“It was either a good line, or a bad one, and, whichever it was, I took it on my own responsibility….I took up that line because it enabled me to hold commanding ground, which, if the enemy had been allowed to take—as they would have taken it if I had not occupied it in force—would have rendered our position on the left untenable; and, in my judgment, would have turned the fortunes of the day hopelessly against us.” So testified Union Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles on February 26, 1864, to the Joint Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War about the controversial decision he made, against orders, to reposition his 3rd Corps at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863.

As a politician, Sickles understood the importance of getting out in front of a story and shaping how it was perceived. In his view, had he not moved his corps to its advanced position, the battle likely would have been lost—a narrative he pushed on more than one front. Sickles, whose left leg was shattered by a cannonball and amputated during that day’s fighting, eagerly shared his version of the battle with President Abraham Lincoln while recovering from his wound, as well as anyone else in Congress he thought might be of help, particularly those who served on the Conduct of the War committee.

It was no accident Sickles was the first officer to testify before the committee about Gettysburg. In March 1864, he was likely the author, or at least the source, of an article about the battle in The New York Herald, under the pen name “Historicus,” which essentially repeated Sickles’ points from his testimony before the committee.

At the time, Sickles was unsuccessful in his effort to have Maj. Gen. George Meade removed as commander of the Army of the Potomac and for his personal return to the army, which Meade had blocked. But he was successful in muddying the waters of truth and in casting doubt upon Meade’s generalship at Gettysburg. This has echoed through the decades to today, where people still fiercely debate the wisdom or folly of Sickles’ advance, and view Meade’s generalship through the lens Dan Sickles shaped.

In considering the position Sickles occupied and the one Meade ordered him to be in, it is worth pausing a moment to consider the two men’s military pedigree, for in this area they were not equals. Sickles had no antebellum military experience. He was commissioned a colonel on June 26, 1861, principally because he was a well-known Democrat who supported the war and could assist in the raising of troops.

Sickles’ nomination to brigadier general in September 1861 was held up for months, and although he had command of a brigade, when it shipped out for the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, he remained in Washington to fight the political battles needed to secure that promotion. He succeeded but missed the key Battle of Williamsburg, although he was with the brigade at Fair Oaks (Seven Pines) on May 31–June 1, 1862.

Sickles saw further action during the Seven Days’ Battles starting in late June, but then returned home on a recruiting mission, which resulted in him missing both the Second Bull Run and Antietam campaigns.

When Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside assumed command of the Army of the Potomac in November 1862, Sickles was bizarrely placed in command of the 3rd Corps’ 2nd Division despite his lack of military training and combat experience. His division was lightly engaged at Fredericksburg, however, suffering only about 100 casualties.

Then, in yet another questionable military decision, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker handed Sickles command of the 3rd Corps upon replacing Burnside atop the Army of the Potomac in January 1863.

In describing the general’s performance at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May, Sickles’ biographer, James Hessler, wrote: “[H]e fought aggressively, but demonstrated questionable military judgment.” Shortly after that battle, Sickles left the army again, claiming a shell burst had damaged his health. He did not return until June 28, the day Meade replaced Hooker as the army’s commander.

There is no question Sickles was a brave soldier, but he was a corps commander with relatively little experience who had demonstrated no aptitude to read terrain well. Meade, on the other hand, was a West Pointer with 28 years’ service in the Army, including as a topographical engineer during the Mexican War, where his job was to read terrain. Meade had commanded, with great skill, units from brigade to corps in the Army of the Potomac in every major battle in the Eastern Theater.

When Meade decided where to place each of his corps on July 2, he relied on an early morning reconnaissance he had conducted. Meade sent verbal orders to Sickles early, probably about 5–5:30 a.m., to relieve a 12th Corps division on the northern slope of Little Round Top and to extend his right to connect with the 2nd Corps. Sickles never visited Little Round Top that we know of, and he would later claim the 12th Corps division had no defined position, which was untrue, for some of his troops did in fact spell relief for part of the 12th Corps command.

At 11 a.m., after riding to Meade’s headquarters, Sickles told his commander he was unsure of the position he had been ordered to occupy. Meade reiterated “that his right was to rest upon General [Winfield S.] Hancock’s left; and his left was to extend to the Round Top mountain, plainly visible, if it was practicable to occupy it.”

What then of the advanced position to which Sickles subsequently moved without orders? The reasons why Meade had not deployed the 3rd Corps here soon became abundantly clear for several reasons: 1) the advanced position upset the defensive arrangement of the army commander; 2) it was beyond support distance of the 2nd Corps, or any of the army’s other corps; 3) Sickles did not have enough men to assume the front he chose; 4) he left Little Round Top, the key terrain on the southern end of the field, undefended; 5) the salient at the Peach Orchard was easily hit by a crossfire of Confederate artillery; 6) if the 3rd Corps was driven from its position, it would have to retreat over open ground, likely leading to heavy casualties; and 7) contrary to Sickles’ claim, Meade’s assigned position for the 3rd Corps was a superior one.

To answer Sickles’ rhetorical question of whether his line was a good or bad one: no, it was bad—and it nearly led to the army’s defeat. Colonel E. Porter Alexander was one Confederate certain the battle was won when he placed his guns in the Peach Orchard, with the 3rd Corps driven back. But “when I got to take in all the topography, I was very much disappointed,” he recalled. “It was not the enemy’s main line we had broken. That loomed up near 1,000 yards beyond us, a ridge giving good cover behind it & endless fine positions for batteries.”

It was the original position Meade had assigned Sickles to defend.

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of America’s Civil War magazine.

Hiram Dryer is not a name that readily comes to mind when we ponder leaders who stood out during the Battle of Antietam. He remains largely unknown to all but the battle’s most ardent students, yet the impact Captain Dryer had on the fighting September 17, 1862, should not be underestimated.

A New York native, Dryer was 53 years old at Antietam. Relatively little is known about his early years, but on October 1, 1846, during the Mexican War, he enlisted in the Regular Army. Assigned to the newly organized Regiment of Mounted Riflemen, he rose rapidly in rank to first sergeant, and then earned a commission on July 31, 1848, as a second lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Infantry for gallantry at the battles of Chapultepec and Garita de Belan. He served for a time with future Civil War luminaries Ulysses S. Grant, Phil Sheridan, and George Crook. In 1852, the 4th U.S. was transferred to the West Coast, which required the regiment first to cross the Isthmus of Panama and then journey by ship to the Pacific Northwest. Passage across Panama’s isthmus was a nightmare, as a cholera breakout killed 104 enlisted men and one officer. In November 1853, while stationed at Fort Vancouver in Oregon, Dryer displayed trademark courage in volunteering to lead a supply expedition to a group of settlers trapped by a blizzard in the Cascade Mountains.

Dryer returned with his regiment to the East in the fall of 1861 and was assigned to the Army of the Potomac. The early war period was a time of great change for the Regular Army, its leadership decimated both by officers assuming commissions of higher rank in the U.S. Volunteer service and Southern-born officers who resigned to fight for the Confederacy. Individuals pulled from civilian life frequently filled the resulting vacancies.

The enlisted ranks were also in flux due to the expansion of the Regular Army, featuring nine new regiments of infantry and one each of cavalry and artillery. Some of the noncommissioned officers serving under Dryer were no doubt grizzled veterans, but many of his soldiers had enlisted in 1861. Rigorous training and discipline was what set Regulars apart from most volunteer regiments, and the heightened attention they received in skirmishing and marksmanship would prove particularly crucial.

Dryer, who saw service during the 1862 Peninsula and Second Bull Run campaigns, was his regiment’s senior officer when fighting broke out at Antietam. At about 10 a.m. September 17, Maj. Gen. George McClellan ordered his cavalry commander, Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton, to cross Antietam Creek at the Middle Bridge with his troopers and horse artillery in order to provide a diversion and support to the current Union attack on the Confederate position along the Sunken Lane.

A diversion was a sound idea; using cavalry was not. Most Union troopers lacked carbines or training in fighting dismounted, so Pleasonton’s men were forced mainly to hide from enemy artillery either behind Joshua Newcomer’s large barn or on the Antietam Creek bank. This left the horse artillery exposed to long-range fire from skirmishers and sharpshooters. Disgusted that his guns and the others had been sent into harm’s way without proper support, one horse battery commander, John C. Tidball, sought infantry help.

Pleasonton managed to get two companies of the 1st Battalion/12th U.S. Infantry (1/12th) to support his batteries, and then for Brig. Gen. George Sykes, commanding the 5th Corps’ 2nd Division (which included all of the army’s Regular regiments) to send in the entire 2nd/10th U.S. Infantry, commanded by Lieutenant John Poland.

Fierce artillery duels and skirmishing continued well into the afternoon. Worried the Confederates had large reserves concealed behind Cemetery Hill and Cemetery Ridge, Sykes was reluctant to send more infantry across the creek but acquiesced on Poland and the 2nd/14th U.S., and then, at 2 p.m., ordered Dryer to cross the creek with the 4th U.S. and the 1st/14th U.S. and to assume command of all Regular forces there.

Described by a peer “as one of the coolest and bravest officers in our service,” Dryer proceeded to justify such high praise. He first reinforced the Regulars’ skirmish line west of Newcomer Ridge—high ground several hundred yards west of the Newcomer farmhouse. Then, he ordered skirmishers forward on both sides of the Boonsboro Pike, toward Cemetery Hill south of the pike, and Cemetery Ridge, north of it. Unlike commanders who liked to test enemy strength and position by an all-out attack with massed infantry, resulting in extensive casualties—Maj. Gen. William H. French, for instance—Dryer used the superior training, leadership, and marksmanship of the Regulars to probe and press the enemy defenses, his men deployed in dispersed order, offering no inviting targets for Confederate artillery or riflemen.

Backed by plentiful artillery deployed along Newcomer Ridge, the Regulars worked their way forward, advancing on the left as far as the Sherrick Farm lane and on the right, north of the pike, using four companies (at most 130 men) to dislodge Confederate defenders on Cemetery Hill. While forcing the artillery there to withdraw, they advanced within 450 yards of the Lutheran Church on Cemetery Hill’s western slope. But that would be their high-water mark, not because of Rebel resistance, but because of General Sykes. What Sykes saw in Dryer’s advance was an unnecessary risk rather than an opportunity. He found it highly unlikely the Confederate center was simply a hollow shell, only that his Regular infantry faced potential destruction with Dryer exceeding his orders.

Sykes’ orders directing him to immediately withdraw his forces to Newcomer Ridge left Dryer incredulous. Asking if there was any discretion, he was told the “order was imperative.” Gathering up their dead and wounded, Dryer and his Regulars fell back.

At a cost of 11 killed and 75 wounded, they had cleared Cemetery Ridge of Confederates and threatened to capture Cemetery Hill. It would be an exemplary yet virtually unknown achievement. When one considers that the 1st Delaware lost 230 men alone in French’s failed frontal assault upon the Sunken Lane, Dryer’s proficiency in tactics and managing his troops is remarkable.

Dryer went on to receive brevet promotions for courage at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville but, surprisingly, not for Antietam. He apparently lacked political clout, or had no interest in taking a volunteer commission, for there is no evidence he sought or was considered for promotion to higher rank in the volunteer service.

Thrown from a horse in June 1863, Dryer would miss the Gettysburg Campaign. The injury apparently affected his ability to return to the field, for he spent the rest of the war in staff duties. He was remembered by a fellow officer as “always kind and friendly.” We might add that he was also a man of remarkable, daring skill and competence who deserves to be remembered.

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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What can we learn from an old photograph, a moment in time captured on a glass plate negative? In the case of the image above—taken by Alexander Gardner and Timothy O’Sullivan on September 19, 1862, two days after the Battle of Antietam—the answer is quite a bit. It appears to be a burial detail, but we will discuss this more later. The granite outcropping and boulders piled on it make the identification of this site straightforward. It is marked today by the unique 90th Pennsylvania Infantry monument of three stacked rifles supporting a water or coffee bucket with the inscription: “Here fought the 90th Penna (Philadelphia) Sept 17, 1862 A Hot Place.”

The last three words of the inscription are an apt description of this spot on September 17. Few locations on the Antietam battlefield saw more sustained combat than what swirled around this point. It is located about 50 yards south of David Miller’s famed Cornfield. The camera is facing slightly southwest with the Cornfield directly behind the viewer. The woods visible behind the group of four living soldiers on the right are the West Woods. Midway between the outcropping and the West Woods the line of occasional brush marks a fence line that ran east-west from the Hagerstown Pike to the southern tip of the East Woods and was used as cover by Colonel Marcellus Douglass’ Georgia brigade in its fierce engagement with the Union brigades of Brig. Gens. Abram Duryée, John Gibbon, and George Hartsuff.

