters, made a very hell
of fire that amazed the oldest officers. They burst in the
yard,--burst next to the fence on both sides, garnished as usual
with the hitched horses of aides and orderlies. The fastened
animals reared and plunged with terror. Then one fell, then
another,--sixteen lay dead and mangled before the fire ceased,
still fastened by their halters, which gave the expression of
being wickedly tied up to die painfully. These brute victims of a
cruel war touched all hearts. Through the midst of the storm of
screaming and exploding shells an ambulance, driven by its
frenzied conductor at full speed, presented to all of us the
marvellous spectacle of a horse going rapidly on three legs. A
hinder one had been shot off at the hock. A shell tore up the
little step at the head-quarters cottage, and ripped bags of oats
as with a knife. Another soon carried off one of its two pillars.
Soon a spherical case burst opposite the open door,--another
ripped through the low garret. The remaining pillar went almost
immediately to the howl of a fixed shot that Whitworth must have
made. During this fire, the horses at twenty and thirty feet
distant were receiving their death, and soldiers in Federal blue
were torn to pieces in the road, and died with the peculiar yells
that blend the extorted cry of pain with horror and despair. Not
an orderly, not an ambulance, not a straggler was to be seen upon
the plain swept by this tempest of orchestral death, thirty
minutes after it commenced. Were not one hundred and twenty
pieces of artillery trying to cut from the field every battery we
had in position to resist their purposed infantry attack, and to
sweep away the slight defences behind which our infantry were
waiting? Forty minutes,--fifty minutes,--counted watches that
ran, O so languidly! Shells through the two lower rooms. A shell
into the chimney, that daringly did not explode. Shells in the
yard. The air thicker, and fuller, and more deafening with the
howling and whirring of these infernal missiles. The Chief of
Staff struck,--Seth Williams,--loved and respected through the
army, separated from instant death by two inches of space
vertically measured. An aide bored with a fragment of iron
through the bone of the arm. And the time measured on the
sluggish watches was one hour and forty minutes."

A soldier was lying on the ground a few rods distant from where I was sitting. There was a shriek, such as I hope never again to hear, and his body was whirling in the air, a mangled mass of flesh, blood, and bones!

A shell exploding in the cemetery, killed and wounded twenty-seven men in one regiment![51] and yet the troops, lying under the fences,--stimulated and encouraged by General Howard, who walked coolly along the line,--kept their places and awaited the attack.

[Footnote 51: General Howard's Report.]

It was half past two o'clock.

"We will let them think that they have silenced us," said General Howard to Major Osborne. The artillerists threw themselves upon the ground beside their pieces.

Suddenly there was a shout,--"Here they come!"

Every man was on the alert. The cannoneers sprang to their feet. The long lines emerged from the woods, and moved rapidly but steadily over the fields, towards the Emmettsburg road.

Howard's batteries burst into flame, throwing shells with the utmost rapidity. There are gaps in the Rebel ranks, but onward still they come. They reach the Emmettsburg road. Pickett's division appears by Klingel's house. All of Howard's guns are at work now. Pickett turns to the right, moving north, driven in part by the fire rolling in upon his flank from Weed's Hill, and from the Third, Fifth, and Sixth Corps batteries. Suddenly he faces east, descends the gentle slope from the road behind Codori's, crosses the meadow, comes in reach of the muskets of the Vermonters. The three regiments rise from their shallow trench. The men beneath the oak-trees leap from their low breastwork of rails. There is a ripple, a roll, a deafening roar. Yet the momentum of the Rebel column carries it on. It is becoming thinner and weaker, but they still advance.

The Second Corps is like a thin blue ribbon. Will it withstand the shock? "Give them canister! Pour it into them!" shouts Major Charles Howard, running from battery to battery. The Rebel line is almost up to the grove in front of Robinson's. It has reached the clump of shrub-oaks. It has drifted past the Vermont boys. Onward still. "Break their third line! Smash their supports!" cries General Howard, and Osborne and Wainwright send the fire of fifty guns into the column, each piece fired three times a minute! The cemetery is lost to view,--covered with sulphurous clouds, flaming and smoking and thundering like Sinai on the great day of the Lord! The front line of Rebels is melting away,--the second is advancing to take its place; but beyond the first and second is the third, which reels, breaks, and flies to the woods from whence it came, unable to withstand the storm.

Hancock is wounded, and Gibbon is in command of the Second Corps. "Hold your fire, boys; they are not near enough yet," says Gibbon, as Pickett comes on. The first volley staggers, but does not stop them. They move upon the run,--up to the breastwork of rails,--bearing Hancock's line to the top of the ridge,--so powerful their momentum.

