Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

BATTLE-FIELD OF GETTYSBURG.

[ocr errors]

runs Rock Creek, the chief of the head-waters of the Monocacy River. The situation is one of surpassing beauty, and as it is the shire town of Adams County, and a town of some eight thousand inhabitants, it is quite a business and social centre for that part of the State. We will imagine that we are approaching the town from the southeast, on the Baltimore road.

Looking towards the north, we see a high wooded ridge, which we ascend by a gradual slope. At the summit of this ridge, on our left, is holy ground, long since baptized in tears, where for years the cherished dead of Gettysburg have been laid to sleep that sleep which no thunders but those of the archangel's final trump can disturb.

"Life's labor done, securely laid in this their last retreat,
Unheeded o'er their silent dust, the storms of life shall beat."

On their right, half a mile distant, is ground now no less holy-newly consecrated by the baptism of blood-the God-inspired position of Steinwehr early in Wednesday's fight.

These two positions are most essential to be remembered. As we follow this Cemetery Ridge southward, we find it at first curving towards the east, diminishing in height, and crossed by the Taneytown road; but it rises again suddenly at the distance of a mile from the cemetery, and forms two hills, well defined and rock-sided, called Round Top and Little Round Top. Upon the summit of Round Top, General Meade established his signal-station, and posted the extreme left of his line.

A mile away to the northwest rises Seminary Hill, with its wooded crest sloping gracefully towards the south. At its base is the Lutheran Seminary. Upon this outer and lower ridge, which, bending in towards the town, crossed the Chambersburg, Hagersion, and Emmetsburg roads, General Lee concentrated his army in a line about eight miles in extent. Thus posted, they formed a circling sweep around the higher Cemetery Ridge, upon which the patriot troops were stationed.

Early on the morning of Wednesday, July 1st, General Reynolds, in pursuance of his orders to occupy Gettysburg, sent forward a reconnoitring body of cavalry, under General Buford, which was almost immediately engaged by the rebel advance. General Reynolds, who was following closely with the First Corps, kindled to martial rage by the first sound of battle, dashed into and through the town, and, forming his line under cover of Seminary Hill, opened instantly a furious attack upon the enemy, boldly hurling his eight thousand war-worn veterans against twenty thousand unwearied by marching. Realizing, however, the fearful odds, he sent an urgent message to General Howard to advance as rapidly as possible with the Eleventh Corps. For two hours, the gallant eight thousand not only held their ground, but fiercely drove back their foes, whenever they charged upon them; the left wing standing firm as a rock, and the right, though weaker and often so heavily pressed that it was forced to yield temporarily, dashing up the hill again, and defiantly regaining, with a thinner line, its original position. Glorious among the Spartan corps flashed the Iron

Brigade* well named-resistless as Western nerve and muscle can beclutching helpless in their grasp the entire rebel brigade of General Archer, which had sought to turn their flank. Foremost in the fray rode the undaunted Reynolds, to meet, alas! the relentless death which had marked his brave life for that day's first crown of holy sacrifice. No time was there, however, to stay even for a look at the dead.† The courageous Doubleday, who had brought tried nerves from Sumter's walls, sprang into the breach, and the fight went on. Noon came, and passed, and no help for the dwindling band, who stood among their dead immovable. At last, at one o'clock, came Barlow's and Schurz's Divisions of the Eleventh Corps, burning to wipe out the memory of Chancellorsville, and eager to save the hard-pressed First. They formed on the right, and stayed the faltering line for a space. The remainder of the Eleventh Corps, under Steinwehr, was moved rapidly forward to occupy Cemetery Hill. This order on the part of Howard, the noble and Christian general, was one of those divine inspirations on which destinies turn. It gave him a stronghold of defence and shelter, when it became necessary to retire, as his military eye clearly foresaw that it must soon be, when sixteen thousand men were confronted by forty thousand. From one until nearly four they struggled against the constantly increasing odds. But no human bravery, no endurance could outlast such a concentration of the fire of superior numbers. The wearied right, which had been most sorely tried through the day, yielded first, but fell back steadily till they reached the town. Here an ill destiny awaited them. Confused by their officers attempting to manoeuvre them through cross-streets, and stung by the familiar battle-yell of "Stonewall" Jackson's men in their rear, they broke into inextricable confusion, and fell an easy and wholesale prey to their pursuers, losing one thousand and two hundred men in the incredibly short