The first troops heavily engaged near this point were the 97th, 104th, and 105th New York of Duryée’s 1st Brigade in Maj. Gen. James Ricketts’ 2nd Division, 1st Corps. They would be relieved by the 12th Massachusetts, part of Hartsuff’s brigade, also in Ricketts’ division. Around this outcropping, they engaged the 13th and 60th Georgia, and Brig. Gen. Harry Hays’ Louisiana brigade, which launched a counterattack that was repulsed with significant losses. “Never did I see more rebs to fire at than that moment presented themselves,” recalled Corporal George Kimball of the 12th Massachusetts—hit hard, too, with 49 killed, 165 wounded, and 10 missing.

Typically, struck soldiers drop their weapons and/or equipment (belts, canteens, cartridge boxes, haversacks, etc.), lose their hats, tear off pieces of clothing to locate their wounds, or grab for blankets to help carry wounded to the rear. Walking this ground on September 21, physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. found it “strewed with fragments of clothing, haversacks, canteens, cap-boxes, bullets, cartridge-boxes, cartridges, scraps of paper, portions of bread and meat.” We can see in the foreground what Holmes is referring to. The ground is literally covered with discarded clothing and gear.

There are seven dead bodies and, on the far right, what looks like a dead horse. All appear to be Confederates, but who? Numerous Rebel units passed this point or fought in its immediate vicinity: the 2nd and 11th Mississippi of Evander Law’s Brigade; the 1st and 3rd North Carolina of Roswell Ripley’s Brigade; and the 28th and 23rd Georgia of Alfred Colquitt’s Brigade. All had high casualty counts—the 3rd North Carolina suffered an appalling 116 killed or mortally wounded and the 1st 50 in this area alone. Illustrating just how lethal the fighting was, the 3rd North Carolina at one point had to change front to the northeast to counter an advance by the 128th Pennsylvania, a maneuver in which seven of the regiment’s 10 companies had every officer killed or wounded.

What seems odd is that no dead are visible beyond the outcropping, but they may already have been picked up for burial, or buried, by the time the photographers arrived. That no Union dead appear in the image is evidence that burial details had already been at work here.

We can presume that the five living soldiers looking upon the dead are a burial party, but unlike another set of soldiers Gardner and O’Sullivan photographed near the Miller Farm, these men have no tools. Jeff Dugdale, who produced a fascinating book about Confederate uniforms during the Maryland Campaign, believes the two men sitting and crouching in front of the two men on top of the outcropping are prisoners, based on their clothing. If they are Confederates, which might explain the one Union soldier behind them holding his musket, they may have been stragglers, captured when the Army of Northern Virginia retreated the night of September 18 and put to work gathering the dead for burial. Perhaps the four bodies in front of them had been moved, laid out in a rough line. The other three bodies seem to have remained where they fell or where they were dragged by comrades during the fighting.

It is remarkable that members of the burial detail—if that is what this is—seem grim but otherwise unaffected by the carnage before them. September 19 was warm—75 degrees—and the rapidly decomposing bodies were emitting an offensive odor. A Massachusetts soldier in a West Woods burial party described the work that day as “very unpleasant,” that he “tasted the odor for several days.” And according to civilians from Lancaster, Pa., who visited immediately after the battle, “the stench…from the decomposing bodies was almost unendurable.” The soldiers here have made no effort to ward off that odor by covering their mouths or noses with a handkerchief or bandanna. Perhaps they believed it would make no difference, as the smell penetrated everything.

Because the photographers made no known effort to identify either the living or the dead in this image, we are left to speculate, which perhaps makes it easier for a viewer to remain emotionally detached from the scene. It is horrifying, but we do not know who the dead are. One conceivably is Anson W. Deal, a 25-year-old private in Company B, 3rd North Carolina, who in the summer of 1862 had been conscripted from his family farm in Duplin County, N.C. Deal was initially listed as missing and presumed captured, and his family surely held out hope that he had survived. Months later, though, the remarks on his fate were changed to “supposed to have been killed in battle at Sharpsburg” and then to “killed at Sharpsburg.” He was almost certainly buried as an unknown soldier in a mass grave with other Confederates. His name, and the family that grieved his death, are a reminder that every anonymous body we peer at in photographs from that fateful day had a story to tell and deserves to be remembered as a person and not a prop. 

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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The Army of the Potomac’s cavalry received a much-needed reorganization when Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker assumed command of the Union’s largest army in the winter of 1863, transforming from a collection of mounted brigades to a formal Cavalry Corps. Most important perhaps, Hooker infused his horsemen with a new mission. Although they would continue fulfilling the traditional cavalry roles of scouting, picketing, headquarters security, and escort duty, they were now to serve primarily as an offensive weapon—much like J.E.B. Stuart’s vaunted troopers did in the Army of Northern Virginia.

During the Chancellorsville Campaign, Union cavalry performed better in defeat than it had in any previous campaign, but Hooker was disappointed in the leadership of some of its commanders, specifically corps commander George Stoneman and 2nd Division commander William A. Averell. Both lost their jobs in a further reorganization that followed Chancellorsville.

The Cavalry Corps’ new commander would be Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton, known as a notorious self-promoter and miserable intelligence officer but someone Hooker believed might put more fire into his troopers. Pleasonton did. In the early stages of the Gettysburg Campaign in June 1863, the Federal horsemen took the fight to the Rebel cavalry at Brandy Station, Va., and in a subsequent series of sharply fought engagements at Aldie, Middleburg, and Upperville in central Virginia.

Nevertheless, though his men had fought well, Pleasonton was eager to find positions for his more aggressive subordinates. After Maj. Gen. Julius Stahel’s division was sent as reinforcements from the defenses of Washington, D.C., in late June, Pleasonton convinced the Army of the Potomac’s new commander, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, to allow him to replace Stahel and his brigade commanders with officers of his own choice.

Pleasonton handed Stahel’s command to the recklessly aggressive Brig. Gen. H. Judson Kilpatrick, and to fill the two brigade slots he received approval to jump two junior officers—Elon Farnsworth and George Armstrong Custer—to brigadier general. Both men had been staff officers for Pleasonton and were favorites of the general.

Also elevated was Captain Wesley Merritt, who was handed a brigade in the cavalry’s 1st Division. All were young, bright, and aggressive officers.

Farnsworth never had a chance to prove himself, for he was killed July 3 at Gettysburg in a foolish attack demanded by Kilpatrick. Merritt proved an excellent soldier, but it is Custer we remember best. Because of the Little Big Horn showdown that lay in his future, Custer is remembered as a brash, ambitious, and particularly reckless officer. He was indeed brash and ambitious. His performance during the Gettysburg Campaign, however, showed an officer who understood modern cavalry tactics and applied them appropriately while displaying solid leadership commanding volunteers.

The 23-year-old Custer was, in fact, far more prudent than popular history would have us think. He asked for and received command of a brigade of four Michigan regiments: the 1st, 5th, 6th, and 7th. When he arrived in the camps of his brigade in the rain on June 29, Custer’s appearance instantly attracted attention—as he intended. A staff officer described him as “one of the funniest looking beings you ever saw, and looks like a circus rider gone mad! He wears a huzzar jacket and tight trousers, of faded black velvet trimmed with tarnished gold lace.” Not to mention a red cravat.

Ego partly drove Custer’s uniform style, but it also reflected his understanding of volunteer soldiers. They would recognize him instantly on the march or, more importantly, on the battlefield, where he intended to provide them leadership that would inspire them to risk their lives and take the fight to the enemy.

The day after assuming command of his brigade, June 30, Custer’s command engaged J.E.B. Stuart’s Confederate horsemen for the first time at Hanover, Pa. Instead of charging headlong into the fray, heedless of casualties, Custer demonstrated tactical competence, employing his superior firepower—the 5th and 6th Michigan carried Spencer repeaters—by dismounting his troopers and supporting them with attached horse artillery. The result was a check to the Rebel horsemen, who departed to find an easier route to reach Lee’s main army.

On July 2, Custer’s Michiganders encountered Brig. Gen. Wade Hampton’s veteran brigade near the small village of Hunterstown, Pa., several miles northeast of Gettysburg. When the officer leading Custer’s van emerged from the village, he encountered open ground extending west for several hundred yards. Standing partway across these open fields were two farms around which a small rearguard of Hampton’s Brigade had halted to keep the enemy at a distance from the main body.

Uncertain what this small body of enemy cavalry represented, Custer dismounted several companies of the 6th Michigan and unlimbered his horse artillery to provide covering fire. But to disperse the Confederate horsemen, he ordered Company A of the 6th to conduct a mounted charge. Then, as the company readied for its advance, Custer drew his saber and motioned for his staff to stay back before riding out in front of the troopers. With what would be described as a “careless laughing remark,” he declared, “I’ll lead you this time boys. Come on!’”

The charge struck the Confederates hard. Reinforcements from Hampton’s Brigade counterattacked and a wild melee ensued. Custer’s horse was killed beneath him, and he was almost ridden down and killed by a Southern trooper—his life saved by his orderly, who dropped the assailant with a well-aimed shot.

Custer’s prudence in establishing an additional line of fire was rewarded when his dismounted troopers and horse artillery held off Hampton’s counterattack. Though Custer had taken an unnecessary risk in leading the charge, the calculated risk paid dividends in increased confidence and respect for the young general’s leadership.

A day later, Custer made even more of a mark with his men and the army in the much larger cavalry action three miles east of Gettysburg around the John Rummel Farm. Again, Custer displayed a firm grasp of cavalry tactics, skillfully using his troopers in both dismounted and mounted roles, and establishing his horse artillery as a base of fire. And again, Custer deliberately placed himself in harm’s way by leading charges by the 7th and then the 1st Michigan Cavalry. In both charges he rode out in front of his men shouting, “Come on, you Wolverines!” The result was a block of Stuart’s efforts to disrupt the Army of the Potomac’s communication lines.

Custer had accomplished precisely what Pleasonton had sought in advancing these young men to brigade command. It elevated the Union cavalry to the level of J.E.B. Stuart’s. That process had actually begun a few weeks earlier at Brandy Station, but now the Army of the Potomac’s horsemen would be an effective fighting arm. The attrition of two more years of war meant that the men in blue would, however, gradually gain superiority. 

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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When I worked at Gettysburg National Military Park, I regularly encountered visitors who imagined that some type of grand government master plan had created the park and accounted for the order and symmetry of its hundreds of monuments. Yet there is no master plan. The battlefield we see today with its orderly placement of monuments evolved over many years. The park was officially created by congressional legislation in 1895, but most of the regimental monuments were erected in the 1880s, before the U.S. government assumed responsibility for managing the battlefield.

At the time, the field was managed by the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association, an organization created in 1864, which initially viewed the battlefield as a monument to the Union victory of July 1863. It sought to acquire land where evidence of the conflict still existed, such as Culp’s Hill, East Cemetery Hill, and parts of Little Round Top—with their bullet-riddled trees, artillery lunettes, breastworks, and entrenchments.

In its early years, the GBMA was largely a local organization with a modest budget. Although it supported the idea of marking positions of Union Army units “by tablets, obelisks and other monumental structures,” its efforts centered on lobbying Northern states to pass laws and appropriate funds to make this a reality.

In 1880, the GBMA underwent a transformation, electing a new slate of officers and directors who had a larger vision than the original board. One of their decisions that would have far-reaching consequences for how regimental monuments would be located and what their inscriptions could say was to invite the amateur historian John B. Bachelder to join the board. Although he had not served in the Army during the war, Gettysburg had become Bachelder’s life work, and he was considered the expert on the battle. Former Union Maj. Gen. Henry
Slocum wrote that Bachelder “can tell more of what I did there [at Gettysburg] than I can myself.”

In July 1883, the board elected Bachelder as Superintendent of Tablets and Legends. In this role he approved the proposed location, design, and inscription for regimental monuments.

When monuments went up had much to do with when state legislatures appropriated funding for them. Massachusetts, for example, appropriated $500 in March 1884 for each regiment and battery of the state that had fought at Gettysburg. It would be up to the veterans of each unit to raise any additional funding necessary beyond this total. The result was almost all Massachusetts’ regimental and battery monuments went up in 1885 and 1886.