Men fire into each other's faces, not five feet apart. There are bayonet-thrusts, sabre-strokes, pistol-shots; cool, deliberate movements on the part of some,--hot, passionate, desperate efforts with others; hand-to-hand contests; recklessness of life; tenacity of purpose; fiery determination; oaths, yells, curses, hurrahs, shoutings; men going down on their hands and knees, spinning round like tops, throwing out their arms, gulping up blood, falling; legless, armless, headless. There are ghastly heaps of dead men. Seconds are centuries; minutes, ages; but the thin line does not break!

The Rebels have swept past the Vermont regiments. "Take them in flank," says General Stannard.

The Thirteenth and Sixteenth swing out from the trench, turn a right angle to the main line, and face the north. They move forward a few steps, pour a deadly volley into the backs of Kemper's troops. With a hurrah they rush on, to drive home the bayonet. The Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth Massachusetts, and Seventh Michigan, Twentieth New York, Nineteenth Maine, One Hundred Fifty-First Pennsylvania, and other regiments catch the enthusiasm of the moment, and close upon the foe.

The Rebel column has lost its power. The lines waver. The soldiers of the front rank look round for their supports. They are gone,--fleeing over the field, broken, shattered, thrown into confusion by the remorseless fire from the cemetery and from the cannon on the ridge. The lines have disappeared like a straw in a candle's flame. The ground is thick with dead, and the wounded are like the withered leaves of autumn. Thousands of Rebels throw down their arms and give themselves up as prisoners.

How inspiring the moment! How thrilling the hour! It is the high-water mark of the Rebellion,--a turning-point of history and of human destiny!

Treason had wielded its mightiest blow. From that time the Rebellion began to wane. An account of the battle, written on the following day, and published on the 6th of July in the Boston _Journal_, contains the following passage:--

"The invasion of the North was over,--the power of the Southern
Confederacy broken. There at that sunset hour I could discern the
future; no longer an overcast sky, but the clear, unclouded
starlight,--a country redeemed, saved, baptized, consecrated anew
to the coming ages.

"All honor to the heroic living, all glory to the gallant dead!
They have not fought in vain, they have not died for naught. No
man liveth to himself alone. Not for themselves, but for their
children; for those who may never hear of them in their
nameless graves, how they yielded life; for the future; for all
that is good, pure, holy, just, true; for humanity,
righteousness, peace; for Paradise on earth; for Christ and for
God, they have given themselves a willing sacrifice. Blessed be
their memory forevermore!"

I rode along the lines, and beheld the field by the light of the gleaming stars. The dead were everywhere thickly strown. How changed the cemetery! Three days before, its gravelled walks were smooth and clean; flowers were in bloom; birds carolled their songs amid the trees; the monuments were undefaced; the marble slabs pure and white. Now there were broken wheels and splintered caissons; dead horses, shot in the neck, in the head, through the body, disembowelled by exploding shells, legs broken, flesh mangled and torn; pools of blood, scarlet stains on the headstones, green grass changed to crimson; marble slabs shivered; the ground ploughed by solid shot, holes blown out by bursting shells; dead men lying where they had fallen, wounded men creeping to the rear; cries and groans all around me! Fifty shells a minute had fallen upon that small enclosure. Not for a moment was there thought of abandoning the position. How those batteries of Osborne and Wainwright, of the Eleventh and First Corps, had lightened and thundered! There were scores of dead by the small house where the left of the Rebel line advanced, lying just as they were smitten down, as if a thunderbolt had fallen upon the once living mass!

An English officer, who saw the battle from the Rebel lines, thus says of the repulse:--

"I soon began to meet many wounded men returning from the front;
many of them asked in piteous tones the way to a doctor, or an
ambulance. The further I got the greater became the number of the
wounded. At last I came to a perfect stream of them flocking
through the woods in numbers as great as the crowd in Oxford
Street in the middle of the day.... They were still under a heavy
fire; the shells were continually bringing down great limbs of
trees, and carrying further destruction amongst their melancholy
procession. I saw all this in much less time than it takes to
write it, and although astonished to meet such a vast number of
wounded, I had not seen enough to give me an idea of the real
extent of the mischief.

"When I got close up to General Longstreet, I saw one of his
regiments advancing through the woods in good order; so, thinking
I was just in time to see the attack, I remarked to the General
that 'I wouldn't have missed this for anything.' Longstreet was
seated on the top of a snake-fence, in the edge of the wood, and
looking perfectly calm and unperturbed. He replied, 'The devil
you wouldn't! I would like to have missed it very much; we've
attacked and been repulsed. Look there!'

