Gettysburg (22 page)

As a rule, Stuart preferred to lead from the front, but today he was directing affairs from a point on the outskirts of the town, near a farm owned by a family named Forney. For the second time in this campaign, he was nearly captured, in this instance when a squad of Federals broke
out of the whirling combat and charged for the headquarters guidon. The cavalry commander and a few aides galloped for safety, only to find their escape blocked by a gully fifteen feet wide. The mounted aide leading the group took the gap in one grand jump and then turned to see what his general’s horse would do. “I shall never forget the glimpse I then saw of this beautiful animal up in mid-air over the chasm and Stuart’s fine figure sitting erect and firm in the saddle,” he marveled.

Stuart’s efforts had their desired effect, so that by early afternoon the two sides were essentially glaring at each other, the Confederates on the high ground along an arc south of Hanover, and the Federals in the town itself.

In his official report, John Buford would claim that his men had met the “enemy entering the town, and in good season to drive him back before his getting a foothold.” The truth was less dramatic. Louis Young of Pettigrew’s staff, with a fellow mounted officer, constituted the brigade’s visible rear guard. As their unit pushed on, the two took care always to stop on high ground that would afford them a “perfect view of the movements of the approaching [Yankee] column. Whenever it would come within three or four hundred yards of us we would make our appearance, mounted, when the column would halt until we retired. This was repeated several times.”

Pettigrew moved his brigade across Marsh Creek and left the 26th North Carolina to picket its western bank. The rest of his command marched a short distance farther toward Cashtown and then camped for the night. The unofficial army grapevine crackled with news: the word, noted in one Rebel diary, was that Pettigrew’s soldiers, “in coming in contact with the enemy, had quite a little brush, but being under orders not to bring a general engagement fell back, followed by the enemy.”

George Meade’s thinking regarding the position of Lee’s forces changed throughout this day. For much of the morning, his attentions were focused on the enemy units said to be along the Susquehanna River, to counter which he planned to move his army more strongly toward the northeast. Then, about midday, news came in from John Reynolds of Buford’s clash with Rebel infantry at Fairfield. This information, coupled with rumors that Confederates were advancing on Gettysburg,
persuaded Meade “to hold this army pretty nearly in the position it now occupies.”

As late as 4:30
P.M.,
the Union commander still believed that Ewell’s Corps was in strength “in the vicinity of York and Harrisburg.” By the time evening orders were issued to all commands, however, further information had been received that put Ewell “at Carlisle and York.” This latest intelligence compelled Meade to reconsider his balance of forces. He had already sent Sickles’ Third Corps toward Emmitsburg to support Reynolds and Howard—both of whom were scheduled to reach Gettysburg the next day, July 1—but even more weight was clearly needed on the left. Accordingly, Meade made sure that three of his remaining seven corps were also placed on roads leading directly to Gettysburg. Only Sedgwick’s Sixth Corps, holding position near Manchester, was not fitted into this scheme.

These directives meant relatively normal marches for the men. John Reynolds’ First Corps left the Emmitsburg area and proceeded north as far as Marsh Creek, about five miles from Gettysburg. Just before they quit the Maryland town, some of the boys in the 90th Pennsylvania partook of food freely offered by an old couple who told them, “‘We’ll give you all we have if you will drive the rebels off, and hope you’ll not get killed.’” When this regiment crossed the line into its home state, the men sent up “nine cheers.”

As the 12th Massachusetts settled into its night bivouac at Marsh Creek, the regiment’s colonel was approached by one of his company captains, who had a boyish-looking civilian in tow. The stranger said he lived close by and was desperate to “fight the rebels.” The colonel reluctantly accepted this impromptu volunteer, who was allowed to join Company A. “After an extended search,” recalled a member of that company, “a cap, blouse, musket, and roundabout were secured, together with a supply of ammunition, and thus equipped he took his place in the ranks.”

Once the First Corps had cleared Emmitsburg, the Eleventh moved up from south of the village and set up all around it. The soldiers of the 26th Wisconsin were lucky enough to be assigned to camp on the grounds of the Saint Joseph Academy, operated by the Sisters of Charity. “The Sisters gave us a very good dinner today,” wrote an officer in the unit, “which all enjoyed heartily.” A staff officer with Major General Carl Schurz performed a little recital on the academy’s chapel organ, “to the edification of all who heard him.”

Not everything was so placid. A soldier in the 154th New York observed that “Lee’s troops cannot be far off, from reports and the number of aid[e]s … flying in all directions.” Another of Howard’s men, this one from the 107th Ohio, was “told this evening that there was not much doubt but that the engagement would begin sometime within the next day or two.”

It was not long after sunset when the Eleventh Corps’ commander, Oliver Otis Howard, received a note from John Reynolds, now in charge of the left wing, asking him to pay him a visit. When Howard arrived at his headquarters, Reynolds greeted him warmly and showed him a copy of a circular that Meade had ordered to be read to the troops. “The enemy are on our soil,” it declared. “The whole country now looks anxiously to this army to deliver it from the presence of the foe.” The message ended by advising that officers were “authorized to order the instant death of any soldier who fails in his duty at this hour.” After Reynolds’ visitor digested this, the two men “sat down … to study the maps of the country,” Howard later recollected, “and we consulted upon those matters till eleven o’clock at night.”