In October 1885, the 15th, 19th, and 20th Massachusetts placed their monuments—with Bachelder’s and the GBMA’s approval—on the southern edge of the famous Copse of Trees, to which they had advanced during the repulse of Pickett’s Charge on July 3. Bachelder, however, had second thoughts on allowing units to erect their principal monument at the point of their farthest advance. Ten other regiments had crowded into the same space the three Massachusetts regiments had in the counterattack to drive back the Confederate breakthrough near the Copse. If he allowed all these regiments to follow the Massachusetts example, the result would be a jumble of monuments near the trees. This, he believed, would “mislead the public in the future rather than illustrate the battle.”

While it was understandable that veterans wished to place their monument where they had lost the most men or achieved their greatest success, this could lead to clumps of monuments that would baffle future generations not steeped in Gettysburg’s history, not to mention foment interminable arguments between veterans over who was where and when.

To resolve the issue, Bachelder met with Secretary of War William C. Endicott and Regular Army officers who had been in the volunteer service during the war. They reached a decision “that the desire of the memorial association would be better carried out if the lines of battle were marked, rather than the lines of contact when any regiment left their position to go into action.”

In effect, regiments and batteries would mark the principal position they occupied in the general line of battle rather than to where they eventually advanced. Inscriptions on each monument could explain the regiment’s actions and movements. Once a regiment had erected its principal monument, it could place an advance position marker/monument/tablet if desired. In December 1887, the GBMA formally adopted this “line of battle” policy.

One of Bachelder’s first tasks was convincing veterans of the 15th, 19th, and 20th Massachusetts to move their monuments from their advance positions at the Copse to their July 2-3 lines of battle. The veterans agreed, though for the 19th Massachusetts that meant moving its monument to the second line of battle, where it had served in support. To soften the blow, each regiment was allowed to place an iron tablet at its advance position, where their monuments had originally been placed.

The new policy was generally a success, bringing a sense of order to how the field would be marked. Through the 1880s, the GBMA opened avenues that followed the Army of the Potomac’s general lines while creating access to the monuments being erected. But determining “line of battle” proved to be a gray area. For example, all the monuments to Caldwell’s 1st Division, 2nd Corps, are in the Wheatfield area to which the division advanced on July 2, rather than where the division was in line on the southern end of Cemetery Ridge most of the day. Artillery batteries were tricky because many of them moved numerous times throughout the battle. In these cases, Bachelder and the GBMA compromised and worked with veterans to meet the spirit of the policy but still honor the service of the unit.

The War Department continued this policy after the creation of Gettysburg National Military Park in 1895, when it assumed responsibility for all the lands of the GBMA. It generally worked well for the Army of the Potomac, but when the Confederate side of the field began to be acquired, Army of Northern Virginia veterans had little interest in erecting monuments on their “line of battle” positions, which were where their attacks originated from, not where they suffered their principal loss. But they also had less incentive than Union veterans to erect monuments, for starting in the 1890s the War Department marked the position of every brigade, battery, division, and corps of both armies with iron tablets. These tablets adhered to the same line of battle policy and typically marked where units were in position immediately before the fighting began.

Monuments are about memory, and numerous battles were fought over the years between veterans, and with the GBMA, over where a particular monument would be placed and what constituted the unit’s position in the line of battle on a particular day of the battle. But overall, the association’s policy was a success and reflected Bachelder’s vision in making the Gettysburg battlefield comprehensive for generations to come.

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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During the 1864 Overland Campaign, staff officer Theodore Lyman marveled at the skill of the Army of the Potomac’s chief quartermaster Rufus Ingalls. “How these huge trains are moved over roads not fit for a light buggy, is a mystery known only to General Rufus Ingalls, who treats them as if they were so many perambulators on a smooth side walk.” When Maj. Gen. George McClellan received orders on September 3, 1862, to assemble a field army to meet a possible Confederate invasion of Maryland, Ingalls was perhaps the most important soldier McClellan needed for that to happen. Napoleon purportedly once wrote that an “army marches on its stomach.” Another frequently heard quip is that “amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” Both reference the crucial role of logistics in maintaining armies in the field. Soldiers cannot fight without weapons, bullets, and shells, and if they lack food, fuel, clothing, equipment, and transportation the army will soon come apart at the seams as soldiers straggle to meet basic needs, just as thousands of Confederate soldiers did in the Maryland Campaign. A good quartermaster was essential to an army’s ability to fight, and Ingalls was among the best in either army.

Logistics posed an immense challenge for McClellan in assembling an army capable of maneuvering in the field. The Army of the Potomac still had considerable quantities of equipment arriving daily from the Virginia Peninsula, from where they had been withdrawn in August 1862 to reinforce Maj. Gen. John Pope’s Army of Virginia in northern Virginia. Logistics were not Pope’s strength, and his army’s wagon trains were in a muddle even before the defeat at Second Bull Run. Ingalls wrote with unconcealed contempt that it “does not appear that the commander of the Army of Virginia ever knew how many wagons there were, nor what quartermasters were on duty.” The chaotic retreat from Manassas to Washington threw both armies’ trains into even greater confusion.

McClellan relied on Ingalls to untangle the fishing knot encumbering the army’s transportation, because until the army reached Frederick, Md., where it would have rail communications, it would have to be supplied solely by wagons hauling supplies from depots around Washington. To get a sense of the magnitude of the task, the nearly 80,000 men and 32,000 horses and mules required a million pounds of food and forage daily. The complex calculations to haul this quantity of supplies efficiently with horse-drawn wagons to combat units spread across a front of nearly 30 miles can be imagined. Ingalls also had to determine deficiencies in clothing and equipment and do his best to meet the direst situations so units had a basic kit with which to fight. He needed to become familiar with the quartermasters for the 1st, 9th, and 12th Corps—none of whom had operated with the Army of the Potomac—and assess their needs as well as their organizational strengths and weaknesses. It was incessant work and demanded great skills. Ingalls related, without exaggeration: “The labor, however, of arranging and perfecting this system of transportation, of bringing to each depot the requisite amount, and the details of trains for the distribution of these vast supplies to the different portions of the army, was excessively onerous night and day.”

A “violent and destructive disease” that broke out among the army’s horses exacerbated the challenges, taking nearly 4,000 out of service. Despite the haste with which the army had to take the field when the Confederates entered Maryland in early September, Ingalls succeeded in keeping it adequately supplied. Adequate was a relative term, as many soldiers complained of shortages of clothing and equipment. Holmes Burlingame of the 104th New York wrote that his brigade “was in really bad condition, we had been without tents or blankets, with no change of clothing since we left our knapsacks on the field back near Thoroughfare Gap [Va.].” The uniforms “were ragged, our shoes no better,” and numbers lacked socks. Rations were also barely palatable, “unfit to eat almost,” the hardtack, “filled full of little black bugs.”

Ingalls likely would have told a soldier like Burlingame that the quartermasters did the best they could under the circumstances. Clothing and equipment resupply and better quality food would have to wait until the emergency created by the Confederate invasion had passed. The soldiers responded by straggling and foraging, which created its own set of problems for McClellan.

When the army reached Frederick, Ingalls’ problems eased momentarily, as supplies could be transported there by train. But when the army moved west to South Mountain and Antietam, it became necessary to again haul those supplies by wagon, the Rebels having destroyed the railroad bridge over the Monocacy River. Supplies might be carried here by rail, but they had to be unloaded and transferred to wagons. Once the army reached the Antietam battlefield, Ingalls established a depot at Hagerstown, where supplies could be carried via the Cumberland Valley Railroad. From this depot, it was a 13.5-mile haul to the army around Sharpsburg, but this was better than the difficult 22-mile drive from Frederick, crossing Catoctin Mountain and South Mountain, which placed incredible stress on the animals pulling the heavy wagons.

The Union victory at Antietam and retreat of the Confederates to Virginia did not ease Ingalls’ labors. The period of quiet after the battle was spent trying to make good the shortages of which soldiers such as Burlingame complained. Ingalls and his quartermasters worked tirelessly, but the problem with getting clothing, forage, and equipment to the army—now spread out from Sharpsburg to Harpers Ferry—proved maddeningly slow.

Some sense of the task’s magnitude was the fact that the Army of the Potomac was just under half the size of the city of Baltimore’s population of 212,000. It took more than a snap of the fingers to establish a smooth flow of abundant supplies to an army of this size over a transportation system that was not designed to supply so many people and animals in this part of Maryland. Colonel Charles Wainwright, the 1st Corps’ chief of artillery, grumbled on October 10 (nearly a month after Antietam) that the corps had “received next to no supplies, and is just as badly off as directly after the battle.”

The situation slowly improved but hadn’t been entirely sorted out when McClellan, prodded fervently by Lincoln and the War Department, moved his army from its Maryland camps into Virginia to start a new campaign. On November 7, McClellan was replaced by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, but Ingalls was one McClellan legacy who fortunately remained and would continue to work logistical miracles for the army’s grateful commanders to follow: Burnside, Joe Hooker, and George Meade, as well as U.S. Army General-in-Chief Ulysses S. Grant.

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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Tracking down obscure monuments is a popular activity for those who enjoy tramping Gettysburg’s fields. One of the least visited in the heart of the battlefield is the simple four-foot granite monument marking the approximate location where Colonel George Willard—commanding the 3rd Brigade, 3rd Division, 2nd Corps of the Army of the Potomac—was killed on July 2, 1863. It was erected in 1888 by survivors of the 125th New York, the regiment Willard commanded before assuming brigade command.

The reason this monument is so seldom visited is two-fold; Willard is a relative unknown and it requires a hike of several hundred yards across an uneven meadow to what is known as the Codori-Trostle thicket. Since there is no well-trodden path, once you reach the thicket it can take a few minutes of hunting to locate the monument.

Chaplain Ezra D. Simons, the 125th New York’s historian, called Willard the “embodiment of a true soldier—strict when on duty, cool amid danger, of oft-proven bravery, respected alike by subordinates and superiors.” Simons’ history was published the same year Willard’s marker was placed. In their own way, both reflected how time, and death on a battlefield, can soften opinions, for initially the unit’s soldiers utterly despised their colonel.

Willard came from a military family, but his father preferred he pursue a business career. Nevertheless, when the Mexican War came, George enlisted and would distinguish himself at the 1847 Battle of Chapultepec. On the recommendation of U.S. Army commander Winfield Scott, he earned a commission to the 8th U.S. Infantry.

On August 15, 1862, the 35-year-old Willard made the jump from the Regular Army to the Volunteer Army and was appointed colonel of the new 125th New York. Although some Regular Army officers conceded that working with and motivating volunteers was different than regulars, Willard was not one of them. A rigid disciplinarian, he quickly earned his men’s hatred.

Unit morale was not improved by the Union debacle at Harpers Ferry in September 1862, when the 125th surrendered with the rest of the garrison to Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson. The 125th was sent with the other Union prisoners to Camp Douglas’ parole camp in Chicago, where they were confined until they could be exchanged. They became known collectively as the “Harpers Ferry Cowards,” only adding to their demoralization. Finally in November they were exchanged and sent to Washington, D.C. There, the business of reorganizing the regiments and rebuilding morale began.

Willard continued to founder as the regiment’s commander. His lieutenant colonel, Lewis Crandell, wrote in December that Willard “has come to the conclusion that he cannot or has not the faculty to command a volunteer Regt successfully,” and had told the regiment’s adjutant “he would be d—-d if he did not resign as the regt was wholly demoralized.” When Willard took a leave of absence, Crandell noted how the men “have become cheerful, and have done more drilling than they have since we left Chicago.”

The 125th, 126th, 111th, and 39th New York formed what was known as the “Harpers Ferry Brigade,” and in January 1863 received a new commander, Brig. Gen. Alexander Hays. Although he also had been Regular Army, Hays understood volunteers and knew how to make soldiers and build morale. It seems he also helped Willard reset his relationship with his men.

On June 25, 1863, Hays’ brigade was assigned to the Army of the Potomac, then marching north to confront the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania. In the reorganization of the army that took place on the march, Hays’ brigade was assigned to the 2nd Corps, with Hays promoted to command of the 3rd Division. The promotion put Willard, as the senior colonel, in command of the brigade. By this point, however, opinions about him had changed. Even though his soldiers accepted that he remained a firm disciplinarian, they had also come to recognize that he displayed “the utmost care for the welfare of his men.”