* "Well-tried troops those-no fear of their flinching; veterans of a score of battles-in the war, some of them, from the very start; with the first at Philippi, Laurel Hill, Carrick's Ford, Cheat Mountain, and all the Western Virginia campaign; trusted of Shields at Winchester, and of Lander at Romney and Bloomery Gap; through the campaign of the Shenandoah Valley, and with the Army of the Potomac in every march to the red slaughter-sowing that still had brought no harvest of victory. Meredith's old Iron Brigade was the Nineteenth Indiana, Twenty-fourth Michigan, Sixth and Seventh Wisconsin-veterans all, and well mated with the brave New Yorkers whom Wadsworth also led."-Cincinnati Gazette.

"General Reynolds fell a victim to his cool bravery and zeal. As was his custom, he rode in front of his men, placing them in position, and urging them to the fight, when he was shot through the head, as was supposed, by a rebel sharpshooter, and died shortly afterwards. He has been charged with rashness, with prematurely bringing on the battle. It would be more just to say that he had but little agency in bringing it on; that it was forced on us by the rebels; that if they had not been held in check that day, they would have pressed on and obtained the impregnable position which we were enabled to hold; and that, most of all, the hand of Providence, who gave us, at last, a signal victory, was in the arrangements of that day.”—Notes on the Battle of Gettysburg, by M. Jacobs, p. 27.

"The other division of the Eleventh Corps, under General Steinwehr, by the prudent forethought and wise generalship of General Howard, was at once sent forward to occupy Cemetery Hill, on the south side of the town, and to provide for the contingency which happened three hours afterwards, and which he must haye foreseen. To this happy forethought we may, in a great measure, under God, attribute the favorable results of the battle of the two succeeding days." -Id., p. 25.

space of twenty minutes. The remainder fled, in utter rout, to the hills on the south, where they were, with great difficulty, reorganized.

In the mean time the sturdy left wing, which had borne so steady a front since morning, had received at half-past three the onset of A. P. Hill's entire corps. In vain Generals Doubleday, Robinson, and the indomitable Wadsworth, with his Iron Brigade, stood to resist it. The fire was such as veterans never saw before. Brave men sprang from one falling horse to another and another. In thirty minutes Cutler's Brigade had not one staff officer who had not lost his horse. General Cutler himself had three horses shot under him. It was utter carnage, certain death, not war. The line wavered; the enemy pressed on; the retreat commenced; pursued and pursuers pushed through the town tumultuously; Gettysburg was lost, and the day looked dark indeed.*

Suddenly from the Hill of Refuge to the south, our artillery blazed a defiant check to the triumphing pursuit; all was not lost; all was gained. A rallying centre, a position difficult to assault, and time for the Union forces to come up, was all that we needed. For the first, God had built a hill; and now came merciful night, to give us the second. The night was passed on both sides in making the most active preparations for the morrow. Sadly the remnants of our two corps busied themselves in fortifying the heights which had saved them from destruction on the day before, but which might afford them only a grave on the next.

If reënforcements did not reach them they were lost, for the slaughter of one day had left them but a wearied fragment of the force which even in the outset was outnumbered nearly two to one. The glorious Iron Brigade, which stood up one thousand eight hundred and twenty strong to meet the onset of Hill's Corps, reached Cemetery Hill with but seven hundred men. The brigade by its side, fifteen hundred men at noon, at night read its roll of death and wounds and loss, thirteen hundred and thirty-three privates and fifty-four officers. It was a night of solemn grief and earnest work among the silent monuments of the dead.