"For the first time I then had a view of the open space between
the two positions, and saw it covered with Confederates slowly
and sulkily returning towards us in small broken parties....

"I remember seeing a general (Pettigrew I think it was) come up
to him and report that he was unable to bring his men up again.
Longstreet turned upon him and replied with some sarcasm: 'Very
well,--never mind, then, General; just let them remain where they
are. The enemy is going to advance, and will spare you the
trouble.' ...

"Soon afterward I joined General Lee, who had in the mean while
come to the front, on becoming aware of the disaster. He was
engaged in rallying and in encouraging the troops, and was riding
about a little in front of the woods quite alone, the whole of
his staff being engaged in a similar manner further to the rear.
His face, which is always placid and cheerful, did not show signs
of the slightest disappointment, care, or annoyance; and he was
addressing to every soldier he met a few words of encouragement,
such as, 'All this will come right in the end; we will talk it
over afterwards,--but in the mean time all good men must rally.
We want all good men and true men just now,' &c.... He said to
me,'This has been a sad day for us, Colonel,--a sad day; but we
can't expect always to gain victories.' ... I saw General Wilcox
(an officer who wears a short round jacket and a battered straw
hat) come up to him, and explain, almost crying, the state of his
brigade. General Lee immediately shook hands with him, and said,
cheerfully, 'Never mind, General. All this has been my fault,--it
is I that have lost this fight, and you must help me out of it in
the best way you can.'"[52]

[Footnote 52: Blackwood's Magazine, September,
1863.--Lieutenant-Colonel Freemantle.]

It was past eleven o'clock in the evening when I rode up from the gory field, over the ridge, where the Second Corps had stood like a wall of adamant. Meade's head-quarters were in a grove, east of the small house where he established himself at the beginning of the battle. The fire had been too hot at Mrs. Leister's. Meade was sitting on a great flat boulder, listening to the reports of his officers, brought in by couriers. It was a scene which lives in memory: a dark forest,--the evening breeze gently rustling the green leaves over our heads,--the katydids and locusts singing cheerily,--the bivouac fires glimmering on the ground, revealing the surrounding objects,--the gnarled trees, torn by cannon-shot,--the mossy stones,--the group of officers,--Williams, Warren, Howard (his right sleeve wanting an arm), Pleasanton, as trim as in the morning; Meade stooping, weary, his slouched hat laid aside, so that the breeze might fan his brow.

"Bully! bully! bully all round!" said he; and then turning to his chief of staff, Humphrey, said, "Order up rations and ammunition."

To General Hunt, chief of artillery, "Have your limbers filled. Lee may be up to something in the morning, and we must be ready for him."

A band came up and played "Hail to the Chief!" the "Star-spangled Banner," and "Yankee Doodle." Soul-stirring the strains. The soldiers, lying on their arms, where they had fought, heard it, and responded with a cheer. Not all: for thousands were deaf and inanimate evermore.

No accurate statement of the number engaged in this great, decisive battle of the war can ever be given. Meade's march to Gettysburg was made with great rapidity. The Provost Marshal of the army, General Patrick, committed the great error of having no rear guard to bring up the stragglers, which were left behind in thousands, and who found it much more convenient to live on the excellent fare furnished by the farmers than to face the enemy. Meade's entire force on the field numbered probably from sixty to seventy thousand. The Rebel army had made slower marches, and the soldiers could not straggle; they were in an enemy's country. Lee, therefore, had fuller ranks than Meade. His force may be estimated at ninety thousand men.

The people of the North expressed their gratitude to the heroes who had won this battle, by pouring out their contributions for the relief of the wounded. The agents of the Christian and Sanitary Commissions were quickly on the ground, and hundreds of warm-hearted men and women hastened to the spot to render aid. The morning after the battle I saw a stout Pennsylvania farmer driving his two-horse farm wagon up the Baltimore pike, loaded down with loaves of soft bread which his wife and daughters had baked.

Tender and affecting are some of the incidents of the battle-field. A delegate of the Christian Commission passing among the wounded, came to an officer from South Carolina.

"Can I do anything for you?" he asked.

"No!" was the surly reply.

He passed on, but upon his return repeated the question, and received the same answer. The day was hot, the air offensive, from putrefying wounds, and the delegate was putting cologne on the handkerchiefs of the patients.

"Colonel, let me put some of this on your handkerchief."

The wounded man burst into tears. "I have no handkerchief."

"Well, you shall have one"; and wetting his own gave it to him.

"I can't understand you Yankees," said the Colonel. "You fight us like devils, and then you treat us like angels. I am sorry I entered this war."[53]

[Footnote 53: Address before Alumni of Williams College,
1865. Charles Demond.]