A week later, at Gettysburg, Willard’s brigade found itself arrayed in a reserve position along the northern end of Cemetery Ridge. The men all hoped for a chance to erase the stain of Harpers Ferry from their reputations. They spent the afternoon of July 2 listening to a furious battle on the Union left. Late in the afternoon, with a general collapse of that flank, troops of the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Corps began streaming to the rear in retreat. Yawning gaps developed in the Union front that advancing Confederate troops threatened to exploit. It was imperative that those gaps be closed, whatever the cost. As dusk approached, Hays was ordered to send a brigade to the left. He chose Willard, instructing the colonel to “take your brigade there and knock the h— out of the rebs.”

Nearing the southern end of Cemetery Ridge, in the vicinity of where the Pennsylvania Monument stands today, the brigade encountered the confusion brought on by the frantic exodus of 3rd Corps soldiers retreating from the Confederate onslaught. Willard deployed his brigade approximately along the line where Hancock Avenue now runs. “It was difficult to keep a line in the face of these squads of flying men,” wrote one 111th New York soldier, who noted they also faced artillery fire—“terrific” in its intensity. Then, from a thicket about 400 yards to the west, came small-arms fire from Brig. Gen. William Barksdale’s advancing Confederates.

Under orders from corps commander Maj. Gen. Winfield Hancock, Willard directed his brigade forward. Although, as Ben Thompson wrote, “men fell at every step,” the New Yorkers—their bayonets fixed and shouting “Remember Harpers Ferry”—swarmed forward. Despite bullets and enemy shells tearing through “our ranks fearfully,” they drove back Barksdale’s men, mortally wounding the general in the melee, and continued on toward the Emmitsburg Road. As they neared the road, though, shelling from Rebel batteries around the Peach Orchard, as well as friendly fire from Union artillery, forced Willard to order a retreat in order to re-form east of the thicket.

That proved difficult, and losses were heavy. The atmosphere choked with smoke and the noise of artillery deafening, Willard rode among his men, attempting to steady and reorganize them into regimental formations. And then an enemy shell found its mark on the colonel, almost decapitating him. To prevent his sudden, gruesome death from demoralizing the men, Willard’s mangled body was quickly gathered up and carried from the field.

The stigma of Harpers Ferry had been erased, but at a terrible cost. Monuments are about memory. Willard may not have been “loved” by his men, but the granite marker standing in the Codori-Trostle thicket is a fitting reminder that he had earned their respect and that his courage and sacrifice would not be forgotten.

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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Inexperienced 126th New York mustered in three weeks before it surrendered on eve of Antietam

In its November 1862 report on the disastrous surrender of the U.S. garrison at Harpers Ferry, Va., two days before the Battle of Antietam, the Army commission investigating singled out the performance of one regiment as worthy of special condemnation, calling attention “to the disgraceful behavior of the One hundred and twenty-sixth New York Infantry.”

Recruited from the state’s Finger Lakes region, the 126th New York had been in service for barely three weeks when it was surrendered at Harpers Ferry on September 15, 1862. The 126th had been ordered to Harpers Ferry only a week after mustering in, along with the equally green 111th and 115th New York. In reality, the regiment consisted of uniformed and equipped civilians, with no training in marching, maneuvering, or in firing their weapons. Harpers Ferry seemed a relatively safe location for these regiments to gain some experience and train for field service. The 126th’s colonel was 49-year-old Eliakim Sherrill, a Geneva, N.Y., farmer and former U.S. congressman and state senator. Sherrill had dabbled in the state militia but admitted when his regiment was ordered to the defense of Maryland Heights on September 12 “that he knew nothing about military; that he made no pretensions to military; that he was just in the field and green, but if there was to be fighting he was ready to go.”

Sherrill’s unit drew the unlucky assignment of providing reinforcements to Maryland Heights, key to the defense of Harpers Ferry and currently threatened by an advance of two brigades of Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws’ Division. The march to the summit was grueling for the green soldiers. As Company E Private Marcus Andrus wrote his sister: “The distance from our camp on Bolivar Heights to Maryland Heights is about four miles, and over one of the worst roads to travel that ever lay out doors. We were nearly three hours in reaching there, and a more tired, hungry and thirsty set of mortals you never heard of in your life.” Sherrill was missing some 200 of his men, who were on picket and could not be recalled before the regiment marched. This left him about 800 effectives.

The commanding officer on Maryland Heights was 32nd Ohio Colonel Thomas H. Ford. Because Ford was physically immobilized due to recent surgery, he delegated tactical command of the troops facing McLaws’ advance to his major, Sylvester M. Hewitt. Neither man was a gifted leader. Ford and Hewitt had a large area to defend, but they compounded their problems with a ruinous system of detaching individual companies for various duties. That wasn’t a serious problem for veteran troops but was a recipe for disaster for a raw unit such as the 126th. Individual companies and their officers had no experience in deploying skirmishers or other elemental operational duties. Hewitt took two of Sherrill’s companies for one mission and three others for another, halving the 126th’s strength.

The balance of the regiment marched north to where Union skirmishers were sparring with Confederates of Brig. Gen. Joseph Kershaw’s South Carolina brigade. Hewitt led the 126th to a position in rear of the skirmish line and for the first time the regiment formed a line of battle. This was not a drill field but a dense wood with gunfire exploding a short distance away. The enemy could be heard but not seen. Bullets clipped through the trees. Sherrill thought the situation worrisome enough he recalled two of his companies that Hewitt had detached.

The skirmishing ended at nightfall, but resumed about 7 the next morning. Utterly unprepared for combat, the 126th greatly exaggerated the strength of the enemy in its front—15,000, Private Andrus would write—and performed poorly. “All we could do was ‘skedaddle’ for our own breastwork,” about a mile in the rear, Andrus wrote. In reality, Kershaw had only about 1,200 men, but they were experienced veterans.

herrill and his adjutant, Lieutenant Samuel Barras, beat their stampeding regiment in the race to the breastwork, a log work that stretched across the summit of the mountain. The path along the mountain spine passed through an opening in the works. Sherrill and Barras positioned themselves here and managed to rally most of the regiment as it arrived behind the works. This was the best possible circumstance for the New York rookies. They had good cover and did not need to maneuver. They were also buttressed by parts of more experienced regiments, such as the 32nd Ohio and 39th New York.

The battle renewed and, according to Andrus, “we had a pretty lively time of it.” Sherrill proved exceptionally—and rashly—brave, climbing up on the log works to shout encouragement to his men. When someone warned him he was exposing himself too much, he thundered, “G_d d__m the exposure: no rebel ball can hit me.” But they could. A bullet struck him in the lower jaw; a bloody, frightening wound. His fall further shook the confidence of his men, though they fought on. Minutes later it was learned that another Confederate brigade, Brig. Gen. William Barksdale’s Mississippians, was threatening the right flank of the barricade defenders. Shaken by the news, Major Hewitt fatefully sent orders for the men to fall back. Confusion reigned at the barricade, where some officers, knowing the strength of their cover, tried to keep the men at the works. Eventually though, the defense collapsed and everyone, rookies and veterans, streamed to the rear.

Andrus was furious when he later read in a New York newspaper that his regiment was the first to run from the barricade and the cause of the Union defeat on Maryland Heights, writing, “All I have to say about this is that it is a downright lie!” The first ones to run were the famous Garibaldi Guards and the next were the Ohio boys. This I know to be a fact, as I was there and saw the whole of it.” The truth was that any of the new regiments in the Harpers Ferry garrison placed in the position the 126th found itself would have suffered the same outcome. The commission’s censure of their performance deflected responsibility from the real culprit of the debacle: a system that placed them in harm’s way before they were trained.

Over the next nine months, the 126th would hone itself into a well-trained fighting unit and redeem its reputation at Gettysburg.

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg. 

This story appeared in the May 2020 issue of America’s Civil War. 

Two of the 11th Connecticut’s officers died in gallant rush on Burnside Bridge  

On the surface, the attack by the 11th Connecticut Infantry upon the Lower Bridge (Burnside Bridge today) during the September 17, 1862, Battle of Antietam was a straightforward affair. In the standard account, the 11th advanced in the first assault upon the bridge, hoping to draw enemy fire and allow Colonel George Crook’s 2nd Brigade, 9th Corps, to storm across Antietam Creek. But suffering heavy casualties as it neared the bridge, the regiment had no choice but to retreat. The general framework of this is true, but when we probe further, we discover a story more complex and interesting than a simple regimental advance and retreat.

The 11th’s commander that day was West Point–trained Colonel Henry W. Kingsbury. When Kingsbury took command of the regiment earlier that summer, he found the officers “coarse and ill-informed,” and the enlisted men “miserably disciplined.” One member of the regiment recalled that Kingsbury “descended upon this casual band like a bolt of blue lightening [sic],” and over a period of weeks weeded out incompetent leaders and molded the unit into a well-trained and disciplined fighting force.

There were still problems, like those even the best of regiments face when combat looms. The 11th had four men desert the night before the battle, and when Kingsbury gave the regiment its orders for the attack the following morning, Sergeant David Kittler, bearer of the national colors, refused to advance, declaring the color guard was understrength and could not protect him. A physical confrontation ensued in which an unnamed officer slashed Kittler’s arm with a sword. At some point during or after that disconcerting event, a corporal stepped forward and agreed to take the flag from Kittler.

To reach the bridge, the regiment needed to pass through a cornfield, and then cross a plowed field and meadow. As the open ground extended for nearly 300 yards, Kingsbury recognized that getting his men across would be a formidable challenge. He understood that a regimental charge over this ground—which is the way the 11th’s attack is usually depicted—was a recipe for slaughter, so he ordered Companies A and B, both armed with Sharps rifles, to advance to the bridge as skirmishers. He divided the remaining eight companies into two wings for greater tactical flexibility, with Lt. Col. Griffin A. Stedman Jr. commanding the right wing and Kingsbury the left. Stedman’s mission was to advance to a partly wooded hill about 250 yards east of the bridge and provide covering fire, while Kingsbury’s wing supported the skirmishers.

Those skirmishers did not sprint toward the bridge, as we might imagine. Instead, they advanced warily, scanning the opposite bank for the unseen enemy. Not a shot was fired at them as they neared the bridge. A number of the Confederates were armed with smoothbore muskets and their officers likely wanted the Yankees to get within effective range before firing. Company A’s skirmishers were closest to the bridge. When their captain, John Griswold, saw his men hesitate, he scaled a fence, shouting, “Come on, boys.” Several of his men followed, just as the Confederates opened fire. Having jumped into the creek, Griswold was midway across when he was mortally wounded. He managed to stagger to the west bank before falling.

A resulting rescue effort produced conflicting accounts after the battle. Nathan Mayer, the regiment’s assistant surgeon, claimed that when he learned Griswold had been shot, he fetched a stretcher, grabbed four men, and sprinted into the middle of the fight, personally crossing the creek to retrieve Griswold without losing a man. But years later, Company A Private Philo Pearce wrote that he and a few comrades were the ones to cross the creek and secure Griswold. Conflicting accounts like these from reliable eyewitnesses unfortunately bedevil historians attempting to reconstruct a battle’s action.

It is shocking that Companies A and B were not cut to pieces by the close-range fire. Griswold was the only soldier killed, with 14 wounded in both units. How to account for this is uncertain. The sources from the 11th offer no explanation. Perhaps it was because they were in skirmish order. But it is also possible that after pinning the skirmishers down, the Confederates shifted most of their fire to Kingsbury’s approaching left wing.

As the left wing crossed the plowed ground and entered the meadow before the bridge, the Confederates opened what one New Englander described as a “murderous” fire. This expression is often a cliché in Civil War-era writing, but the 11th’s survivors gave it validity. “All but myself of the first eight of our company fell at their first fire,” wrote a Company K soldier. Companies E, D and H lost 20 men killed total, more than half the killed in the entire regiment. Alonzo Maynard, a Company I private, was shot five times and crippled for life. Arriving near the bridge, Kingsbury shouted for his men to take cover, but there was little other than the fence along the road and a handful of trees near the creek’s bank. It is revealing of the respect Kingsbury’s men had for him that they kept pace in the face of the fire. Wrote one soldier: “We followed him, but I doubt if we would have followed any other officer.”