Below, in the town, the flushed and boastful rebels rested satisfied. They jeered at the dismayed citizens, and vaunted loudly of the certain success of the morrow. But they little knew what it had in store. Before midnight our feeble and exhausted band was cheered by the arrival of the Twelfth Corps, under General Slocum, and the Third, under General

* "The officers, brave almost always to a fault, sought to keep them in. One-his name deserves to be remembered-Captain Richardson, of the Seventh Wisconsin, seized the colors of a retreating Pennsylvania regiment, and strove to rally the men around their flag. It was in vain : none but troops that have been tried as by fire can be re-formed under such a storm of death. But the captain, left alone and almost in the rebel hands, held on to the flaunting colors of another regiment, that made him a conspicuous target, and brought them safely off.

"Wadsworth still holds on-for a few minutes more his braves protract the carnival of death. Doubleday managed to get three regiments over to their support; Colonel Biddle's Pennsylvania regiment came in and behaved most gallantly. Colonel Stephenson, who all the day had been serving in the hottest of the fight as aide to Meredith, relieved a wounded colonel, and strove to rally his regiment. Meredith himself, with his Antietam wound hardly yet ceasing to pain him, is struck again—a mere bruise, however on the head, with a piece of shell. At the same instant his large, heavy horse falls, mortally wounded, bears the general under him to the ground, and beats him there, with his head and shoulders, in his death convulsions."-Cincinnati Gazette.

Sickles. At one A. M., the confident and assured bearing of the Commanderin-Chief in their midst, gave them new life and courage. Shortly after daylight came the strong aid of the Second and Fifth Corps. The sun of Thursday rose upon a changed picture. The hills of Cemetery Ridge bristled with a new army, and the rebels, who had dreamed through the night of easy and unquestioned victory over the exhausted survivors of Wednesday's battle, found themselves, to their dismay, confronted by the greater portion of the Army of the Potomac. By a glance here at the map, the reader can comprehend the simple beauty of General Meade's plan.

Cemetery Hill, forming the apex of the triangle in which our forces were disposed, perfectly commanded the town and the entire valley in front, through which the rebels must advance to attack our centre. Our lines, gradually diverging from this central tower of strength to the southwest and southeast, formed the sides of the triangle, outside of which, and therefore on a larger triangle, the enemy must operate. This gave us the incalculable advantage of moving on the interior and shorter lines, and enabled us to throw our reserves, the Fifth and Sixth Corps, rapidly to east or west, as might be most needed. Major-General Howard held the centre, with the Eleventh Corps. The right leg of the triangle was made by the remnant of the First Corps and the Twelfth, under MajorGeneral Slocum, and lay to the right of the Baltimore road. The left side of the triangle was formed by the Second Corps, under MajorGeneral Hancock, and the Third, under Major-General Sickles, and lay between the Taneytown and Emmetsburg roads. Through Thursday forenoon the rebels were inexplicably quiet. Had they opened the attack in the early morning, before our reënforcements had recovered from the fatigue of their forced marches, and before the careful disposition of the different corps had been made, the result might have been different. But they were occupied in making temporary fortifications in the town, in hurrying up the rest of their troops, and in deliberating upon the dilemma of finding themselves, to quote from General Lee's own words, "unexpectedly confronted by the Federal army."

The afternoon had begun to wane before they were ready to make the attack, for which we were waiting, silent and immovable as the hills on which we stood. At four o'clock, Longstreet hurled the entire strength of his division against our left, opening with a storm of artillery, and then plunging forward with an infantry charge. The brave Third, under the imperturbable Sickles, stood like granite blocks. They were tried troops; the enemy, thirty to forty thousand in number, beat vainly on their lines again and again. But a new danger threatened them on the left flank. Stealthily one of Longstreet's divisions was aiming to get between them and Round Top Hill. A glance at the accompanying map will show how fatal would have been the success of this manoeuvre. On Round Top were only three or four batteries, the one at the extreme left commanded by Captain Bigelow, of the Massachusetts Ninth. "For God's sake hold on till we can get up more batteries and men," was Sickles's imploring cry, rather than order. His infantry was swaying backward, almost breaking. No wonder under such an overwhelming charge. If the artillery failed,

« PreviousContinue »