Glory Road (47 page)

Dilger's and Wheeler's batteries had to limber up quickly, with four Southern batteries lashing at them and yelling Southern infantry only a hundred yards away. As the guns moved off a solid shot smashed the axle of one of Wheeler's pieces. He halted and put his sweating gunners to work arranging a rope lashing to sling the dismounted gun beneath one of the limbers—hot enough work it was, too, under the blistering sun, with Rebel bullets whipping in all around and the plain draining itself of men in blue. They got the gun fixed at last and went off again, but a gun is one of the most perverse of all inanimate objects, and before the battery had gone far this one broke loose from its lashing and thumped down on the ground. Wheeler left it there and went off without it. (After the battle he came back and found it, remounted it, and put it back in service.)
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From time to time Dilger halted a section and fired a few rounds of canister at the pursuers.

From Oak Hill all the way to the south of the seminary there were boiling smoke clouds and a tremendous racket of guns and rifles and yelling men. On the extreme right of this line General Robinson had planted the 16th Maine, with instructions to stay there no matter what, and these men were fighting against enemies who had come in so close that the Federals could hear the Rebel officers shouting orders to their men. The 16th's colonel protested that he had only two hundred men and could not stay where he was, but Robinson repeated that orders were to hold on at any cost. The regiment edged back a trifle and found itself isolated on a narrow, wedge-shaped ridge, Southern infantry firing fast from behind a rail fence on one side, a new battle line charging in on the other. This could end in just one way, and everyone present knew what that way was going to be. The color-bearer went dodging along the line at last, and each man tore off a piece of the regimental flag and tucked it in his pocket, and then it was every man for himself, and those who were still on their feet struck out for Cemetery Hill south of town. That evening thirty-five of them reassembled there.
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Farther south the line was in no better shape. The whole of Robinson's division was cut to pieces, more than sixteen hundred of its twenty-five hundred men being shot, among them Brigadier General Gabriel R. Paul, a white-haired regular who got a bullet through both eyes. A Pennsylvania infantry brigade led by Colonel Roy Stone got into a tremendous series of fights around the unfinished railroad cut, captured it, lost it, recaptured it and lost it again, seized it for a third time, and then was blasted out for good by two Rebel batteries posted to shoot lengthwise down the cut. The brigade retired with a loss of two thirds of its numbers, and Colonel Stone wrote proudly that his men fought "as if each man felt that upon his own arm hung the fate of the day and the nation."
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They all fought that way, but there were just too many Confederates present, and after the XI Corps line collapsed the line west of town was bound to go. Cutler's brigade retreated at last, leaving a thousand men dead and wounded on the ground, and when he came to write his report Cutler remarked sadly: "I can only hope that the country may not again require that these brave men shall go through so severe an ordeal."
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Off to the left, near the rail-and-dirt barricade which Doubleday had had the men build near the seminary, the Iron Brigade grimly hung on in the grove which the general had told them to hold to the last extremity. The last extremity had visibly arrived. The Rebels were attacking from three sides, and the brigade was dissolving in fire and smoke and ear-shattering noise. General Meredith was knocked out when his horse was killed and fell on him, the 19 th Indiana lost eight color-bearers, Colonel Fairchild of the 2nd Wisconsin went down with a wound that was to cost him an arm, and Private Patrick Maloney, who had captured General Archer, was killed.