Inevitably, the Confederates targeted the colonel. He was hit in the heel. When he hobbled over to tell one of his captains he was wounded, another bullet struck him in the shoulder and knocked him down. The captain and two men tried to carry him to the rear, but the Confederates kept firing at the party and Kingsbury was hit again in the right foot before taking a final, mortal, wound through the body. The merciless nature of Kingsbury’s death makes Mayer’s story of safely retrieving Griswold sound even more fantastic, but it does not mean it didn’t happen. Death can sometimes lurk in one yard of ground and not in another.

The damage done to the regiment was uneven, but all felt the mental trauma that accompanies bloody fighting. In trying to articulate for those at home what he had experienced, George Bronson, a hospital steward with the 11th, wrote, “I do not know the name of the creek, but I have named it the creek of death. Such slaughter I hope never to witness again.”

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

This story appeared in the March 2020 issue of America’s Civil War.

It is frequently presumed that Pickett’s Charge, on July 3, 1863, was doomed to defeat before a single cannon opened fire or a Confederate soldier stepped off toward Cemetery Ridge. No question, Lee’s plan for a massive frontal assault against the Union center on Gettysburg’s third day was a huge gamble that might cost him dearly in casualties. Two days earlier, however, he had watched his soldiers successfully execute a frontal assault on Seminary Ridge. The scale was smaller, but the risks were similar.

The attack on Seminary Ridge by Maj. Gen. Dorsey Pender’s troops, of A.P. Hill’s Corps, is not well known in the popular memory of the battle, and it doesn’t help that a portion of that hotly contested ground, owned by the Lutheran Theological Seminary, now holds a parking lot and that some terrain has been recontoured.

In 1862, Pender’s unit had been A.P. Hill’s famous Light Division, but when the Army of Northern Virginia was reorganized after Chancellorsville in May 1863, two brigades were transferred to create a new division under Maj. Gen. Henry Heth. The four remaining brigades featured crack combat veterans led by Pender, one of the rising stars in Lee’s army. On July 1, Pender’s men followed Heth’s Division on its reconnaissance-in-force up the Chambersburg Pike toward Gettysburg. After Heth suffered defeat during the morning action, Pender advanced to Herr Ridge, about two miles west of town. When the fighting renewed about 3 p.m., he advanced with three brigades to support Heth, fiercely engaged in bloody fighting along McPherson’s Ridge and Herbst Woods.

As the South Carolinians of Colonel Abner Perrin’s Brigade approached Willoughby Run, west of McPherson’s Ridge, they encountered a field “thick with wounded hurrying to the rear, and the ground was grey with dead and disabled” from Brig. Gen. James Pettigrew’s North Carolina brigade. Shocked by the combat they had just experienced, some of Pettigrew’s men warned the South Carolinians that “we would all be killed if we went forward.”

By 3:30 p.m., Heth, with help from Robert Rodes’ Division, had driven the Union 1st Corps from McPherson’s Ridge and Herbst Woods—at a frightful cost. Heth’s men were fought out and low on ammunition.

“We could see the Yankees running in wild disorder,” wrote a 1st South Carolina officer. To complete the rout, A.P. Hill was confident all he needed to do was commit Pender’s Division.

The Yankees were running, but they were far from routed. Rather, they were hurrying to cross the open space between McPherson’s Ridge and Seminary Ridge to get cover. Four 1st Corps batteries, with 22 guns, had been unlimbered along Seminary Ridge, from the unfinished railroad cut north of the Chambersburg Pike to the Hagers-
town Road. In the small wood lot directly in front of the Seminary building, 1st Corps soldiers earlier had dismantled fences and built a rail barricade that curved through the entire woods. Survivors of the Herbst Woods and McPherson’s Ridge fighting took cover behind the barricade or fell in between the artillery batteries and prepared to defend their position.

Pender wanted to have his men move swiftly in force and give the Federals no time to reorganize or rally. Before the Rebels could step off, however, Union Brig Gen. John Buford adeptly maneuvered his cavalry and impeded the movement of Brig. Gen. James Lane’s Brigade on Pender’s right, letting Pender advance with only two brigades: Brig. Gen. Alfred Scales’ North Carolinians and Perrin’s South Carolinians, about 3,000 men total.

At about 4 p.m., the two brigades started forward at a quick step. When they crested McPherson’s Ridge, the Union batteries, their guns loaded with shrapnel or canister, were ready. As the gray lines passed over the ridge, the guns opened fire with terrible effect. Scales’ Brigade took the brunt of that fire—“[e]very discharge made sad loss in the line,” wrote one North Carolinian—and Union infantry added to the slaughter, felling Scales’ men by the dozens. Though survivors managed to reach low ground between the two ridges, Scales reported, “our line had been broken up, and now only a squad here and there marked the place where regiments had rested.” Scales was wounded, all but one of his field officers had been shot, and the 13th North Carolina alone had lost 150 of 180 men. Some survivors lay down and began firing at the enemy. Others, panicked by the slaughter, fled back across McPherson’s Ridge.

On Scales’ right, a 14th South Carolina captain, whose regiment was advancing toward the barricade, described the ground before him as “the fairest field of fire and finest front for destruction on an advancing foe that could well be conceived.” Perrin was spared the worst of the artillery fire that had ripped Scales’ line, but the small-arms fire was murderous. The 14th South Carolina suffered 200 casualties.

Some of Buford’s dismounted troopers, south of the Hagerstown Pike, raked Perrin’s right with carbine fire, but Perrin, displaying remarkable coolness, dispatched two of his regiments to deal with Buford and, finding a seam in the Union defenses on Seminary Ridge, pushed Major C.W. McCreary’s 1st South Carolina (Provisional Army) through it, unraveling the entire Federal line.Charles Wainwright, the 1st Corps artillery commander, remarked as he watched the South Carolinians sweep forward in spite of heavy losses: “Never have I seen such a charge. Not a man seemed to falter. Lee may well be proud of his infantry.”

Though Pender’s Division endured approximately 1,100 casualties, his men pressed on into Gettysburg, scooping up hundreds of prisoners. But it proved a tactical, rather than operational or strategic, success. At the end of the day, the enemy retained the key terrain in the Gettysburg area. The subsequent fighting would cause Lee to attempt to duplicate the feat of Pender on July 3, this time with 11 brigades instead of two and with a massive artillery preparation.

As would be proved late in the day July 3, Lee miscalculated. The enemy were not the battered regiments and brigades that Pender had faced on Seminary Ridge, but determined infantry supported by a fearsome assemblage of artillery. Élan and courage carried the day on July 1. They would not on July 3.

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

This column appeared in the January 2020 issue of America’s Civil War.

Making Gettysburg the shrine it is today required a true team effort, with the input of veterans from both sides

This is the second part of ACW’s two-part story on renowned Civil War veteran William Robbins. William McKendree Robbins’ journal entry for July 1, 1899, read: “This morning I went with Gen. Chamberlain of Maine who was the Colonel of the 20th Me. Reg’t, & we viewed the lines of the fight at the southern end of Little Round Top. Our respective recollections of this battle & its incidents on that ground were in remarkable accord.” Thirty-six years earlier the two men confronted each other as enemies in the desperate struggle for control of that crucial hill, Robbins as major of the 4th Alabama Infantry. Now both men worked for a common cause—to preserve and protect the Gettysburg battlefield for both current and future generations. Robbins, as a commissioner of Gettysburg National Military Park, drew his salary from the government he had once opposed. But no man ever worked harder, more diligently and honestly, to represent the United States government than this former Confederate soldier.

Robbins returned to Gettysburg in a somewhat roundabout way. In May 1893, Secretary of War Daniel S. Lamont appointed a three-man commission to survey the battlefield and mark the lines of battle of the respective armies. The original commissioners were John P. Nicholson, who had served in the 28th Pennsylvania; civilian John Bachelder, known today as the battle’s greatest historian; and William H. Forney, a veteran of the 10th Alabama. When we consider how triumphant governments usually deal with their opponents in other nations’ civil wars, it is remarkable that less than 30 years after America’s seminal conflict, members of the side that had fought to rupture our nation were given key roles in such a commission.

Misfortune, however, decimated the commission before it began its work in earnest. Forney, in poor health, passed away in January 1894, Bachelder that December. Charles A. Richardson, a 126th New York Infantry veteran, replaced Bachelder and Lamont tapped Robbins to fill in for Forney.

Within a year of Robbins assuming his duties, Congress passed legislation creating Gettysburg National Military Park. The Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association (GBMA), which had worked to preserve the Union side of the field since 1864, transferred its 522 acres to the federal government. The task before Robbins, Richardson, and Nicholson was more than simply marking positions and surveying property. They would be responsible for the appraisal and acquisition of land, and for the construction of roads and bridges, as well as other improvements. They were to be battlefield interpreters, supervisors of law enforcement and resource management, and needed to write and supervise contracts—working directly with Congress and the war secretary in securing appropriations.

They also needed to deal with storm damage, vandalism, bullet-collecting visitors, monument dedications, greedy landowners hoping to profit off the government, and those who sought to undermine the effort to build a national park. The job required diplomacy, tact, patience, legal skills, dedication, and a strong work ethic.

Robbins’ journal gives us a good sense of the scope and variety of his daily work. On August 7, 1897, he and Nicholson went to Culp’s Hill to inspect the avenue being built there, then continued to the flag pole on Barlow’s Knoll, and then on to the foundry to inspect the text on the cast-iron tablet of G.T. Anderson’s Brigade.

In one entry, Robbins noted he had spent an entire day writing the inscriptions for tablets to Generals William Robertson’s and Benjamin Benning’s brigades. The limited word count allowed—only “about 15 lines of 10 or 12 words each”—proved a constant challenge.

Veterans frequently visited Robbins at the commission office in the Gettysburg Hotel, and he often took them out on the battlefield—an endeavor he enjoyed immensely. Once, finding a visiting veteran “in narrow circumstances,” Robbins paid for his lodging and food. Among the generals who traversed the field with him were O.O. Howard, Dan Sickles, Alexander Webb, and James Longstreet. Robbins would note that he particularly enjoyed the time he spent with Longstreet and that he found Howard “very pleasant indeed.”

Robbins moved as easily among Union vets as he did among Confederates. He represented the government at the monument dedication of the 13th Vermont and the Union veterans showered him “with many compliments” for his remarks at the event. When Colonel Joseph Hawley, who had fought at Antietam with the 124th Pennsylvania, visited in August 1903, he and Robbins spent an evening at the Eagle Hotel, where “conversation about Civil War incidents” ensued and “time slipped by unnoted until past Church going hour.”

Not all went smoothly. William C. Oates, recent governor of Alabama and former colonel of the 15th Alabama, which had opposed the 20th Maine on Little Round Top, wished to erect a monument to his regiment where they had fought. Park policy, carried over from the GBMA era, was for a regiment’s original monument to be erected where it was placed in their armies’ general line of battle—a policy established after Union regiments began clustering their monuments at the Copse of Trees on Cemetery Ridge, leaving a confusing hodgepodge of monuments there.

After the initial monument was placed, a position marker or monument could be erected to show a point to which the unit had advanced. What this meant for Oates was he would have to place his monument on Warfield Ridge, where his regiment began its attack. Robbins did his best to work with Oates and find a compromise, but when the Alabamian could not get his way, he sought to undermine Robbins and the commission by enlisting people to appeal to Congress “to have the Gbg park marked differently from our method, putting the tablets all over the field.” In the end, the secretary of war supported the park commission’s decision.

Robbins’ journal for November 17, 1904, read simply, “Busy with my pen all day at my desk.” It was the last full day he would work at Gettysburg. His health in decline, he headed home to Statesville, N.C., the next day. Although he continued doing commission work from home, his condition worsened. He died May 3, 1905.

“His death is a great loss to his people whom he has lived and served so long,” wrote the Watauga Democrat, “yet his memory is with us still, and his influence for good will live for generations to come.” How true. His good work still stands at Gettysburg and millions have benefited from it.

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

An ‘earnest’ rebel from Alabama helped save Antietam and Gettysburg for future generations

The soldiers of Maj. Gen. John B. Hood’s Division waited in the West Woods on September 17, 1862. Union shrapnel, shell, and solid shot rained down upon the woods, at times sending tree limbs crashing down upon the soldiers below. Captain William McKendree Robbins, acting major of the 4th Alabama, was standing beside a friend talking when a shell or shell fragment struck the young man—the “noble and handsome” Lieutenant David B. King—in the head, spattering Robbins with blood and brains and hurling a piece of King’s skull into the ranks of the 11th Mississippi. No human can witness such an event and not be traumatized, yet Robbins had no time to dwell on the horror. Minutes later, a “to arms” order was sounded and Hood’s Division poured out of the woods to launch a devastating counterattack.

