Gettysburg (36 page)

The two walked to the regiment’s front to look across the long slope to Willoughby Run and the Federal positions behind it. “‘Colonel,’” Burgwyn asked Lane, “‘do you think that we will have to advance on the enemy as they are?’”

Henry Heth was not far away when Robert E. Lee’s aide found him. Lee’s orders were to attack.

What remained of the Iron Brigade was mostly tucked into the Herbst Woods, though its extreme ends stuck out into the open. After routing Archer’s Brigade, Solomon Meredith had reset his line, putting the 7th Wisconsin and the 19th Indiana on his flanks.
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In taking up the defensive position in the woods, Meredith had simply followed the contour of the ground, which resulted in his four regiments’ being placed in a convex line that posed some problems. More than one officer pointed out to Meredith how the shape of the position inhibited the fields of fire and also how easily it could be enfiladed, but the Iron Brigade commander stuck with his decision.

From the cover of these woods the Western soldiers had heard Stone’s brigade repel Daniel’s two assaults, and from here they had watched the enemy artillery pound the ridge line south of them, as Biddle’s men maneuvered extensively to avoid the worst of it. Now they saw
their own fate foretold as Pettigrew’s Brigade, with Brockenbrough’s Virginians moving along its left, began to come down off Herr’s Ridge. One Indiana soldier could only marvel at how “the whole [Rebel] army in our front moved in magnificent lines across the intervening open fields.” It did not take long for the remnants of the Iron Brigade to realize that the biggest regiment in the advancing line was coming straight toward them.

It took fifteen to twenty minutes of hard fighting for John Gordon’s men, assisted by some of George Doles’ regiments, to overrun Blocher’s Knoll. The success was bittersweet for a member of the 13th Georgia who was mourning the loss of a friend: “When he was shot dow[n] he look[ed] up in my face and sed … I am hit take me [a]way, you cant tell how it made me feel to leave him there but I was a blige to do it [as] we wasn’t al[l]owed to s[t]op to carry of[f] the wounded.” “The Yankees … fought more stubborn than I ever saw them or ever want to see them again,” swore one of Doles’ soldiers. “I thought we would have to use the bayonet on them,” recalled another 13th man, “but we got to them, their line gave way, and they retreated across the wheat field into town.”

Gordon was awash in the adrenaline rush of combat. “There was no alternative for Howard’s men except to break and fly,” he exulted, “or to throw down their arms and surrender.” He was right, up to a point: much of the First Division of the Eleventh Corps, forced to defend an exposed position against a determined and resourceful enemy, was in pieces, though frantic efforts were being made by officers to reorganize it near the town almshouse. But the rest of the Eleventh Corps was far from eliminated.

The first challenge to Gordon’s euphoria came from Wlodzimierz Krzyzanowski, who deployed his brigade from column into line and drove toward the knoll. After the Pole’s riflemen sent one of Doles’ regiments scurrying for cover, the Yankee units strode into a stand-up shootout with two others, with neither side appearing willing to leave off the mutual destruction. The standoff ended when both Gordon and Doles managed to work some of their men around the flanks of Krzyzanowski’s line. “So the horrible, screaming, hurtling messengers of death flew over us from both sides,” recollected a New York soldier. “In such a storm it seemed a miracle that any were left alive.” Even the combat-experienced brigade commander was shocked by the violence of this action: “The troops taking part were sweaty, blackened by the
gunpowder, and they looked more like animals than human beings,” recounted Wlodzimierz Krzyzanowski. “This portrait of battle was a portrait of hell.” One by one, beginning with the 26th Wisconsin, the Georgia veterans chewed up the Federal ranks until every regiment in the brigade was streaming toward the town.
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Alexander Schimmelfennig could not just stand by helplessly and watch the Georgians methodically grind up his Second Brigade; he had to
do
something. He called up the 157th New York, from his First Brigade, and ordered it to charge toward the northeast, against the exposed flank of Doles’ line. As the 409 officers and men of the 157th began to advance into the maelstrom, they could not help but notice that they were entering this fight alone and unsupported.

Their ranks carefully ordered and set, the regiments of Pettigrew’s Brigade moved purposefully down the eastern side of Herr’s Ridge toward the Yankee line on McPherson’s Ridge. Forming the center of his imposing array were the eight hundred infantry of the 26th North Carolina, led by their boy colonel, Henry King Burgwyn Jr. A soldier in those ranks was awed and inspired by the way the Tarheels “stepped off, apparently as willingly and as proudly as if they were on review.”

The long files of men breasted into a waist-high oat field that was already trampled down in places from this morning’s actions. The leading ranks had covered about half the distance to the creek bed ahead of them when a soldier darted forward a few paces, set himself, and fired at the distantly visible Yankee formations. Whether prompted by this act or simply to acknowledge that the Rebels were within range, the Federals posted in the woods unleashed a volley that chipped a few Confederates from their places. On Henry Burgwyn’s command, the 26th North Carolina returned the volley.

Colonel Henry A. Morrow of the 24th Michigan, the next-to-last unit on the Iron Brigade’s left flank, later reported that Pettigrew’s Brigade “advanced in two lines of battle, their right extending beyond and overlapping our left.” “Their bearing was magnificent and their alignment seemed to be perfect,” allowed a member of the 2nd Wisconsin. “In some instances their colors were advanced several paces in front of the line.” A soldier in the 19th Indiana feared that “total annihilation stared us in the face.” The Hoosiers could only look on in impotent anger as a skirmish line pushing ahead of the heavy Confederate formation flushed out their pickets, scattering some, killing some, and capturing others.

