Karl Bacon (19 page)

It was at Monocacy that we learned that “Fighting Joe” had no more fight in him. General Hooker resigned entirely from the Army of the Potomac. In his stead, President Lincoln promoted
General George Meade to command the army, a choice that all were fairly pleased with. In addition, the commander of our Third Division, General French, was transferred to command the garrison at Harper’s Ferry. The new commander of the Third Division was General Alexander Hays, apparently no relation to our captured former brigade commander.

On Monday, June 29
^th
, the Second Corps marched thirty-four miles to Uniontown under cloudy skies and occasional rain showers, a severe test of our stamina. Dreary, winded men fell out of line for a time but then forced themselves to keep going, evidence that something had changed way down deep in the soul of this army. Perhaps it was the urgency of knowing that the Rebels were taking the war into Union territory that drove us onward. Every man knew that something big was about to happen, and no one wanted to miss out on this next decisive battle. All did their very best to keep going.

This day I truly felt my age. I took several long rests along the way and finally arrived at camp for the night at about three o’clock Tuesday morning, but I never fell back to the prod of the cavalry, and I was by no means the last to arrive; stragglers continued to file into camp well into the daylight hours of the next morning.

Our new corps commander, General Hancock, addressed the assembled corps at its camp outside of Uniontown. “Your endurance has been splendid indeed. The enemy has invaded Pennsylvania and we are closing on them. We will force General Lee to give us battle, and every man of this corps will be at his place in line with his brothers in arms for this decisive fight. We must achieve nothing short of total victory. For now you may rest, but soon, very soon, your very best efforts will be required.”

After the general dismissed us, Major Ellis ordered a roll
call. Just 166 officers and enlisted men of the Fourteenth Connecticut Volunteers were counted present and fit for duty. Our once mighty regiment had been reduced in numbers to less than two full companies. But in numbers, we were by no means the most dismal case. At Uniontown, we also met up with the Twenty-seventh Connecticut Volunteers. Much of that regiment had been captured at Chancellorsville and they were now only able to muster seventy-five men of all ranks.

July started as hot as June ended. We marched early, before first light, north again, until we reached the road to Taneytown. A short time later we began to hear the muffled thump of artillery firing in the distance ahead of us. The citizens of Taneytown welcomed us warmly, cheering us with gusto, waving Union flags happily, and giving the men whatever sustenance they could afford, a piece of fruit, a hunk of bread, a fresh muffin or biscuit, or a simple, precious cup of cold well water. Spirits rose and hearts were steeled with resolve as we walked on toward Pennsylvania with surer step and quickening pace.

General Hancock galloped by in a clamorous rush. “Reynolds is engaged at Gettysburg! Make time now, boys, you’re needed at the front!”

With redoubled effort we marched to within a few miles of Gettysburg by evening. Several soldiers, possibly shirks or maybe just battle weary, and a few wounded men walked slowly southward. There had been a great battle, they all agreed, but each had seen it differently. One said the Rebels had been whipped and were in full retreat. Another swore it was the reverse; it was our boys who had been badly beaten once again. Still another said that both armies had fought all the day long with neither side gaining any real advantage. “It’s a stalemate,” he said.

Whatever the true result of the day’s fighting, we were told
to make camp for the night alongside the Taneytown Road. Coffee was made and supper was eaten, and the men turned in for the night with the rumbling echoes of angry guns troubling their ears and stirring the ground beneath them. Within the hour, just after I had fallen asleep, Major Ellis ordered everyone up for picket duty in the woods to the west of the road.

“One thing the army has taught this old soldier very well,” I mumbled to Jim Adams, as I felt the heat within flare up once again, “is how to survive without sleep.”

And Moses said unto the children of Gad
and to the children of Reuben,
Shall your brethren go to war, and shall ye sit here?
NUMBERS 32:6

I
N THE GRAYING OF THE DAWN OF
T
HURSDAY
, J
ULY 2
^ND
, WITH
out anything resembling rest and without coffee, the boots of the Fourteenth Connecticut once again tramped up the Taneytown road toward Gettysburg. Long columns of artillery, with their attendant caissons and limbers in tow, ruled the center of the road, while troops of infantry from several brigades and divisions fought for space on either side. With the town in sight some units were directed off the road to the right or to the left to take up their positions in the long Union line of battle that was forming.

The Second Brigade marched without stop those last three miles, with the First Delaware in the lead, followed by the Twelfth New Jersey and the 108
^th
New York, with the Fourteenth Connecticut bringing up the rear. Upon entering the town limits of Gettysburg, I noticed a small white house to the left of the road, a dwelling that might have gone completely unnoticed if not for a flag stirring ever so gently in the early morning
air. It was our nation’s flag, with thirty-three gold stars upon a field of brilliant blue and four equally brilliant blue tassels along the hoist end. The otherwise simply adorned standard was that of General Meade, the new commander of the Army of the Potomac.