And here in the middle of it all was the 24th Michigan, with a county judge for a colonel and a county sheriff for lieutenant colonel and all the line officers carrying presentation swords; the regiment that had once been ostracized because its valor was unproven. Since Fredericksburg the regiment had been accepted, but in the unfathomable economics of army life the men seem to have felt that they still owed the rest of the brigade something, and here on Seminary Ridge the bill had come up for payment. Three times Colonel Morrow sent back word that the position was untenable, and each time General Wadsworth grimly ordered him to hold on anyway. Some of the survivors remembered forming line of battle six times that hot afternoon, with the rank battle fog lying low under the trees and unappeasable enemies coming in from all directions at once. Four color-bearers were killed, and the regiment sagged toward the rear, and Colonel Morrow ordered the fifth color-bearer to jab the flagstaff in the ground and stand beside it for a rally. The man was killed before he could obey, Morrow himself took up the flag and waved it, a private ran up and took it away from him, muttering that it wasn't up to the colonel to carry the colors, and then this private was killed and another man took the staff. Then he too was shot, and Morrow got the flag after all, after which a bullet creased his skull and he himself went down.
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Back went the Iron Brigade to the barricade by the seminary, held by a tough handful of the troops who had been fighting north of the turnpike. The Rebels paused for breath and realignment, then sent a strong column straight in on the low breastworks, and the colonel of the 7th Wisconsin complained that he had trouble making his men hold their fire until the Rebels got to close quarters. The range suited him finally, and the Westerners put in a smashing volley. The whole front rank of the Rebel line seemed to go down in smoke and dust, but there were other ranks behind that kept on coming, and the artillery flailed those ranks without mercy.
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Howard had sent word that the guns were to make a last-ditch stand on Cemetery Hill, but Doubleday's chief of artillery had understood him to say Seminary Hill and so he had plugged in a dozen guns, hub to hub, beside the half-moon barricade and they were firing canister as fast as the men could load. Over in the turnpike was one of the veteran artillery outfits, Battery B of the 4th Regulars, the battery General Gibbon used to command when he was a captain fighting Indians out West. It was led now by Lieutenant James Stewart, and he was on his horse amid his guns, facing always toward the enemy—partly because he was a brave man and partly because his horse was a veteran with certain fixed ideas about battle. In some previous action a shell fragment had cut off most of the horse's tail, and ever since then this beast steadfastly refused to expose his rear to the foe when the shooting started. Stewart swung his guns around now and hit the charging Confederates in flank, and for the moment the assault was beaten back.
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It was only for the moment. A. P. Hill was piling his men in remorselessly and they were great fighters. Their line outflanked the Union line both north and south, and there was no possibility of stopping them. The line by the seminary crumbled and finally collapsed, and when the retreating Federals left the ridge they had to run the gantlet with Rebel battle lines closing in on them from north and south while still other Rebels fired at them from the west. The 7th Wisconsin lost more men on this retreat from the seminary than in all the rest of the day's fighting, and Buford's cavalry came back in to fight dismounted in valiant protection of the left flank. Some of the horse holders turned their animals over to retreating infantrymen so that they themselves could get into the scrap.

