Gettysburg (78 page)
Authors: Noah Andre Trudeau
Heth’s Division, under J. Johnston Pettigrew, constituted the first line of the left wing. The only anomaly in its deployment was the decision of Colonel John M. Brockenbrough to subdivide his small brigade into halves, one (containing the 22nd Virginia Battalion and the 40th Virginia) under his direct control, and the other (consisting of the 47th and 55th Virginia Regiments) to be led by Colonel Robert Mayo. As the leftmost unit in the left wing, Brockenbrough had to squeeze past a battle line aligned along a sunken road and partially masking his front, so perhaps he reasoned that splitting his brigade would make it easier to maneuver in a tight spot.
Behind the right side of Heth’s line were two brigades from Pender’s Division. With Pender himself out of action, Lee had decided to appoint an outsider to command them, tapping the otherwise unattached brigadier Isaac Trimble for the job. Because the choice had been made only in the course of that morning’s planning, it is unclear just how many in the ranks (officers or men) actually knew they were operating as a demidivision under Trimble. While he would later admit that these troops were “entire strangers to me,” their new commander did address some of them, ordering that “no gun should be fired until the enemy’s line was broken,” and assuring them that he would “advance with them to the farthest point.”
After this fight, Trimble would confide to a staff officer that he had been accompanied on his only review of his temporary command by Robert E. Lee, who had seemed surprised by the number of men in the ranks who sported bandages and other evidence of their hard fighting on July 1. “‘Many of these poor boys should go to the rear,’” Trimble remembered Lee’s commenting. “‘They are not fit for duty.’” As they rode away from the lines of men, Trimble swore he heard Lee say, as if to himself, “‘The attack must succeed.’”
Seemingly lost amid the decades of dialogue about the events soon to transpire was the fact that Lee’s planning had provided for a second assault group nearly as strong as the first. He hoped that all the elements he had brought together for this attack would make it possible for that first wave to penetrate the enemy’s defenses, but he did not expect it to be able to exploit the breach. Longstreet would confirm this thinking: “‘We could not look for anything from Pickett except to break your line,’” he would later tell a Union officer. “‘The supports were to secure the fruit of that break.’”
Because there were so many variables that might trigger the advance of a second wave, Lee wisely resolved to forgo complicated instructions and instead settled on a simple plan. Likely working with Longstreet, he selected the brigades to be included in the second wave and directed their commanders to be alert to opportunities and to take advantage of them if they presented themselves. The after-action report filed by Richard Anderson makes this point most clearly: “I received orders to hold my division in readiness to move up in support, if it should become necessary. … Wilcox’s and Perry’s brigades had been moved forward, so as to be in position to render assistance, or to take advantage of any success gained by the assaulting column, and, at what I supposed to be the proper time, I was … to move forward [the other brigades].”
In addition to Anderson’s five brigades, Lee had designated for this purpose Thomas’ and Perrin’s of Pender’s Division, Ramseur’s, Iverson’s, and Doles’ from Rodes’ Division, and at least one more from McLaws’ Division, possibly Wofford’s.
These eleven brigades, numbering perhaps 11,000 men, represented the full extent of Lee’s determined plan to smash the Federal center. Years after the war, veteran William Allen would speak with Lee about many subjects and then encapsulate some of their conversation in a letter to a Southern publication. “There was nothing ‘foolish’ in Pickett’s attack had it been executed as designed,” wrote Allen in echo of Lee. “Had [the supports been employed] … General Lee never doubted that the Federal army would have been ruined.”
Most of Gettysburg’s residents could not comprehend why the awful cannon firing seemed just to end at around 3:00
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few figured that something else was about to happen. Charles McCurdy and his father left their cellar and went up to the third floor of their house, where a dormer window offered a view of the fields to the south; to McCurdy’s lasting disappointment, a “dense volume of smoke hid everything from view.” Henry Jacobs’ father had the good sense to take along a small telescope when he clambered up into the garret of his home, which overlooked Seminary Ridge. From this perspective he could make out some of the lines of Heth’s Division as the men moved up to their departure point. “‘Quick!’” the elder Jacobs called down to this son. “‘Come! Come! You can see now what in all your life you will never see again.’”
By agreement, Archer’s Brigade, now led by Birkett D. Fry, was the unit upon which both wings were to orient themselves, so it most likely began moving first. “I never have known how or from whom Pettigrew received the order to advance,” Fry would write, “but I received it from him.” The brigadier was glad that the waiting was over. “After lying inactive under that deadly storm of hissing and exploding shells, it seemed a relief to go forward to the desperate assault,” he recalled. That feeling must have been shared by his troops, for as he recollected it, “at the command the men sprang up with cheerful alacrity, and the long line advanced.” Pettigrew also brought word to Colonel John K. Marshall, commanding his old brigade. “‘Now, Colonel,’” he exhorted, “‘for the honor of the good old North State, forward.’”