As Howard prepared to return to his own headquarters, one of his aides scrutinized Reynolds closely. “General Reynolds was a tall, vigorous man of quick motion and temperament,” he observed. “That night he was somewhat paler than usual and seemed to feel anxious or at least to be keenly alive to the responsibility resting upon him.” Howard likewise noted his colleague’s mood: “Probably he was anxious on account of the scattered condition of our forces, particularly in view of the sudden concentration of the enemy,” he remarked.

Jeb Stuart sweated out the rest of the daylight at Hanover, worrying all the while that the Federals might renew the combat, and concerned about rumors of Union regular infantry in the neighborhood. When darkness finally fell, he wasted little time in getting out of harm’s way, sending his wagons swinging off to the east of the town and following soon after with the rest of his command.

“Kilpatrick,” a Confederate headquarters aide reported with great relief, “showed no disposition to hinder Stuart’s withdrawal.” Jeb Stuart was beginning to wish he had never captured that Yankee wagon train at Rockville. The lumbering prize, he later conceded, “was now a subject of
serious embarrassment, but I thought … I could save it. … I was satisfied, from every accessible source of information … that the Army of Northern Virginia must be near the Susquehanna.”

Reporter Whitelaw Reid would always think of it as one of the great untold stories of this military campaign. Not twenty-four hours earlier, legions of Rebel cavalrymen had been swarming over the Baltimore-Frederick rail line, ripping out, burning, tearing up, and generally destroying things to the best of their abilities. And now here he was, approaching Frederick on that very same line, aboard a train pulling “cars crowded to overflowing with citizens and their wives and daughters willing to take the risk rather than lose a train.”

Reid’s more resourceful and luckier rival Charles Coffin was at this moment on horseback, trying to navigate by the sound of the guns. His ride would bring him this evening to Hanover, where he would see “dead horses and dead soldiers in the streets lying where they fell. The wounded had been gathered into a schoolhouse and the warm-hearted women of the place were ministering to their comfort.”

When Reid finally reached Frederick, he would find there only the basest detritus of Meade’s military machine. The fighting soldiers of the Army of the Potomac had departed northward to seek their foe, leaving behind mobs of the outfit’s undesirables. “Frederick is Pandemonium,” reported Reid. “The worst elements of a great army are here in their worst condition; its cowards, its thieves, its sneaks, its bullying vagabonds, all inflamed with whiskey, and drunk as well with their freedom from accustomed restraint.” It would be several days before the army’s hard-pressed provost marshal could restore order to the city.

Richard Ewell met with two of his three division commanders this evening near Heidlersburg, Pennsylvania. Present were Robert Rodes and Jubal Early, the latter only just arrived from York. Also with them was the unrequested adviser sent to Ewell by Robert E. Lee. Fresh from army headquarters and confident that he was better informed about the overall state of affairs than Ewell, Isaac Trimble did not hesitate to offer his opinions.

Ewell was frowning at two communications he had received from headquarters, trying to reconcile them with the information he was getting from his scouts. One note, from Lee, modified Ewell’s initial instructions. Instead of heading for Chambersburg, the Second Corps was now to proceed to “Cashtown, near Gettysburg,” or else just to the latter if the situation warranted it. A follow-up memo from A. P. Hill advised that the Third Corps was already at Cashtown, where Hill had heard rumors that Federal infantry were posted in Gettysburg.

Still unhappy about being recalled before he could take Harrisburg, Ewell did not feel that Lee was giving him the whole picture. As he reread Lee’s message to the officers present, he could not refrain from criticizing its “indefinite phraseology.” He asked each man what he thought might decide the matter between Cashtown and Gettysburg. Rodes and Early had nothing to contribute, but Trimble was more than happy to weigh in. He recounted in detail Lee’s expressed wish to beat the enemy and concluded that it meant Ewell should head for Gettysburg, where the Federal infantry were said to be. “This explanation,” Trimble later wrote, “did not satisfy Gen’l Ewell.”

From a mounted patrol he had sent off to scout south, Ewell had reports that there were no Yankee foot soldiers in Gettysburg, only
cavalry. Given that he was supposed to avoid any fight, he therefore opted for Cashtown. Johnson’s Division was too far along on the road to Chambersburg to be recalled, so those men would continue to that point. In the meantime, Robert Rodes was directed to march due west through Middletown,
^*
while Early was to drop down to Hunterstown and then move parallel to Rodes, via Mummasburg. As the officers left the meeting, Trimble could still hear Ewell muttering, “‘Why can’t a commanding General have some of his staff who can write an intelligent order?’”

Back at his own headquarters, Jubal Early did two things. First, he sent a message via mounted courier to the officer in charge of the Virginia troopers who were scouting for his division: “A small band of Yankee cavalry has made its appearance between Gettysburg and Heidlersburg,” he wrote. “See what it is.” And then he had a look at some maps of the area. As he had suspected, his assigned route to Hunterstown was more circuitous than one that carried traffic more directly toward Gettysburg. Early decided to shift his line of march to that shorter route.

It was evening before J. Johnston Pettigrew was able to locate his division commander, Henry Heth, and brief him on the results of his foray toward Gettysburg. In later years, Heth would recall the conversation with several variants. What seems indisputable is that Pettigrew told him “that he had not gone to Gettysburg; that there was evidently a cavalry force occupying the town,” and that there was some indication that infantry might be nearby. Heth was saved from having to take notes on his subordinate’s report when A. P. Hill rode up, giving Pettigrew the opportunity to tell him in person. Hill listened to his story and then remarked that what Pettigrew had encountered was only “cavalry, probably a detachment of observation.” The best information that Hill had from Lee put the enemy almost sixteen miles farther south, or about a day’s march away.