Gettysburg (35 page)

The absence of any controlling plan for the Eleventh Corps became further evident as Francis Barlow moved his division into place. It was not where Carl Schurz wanted it, nor did it conform to any ideas that Oliver Howard may have had, but it was where Barlow wished it to be. Marching with his men eastward across the rear of the Third Division’s line, he had grown increasingly fixated on some high ground slightly less than half a mile forward from where he was supposed to connect with the right flank of Schimmelfennig’s position. Some four hundred feet high, Blocher’s Knoll offered a cleared crown suitable for artillery and a good line of sight up the Heidlersburg Road. Already, skirmishers from Doles’ Brigade were using the woods on its northern and northwestern slopes for some long-range sniping at Barlow’s units. Without consulting or even notifying his superiors, Barlow issued orders that got his division moving toward that point.

Francis Barlow may have commanded 2,477 men, but he did not necessarily believe in them. Soon after taking charge of this division, he had admitted that he had “always been down on the ‘Dutch’ & I do not abate my contempt now.” A month after making that remark, he still considered his soldiers “miserable creatures.” During this day’s movement from Emmitsburg, he had arrested one of his brigade commanders for allowing his men to break marching ranks to fetch water. Just minutes before ordering the movement toward Blocher’s Knoll, Barlow was persuaded to return the officer to command, but only after sternly advising him to “shoot down stragglers.” How much his decision to advance was motivated by his military appreciation of the moment and how much by the desire to strengthen a weak blade in fire, Barlow never revealed.

A skirmish line made up of the 54th and 68th New York and a portion of the 153rd Pennsylvania skittered forward to drive the Georgia and
Alabama riflemen from the knoll area. Behind these Yankees followed the rest of Barlow’s division, even as another Union skirmish line, drawn from the 17th Connecticut, splashed across Rock Creek east of the road.

By taking the high ground, Barlow did check to some extent the actions of Doles’ Georgians, but in so stretching forward he also outdistanced Schimmelfennig’s ability to support him. Devin’s cavalry was supposed to protect his right flank, but when those troopers were regrouping near the York Pike, they had come under friendly fire from Cemetery Hill and subsequently sought cover in the town, rather than the positions where they were needed. Barlow was thus very much on his own.

Carl Schurz saw this and immediately ordered the nearest Third Division units to extend eastward in order to maintain contact with Barlow’s men. The net result, he grimly noted, was to make “still thinner a line already too thin.”

Richard Ewell’s aide Campbell Brown found Jubal Early in the midst of setting up his attack against Barlow’s position. “I … formed my line across the Heidlersburg road,” Early reported afterward,

Carl Schurz knew it was the beginning of the end: “I saw the enemy emerging from the belt of woods on my right with one battery after another and one column of infantry after another, threatening to envelop my right flank and to cut me off from the town and the position on Cemetery Hill behind. … Our situation became critical.”

It was about this time that Lee was located by Andrew R. Venable, Jeb Stuart’s assistant adjutant and inspector general, who had been sent along by Richard Ewell. Little of what Venable reported was good news.
Stuart’s riders were no less than thirty miles distant and (at least when Venable was last with them) moving away from Gettysburg, in what Lee knew would be a fruitless attempt to contact Ewell near Carlisle. No record of Venable’s meeting with Lee was set down; its only artifact is Stuart’s later summary of the message that Venable carried back with him. Wrote Stuart, “I received a dispatch from General Lee (in answer to one sent by Major Venable from Dover, on Early’s trail), that the army was at Gettysburg, and had been engaged on this day (July 1) with the enemy’s advance.”

Lee could expect no help this day from Jeb Stuart.

Junius Daniel was a determined man. Although he had already been twice rebuffed in his efforts to drive off the union flank posted along the Chambersburg Pike, he at once set to work reorganizing for yet another thrust. Abner Doubleday knew full well that it was only unaccountable luck that had kept Hill’s infantry off his back when Daniel attacked, and knew, too, that only a fool would count on such good fortune a third time. He sent an officer to Howard to request either reinforcements or permission to withdraw. Neither was forthcoming. “General Wadsworth reported half of his men were killed or wounded, and Rowley’s division suffered in the same proportion,” Doubleday would later claim. “Stone reported two-thirds of his brigade had fallen. Hardly a field officer remained unhurt.” Needing some sort of reserve, Doubleday had the 151st Pennsylvania, from Biddle’s brigade (holding the southern part of McPherson’s Ridge toward the Fairfield Road), sent back to the seminary, forcing the brigadier to rejigger his formations.

These actions caught the eye of Robert E. Lee, who had been observing the situation with growing concern. He had not been looking for a battle this day, and indeed, when one of his divisions had gotten itself embroiled in a serious firefight with the enemy, he had striven to quell the combat before it exploded into a major engagement. No sooner had he managed to rein in Hill and Heth, however, than Ewell had arrived to reignite the conflict, and now
he
was heavily engaged. Thanks to the inactivity of Heth’s men, the Federals seemed to be shifting units from McPherson’s Ridge to meet Ewell’s threat. The fighting had slithered from Lee’s grasp; no longer in control of events, he was instead being controlled by them. It was time for instinct and experience to replace tattered plans.

Henry Heth returned to give Lee and Hill an update. By his own recollection, he informed Lee that the Federals “were withdrawing troops from my front and push[ing] them against Rhodes, and [I] again requested permission to attack.”
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Lee’s reply, again as remembered by Heth, was, “‘Wait a while and I will send you word when to go in.’” Lee had made his decision: there would be more fighting today at Gettysburg.

