Gettysburg (30 page)

The Westerners of the Iron Brigade paid a stiff price for their advantage. As the 19th Indiana surged into contact with the 13th Alabama, the men in Company C gasped in horror at seeing Corporal Andrew J. Wood blasted three feet into the air: a freak hit by a Rebel minié ball had exploded his cartridge box, leaving the corporal flash-burned and unconscious. When the regiment’s flag bearer fell, Corporal Abram Buckles realized a martial fantasy by grasping the Stars and Stripes and leading the rush down the slope toward Willoughby Run. Buckles enthusiasm propelled him so far out in front of the regiment that the 19th’s commander had to yell repeatedly, “Come back with that flag!”

Confederate command and control collapsed as Archer’s three regiments (the 7th Tennessee had retreated out of harm’s way) stumbled backward from the advance of the Iron Brigade, which was now closing from the north, east, and south. A brief free-for-all ensued along Willoughby Run, just at the northwest corner of the Herbst Woods. Whatever hopes James Archer might have harbored of restoring some semblance of organization vanished the instant a soldier from the 2nd Wisconsin confronted him with a demand to surrender. Archer resisted at first, but he was just too tired and too shaken by his abrupt reversal of fortune to go on fighting, and soon enough he joined the steady procession of Rebel POWs wending their way eastward.

The Union regiments were nearly as disorganized in victory as their Confederate counterparts were in defeat, but no matter. Henry Heth had no intention of counterpunching with either Pettigrew’s or Brockenbrough’s Brigade, both of which stood in combat formation behind Herr’s Ridge, too far away to do anything more than collect the remnants of Archer’s command.

Although some Federal reports would claim that as many as 1,000 of Archer’s men were taken or killed in this engagement, a thoughtful modern accounting reckons that out of Archer’s 1,197 men, some 373 were July 1 casualties. The Iron Brigade had about 1,400 engaged, of which perhaps 300 lay still or writhing on the Pennsylvania soil this morning. An Indiana boy later summed up the action simply: “We went down at them pretty lively and captured a good many, the rest ran away.”
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Ten-year-old Gates Fahnestock was enjoying the view from the roof of his family’s home, slightly east of the town square. “Could see the fighting off on Seminary Ridge,” he would recollect years later. “We were not in direct line of fire, but [saw an] occasional shell go over [the] house. Having a good time.” Catherine Ziegler was not having so good a time. The young girl, whose family occupied part of one of the Lutheran seminary buildings, had slipped away from her worried parents to observe the Herbst Woods fighting. It was, she would remember, an “awe-inspiring scene.” The deadly hiss of minié balls passing near and a warning shout from a union soldier perched in the cupola sent her running back home, where she found “that all the family had repaired to the cellar for safety.”

Already some parts of Gettysburg were being transformed into military aid stations. Surgeon A. S. Cox of Cutler’s brigade commandeered “a large hotel on the north side of the town, opposite to the railroad depot, for a hospital. At the time we took possession of the building it was filled with guests, and no one seemed to expect much of a battle; but in a very short time the wounded were brought in in great numbers and the guests and proprietors left without much order in going, leaving us in quiet and undisputed possession.”

After observing the general skedaddle of civilians near the lower Oak Ridge railroad cut, Daniel Skelly walked toward the town’s square, finding “the streets full of men, women and children, all under great excitement.” Still anxious to see what was happening to the west, Skelly remembered a store two blocks south of the square that boasted a railed observatory on its roof. He made his way there and joined some others who had had the same idea. They were all still trying to make some sense out of the smoke and the movements near the Chambersburg Pike when Skelly looked toward the south and spotted “a general and his staff coming.”

It was Oliver Howard, still embarked on his personal reconnaissance of the vicinity. He had been drawn here by the prospect of gaining the view from the courthouse belfry, but the building was secured and his staff was reluctant to destroy private property by breaking in. Daniel Skelly came tumbling down the stairs from the store roof to trumpet its suitability. “The general dismounted and with two of his aides went with me up onto the observatory,” Skelly recalled.

“a courage … that [was] seldom equaled.” Coates was wounded and blinded in the struggle.

Howard later pronounced himself “delighted with the open view. … Wadsworth’s infantry, Buford’s cavalry, and one or two batteries were nearest, and their fighting was manifest,” he wrote. “Confederate prisoners were just then being sent to the rear in large groups from the Seminary Ridge down the street past my post of observation.” Howard was completely engrossed in his field orientation when a mounted soldier called up to him from the street below, “‘General Reynolds is wounded, sir.’” “‘I am very sorry,’” Howard replied. “‘I hope he will be able to keep the field.’” The Eleventh Corps commander then returned to his scrutiny, only to be interrupted by another aide. “‘General Reynolds is dead,’” was this one’s message, “‘and you are the senior officer on the field.’”

The 6th Wisconsin and the hundred-man brigade guard had been the last units in line as the Iron Brigade deployed along McPherson’s Ridge. Lieutenant Colonel Rufus Dawes was preparing to order his men forward into position to the left of the 24th Michigan when a mounted staff officer ordered him to halt. The sweating, panting files drew back from their rush, dressed their lines, and watched their comrades diminish into the distance. Hardly had the 6th settled into its stationary line when Lieutenant Loyd Harris, directing the brigade guard, ran over to Dawes for instructions. He was told to split his command in half and place one detachment on each flank of the regiment.