A little farther on we came to a cemetery on a hill that was occupied by General Howard’s Eleventh Corps. Many of these men bore witness through blood-stained wrappings to the fierce battle of the day before. The line they now occupied wrapped around the cemetery, following the contours of the hill from left to right until it disappeared down into a shallow vale. Our brigade turned off the road to the left and marched southward a few hundred yards just below the crest of Cemetery Ridge, as it was known, to a grove of trees behind a house belonging to a man by the name of Bryan, where General Hays, our new division commander, established his headquarters. We sat down under the trees and awaited further orders.

The fighting of the previous day had been sustained and brutal. Early in the morning, as the Confederates had tried to push into Gettysburg from the west, they were met by our hard-charging cavalry. The cavalry held Lee’s infantry at bay until General Reynolds’s First Corps arrived to carry on the fight, and although General Reynolds was killed almost immediately and they were outnumbered, the First Corps fought stubbornly. Howard’s Eleventh Corps came up and spread out north of Gettysburg, but as the day wore on, more and more Rebel infantry units arrived to increase the pressure on the two Federal Corps. When the Federals could hold no longer, they fell back through the town to this higher ground just to the south and east, where a new defensive line was planned and engineered by General Hancock.

Across the land in front of us was another low ridge about a mile to the west and thickly occupied by the Confederates.
This was Seminary Ridge, named after a Lutheran seminary that occupied a portion of this ridge to the north. Between the two ridges lay farmland, fields of tall golden grasses and grains, acres of summer harvest ready to be gathered into barns against the winter to come. Across this bountiful land the Emmitsburg Road cut a straight line from northeast to southwest, about two hundred yards in front of our line on Cemetery Ridge and about the same distance from Seminary Ridge at the south. Wooden rail fences lined either side of the road, fences of the kind I had seen along countless miles of country road and lane, the kind we often broke down and used for campfires.

General Caldwell’s division of the Second Corps was positioned directly in front of us behind a low stone wall. The wall began at a narrow wagon lane that connected the Bryan farmhouse to the Emmitsburg Road. From the lane the wall ran south, generally parallel to the crest of Cemetery Ridge, for about two hundred yards. Then it turned at a right angle to the west for something less than a hundred yards, where it turned once more at a right angle to the south again. This wall was not carefully constructed, nor was it very high, nor were the stones cleverly fitted together to increase both its longevity and its strength, as were some I had seen in New England. Rather, the wall seemed to be more a demarcation of a property line or perhaps a marking of the limits of acreage set aside for a certain purpose, perhaps a differentiation between crop land and grazing land. It was certainly no true barrier so as to prevent passage of man or horse from one part of the field to the next, although it may have been an effective restriction for the grazing of sheep or cows. Still and all, the wall afforded a good degree of protection to the infantryman, and Caldwell’s men set about improving it as best they could. They dug with whatever they had at hand, bayonets, mess plates, and an occasional pick or spade, until they had excavated a shallow trench behind the wall. All of the
loose soil and stone was added to the wall. Artillery pieces of the First Rhode Island Light Artillery were drawn up, unlimbered, and carefully positioned at intervals a short distance behind the barrier.

Directly in front of the rock wall, the ground sloped gently downward to the Emmitsburg Road. Across the road, the ground continued to slope gradually downward, and then upward again toward Seminary Ridge. About two-thirds of the way across this shallow depression between the ridges was a farm owned by a man named William Bliss. The Bliss farm buildings consisted of a large barn and a substantial farmhouse. The barn was a two-story structure, sturdily built of stone and brick with wooden
gables and a shingled roof; several doors and windows adorned the side of the barn facing the Union line. An orchard of fruit trees to the rear of the structures perfectly completed this pastoral scene.

At first I raged inwardly against the serenity of the scene before me, until I realized that the peace could not last, given the proximity of the opposing armies and the savage character of the fighting the day before. The two armies must yet again lock together in battle, and thousands more would be added to the rolls of the dead. I took my letter to Jessie Anne out of my pocket with the thought of making the customary changes of date and place. I gazed at the letter for a few moments, then out across the field at the opposite ridge. Then I refolded the letter, put it inside the envelope, and slid it back into my pocket. Would I be among the dead at Gettysburg?

No. Not here. Things would be very different this time.

Late that afternoon peace came to a crashing end. General Sick-les’s Third Corps advanced to a new position in a peach orchard and wheat field well to the left and front of the Second Corps. The Rebels responded quickly and attacked with strong lines of infantry and several batteries of artillery in support. A fierce battle ensued; the combat was terrible and bloody. The Third Corps fought stubbornly and held their ground for a time, but the Rebels outnumbered them greatly, and our men took heavy losses as they grudgingly, yard by yard, gave up the ground. General Hancock saw this and sent General Caldwell’s veteran First Division of about 3,300 men to the aid of the Third Corps in the wheat field. As the four brigades of this division moved out smartly, I caught a glimpse of the flag of our brothers from the Twenty-seventh Connecticut.