H
elp was coming to the Union forces. Couriers had been galloping into Emmitsburg throughout the morning and into the early afternoon, bringing terse reports on the situation. Having been caught not long before in a collision of orders between George Meade and John Reynolds, Daniel
E.
Sickles made sure to follow his instructions to outpost Emmitsburg. That is, he did so until about 3:00
P.M.,
when a courier brought word from Oliver Howard that John Reynolds was dead, the enemy was pressing him hard “in front of Gettysburg,” and help was needed. A fight was something Daniel Sickles understood. Taking care to leave behind sufficient forces to guard his post, Sickles set most of his Third Corps marching “toward Gettysburg immediately.” It would be hours before the first of his men could reach that point.

Other Union troops closer to Gettysburg were also in motion at this time. The irony was that many of these men, along with their commander, had been listening for several hours to the sounds of gunfire not far distant from them.

Two Taverns was, as its name suggests, a small collection of buildings centered on a pair of wayside establishments, located some four miles southeast of Gettysburg on the Baltimore Pike. Travel time between the two places—for veteran troops without opposition—was perhaps two hours. Following the orders of march issued from Meade’s headquarters for July 1, the Twelfth Corps had left its camps around Littlestown, Maryland, starting at daylight and thereafter taken its time covering the six miles to Two Taverns, with the head of the column reaching the place at about 11:00
A.M.
“The people all along the road manifested great curiosity to see us and assembled at all road crossings,” recalled the commander of the first division on the scene. The weather was uncomfortably muggy.

Major General Henry
W.
Slocum, accompanying his front units, arrived at Two Taverns around midday. Reports had already come to him that some of his men were hearing the distant crack of guns. To Slocum’s
practiced ear it sounded like a cavalry scrap with horse batteries engaged. “As we had heard that Buford with his cavalry had driven the rebel cavalry out of the town [of Gettysburg] the day before, this was supposed to be an affair of cavalry and attracted little attention,” attested a staff officer in the corps’ Second Division.

As time passed, though, Slocum began to reassess his conclusion. After learning from one civilian refugee that there was heavy fighting going on at Gettysburg, he sent one of his own staff to scout toward the town. The officer returned to report that he had ascended to some high ground and there heard significant cannonading. More Twelfth Corps soldiers also made out the sounds, which led one to deduce “that the action was more serious than we had supposed.” A few men climbed atop barns, from which vantage “the bursting of shell and clouds of smoke could be … plainly perceived.” And finally, dispatches were delivered attesting to the severity of the fighting.

Still, Henry Slocum waited until after 3:00
P.M.
to order his corps forward. Part of his confusion was related to Meade’s Pipe Creek circular, which keyed his course of action to eventualities involving those units actually engaged with the enemy—in this case John Reynolds’ left wing. Slocum was late in finding out that Reynolds was dead, and while the circular made clear what he should do if the left wing fell back, it was silent regarding his obligation in the event that the same wing entered a large-scale engagement. Another part of the problem was Slocum himself. The New Yorker was a competent manager of military assets, but he lacked the spirit of a warrior. Writing nearly twenty-three years after the battle, Slocum would offer his only explanation for his absence of initiative this day: “My orders were to march to Two Taverns, and await orders from General Meade. The Twelfth Corps was in that position when we heard of the engagement at Gettysburg. We received no word from General Howard [asking us to come], but started as soon as we heard of the battle.”

The batteries under H. p. Jones that Jubal Early had positioned on high ground just east of the Heidlersburg Road opened fire on the Eleventh Corps at about 3:00
P.M.
The situation for the Union infantry and artillery
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was becoming untenable. Hoping to offset this Confederate
advantage, Francis Barlow pushed four guns from the 4th United States Light Artillery, Battery G, onto Blocher’s Knoll. They promptly drew fire from two of Jones’ units, with one of the Rebel shells hitting the mounted commander of the Regulars, Lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson. As the young officer, whose father reported on the war for the
New York Times
, went down with a mortal leg wound, his gunners stuck gamely to their weapons.

The covering fire provided by Jones’ cannoneers allowed Jubal Early to launch his attack. After driving the Yankee skirmishers (17th Connecticut) back across Rock Creek, Brigadier General John B. Gordon’s all-Georgia brigade powered forward to the stream. “We advanced with our accustomed yell,” recollected Private George W. Nichols of the 61st Georgia, “but they stood firm until we got near them.” The Union defenders, two New York regiments belonging to Colonel Leopold von Gilsa’s brigade, held momentarily, then began backing up the slope to the knoll. A supporting Pennsylvania regiment was also shoved back.

With their infantry guardians gone or getting out, the four Yankee guns on the knoll also hitched up, followed soon after by the other two from the battery, which had been supporting them off to the western side of the rise. A Federal counterattack collapsed in blood and confusion. In the chaos, Francis Barlow went down with a bullet hit in his left side. “Everybody was then running to the rear & the enemy were approaching rapidly,” Barlow recollected.

Since moving into position along Herr’s Ridge, the North Carolina regiments of Pettigrew’s Brigade had been spectators to the punishment meted out by the Confederate artillery on the Union infantry standing along McPherson’s Ridge. A minor crisis arose in the 26th North Carolina when John R. Lane, the regiment’s second in command, told Henry King Burgwyn Jr. that he was feeling ill and asked for permission to leave the field. “‘Oh, Colonel, I can’t, I can’t,’” Burgwyn said. “‘I can’t think of going into battle without you.’” He offered Lane some French brandy, which seemed to do the trick.