Gettysburg (45 page)

Longstreet wasted little time before restating his “views against making an attack.” But Lee, as Longstreet recollected, “seemed resolved.” If he was resolved
to
attack, however, he was not yet decided
where
he would do it. Soon there was sufficient light for the two to observe the Federal positions and get “a general idea of the nature of the ground.” Lee needed eyes closer to the enemy, so he called forward a captain of engineers on his staff. “General Lee … said he wanted me to reconnoiter along the enemy’s left and return as soon as possible,” remembered Samuel R. Johnston. Likely as Johnston departed, Longstreet signaled for one of his own engineer officers, Major John J. Clarke, to accompany him. Lee was also thinking about the Second Corps, representing his army’s left. Staff officer Charles Venable was dispatched to Ewell’s headquarters in order to, in Longstreet’s words, “make a reconnaissance of the ground in his front, with a view of making the main attack on his left.”

Lee’s well-intentioned and moderately capable artillery chief, Brigadier General William N. Pendleton, announced that he was going to scout Seminary Ridge southward for suitable battery placements. As Pendleton moved off, Lee had Armistead L. Long of his staff follow after him “to examine and verify the position of the Confederate artillery.”

A. P. Hill now came over from his headquarters, bringing Henry Heth along. From up in his tree, Fremantle saw Heth’s head wound and remarked the fact that the Third Corps division commander had insisted “upon coming to the field” even though he was obviously in no shape to take charge. A British correspondent for the
London Times
, Francis Lawley, stood a respectful distance away, eyeing Lee carefully. He noted that the Rebel chieftain appeared “more anxious and ruffled than I had ever seen him before, though it required close observation to detect it.”

Nothing Daniel E. Sickles had seen thus far persuaded him that George Meade had come to Gettysburg looking for a fight. Unlike Reynolds or Howard, Sickles had received the Pipe Creek circular, which he had immediately interpreted as a blueprint for a retreat. Its very wording, he believed, provided Meade with all the cover he needed. By announcing that the enemy had ceased his advance to the Susquehanna, the army commander (as Sickles later testified) had planted the implicit suggestion that “he need not attack, but might fall back towards Washington, take up a defensive line, and wait until he was attacked in his works.”

Nor was that the only evidence, to Sickles’ way of thinking, of Meade’s lack of resolve. He had not responded promptly to John Reynolds’ predicament on July 1, though he could have done so by ordering Sickles forward from Emmitsburg; indeed, it was only Sickles’ inspired insubordination in marching his men to Gettysburg that had sufficiently stiffened everyone’s will to hold the high ground. Speaking later before a congressional committee, Sickles would proudly claim, “I … moved to Gettysburg on my own responsibility.”

Sickles’ brooding had so preoccupied him on the night of July 1 that he had paid scant attention to the actual disposition of his Third Corps. Major General David Birney’s division had arrived via the Emmitsburg Road not long after dark, followed by Brigadier General Andrew A. Humphreys’ men at about 2:00
A.M.
Humphreys had been misdirected by the guide provided to him by Sickles, but the level-headed officer had discovered the error in time to avoid blundering into the Rebel lines. Each division (minus a brigade apiece left in Emmitsburg) had camped on low ground near water, just off the southwestern side of Cemetery Ridge. “The Third Corps had simply gone into bivouac,” recorded Sickles’ aide Henry Tremain, “pretty much of it in the gloom of evening. … Neither the batteries nor the infantry were occupying any special posts selected for defence or offence. That awaited the light.” So, too, did Daniel Sickles, anxious that George Meade should not refuse the Rebel challenge.

George Meade’s assessment of his lines began at Cemetery Hill and then headed west and south along Cemetery Ridge. His party moved slowly, passing behind the weary remnants of the Eleventh and First Corps, then the encampments of the Third. The talented William Paine had a good eye for terrain, which he put to use in making sketches of the various
positions. One of his efforts depicted a sizable hill that the group halted to survey, which seemed to mark what Henry Hunt deemed “the natural termination of our lines.” Variously called Sugar Loaf or Signal Hill, it would soon become fixed in the story of this battle by yet another name: Little Round Top. From there the party rode back toward Cemetery Hill, with a detour over to Culp’s Hill and nearby areas. During this portion of the ride, Henry Slocum sought out Meade to report that there was a dangerous gap between the First Corps troops on Culp’s Hill and his own Twelfth Corps division near Wolf Hill, almost a mile farther east.

George Meade made two quick decisions. In the hasty alignment of the previous evening, Winfield Hancock had posted one Twelfth Corps division near Little Round Top and the other on Wolf Hill. Now that Sickles’ Third Corps was on hand, Meade would make the Twelfth Corps whole by using both divisions to extend the First Corps line. Until that could be accomplished, he told Henry Hunt to utilize any available artillery to cover the area. Hunt left on his assignment, inordinately pleased that Meade no longer considered him a technical adviser but instead regarded him as an officer with real authority. George Meade and William Paine returned to the gatehouse, where the engineer began producing map tracings on which Meade indicated the positions he wanted his arriving corps to occupy.

Their work was made easier by the fact that the sun was rising.

D
awn ended the spirit of live-and-let-live that had been nurtured by the darkness. Trouble brewed almost immediately, when Rebel soldiers posted in the southern part of Gettysburg realized that their foes on Cemetery Hill were within easy rifle range. “As soon as it was light on the morning of the 2nd of July, we could see the Johnnies moving along the fences in our front, keeping out of sight as much as possible,” remembered an Eleventh Corps officer. “It was not long before ‘zip’ came the bullets from them, and our boys promptly returned their fire, although it was difficult to see them.”
^*
A Tarheel on the receiving end of this attention noted in his diary that “the enemies picket a firing on us all day.”