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-3:15
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s Pettigrew’s and Pickett’s battle lines cleared the crests in their front, their formations opened to sift through the momentarily quiet batteries. Among the positions through which Pettigrew’s men passed was that held by the Fredericksburg Artillery. “Many of us had friends in this command,” John
L.
Marye remembered, “and we eagerly watched them as they swept by.” One of Pickett’s men noted that the cannoneers “raised their hats and cheered us on our way.” Edward P. Alexander spotted his friend Richard Garnett and rode with him a short way, “wishing him good luck.” In advancing, the long Virginia line spooked a rabbit that darted frantically through their ranks to the rear. “‘Run old hare,’” someone called. “‘If I were an old hare I would run too.’”
From atop his horse on Cemetery Ridge, Frank Haskell had a good perspective on the enemy force as it hauled into view. “Regiment after Regiment, and Brigade after Brigade, move from the woods, and rapidly take their places in the lines forming the assault,” he observed. From the right flank of Pickett’s Division to the left of Heth’s, including the gap between the wings, the leading line of armed men stretched about six thousand feet. Some twenty-seven regiments, each centered on its battle flag, began to move forward at common time. At ninety steps a minute, each line covered approximately 225 feet every sixty seconds.
Richard
S.
Ewell, whose doggedly futile morning attacks on Culp’s Hill had utterly wasted his corps’ collaborative potential, was moved by the sight of the assault to try to do
something
to help. He sent a note to Jubal Early, whose troops held the town. “Longstreet, & A. P. Hill are advancing in splendid style,” Ewell wrote. “If you see an opportunity, strike.”
Like small fissures portending a larger earthquake, minor problems characterized the Cemetery Ridge assault from the outset. Kemper’s Brigade, for example, emerged from the swale with its flank aligned along the lane leading from the Spangler farm to the Emmitsburg Road, which pointed it southeast and thus away from the axis of advance to the northeast. Although he had been cautioned to save his men’s strength for the final rush, Kemper had no choice but to order a series of left obliques at quicktime to get his line closer to the right flank of Garnett’s Brigade, which had begun to pull away.
The alignment was even more muddled on the opposite flank. Only half of Brockenbrough’s subdivided brigade stepped off on cue; the other half, assigned to Robert H. Mayo, stood in line waiting for the word. Some minutes passed, but the two officers commanding the pair of regiments had yet to hear anything from Mayo; they watched unhappily as the distance between their half and that commanded by Brockenbrough increased. They finally decided it would be better to do
something
than nothing, so on their own authority they ordered their men forward. “We were a long ways behind and had to run to catch up with the rest of the Brigade,” wrote one of the officers.
The concerns that Edward P. Alexander had expressed to James Longstreet were proving to be well founded. Lee wanted the batteries to advance with the infantry, but ammunition was in short supply: the longer-than-anticipated bombardment had emptied many of the caissons, and William Pendleton’s poor judgment had sent the artillery reserve train too far to the rear to be of any use now. Unwilling to accept the situation, the combative James Bearing made a frantic effort to resupply his depleted battalion, whipping his empty caissons to the rear at breakneck speed. As they rattled past the marching files of the 8th Virginia, Bearing called out to the regiment’s commander, “‘For God’s sake, wait till I get some ammunition and I will drive every Yankee from the heights.’”
Alexander did his part as well, riding to each of his batteries to take a hurried inventory. “If it had enough long range projectiles left to give some 15 shots I ordered it to limber up & move forward after the storming column,” he recalled. More often than not, he would select only the shorter-range weapons, leaving the others behind. Those cannon with fewer than fifteen rounds on hand were “ordered to wait until the infantry had gotten a good distance in front, then, aiming well over their heads, to fire at the enemy’s batteries which were [then] firing at our infantry.”
In this fashion, Alexander got perhaps eighteen cannon moving up behind the infantry. He hoped that his opposite number on the other flank, Colonel R. Lindsay Walker, the artillery chief for Hill’s Corps, was having better luck. But in fact, Walker was not even aware of this part of Lee’s scheme, either because the message had not been clear or because Pendleton had failed to deliver it. Whatever the reason, no guns attached to Hill’s Corps advanced with his infantry. This important element in the assault plan would therefore be implemented not at all on the left wing and only symbolically on the right. Walker “advanced no guns,” Alexander declared, “either before, during, or after the charge that I ever heard of, though the left half of the column was in Hill’s front.”
Hard-bitten and himself no stranger to combat, Henry Hunt was nevertheless in awe of Lee’s audacity. “The Confederate approach was magnificent,” Hunt admitted, “and excited our admiration.” Hunt had a trick of equal daring up his own sleeve. Through a careful placement of guns along Cemetery Ridge and on Cemetery Hill, he had laid out a deadly latticework of crossfire lanes designed to scourge the fields in front of every living thing. Provided that each battery did its part, he was certain that no enemy force could make it across the Emmitsburg Road.