The 4th proceeded double-quick up the Smoketown Road in column as the rest of the division deployed in the fields to their left. “The bullets began to zip about us, very lively,” recalled Robbins, who was disturbed that Captain Lawrence H. Scruggs, the acting lieutenant colonel and regimental commander, had not deployed the 4th Alabama. The problem soon resolved itself when a bullet struck Scruggs in the foot and command fell to Robbins. He deployed the regiment at once. As it advanced toward the East Woods, elements of the 21st Georgia of Colonel James A. Walker’s Brigade joined on its right.

Under the pressure of Hood’s counterattack, the Federal troops firing on Robbins and his regiment fell back and the Alabamians and Georgians pushed up into the East Woods. Robbins halted his advance about midway in the woods and had his men take advantage of the abundant cover. They were soon joined by the 5th Texas, which moved to the right of the line. All told, about 500 Confederates now occupied the woods.

Hood’s counterattack roared up to the northern edge of the Miller cornfield, where Union resistance inflicted devastating casualties and drove it back. But Robbins and his small force held on, repulsing all efforts to dislodge them. Because of their cover, Robbins’ losses were not heavy, but one of his casualties was personally devastating. His younger brother, Madison, serving as an enlisted man, was shot through the throat and killed.

Needing men and ammunition, Robbins sent back repeatedly for both. Colonel Evander M. Law, Robbins’ brigade commander, encouraged the captain to “hold your position, Hill is moving to your support,” meaning troops of Maj. Gen. D.H. Hill’s Division. As for ammunition, Robbins remembered, “somehow we in the wood were overlooked & no supply came,” so his men scrounged from the dead and wounded. Garland’s Brigade, of Hill’s Division, commanded by Colonel Duncan K. McRae, soon entered the woods behind Robbins. About this time, a new Union advance approached the woods from the north. After a brief resistance, McRae’s Brigade fled to the rear. Without ammunition, his numbers dwindling, and the enemy threatening to envelop his right flank, Robbins had no choice but to retreat.

It was a perilous withdrawal. The enemy fire was so heavy that Robbins concluded he could not survive. Determined not to be shot in the back, he kept his face toward the Federals while his men were “dropping all about me.” When he arrived at the edge of the woods unscathed, he recalled, “Thinks I to myself I believe I shall escape after all,” and he made “a little better time” to the West Woods. His small mixed command had held the East Woods for more than 90 minutes, yet no ranking officer on the Confederate side seemed to understand what he had done. He received no acknowledgment in either Law’s or Hood’s after-action reports. Robbins was sick after the battle—a common occurrence for those exposed to severe trauma and great stress—and did not write a report, which may account for his lack of recognition.

Robbins served through the rest of the war, fighting at Little Round Top at Gettysburg and suffering a severe wound in the Wilderness in May 1864. But he returned to duty and surrendered with his regiment at Appomattox. Although he served in an Alabama regiment, Robbins was a North Carolinian. He had moved to Alabama with his wife in 1855 to open a female college, but soon made a career change from education to the law. His wife died three years later, leaving Robbins a widower with two young children. He left his Selma law practice, volunteering immediately when war came.

After the war, he returned to North Carolina. He had married his wife’s sister during the conflict and they settled in Salisbury, where Robbins resumed a legal career. In 1868 and 1870, he was elected to North Carolina’s Senate, then served 1872-1876 as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Robbins was a staunch conservative who opposed Reconstruction, including African-American suffrage, and supported prohibition. While he took great pride in his service as a soldier, he did not cling to the cause of the Confederacy or lament its defeat. “There was not a more sincere or thoroughly earnest ‘rebel,’ I suppose, in the Southern armies,” he wrote in 1891, “but it’s all over and nobody is sorry for that.” He now embraced our “great common country which will soon be the center and acknowledged greatest of the powers of the world.”

In 1891, 10th Maine Infantry veteran John Gould, who was attempting to track down what regiment he had fought in the East Woods and which Rebel unit mortally wounded Maj. Gen. Joseph Mansfield, contacted Robbins. Gould’s inquiry opened memories Robbins had locked away for years. They flowed out in an 18-page letter to the New Englander. He teasingly admonished Gould “for having tempted me to ‘fight’ my battle again which I have never done before.” Through their correspondence, it became clear to Robbins that Gould’s regiment might have been the one responsible for killing his brother. Yet instead of being angry, Robbins warmly embraced Gould as a friend, signing his many letters, “With best wishes, Your friend.”

Four years later, in 1895, President Grover Cleveland selected Robbins to serve on the park commission for the newly created Gettysburg National Military Park. Thirty-two years after trying to fight his way up Little Round Top, Robbins would return to Gettysburg, this time to help develop a park for all Americans. In our next Crossroads we will take up what he did there in the final years of his life.

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

For one Union regiment, the dreadful casualty count from Pickett’s Charge included numerous desertions

When we think of deserters in the Civil War, we imagine an army’s cowards, scoundrels, and riff-raff who abandon their comrades to save their own skins. While some fit this profile, the reality is that what prompted men to desert was often more complex than the simple broad brush that is usually applied. A spike in desertions typically followed every major battle, including Gettysburg. Even the best regiments experienced desertions. The 69th Pennsylvania Infantry is an example. It was an excellent unit, but between July 5 and July 17, 1863, it lost 11 soldiers to desertion. Their stories can provide us some idea of desertion’s complexities.

The 69th was engaged July 2–3 on Cemetery Ridge. On the 3rd, its position was struck by the full fury of Pickett’s Charge. The famous Copse of Trees stood directly in the 69th’s rear. With Confederates surging forward in their front and on both flanks, the regiment held, though the cost was high. In the two days of combat, 40 were killed, 80 wounded, and 17 captured, just more than 50 percent of the regiment’s strength.

The first to desert was Private George Haws of Company A, a 29-year-old plumber in civilian life. Haws was Major James Duffy’s orderly. When Duffy was seriously wounded July 3, Hays accompanied him to his home in Philadelphia. Once the major was safe, Haws disappeared into the city, never to be seen by his regiment again. He apparently went straight to the docks and, probably under an assumed name, signed on as a merchant sailor, concluding perhaps he would not survive another battle like Gettysburg.

Each man had his limit of how much combat he could endure without breaking, and Haws may have reached his in the terrifying action of July 3. That may have also been why Patrick Harvey of Company F deserted on July 6. Harvey’s company was overrun by Pickett’s men on July 3, with nearly every man killed, wounded, or captured. Where Harvey went is unknown, but he returned to the regiment on September 27 carrying his rifle and equipment. The Army court-martialed him and docked his pay, but no more. He served out the remainder of his enlistment without incident. Even though both men were in the battle, you’ll not find Haws’ name on the 69th’s tablet on the Pennsylvania Memorial; Harvey’s is. Deserters who returned were deemed worthy of having their name on the monument. Those, like Haws, who never returned were omitted.

A third soldier deserted the regiment on July 7, three more on July 11, one each on July 12 and 13, and two more on July 14. The 11th deserter was John Harvey Sr., on July 17.

Not all of these were guilty. Patrick Lundy straggled during the regiment’s march July 12, was captured by Confederate partisans, then rescued by Union cavalry during a skirmish. In the action, Lundy lost two fingers and wound up in a Washington, D.C., hospital. Word failed to reach his company commander, and Lundy was carried on the regimental rolls as a deserter until August, when he wrote his commander that he had not deserted but was wounded and in the hospital.

John Eckard of Company A was one of those to desert on July 11. He was 27 and a laborer before the war. He had already deserted once, on August 28, 1862, and returned on April 29, 1863, under a pardon President Lincoln issued to entice deserters to return to their regiments. Other than the period he had absconded, Eckard served in every battle in which the regiment participated. The Army tracked him down in Philadelphia in September. He was court-martialed, sacrificing all back pay, and was ordered to pay the government $10 a month of his wages for nine months. Eckard, like many in the regiment, was poor and the sentence hit him hard financially. He appealed to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in March 1864 to be allowed to reenlist as a veteran volunteer. Because of his sentence, he had been denied this right. “You will be rendering a never to be forgotten favor on [me],” by approving the request, he wrote to Stanton. The secretary approved and Eckard reenlisted. It did not end well for him. The private was captured at Ream’s Station, Va., on August 25, 1864, and sent to North Carolina’s Salisbury Prison, where he soon died of disease.

From his record, William Farrell was a good soldier, but he had quarreled with Colonel Dennis O’Kane, the 69th’s commander. Farrell was wounded in the July 3 fighting and likely didn’t know that O’Kane had been killed. Determined he would not return to serve under O’Kane again, Farrell slipped out of an Army hospital in Philadelphia on July 13 and made his way to the city’s Marine Corps recruiting office. He enlisted for six years under the name William Giblin, served out his enlistment honorably, and was discharged in 1869. Years later he applied for a pension for disability from his service in both arms. When the remarkably thorough Pension Office investigated, officials discovered he had deserted from the 69th Pennsylvania but had served honorably in the Marines. His pension for service with the 69th was denied, but approved for the Marine Corps.

Other than Eckard, who had previously deserted, each of these deserters had good records as soldiers. They had done their duty and been present in all the regiment’s battles and campaigns. Something about Gettysburg, or perhaps the cumulation of everything leading to Gettysburg, tipped the scale in them. Each had his own reason to desert his comrades, a decision that could not have been easy. They were not scamps or cowards, but men who had reached the end of what they could bear. All paid some price for their decision. Their story is a reminder that the war’s casualties were not just the killed, wounded, and captured.

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

Already a Confederate hero, John B. Gordon still couldn’t resist tweaking the record a little

“My rifles flamed and roared in the Federals’ faces like a blinding blaze of lightning accompanied by the quick and deadly thunderbolt. The effect was appalling. The entire front line, with few exceptions, went down in the consuming blast. The gallant commander and his horse fell in a heap near where I stood—the horse dead, the rider unhurt. Before his rear lines could recover from the…shock, my exultant men were on their feet, devouring them with successive volleys. Even then these stubborn blue lines retreated in fairly good order. My front had been cleared; Lee’s centre had been saved; and yet not a drop of blood had been lost by my men.”

That’s how John Brown Gordon, colonel of the 6th Alabama Infantry, described in his widely read Reminiscences of the Civil War the initial Union advance against the Sunken Road (a.k.a. “Bloody Lane”) at Antietam. The account by Gordon, who was wounded five times in the Sunken Road, is wonderfully descriptive and quotable, and has largely been accepted without pause as an accurate description of the dreadful fighting that day. A modern reviewer of Gordon’s book effused that his “first hand description of the battle…causes the reader to hear the cannons and smell the smoke.” No one can question Gordon’s skill with a pen or his courage and ability to manage troops in battle.

Considerable attention has been paid to Gordon’s description of his interaction with wounded Union Brig. Gen. Francis C. Barlow at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, and how he shaped the story to make himself the central figure and claim credit for things others had done. The Gordon–Barlow incident is part-truth and part-myth. Gordon’s “Sunken Road” account has eluded the same level of scrutiny. How does it stand up to the evidence of the battle now available?

On page 84 of Reminiscences, he describes the initial approach of the Union attackers:

The men in blue filed down the opposite slope, crossed the little stream [Antietam], and formed in my front, an assaulting column four lines deep. The front line came to a “charge bayonets,” the other lines to a “right shoulder shift.” The brave Union commander, superbly mounted, placed himself in front, while his band in rear cheered them with martial music. It was a thrilling spectacle.

It is possible today to stand about the exact spot where Gordon awaited the Union attack. Several things are evident immediately. There is no way he could have seen the Federal soldiers, of William French’s 3rd Division, 2nd Corps, filing down the east bank and crossing Antietam Creek. To read they “formed in my front,” one imagines they were close and in full view of Gordon’s position. But French’s men formed for their advance in the East Woods, more than a mile north of this position, and unless Gordon climbed up the hill in the right front of his regiment, he couldn’t have seen them. At that distance he also could not have observed the front rank come to “charge bayonets.” For one, no soldier in French’s leading brigade mentions coming to “charge bayonets.” No band was playing, and it could not have been heard anyway over the roar of artillery fire. There also were numerous mounted Union officers, not just one. Finally, we need to ask how it was possible for Gordon to know at over a mile the enemy were new recruits or “fresh troops from Washington.” It is likely he learned these acts after the war.