Rifles were not the only weapons involved in this morning scrap. When the 41st New York was repositioned behind a stone wall facing the town, the action drew some shells from Confederate batteries. Federal cannon were not long silent, either. As the 153rd Pennsylvania deployed in skirmishing order, Rebel snipers in a brickyard behind the McCreary house on Baltimore Street began causing enough problems that the lieutenant commanding asked for heavy support. The willing artillerymen on Cemetery Hill solved the problem by throwing a few shells into the brickyard.

The steady popping of musketry backed by the sporadic bass crack of cannon discharges convinced George Meade that his right was especially vulnerable, and that shoring it up must be his first priority. The Twelfth Corps division moving from near Little Round Top would soon connect with the First Corps line along the southeastern slope of Culp’s Hill. Even as these men were marching into place, the Twelfth’s other division came off Wolf Hill across Rock Creek. Once linked, the two units would spread the Union defense unbroken over Culp’s Hill’s upper and lower summits.

The Second Corps (still under John Gibbon) began reaching the field by 6:00
A.M.
Uncertain as to the nature of the firing coming from the direction of town, Meade held Gibbon’s men in reserve about a mile south of the action until he was satisfied that nothing serious was developing. At around 7:00
A.M.,
he started placing the Second Corps along the northern part of Cemetery Ridge, extending the line southward from the Eleventh Corps toward the Third near Little Round Top.

While these actions were essentially defensive ones, Meade was also actively considering offensive possibilities on his right. As he would later testify before Congress, “Early in the morning it had been my intention, as soon as the 6th corps arrived on the ground to make a vigorous attack from our extreme right upon the enemy’s left. … The attacking column was to be composed of the 12th, 5th and 6th corps.”

Meade’s headquarters were established some nine hundred yards south of Cemetery Hill, along the Taneytown Road, in a two-room wood-frame house belonging to Lydia Leister, a widow. It offered a sheltered location close to the battle lines, on the shoulder of one of the principal roads being used by the army. This modest structure now became the Army of the Potomac’s nerve center.

The skirmishing on the southern edge of town posed its own dangers for Gettysburg’s civilians. “Sharp shooters were stationed all through the town to do their deadly work,” reported Nellie Aughinbaugh. “It was hot and sultry and the lines of battle were quiet with the exception of an occasional exchange of shots between pickets or sharpshooters,” noted the now veteran Daniel Skelly. Catherine Garlach was determined to remain in her house, even though the safest place in it, the cellar, was a foot deep in water. She and her son hauled in some wood intended for furniture construction and used it to build a stilted platform strong enough to hold not only the four Garlachs but also eleven neighbors who came by in search of refuge.

Sarah Broadhead worried about her foolish husband, who insisted on dodging stray friendly fire to harvest their backyard-garden bean crop. “He persevered until he picked all,” she remembered, “for he declared the Rebels should not have one.” Liberty Hollinger’s father was equally determined to feed his barn animals, even though his efforts drew Union sniping. When he took the matter up with a squad of Confederates who happened to be nearby, the officer in charge seemed
amused. “‘Why, man, take off that gray suit,’” he said. “‘They think you are a “Johnny Reb.”’”

The skirmishing did not go unnoticed by Robert E. Lee. With his scouts out checking the Federal positions and due back at any time, he could not wander far, so he stalked about like a caged animal. The Prussian observer, Scheibert, recalled his “riding to and fro, frequently changing his position, making anxious inquiries here and there.” It was quite possibly at this time that Richard Ewell, recognizing that Lee would be curious about the firing, sent his aide Campbell Brown to report and request instructions.

In a memoir penned not long after the war, Brown recounted his meeting with Lee on Ewell’s behalf sometime between the night of July 1 and July 2. As Brown remembered it, Lee instructed him “to tell Genl E. to be sure not to become so much involved as to be unable readily to extricate his troops, ‘for I have not decided to fight here, and may probably draw off by my right flank so as to get between the enemy & Washington & Baltimore, & force them to attack us in position.’”

Two brigades from Pender’s Division began extending Lee’s line southward from the McMillan Woods, bordering the Fairfield Road. One of these was Lane’s unit, relatively unbloodied in yesterday’s fighting; the other was Scales’, whose ordeal before Wainwright’s wall of cannon had left the survivors (in the words of the brigade’s acting commander) “depressed, dilapidated and almost unorganized.”

Even as the regiments spread down Seminary Ridge, each brigade commander sent forward selected companies to create a protective skirmish line perhaps five hundred feet east of the ridge crest. Settling into positions of convenience behind whatever cover they could find, the Rebel riflemen peered warily into the glare of the rising sun. Before them was a lone farmstead with a modest-sized orchard west of the buildings. A few bold skirmishers eased ahead to check out the structures.

The William Bliss family, owners of this sixty-acre farm lying west of the Emmitsburg Road, had fled the day before at the first sign of trouble. A Yankee soldier who was at the farm later this day could still observe that the householders had “evidently left in a hurry as they left the doors open, the table set, the beds made.” Although not on a commanding piece of ground, the Bliss farm land had the misfortune to be situated nearly midway between the principal lines that were taking shape on both sides.