When Caldwell’s division left the rock wall, General Hancock
ordered our division to take its place. Colonel Smyth ordered the Second Brigade to occupy the two-hundred-yard-long portion of the stone wall at the Bryan farm as well as some of the line to the north of the lane to the Emmitsburg Road. Units of the Second Division of the Second Corps under the command of General Gibbon occupied the angle in the rock wall to our left. We were now in the front line with the Rhode Island guns supporting us, and surely we would get into it soon.

The Rhode Island gunners turned their guns to the left and opened fire on the Confederates in the wheat field. I leaned back against the rock wall to watch these fellows fire round after round of solid shot and shell in the afternoon heat. After only a few rounds, all except the officers had stripped off their shirts to work bare-chested in a deadly but finely orchestrated dance about the guns. Each man knew his position and his task; a sergeant barked orders; a corporal with an assistant aimed the gun carefully at the chosen target. Two men worked at the limber, removing the powder charge and the correct ammunition round from the chest and preparing them for use. These were handed over to two more men who carried them forward. The loader first placed the powder charge into the barrel and then the round; another man on the opposite side of the gun rammed them home. The corporal’s assistant drove a pick down through a vent hole in the barrel into the powder charge and someone on the opposite side inserted the friction primer with its lanyard attached. All turned away and cupped their ears as the lanyard was pulled. The piece bucked and roared. A highly trained battery like this one from Rhode Island could get off a well-aimed shot every thirty seconds from each gun. Grape and canister did not require the accuracy of shot and shell; they were fired point blank, and each gun could fire up to four shots per minute.

Confederate batteries answered the fire of the Rhode Island
guns and we soon came under heavy bombardment. One man was blown high in the air by a shell; he landed on his head and never rose again. To add to the mayhem, Rebel riflemen came out from their lines and occupied the barn at the Bliss farm. From there the Rebels had a clear view of a large portion of our lines and they started to cut down our artillerymen. One of the Rhode Island boys was shot in the head and fell dead immediately. Several more were wounded by the Rebels in the barn; other members of the battery had to step up and perform double duty in the deadly dance.

General Hays ordered Colonel Smyth to deal with the sharpshooters at the Bliss farm. I fairly leaped for joy at the sudden prospect of seeing some action, but the Twelfth New Jersey was chosen for this assignment. These men left their position along the wall and marched the short distance to Bryan’s Lane, which they followed out to the Emmitsburg Road. In the fields across the road they came under heavy fire from the occupants of the barn and from the Rebel pickets in the field; a number of the New Jersey boys went down. A gallant charge routed the Rebels from the barn, and the New Jersey boys were loudly cheered when they returned to our line with nearly one hundred prisoners.

No sooner had the cheering died away than the barn was infested again and the Rebels renewed their deadly game. To my dismay, the 108
^th
New York was sent out and, with some help from the First Delaware, again cleaned out the barn. Once again our men returned to their places in line, and once again, shadowy figures emerged from the tree line across the way and moved toward the barn.

The day ended much as it had begun, with both armies on opposite low ridges glaring at each other. At first Caldwell’s men had driven the Confederates backward across the wheat field, but more Rebels were sent into the fight, and Caldwell’s division was assailed with renewed fury. So many of our boys in
blue fell dead or wounded in the brutal combat that Caldwell’s men finally abandoned the wheat field and made their way back to Cemetery Ridge. I counted only about two dozen men still rallying around the colors of the Twenty-seventh Connecticut as they withdrew.

Late in the afternoon, about two miles south of our position, Confederate infantry tried to throw parts of our Fifth Corps off a small rocky knob called Little Round Top. Had they been successful, the Rebels could have placed artillery atop that hill and fired directly down the length of the Federal line. The crackle of musketry waxed each time the Rebels drove up the slopes against unwavering Federal fire and waned as they tumbled back down in defeat. Several times this happened until the Rebels were finally driven back down the slope for good.

The bloodletting of that day had been terrible indeed. For thousands of my brothers in blue, it had been their final day in this world. The only consolation I found was that it seemed an equal number of that ragtag bunch on the opposite ridge had met similar ends. On that day when so many had shed blood, I had not so much as loaded my rifle. I slammed my knapsack up against the wall and tried to find some measure of comfort by lying against it. I stared up at the stars. How I longed to quench the burning in the pit of my stomach. How I longed for the Rebels to cross the field and come up here to this wall that I might deal with them once and for all. But I feared they would not; I feared they would cheat me out of the only antidote so strong as to effectively extinguish the flames of hatred and rage that consumed me from within.

With sunrise upon Cemetery Ridge, the Rebel sharpshooters in the Bliss barn opened up again, and a few more of the less wary were shot down without warning. General Hays was hopping
mad. He screamed at Colonel Smyth to deal with the situation once and for all, and this time, finally and blessedly, the Fourteenth was chosen. Since Company C had not yet served picket duty, we were chosen to lead the assault, along with about forty others.
Good, let’s kill some Johnnies.
Captain Moore of Company F was chosen to command our small force, and Lieutenant Seymour of Company I was second in command. Rifles were loaded and capped; bayonets fixed.