Those unfamiliar with the battle’s details might imagine the only thing standing between the utter defeat of Lee’s army and its survival was Gordon and his regiment. “Every act and movement of the Union commander in my front clearly indicated his purpose to discard bullets and depend upon bayonets,” he wrote; “…It was my business to prevent this; and how to do it with my single line was the tremendous problem which had to be solved and solved quickly; for the column was coming.” Neither Robert Rodes, Gordon’s brigade commander, nor any other unit are ever mentioned. It was Rodes’ business, not Gordon’s, to assure the Federals did not break through his line. The only way we know any other Confederates were involved in the defense is when Gordon mentions talking to “the chivalric Colonel Tew, of North Carolina” as Tew is shot in the brain by the first Union volley. This was Charles C. Tew, colonel of the 2nd North Carolina, of Brig. Gen. George B. Anderson’s Brigade, which fought beside Rodes’ men in the Sunken Road.

Tew, however, was mortally wounded well into the combat, after being notified he was now in command of the brigade, with Anderson wounded. When asked to acknowledge receipt of the message, Tew bowed and tipped his hat, but was struck in the head as he did.

Even Gordon’s own description of his fifth wound omits a key detail. He writes that a bullet struck him squarely in the face, knocking him unconscious, and that he fell forward, face in his cap, and would have been “smothered by the blood running into my cap” had not a bullet hole in it allowed the blood to drain. A litter team bore him to the rear and he did not awake until later that night. A contemporary account by a 6th Alabama soldier revealed, however, that after his fifth wound Gordon “found…the strength to crawl 100 yards to the rear,” where he was discovered covered with blood, and then assisted from the field.

It seems unlikely Gordon simply forgot all this. More likely is that a tale of him falling among his men would seem more heroic than the truth. Whenever Gordon chose to exaggerate, bend, ignore, or invent incidents, he almost always did so deliberately either to advance his political agenda—he was a post–Civil War U.S. senator (1873-80) and later governor of Georgia (1886-90)—or to elevate himself to a central role in the drama. There is value in his Antietam account, but it should always be used with care and caution.

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

Hand-to-hand fighting actually was rare at Gettysburg

As much as some popular histories and films of Gettysburg play it up, a visitor to the battlefield might imagine that most of the combat that took place there was hand to hand. The scene at the end of Pickett’s Charge in the movie Gettysburg is an example. The mix-up of blue and gray resembles a massive rugby scrum. The idea that hand-to-hand combat on any battlefield of the war was common is mostly myth, conjured up to sensationalize a terrible event that needs no embellishment. Even Pickett’s Charge saw very little true hand-to-hand fighting, although it is widely presumed that it was an ordinary occurrence at the height of the attack.

Hand-to-hand fighting is usually defined as combat with clubbed muskets and bayonets, sometimes even fists and rocks. Firing point blank might also fall into this category—the discharge of a weapon so close that it leaves powder burns on the killed or wounded.

Most infantry fighting at Gettysburg, however, occurred at ranges from 100 to 200 yards, though there were occasions when units engaged one another at longer and shorter ranges. During the bloody combat in the Herbst Woods on the afternoon of July 1, Brig. Gen. James Pettigrew’s Brigade and the Union Iron Brigade traded fire at 20–40 paces, with dreadful results. During a defense of the Rose Woods by Brig. Gen. Joseph Kershaw’s Brigade on July 2, Lt. Col. Franklin Gaillard of the 2nd South Carolina wrote: “It was so desperate I took two shots with my pistol at men scarcely thirty steps from me.” In neither of these actions, however, did the fighting come to hand to hand. One side always gave way before it could get that close.

When hand-to-hand fighting did occur, one of two factors almost always was present. First, the defending fire was so disorganized or weak that the enemy were able to rush across the deadliest ground—the last 30 to 40 yards—and close with the defender, or the attacker surprised the enemy from the rear or flank. Second, the defender believed he could fight off the attackers or he was trapped, and flight was either impossible or too fraught with danger to attempt escape. Both factors were present in the Wheatfield the afternoon of July 2. When Brig. Gen. William Wofford’s Georgians emerged from Rose Woods in the rear of Colonel Jacob Sweitzer’s 5th Corps brigade, Sweitzer made a desperate attempt to change front to face the onslaught. Running would have meant slaughter, so Sweitzer’s men attempted to fight off their attackers. Wofford said after the war that “more men were killed here with the bayonet than he had ever known before in the war.”

Wofford likely had seen few bayoneted in the war before Gettysburg. Nevertheless, we have good documentation that the combat here did involve the bayonet and was particularly vicious. According to Jacob Funk, the 62nd Pennsylvania’s color-bearer, “The battle know [sic] raged in all its fury as foe grappled with foe and the Bayonet was freely used.” Funk also recalled that when a Rebel officer demanded the Pennsylvanians surrender, “[O]ne of my company turned round and clubbing his musket brought the but[t] down on [his] hed[,] smashing him down on the spot.”

In a more famous encounter, when one Confederate tried to bear off the 4th Michigan’s flag, dropped when the color-bearer was shot, he was chased down by Colonel Harrison Jeffords, the 4th’s commander. Jeffords ran the Confederate through with his sword but was then impaled from behind by a bayonet wielded by a Rebel soldier, who in turn was shot at point blank range.

That incident might suggest that many others were bayoneted or run through with swords, but the truth was that Jeffords was the only man in his regiment to be bayoneted. This helps put Wofford’s statement in some perspective. There is little doubt he saw more men killed with the bayonet in the Wheatfield than he ever had before, but that number was still relatively small.

The part of the battle where probably more true hand-to-hand fighting occurred was not during Pickett’s Charge or in the Wheatfield but at East Cemetery Hill during the assault by Harry Hays’ and Isaac Avery’s brigades, of Jubal Early’s Division, on the evening of July 2. That attack was launched at dusk, and though Union artillery and infantry responded immediately, their fire was not accurate due to the falling light. This enabled Hays’ Louisianans to close with Federals at the base of the hill behind a stone wall. Recalled 1st Lt. Oscar Ladley of the 75th Ohio: “They came on us about dark yelling like demons with fixed bayonets. We opened on them when they were about 500 yards off but still they came their officers & colors in advance. We lay behind a stone wall and received them with our bayonets….A Rebel officer made at me with a revolver with his colors by his side. I had no pistol, nothing but my sword. Just as I was getting ready to strike him one of our boys run him through the body so saved me. There was a good many killed that way.”

One reason the fighting came down to hand to hand was that retreating uphill probably was riskier than sticking to the stone wall and fighting it out. Ladley noted how unusual this experience was compared to others he had. “I never saw such fighting in my life,” he would write. “It was a regular hand to hand fight.”

William Southerton, a 19-year-old private in Ladley’s regiment, left his position at the wall and retreated up the hill, where he witnessed more brutal hand-to-hand encounters around Union artillery positions. “Artillerists fought with ramrods, wielding them like ballbats,” he wrote, “So infuriated were the Tigers [the Louisianans of Hays’ Brigade] that they jabbed with their bayonets. Fought with rocks. A tall rebel shoved right at my elbow, a huge rock raised ready to dash it at Major Fox. I jabbed with my bayonet.” In moments, the fight was over and the Confederates retreated.

What nearly all the examples of hand-to-hand combat at Gettysburg have in common is that the writers inevitably note how extraordinary or rare they were. So though it did occur in various places during the battle, it was the exception to the rule those three days.

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

by Brian Holden Reid, Prometheus, 2008, $34.95

Other than to professional soldiers or students of warfare, the concept of the operational level of war is largely unfamiliar to most Ameri cans interested in the Civil War. We are familiar with strategy, the broad-based objectives or plan of a government or a general, and tactics, how battles are fought.

But what is the operational level? As defined by Brian Reid, “This is the area of military activity that links strategy and tactics that conceives of campaigns as comprising distinct but linked phases of effort that can be conceived as a coherent whole.”

In other words, Grant’s failed assaults against Vicksburg on May 19 and 22 were not isolated events of the siege of Vicksburg but were rather a linked part of Grant’s Vicks – burg campaign, which was a part of a larger strategic objective to gain control of the Mississippi River, which in turn connected to the Union’s strategic goal of dividing the Confederacy and contributing to its ultimate demise.

Reid applies this concept of the operational level of war to his study of the war from 1861-1863. What Reid sets out to do is not necessarily new. After all, Bruce Catton and James McPherson, among others, did a masterful job of connecting the military campaigns and battles of the war with the strategic objectives of the United States and Confederate States governments.

Where Reid departs from the above and most other scholars of the war is first, he is a British military historian, so he brings a different and perhaps more detached perspective to the subject; and second, he rejects many of our now commonly held assumptions about the war. In particular he takes on what he describes as the “Vietnam Syndrome,” which he argues has come to dominate how we view war, and hence the Civil War. He writes, “The Vietnam Syndrome underwrites the presumed “futility” of war: the notion that war can never succeed in its aims, never produce a positive outcome, and is thus destined to fail even before its initial operations are launched.” Great Britain, he points out, produced a similar set of arguments following its experience in World War I.

In this first of two volumes, Reid examines the causes of the war and how the war aims of the U.S. and Confederate governments, and the expectations of the people of both regions, shaped strategy. From this foundation he embarks upon his operational study of the war from its earliest battles to Grant’s victory at Chattanooga. Along the way he raises many thought-provoking points about the conduct of the war. Among them, he challenges the widely believed notion that the defender in the Civil War possessed great advantages over the attacker due to the advent of rifled weapons. He does not dis – count the firepower the defender could now deliver, but argues that it was entirely possible for the attacker to win a decisive victory over the defender. That this did not occur during the first 21⁄2 years of the war was due to several factors. Reconnaissance, mapping and staff work, he points out, were all inadequate.

This led to failure to coordinate attacks and a frequent squandering of resources. Lee’s failure to destroy McClellan’s Army of the Potomac during the Seven Days’ campaign is an example. Given McClellan’s errors of generalship, his army’s complete defeat was possible during the retreat following the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, but poor staff work and command and control thwarted Lee’s plans and allowed the Union army to escape. The Federals’ success in making good their retreat to Harrison’s Landing had less to do with the advantages of the defender over the attacker than it did with the Confederates’ failure to coordinate and take advantage of all of its available forces.

Reid is at his best when discussing the operational and strategic level of the war. He is on less solid ground when he ventures into the details of individual campaigns and battles, and one can find minor mistakes here and there.

But the strength of Reid’s book is in its incisive analysis of operations, and bringing an enhanced understanding to how the individual battles and campaigns connected at the operational and strategic level of war.

Readers may not agree with all of Reid’s arguments and interpretations, but few will deny that he has produced a compelling, solid contribution to our grasp of the operational level of warfare in our Civil War.

Originally published in the July 2008 issue of America’s Civil War. To subscribe, click here. 

Quickly built breastworks saved the day on Culp’s Hill

When the Army of the Potomac’s 12th Corps arrived on Culp’s Hill early in the morning July 2, 1863, 2nd Division commander Brig. Gen. John Geary “submitted…the question of building rifle-pits” to his three brigade leaders—Colonel Charles Candy, Colonel George A. Cobham Jr., and Brig. Gen. George Sears Greene. Doing so was not Geary’s choice. He was of the mindset that building defensive works “unfitted the men for fighting without them.”

At this point of the war, Geary’s opinion was not unusual on either side. Although both armies sometimes built breastworks and earthworks in battles preceding Gettysburg, their construction in the face of the enemy was not standard doctrine, as it would become in 1864. At Gettysburg, in fact, Culp’s Hill was the only location where true field works were constructed.

The first works on the hill were erected the evening of July 1 by troops in Brig. Gen. James S. Wadsworth’s 1st Division, 1st Corps. The division had suffered enormous casualties in the fighting that day, and after retreating through the town to Cemetery Hill, the men were ordered to occupy the northern slope of Culp’s Hill. Upon arrival, Lt. Col. Rufus R. Dawes, commanding the 6th Wisconsin, ordered his regiment to entrench. They set to work with a dozen spades and shovels, obtained from their regimental wagon. The decision to entrench did not come from above. Wrote Dawes: “There were no orders to construct these breastworks, but the situation plainly dictated their necessity.” The other regiments saw the wisdom of Dawes’ actions and soon the whole division was busy entrenching from Stevens’ Knoll to the summit of Culp’s Hill by nightfall.