Said another Rebel,--an Irishman,--to a chaplain who took care of him, "May every hair of your head be a wax-taper to light you on your way to glory!"[54]

[Footnote 54: Ibid.]

A chaplain passing through the hospital, came to a cot where lay a young wounded soldier who had fought for the Union.

"Poor fellow!" said the chaplain.

"Don't call me 'poor fellow!'" was the indignant reply.

"Dear fellow, then. Have you written to your mother since the battle?"

"No, sir!"

"You ought to. Here it is the tenth,--a whole week since the battle. She will be anxious to hear from you."

The lad with his left hand threw aside the sheet which covered him, and the chaplain saw that his right arm was off near the shoulder.

"That is the reason, sir, that I have not written. I have not forgotten her, sir. I have prayed for her, and I thank God for giving me so dear a mother."

Then turning aside the sheet farther, the chaplain saw that his left leg was gone. Sitting down beside the young hero the chaplain wrote as he dictated.

"Tell mother that I have given my right arm and my left leg to my country, and that I am ready to give both of my other limbs!" said he.[55]

[Footnote 55: Rev. Mr. Auley, meeting Christian Association,
Chicago.]

The courage and patriotism of Spartan mothers is immortalized in story and song. "Return with your shield, or upon it," has been held up for admiration through three thousand years. The Greek fire is not extinguished; it burns to-day as bright and pure as ever at Salamis or Marathon.

Riding in the cars through the State of New York after the battle of Gettysburg, I fell in conversation with a middle-aged woman who had two sons in the army.

"Have they been in battle?" I asked.

"Yes, sir; one has been in fifteen battles. He was taken prisoner at Chancellorsville and was wounded at Gettysburg. The other is in the Medical Department."

"The one who was wounded at Gettysburg must have seen some hard fighting."

"Yes, sir; and I hear a good account of him from his captain. He says my son behaves well. _I told him, when he went away, that I would rather hear he was dead than that he had disgraced himself._"

"His time must be nearly out."

"Yes, sir, it is; but he is going to see it through, and has re-enlisted. I should like to have him at home, but I know he would be uneasy. His comrades have re-enlisted, and he is not the boy to back out. I rather want him to help give the crushing blow."

There were thousands of such mothers in the land.

Lee retreated the morning after the battle. His reasons for a retrograde movement are thus stated by himself:--

"Owing to the strength of the enemy's position and the reduction
of our ammunition, a renewal of the engagement could not be
hazarded. and the difficulty of procuring supplies rendered it
impossible to continue longer where we were. Such of the wounded
as were in condition to be removed, and part of the arms
collected on the field, were ordered to Williamsport. The army
remained at Gettysburg during the 4th, and at night began to
retire by the road to Fairfield, carrying with it about four
thousand prisoners. Nearly two thousand had previously been
paroled, but the enemy's numerous wounded, that had fallen into
our hands after the first and second day's engagements, were left
behind."[56]

[Footnote 56: Lee's Report.]

Meade made no attempt to follow him with his main army, but marched directly down the Emmettsburg road, once more to Frederick, then west over South Mountain to intercept him on the Potomac. Meade had the inside of the chess-board. He was a victor. The men who had made a forced march to Gettysburg were awake to the exigency of the hour, and made a quick march back to Frederick, and over the mountains to Boonsboro'. A severe storm set in, and the roads were almost impassable, but the men toiled on through the mire, lifting the cannon-wheels from the deep ruts, when the horses were unable to drag the ordnance, singing songs as they marched foot-sore and weary, but buoyant over the great victory.

And now, as the intelligence came that Grant had taken Vicksburg, that Banks was in possession of Port Hudson, and that the Mississippi was flowing "unvexed to the sea," they forgot all their toils, hardships, and sufferings, and made the air ring with their lusty cheers. They could see the dawn of peace,--peace won by the sword. The women of Maryland hailed them as their deliverers, brought out the best stores from their pantries and gave freely, refusing compensation.

Meade left all his superfluous baggage behind, and moved in light marching order. Lee was encumbered by his wounded, and by his trains, and when he reached Hagerstown found that Meade was descending the mountain side, and that Gregg was already in Boonsboro'.

Reinforcements were sent to Meade from Washington, with the expectation that by concentration of all available forces, Lee's army might be wholly destroyed. The elements, which had often retarded operations of the Union troops,--which had rendered Burnside's and Hooker's movements abortive in several instances, now were propitious. The Potomac was rising, and the rain was still falling. On the morning of the 13th I rode to General Meade's head-quarters. General Seth Williams, the ever-courteous Adjutant-General of the army, was in General Meade's tent. He said that Meade was taking a look at the Rebels.