In any war, the combat death of a high-ranking field officer begins an immediate process of succession that unfolds only as smoothly as circumstances allow. The killing of John Reynolds had elevated Abner Doubleday to control of the scene, which in turn caused other changes as his subordinate commanders shifted places. Orders were given, countermanded, and reaffirmed. Dawes experienced his share of this confusion when a rider brought orders from his brigade commander to move forward, only to be overruled moments later by another mounted officer who announced, “‘General Doubleday is now in command of the First Corps, and he directs that you halt your regiment.’” Dawes yelled out the command, and the files again jerked to a stop.

Abner Doubleday was adjusting to the “great responsibilities” thrust on him by virtue of Reynolds’ death. The Union line south of the Chambersburg Pike was in reasonably good shape following Archer’s repulse, but a crisis loomed north of the road. The unequal contest between
Cutler’s three regiments and those of Davis’ Brigade lasted about thirty minutes before James Wadsworth decided to pull the former out. Members of the 56th Pennsylvania and the 76th New York would later tend to portray a more orderly withdrawal than was witnessed by others present. In a nonstandard formation incapable of immediate further service, the battered survivors of the two regiments tumbled back into the Wills Woods on Oak Ridge, some of them not stopping until they neared the town’s western edge.

A variety of reasons were subsequently offered to explain why Cutler’s third regiment north of the pike—the 147th New York—did not receive the word to retreat. Until the abrupt departure of the other two regiments, the 147th had been slowly shredding the 42nd Mississippi, but with that flank cover gone, first the 2nd Mississippi and then the 55th North Carolina turned their hot rifles on the lone Yankee unit still in action against them. The New Yorkers refused their flank to meet the new threat, but the combined musketry was exacting a brutal toll. “It was a hot place, and no mistake,” a member of the regiment recalled. Said another, “The scourge of lead that passed over was terrible, and could almost be felt—not the zip of bullets, but a rushing, forcing sound.” “The fighting was at very short range and very destructive,” attested the regiment’s adjutant.

The dramatic change of fortune north of the pike threatened James Hall’s six cannon, which had been shoveling canister at the Rebel infantry even as they dealt with the deadly projectiles sent against them by Pegram’s Battalion. With no infantry protection to the north, Hall’s guns were doomed. After seeing the two regiments in the field clear out, and having lost sight of the 147th New York in the gunpowder smog, Hall “ordered the battery to retire by sections, although having no order to do so,” as he later conceded.

His intention was to leapfrog one pair of guns past the next until all had reached the relative safety of Seminary Ridge. The plan might have worked on a parade ground, but when the first covering section pulled back seventy-five yards, it found itself right in the sights of the 55th North Carolina, whose riflemen dropped all the horses pulling one cannon and kept the gunners so busy ducking that they could not set either tube to fire. This pair promptly resumed their retrograde movement, with the motive power for one cannon coming from its two-legged battery members. The crews assigned to the other four guns somehow hooked the cannon to their limbers and then lashed the animals into a wild gallop across the narrow, open field between the pike and the railroad bed. The last gun to leave did not make it clear and was left behind.

Even as James Hall completed his untidy withdrawal, the last stand of the 147th New York was reaching its climax. The regiment had stood against its massed enemies for perhaps ten minutes before word percolated among the ranks that it was time to go. The officer in charge gave the improvised order “In retreat, double quick, run,” and those who could hear him fled for their lives. “We was ordered to retreat, which we did at a fast rate,” wrote a private in the ranks. “We left [an] awful sight of dead and wounded on the field as we retreated.”

The impending collapse of Cutler’s line north of the pike next threatened the two regiments arrayed just south of the road by the McPherson
farm, facing west. Disaster was averted when Edward Fowler, in tactical control of both units, bawled out orders that reoriented the battle lines 90 degrees, so that the pair now faced north, with the 14th Brooklyn on the left and the 95th New York on the right. Still, so convinced was James Wadsworth that the Chambersburg Pike position was compromised that he reportedly told James Hall “to lose no time, but get my battery in position near the town on the heights, to cover the retiring of the troops.” Lysander Cutler was meanwhile advised “to fall back to the town and barricade the streets.”

North of Gettysburg, Richard Ewell’s decisiveness was beginning to pay off for the Confederate cause. Union cavalry outposts located three miles out from the town’s square, near Keckler’s Hill, suddenly came under fire from the advanced elements of Robert Rodes’ division, now marching south instead of west, as initially ordered. Brigadier General Alfred Iverson’s all-North Carolina brigade had the point, and once contact had been made, the call went out for the sharpshooters to come forward. “I went,” recalled one of them, “and very soon we commenced shooting at the Yankees.” In a pattern similar to that established a few hours earlier, infantry skirmishers took on cavalry vedettes, who stuck in place as long as they could. The difference now was that Rodes’ men were driven by an urgency such as had never possessed Heth’s troops, for they could hear the distant sounds of combat, signaling that their comrades were fighting.

The news of John Reynolds’ death, and with it the realization that he was now in command of the Union forces engaged at Gettysburg, hit Oliver Howard hard. “Is it confessing weakness to say that when the responsibility of my position flashed upon me I was penetrated with an emotion never experienced before or since?” he later asked. But in almost the same instant, his trepidation turned to a hard resolve to hold the position that his fallen predecessor had staked out. Couriers began to stream out from Howard’s location with a passel of messages: one to Carl Schurz putting him in charge of the Eleventh Corps, one to Doubleday telling him to hold his position, one to John Buford directing him to remain with Doubleday, and one to Daniel Sickles at Emmitsburg, “ordering him up” (with instructions for the courier to carry the message on to Meade at Taneytown). Finally, a dispatch was sent to Henry Slocum, commanding
the Twelfth Corps, supposedly camped near Two Taverns. Before throwing himself into demands of the moment, the deeply religious Howard allowed himself the briefest of prayers: “‘God helping us, we will stay here till the [rest of the] army comes.’”