After absorbing a second volley in response to its own, the 26th North Carolina moved at the double quick until it reached the underbrush along Willoughby Run. Burgwyn’s men were now in point-blank range, and the instant they slowed their advance to negotiate the briars and thorn bushes, the Iron Brigade loosed a carefully aimed massed fire. A dazed North Carolina sergeant could not even begin to estimate the number of “deadly missiles [that] were sent into our ranks, which mowed us down like wheat before the sickle.” The few Federal cannon that had succeeded in holding on to positions along the southern portion of McPherson’s Ridge found themselves with a clear shot at the Tarheel battle lines. “The Yanks took advantage of that,” another in the 26th’s ranks recalled, “and began killing our men like forty.”

For several long minutes, the resolute Iron Brigade veterans kept up a murderous fire on the creek crossings in their front. The officer commanding the 19th Indiana later avowed that for some time following first contact, “no Rebel crossed the stream and lived.” It was not for lack of trying: a young captain in the 2nd Wisconsin could not help but admire how the Rebels charged “with recklessness upon our walls of fire.” Then, unbelievably, the tide turned, as the lack of flank support and the convex alignment that Solomon Meredith had stubbornly maintained conspired to end the Iron Brigade’s stand. A portion of the 11th North Carolina (operating off the right of the 26th) worked its way around the exposed flank of the 19th Indiana and began raking the Union line. “The slaughter in our ranks became frightful beyond description,” a Hoosier recorded. Flesh and blood could endure only so much: dropping men at every step, the rank and file of the Iron Brigade backstepped a hundred yards to the position where their officers had established a second line of defense.

The advance by the 157th New York, intended to relieve the killing pressure on the Eleventh Corps, never stood a chance. The regiment moved north and then east to form along the Carlisle Road, targeting two Georgia units that had been decimating the barely organized remnants of Krzyzanowski’s brigade. Alert Confederate officers saw the New Yorkers approaching, however, so by the time the men of the 157th reached the road, they were confronted by a Georgia regiment in their front, with two more moving to their left and rear. “The men were falling rapidly and the enemy’s line was taking the form of a giant semi-circle … concentrating the fire of their whole brigade upon my rapidly diminishing numbers,” reported the New York colonel. By the time the 157th finally fell back, it had lost more than 75 percent of the number engaged. Among the mortally wounded was the officer who had boasted that “the bullet is not molded which is to kill me.”

Less than half a mile southeast of the site of the 157th’s solitary ordeal, the defensive stand of the Eleventh Corps’ First Division, near the almshouse, was collapsing. A private in the ranks of the 61st Georgia felt grudging admiration for his foe: “Their officers were cheering their men and behaving like heroes and commanders of the ‘first water,’” he allowed. Nevertheless, the patchwork union line could not hold against Gordon’s men, already tipsy with victory. “We drove them on through Gettysburg and had them greatly confused,” said the Georgia private. The officer who had assumed command after Francis Barlow was wounded later noted that the “whole division was falling back with little or no regularity, regimental organization had become destroyed.”

The parallels to Chancellorsville were eerie. For the second time in two months, the unlucky Eleventh Corps had been poorly positioned on an exposed flank, allowing it to be struck by a sudden, well-handled enemy attack. Two full divisions of the corps had been ground into broken pieces. John B. Gordon later remembered that as “far down the line as my eye could reach the Union troops were in retreat.”

Doubleday’s line on McPherson’s Ridge gave way slowly, sullenly, but inexorably. Pettigrew’s Brigade was one of the best in Lee’s army, and its men seemed especially determined to vanquish their foes this day. The first section of the Federal line to unravel was on the left, along the southern portion of the ridge, where three of Biddle’s regiments had gamely held on throughout the Rebel artillery barrages, despite having very little to work with defensively. The two southernmost regiments of Pettigrew’s line now took on Biddle’s trio. After chasing off two companies from the 80th New York that were outposted west of Willoughby Run on the Harmon farm, the North Carolina units—the 47th and 52nd Regiments— splashed across the run, surged up the gentle slope, and delivered a devastating volley right into the faces of Biddle’s men. The fire was returned by the approximately 900 Yankees defending against the 1,100-man Rebel force. A North Carolina officer in the 47th would later narrate the action in the present tense: “The struggle grows hotter and hotter, men are falling in all directions.” Still Biddle’s men held, until a portion of the 52nd North Carolina angled itself across the left flank of the southernmost Union unit, and enfilade fire began to peel the small Federal brigade off McPherson’s Ridge, one regiment at a time.

The fighting in the Herbst Woods was ferocious. Too overwhelmed to hold and too proud to break, the Iron Brigade fought on, rear-stepping from the second defensive line to a third, always holding until just past the point of common sense. Solomon Meredith was badly wounded in one exchange, his head slammed by fragments of an exploding shell that also rolled his horse onto him, breaking bones. In the choking gunpowder fog enshrouding both sides, the color-bearers became clear and tempting targets. The 26th North Carolina lost several such in quick succession, but each time a new volunteer would grab the standard to keep the regiment pressing forward. “Lots of men near me were falling to the
ground, throwing up their arms and clawing the earth,” remembered one Tarheel. “The whole field was covered with gray suits soaked in blood.”

Not everyone shared the suicidal thirst for glory. When someone told Lieutenant William W. Macy that the flag of the 19th Indiana was down, he shouted back, “Go and get it!” “Go to hell, I won’t do it!” came the reply. Once Macy and another Hoosier officer had located the colors, they decided that their chances of making it out of the inferno alive would be improved if the standard was less visible, so they rolled it up and slipped its marching shuck over it. As the two men turned to go, Macy’s companion was killed. Fighting back the shock of seeing his friend die, the young lieutenant clutched the furled flag and staggered off toward the northeast.