"Do you think that Lee can get across the Potomac?" I asked.

"Impossible! The people resident here say that it cannot be forded at this stage of the water. He has no pontoons. We have got him in a tight place. We shall have reinforcements to-morrow, and a great battle will be fought. Lee is encumbered with his teams, and he is short of ammunition."

General Meade came in dripping with rain, from a reconnoissance. His countenance was unusually animated. He had ever been courteous to me, and while usually very reticent of all his intentions or of what was going on, as an officer should be, yet in this instance he broke over his habitual silence, and said, "We shall have a great battle to-morrow. The reinforcements are coming up, and as soon as they come we shall pitch in."

I rode along the lines with Howard in the afternoon. The Rebels were in sight. The pickets were firing at each other. There was some movement of columns.

"I fear that Lee is getting away," said Howard.

He sent an aide to Meade, with a request that he might attack.

"I can double them up," he said, meaning that, as he was on Lee's flank, he could strike an effective blow.

Kilpatrick was beyond Howard, well up towards Williamsport. "Lee is getting across the river, I think," said through a messenger.

It was nearly night. The attack was to be made early in the morning.

The morning dawned and Lee was south of the Potomac. That officer says:--

"The army, after an arduous march, rendered more difficult by the
rains, reached Hagerstown on the afternoon of the 6th and morning
of the 7th July.

"The Potomac was found to be so much swollen by the rains that
had fallen almost incessantly since our entrance into Maryland,
as to be unfordable. Our communications with the south side were
thus interrupted, and it was difficult to procure either
ammunition or subsistence, the latter difficulty being enhanced
by the high waters impeding the working of the neighboring mills.
The trains with the wounded and prisoners were compelled to await
at Williamsport the subsiding of the river and the construction
of boats, as the pontoon bridge, left at Falling Waters, had been
partially destroyed. The enemy had not yet made his appearance;
but, as he was in condition to obtain large reinforcements, and
our situation, for the reasons above mentioned, was becoming
daily more embarrassing, it was deemed advisable to recross the
river. Part of the pontoon bridge was recovered, and new boats
built, so that by the 13th a good bridge was thrown over the
river at Falling Waters.

"The enemy in force reached our front on the 12th. A position had
been previously selected to cover the Potomac from Williamsport
to Falling Waters, and an attack was awaited during that and the
succeeding day. This did not take place, though the two armies
were in close proximity, the enemy being occupied in fortifying
his own lines. Our preparations being completed, and the river,
though still deep, being pronounced fordable, the army commenced
to withdraw to the south side on the night of the 13th.

"Ewell's corps forded the river at Williamsport, those of
Longstreet and Hill crossed upon the bridge. Owing to the
condition of the roads, the troops did not reach the bridge until
after daylight of the 14th, and the crossing was not completed
until 1 P. M., when the bridge was removed. The enemy offered no
serious interruption, and the movement was attended with no loss
of material except a few disabled wagons and two pieces of
artillery, which the horses were unable to move through the deep
mud. Before fresh horses could be sent back for them, the rear of
the column had passed."[57]

[Footnote 57: Lee's Report.]

Kilpatrick was astir at daybreak; he moved into Williamsport. I accompanied his column. The Rebels were on the Virginia hills, jubilant at their escape. There were wagons in the river, floating down with the current, which had been capsized in the crossing. Kilpatrick pushed on to Falling Waters, fell upon Pettigrew's brigade, guarding the pontoons, captured two cannon and eight hundred men, in one of the most daring dashes of the war. It was poor satisfaction, however, when contrasted with what might have been done. The army was chagrined. Loud were the denunciations of Meade.

"Another campaign on the Rappahannock, boys," said one officer in my hearing.

"We shall be in our old quarters in a few days," said another.

General Meade has been severely censured for not attacking on the 13th. Lee had lost thirty thousand men. He had suffered a crushing defeat at Gettysburg. Enthusiasm had died out. His soldiers were less confident than they had been. His ammunition was nearly exhausted. He was in a critical situation.

Those were reasons why he should be attacked; but there were also reasons, which to Meade were conclusive, that the attack should not be made till the 14th: the swollen river,--the belief that Lee had no means of crossing the Potomac,--and the expected reinforcements. The delay was not from lack of spirit or over caution; but with the expectation of striking a blow which would destroy the Rebel army.

Lee went up the valley, while Meade pushed rapidly down the base of the Blue Ridge to Culpepper. But he was not in condition to take the offensive, so far from his base; and the two armies sat down upon the banks of the Rapidan, to rest after the bloody campaign.