From Cemetery Hill the men in reserve looked down on a wild panorama of retreat. Thick battle fog lay on the ridge and the late afternoon's sun shone down through it, and out of it came the swaying lines of beaten men, turning now and then to fire a defiant volley, batteries lunging down roads and lanes with men clinging to gun limbers and caissons, shreds and patches of smoke lying in the hollows and on the plain, with flags making bright spots of color here and there as the breeze caught them. One man recalled seeing a color-bearer plant his flag and turn to face his pursuers, part of his regiment clustering about him. The smoke from their rifles floated up, the charging Confederates fired heavily in reply, and the knot of soldiers around the colors broke up in flight. The man with the flag remained by the staff, shaking his fist at his foes as they came nearer, then someone drew a bead on him and he went down and the flag went down and the retreat was unbroken again.
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Going through the town was worst of all. All of the lines of retreat converged here, and a considerable number of Confederates had got into town, and there was a maddening chaos in the streets and between the houses—thoroughfares all clogged with guns, wagons, and ambulances, retreating regiments colliding with each other and getting hopelessly intermingled, Rebel gunners hitting the place at long range so steadily that a number of soldiers were wounded by bricks and other debris knocked down from buildings, Rebel infantry regiments firing unexpectedly down the streets, dense smoke clouds settling down so that nobody could see which way he was going. One of the High Dutch regiments, the 45th New York, went double-quicking down a side street to avoid a traffic jam and ran into Confederate infantry fire. It turned and ducked down an alley and found itself in a cul-de-sac. There was no way out but the way by which it had come in, which was blanketed by rifle fire. Barely a third of the men got out of it and went back to Cemetery Hill. Steinwehr's rear-guard brigade helped, and Dilger ran a gun section out in a street near the public square and held the pursuit back for a time, but before the day ended several thousand Federals were taken prisoner in Gettysburg.
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The rest of the army pulled itself together on Cemetery Hill in the smoke-stained evening. Losses had been appalling. The I Corps had taken between 9,500 and 10,000 men into action and had approximately 2,400 left. Its divisions and brigades were mere remnants. The Iron Brigade, which had had the worst of it, had lost almost exacdy two thirds of its 1,800 effectives, and for the rest of the war it existed as a shadow, always a great name but never again a mighty force in battle. The 2nd Wisconsin had brought only 69 men back to the hill. As the 7th Wisconsin came up the slope a shell wounded Sergeant Daniel McDermott, who had carried the regimental flag in every battle of the war, and splintered the flagstaff. They laid McDermott on a caisson which lumbered along just ahead of the regiment, and he rode up onto the hill, still feebly waving the tattered flag on the broken staff. The 24th Michigan, largest regiment in the brigade, had had the most fearful loss: 399 of its 496 men had been shot, for a loss of 80 per cent, and whatever it was which the men had felt they owed the rest of the brigade, it would seem to have been paid by now. In a house in Gettysburg the Confederates had laid a number of the 24th's wounded, and later that evening Colonel Morrow was carried in to share the quarters with them. As he was brought in the wounded men raised their heads and asked him if he was finally satisfied with his regiment.
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Howard's corps had suffered heavily too. There had been fewer outright casualties, but nearly 4,000 men had been captured in the wild mix-up attending the retreat through town, and 1,500 more had fled to the rear, to be rounded up later that evening by the provost guard of the oncoming XII Corps.
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All in all, as evening came down there were no more than 5,000 fighting men left of the two corps which had fought that day. These were grouped in a semicircle on and around Cemetery Hill, and between the height of the ground and the trenches and gun pits Steinwehr had dug they put up a bold front, but if the Confederates had followed up their victory they probably could have taken the hill and everybody on it. The expected attack did not come, however. Lee's orders were vague and seem not to have been well understood, and the Confederates themselves had been badly mauled in the day's fighting and were ready for a rest.

As the exhausted Federals took position on the hill they met Howard, still defiant, riding back and forth with a battle flag tucked under the stump of his right arm. Better yet, they met Hancock, who had been sent up by Meade to look things over and see whether the whole army should go to Gettysburg and make a finish fight of it. Hancock got there just as the retreat was ending, and he had a brief passage at arms with Howard. Howard outranked him and did not see how Meade could send a junior to take charge, and he was slightly stuffy about it for a time. But in the end the two men straightened things out without too much of an argument and saw to it that an orderly line of battle was formed. Hancock decided that Gettysburg was a good place for a fight, sent Meade a note saying so, and continued to look about him.

Straight east from Cemetery Hill there was a saddle of high ground running for half a mile to another high point, Culp's Hill, all rocky and overgrown with trees. A ravine cut into this saddle from the north, halfway between the hills, and Rebel patrols were edging forward into it, and it occurred to Hancock that if the Rebels got up on Culp's Hill the whole Union position would be ruined. He spurred over to the west side of Cemetery Hill, where Doubleday was collecting the remnants of the I Corps, and told him to send a division over to occupy Culp's Hill.

Doubleday demurred: his men were disorganized, they were almost out of ammunition, many of their officers were dead, they had had a hard day, someone else would have to go to Culp's Hill. Hancock was not the man to take excuses, and in his pocket he had Meade's letter giving him control for that evening over everybody around Gettysburg. He stood up in his stirrups and he raised one hand and he thundered largely, and a soldier who watched noted that despite the heat and dirt of the day Hancock then, as always, wore spotless white linen, gleaming cuffs visible at the ends of his sleeves.