Seeing the works the 1st Corps troops had built might have prompted Geary’s breastworks query to his brigade commanders. He might also have felt some pressure by the actions of the 12th Corps’ other division commander, Brig. Gen. Alpheus Williams. When his division reached Culp’s Hill, Williams wrote, “I ordered at once a breastwork of logs to be built, having experienced their benefits at Chancellorsville,” adding that “our men had learned to love entrenching with logs.”

It is possible General Greene was the one who suggested building breastworks. He was the only West Pointer among the division’s leadership and understood engineering. “[T]he saving of life,” he said, “was of far more consequence…than any theories as to breastworks, and so far as his men were concerned, they would have them if they had time to build them.” Candy, a former Regular Army enlisted man, shared Geary’s doubts and insisted his brigade would not waste time building works, but Cobham sided with Greene. Fortunately for the 12th Corps, Geary placed Candy’s brigade in reserve and Greene’s and Cobham’s on the front line.

“The men grumbled a little,” recalled Captain George Collins of the 149th New York, but they nevertheless “brought sticks, stones, and chunks of wood, and felled trees and shoveled dirt for three or four hours.”

Although some soldiers refer-red to them as “rifle pits” they were true breastworks. Captain Jesse Jones of the 60th New York described how the men “felled the trees and blocked them into a close log fence,” and appropriated nearby piles of cordwood. The numerous boulders strewn across the hill were incorporated into the line, and head logs for further cover were added along much of the line. Efforts were also made to conceal the works by placing “heavy boughs and logs” in front. The work was so well done, Captain Charles P. Horton noted, the entrenchments “could not be distinguished fifty yards to the front.”

Culp’s Hill remained quiet most of the day, but when Lt. Gen. James Longstreet launched his attack on the Union left about 4 p.m., the summit came under Confederate artillery fire. As the crisis on the Union left grew during the afternoon, Army of the Potomac commander Maj. Gen. George G. Meade ordered the entire 12th Corps to reinforce his embattled flank. To the Federals’ good fortune, 12th Corps commander Maj. Gen. Henry W. Slocum convinced Meade to keep one brigade—Greene’s 3rd—on Culp’s Hill. Greene sent a skirmish line down the slope and aligned his brigade along a single line, each man separated by several feet in order to cover as much ground as possible—a tactic he never would have attempted without the benefit of the breastworks. Just before 7 p.m., Confederate Second Corps commander Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell launched an attack on Greene’s position, spearheaded by Maj. Gen. Edward Johnson’s Division, more than 4,000 strong. The skirmishers sent down the slope were soon seen running back uphill, “followed by a Confederate line of battle, yelping and howling in their peculiar manner.

Behind the works, their colors concealed, Greene’s men waited for the enemy to come within range. “The pale faces, staring eye-balls, and nervous hands grasping loaded muskets,” Collins wrote, “told how terrible were those moments of suspense.” The Confederates were allowed to approach to within 50 yards before the order to fire was given. Though the first volley “staggered” the Rebels, it did not stop their advance. But the Yankees continued to blaze away until the “smoke became so dense [they] were unable to distinguish the enemy and were governed more by hearing than sight in directing fire.”

Three times, Johnson’s men came close to reaching the breastworks but were forced to fall back by the relentless fire each time, finally calling off the attacks about 10 p.m. Greene’s men reportedly had fired upward of 80 rounds per man, and though the Confederates had seized the lower summit, the top of Culp’s Hill remained in Union hands.

Heavily reinforced, Johnson’s Division attempted to carry Culp’s Hill again the next morning. But the entire 12th Corps had returned by then and now also had the services of a 6th Corps brigade. Johnson’s attacks failed once more, with heavy losses.

Had Geary’s disdain for breastworks carried the day, it is difficult to envision how the Army of the Potomac could have held onto Culp’s Hill. And had the hill fallen, the army’s position at Gettysburg would have been untenable. Whoever was behind the decision to build those works—and, as we’ve shown, several officers can be so recognized—deserves considerable credit for the Union’s Gettysburg victory. Without them, Captain Collins would write, “the 3d Brigade could never have held the position on the 2d day of July against the overwhelming numbers brought against it.”

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he 1st Texas Infantry earned a macabre place in history at the Battle of Antietam, suffering 186 casualties out of 226 men engaged—an 82.3 percent loss rate considered the highest for a single regiment not only at Antietam, but also the entire war. New evidence suggests, however, that another Confederate regiment—the 6th Georgia—might have incurred a higher level of devastation than the 1st Texas that day. We may well never know for sure, but it is a valid possibility.

The 6th was one of four Georgia regiments, as well as the 13th Alabama, in Colonel Alfred H. Colquitt’s Brigade, part of Maj. Gen. D.H. Hill’s Division in the Army of Northern Virginia. How many men the 6th took into the battle remains in question. One member of the regiment recorded its strength at 320, but others had the total at about 300, and another estimate was as low as 200. In his studies of the battle, Antietam scholar Ezra Carman decided to go with the average: 260.

Colquitt’s Brigade—still referred to by some as Rains’ Brigade, a nod to former commander Maj. Gen. Gabriel Rains—spent a night of September 16 in Sharpsburg’s soon-to-be-immortal Sunken Lane. At about 7:30 a.m. on the 17th, Colquitt received orders from General Hill to reinforce the fighting around the Miller Cornfield and the East Woods. The brigade marched quickly in the face of sweeping Union artillery fire. It passed the burning Mumma Farm buildings and pushed north across a plowed field toward the East Woods. Wounded soldiers from the fighting ahead were returning in a fairly steady stream. Some encouraged their swiftly moving comrades to “give ’em hell boys.” One of Colquitt’s men never forgot the irony. In the coming hour, he would write, “we went in and got hell ourselves.”

When the brigade reached the Smoketown Road, it was met by Hill, who directed Colquitt to form into line and advance. Up front, the battle was raging fiercely. Colquitt hurried through the southwestern corner of the woods, then formed his brigade into line. When the formation was complete, the 6th Georgia was on the far right and at first entirely within the woods. The brigade had double-quicked nearly a mile, and the men were winded and the regiments strung out. Even though the 6th came under fire almost immediately, its commander, Lt. Col. James N. Newton, was displeased with the ragged line his regiment formed and ordered it to halt. Newton sent out guides to mark the right and left flanks, then had the regiment dress on these human markers until its line was “as cool as on dress parade.”

The 6th hurried to catch up with the rest of the brigade. Their movement brought the left of the regiment out of the woods into a meadow directly south of the Cornfield. All outside the woods were firing at the infantry of Maj. Gen. Joseph K. Mansfield’s 12th Corps, standing on a ridge north of the corn. Colquitt ordered his brigade to advance and drive the Federals off. The men responded by pushing into the Cornfield, loading and firing as they advanced. Many were struck as they moved, among them Major Philemon Tracy of the 6th, who was shot in the thigh. A lieutenant paused to bandage the wound and try to get the major to some cover but was shot in the side. Tracy bled to death. Despite what one of the 6th described as a “most terrific fire,” the left of the regiment reached the northern edge of the Cornfield. The right of the regiment remained in the woods.

It was at this moment that Lt. Col. Hector Tyndale’s brigade of the 12th Corps arrived opposite the Georgians’ right front and flank, its approach concealed by the East Woods. Most members of the 6th had their attention focused on the Federals in the open north of the corn, but Captain John G. Hanna, commanding a company on the far right flank, saw Tyndale’s unit approaching and dashed over to warn Colonel Newton that they were flanked. He delivered his message, but was killed as he turned to head back to his company, and Newton would be mortally wounded by a volley from Tyndale’s men.

That left the 6th with no field officers. Though the regiment held its position and fought stubbornly, it was soon confronted by the 800-man 28th Pennsylvania, part of Tyndale’s brigade, which had moved up through the woods on their right. Some of the Georgians saw them coming and unleashed into them what one Federal called “a withering fire” that somehow failed to check their advance. The Pennsylvanians responded by delivering a murderous volley of their own, mowing down members of the 6th literally in rows.

Ben Witcher was along the Cornfield fence, unaware of the calamity engulfing his regiment. A comrade advised him that it was time to get out. Seeing a line of men still lying down along the Cornfield fence around him, Witcher defiantly said no and to “let them come.” His friend shook several of the men to show Witcher they were all dead or wounded. Suddenly aware of the disaster sweeping toward him, Witcher started off with his friend and two other men. Union bullets cut down all of them except Witcher. The survivors of the 6th fled, along with the rest of Colquitt’s Brigade.

When they had a chance to assess the damage, it was staggering. All but two commissioned officers were dead or wounded, leaving the regiment in command of a lieutenant. In Company E, 13 were killed and 17 wounded. In Company K the carnage was 16 killed, 15 wounded, and 5 captured from 40 present. All told, 84 men were killed or mortally wounded, 115 were wounded and 30 captured. If the regiment had 300 in action this was a loss of 75 percent. But it is possible the loss was higher, for Corporal Robert Johnson wrote that only 40 men could be accounted for on September 18, which would mean a loss of 87 percent.

Playing the percentage game here can be problematic, for the number carried into battle was often not known with absolute certainty. And some units suffered such catastrophic losses that their casualties were imperfectly reported by surviving officers. Others did not even bother to report slightly wounded men. The first two are true for the 6th Georgia, and the third might be. The only thing we can know with certainty is what Ben Witcher wrote years later; “This battle was the most disastrous to my Regt of any in the war.”

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.

If you’re at Gettysburg National Military Park and decide to trace the battle’s first-day action, you’ll more than likely come across a memorial to the 147th New York Infantry on Reynolds Avenue, just north of the Railroad Cut Bridge. It is, admittedly, a fairly standard monument: a bronze sculpture of a knapsack, canteen, and cartridge box perched below the regiment’s organizational legend. The inscription on the east side of the monument reads, “Position 10 A.M. July 1, 1863,” then lists the regiment’s strength and casualties. The strength and casualty figures are accurate, the position is not. The 147th as a regimental organization never formed where its monument stands.

The 147th was part of Brig. Gen. Lysander Cutler’s 2nd Brigade, 1st Division, 1st Corps—the first Union infantry brigade to reach the field the morning of July 1. But it arrived about 10:30, so the time inscribed on the monument is too early. Major General John Reynolds, the 1st Corps’ commander, was preparing to engage the advancing Confederates west of Gettysburg and needed to occupy McPherson’s Ridge before the enemy did. He split Cutler’s brigade, sending two regiments south of the Chambersburg Pike to occupy the ridge beside Edward McPherson’s farm buildings, while the other three regiments, including the 147th, were to move north of the pike and occupy the ridge near Captain James Hall’s 2nd Maine Battery, which had unlimbered opposite McPherson’s barn.

When Reynolds ordered those three regiments to support Hall’s battery, the 76th New York and 56th Pennsylvania moved as directed. For some reason, the orders never reached the 147th, so its commander, Lt. Col. Francis C. Miller, led the regiment along the low ground between the eastern and western branches of McPherson’s Ridge and massed it behind the barn for cover before riding off to get instructions. The confusion was quickly sorted out, and Miller returned to lead his regiment across the Railroad Cut and into a wheat field just to the north.

Meanwhile, the 76th New York and 56th Pennsylvania continued north behind the eastern ridge until they cleared the Railroad Cut, then turned left and advanced to the crest of the ridge, some 150–200 yards to the right and rear of the 147th. They immediately became engaged with the 2nd Mississippi and 55th North Carolina of Brig. Gen. Joseph Davis’ Brigade.

After the 147th advanced through the wheat, it came under fire from the 42nd Mississippi, also part of Davis’ Brigade. “I could see innumerable heads of rebels bobbing up and down on the north side of this wheat,” recalled Lieutenant J. Volney Pierce. “Men began to fall on all sides before we fired a shot.” The New Yorkers continued up the slope a short distance before being ordered by Miller to lie down and commence firing. “The battle was now in all its fierceness,” Pierce wrote. “[A] continuous roar of musketry drowned all orders.”

The 76th New York and 56th Pennsylvania were soon outflanked and ordered by Cutler to retreat toward Gettysburg. Miller received similar orders, but he would be wounded before he could deliver them to his men. The regiment, now under the command of Major George Harney, continued fighting, but it had become isolated—exposed on its right and rear as a Confederate contingent prepared to strike. To confront this new threat, Harney ordered his companies on the right to change front. The odds, though, were clearly not on his side.

Suddenly Captain T.E. Ellsworth, from the staff of division commander Brig. Gen. James Wadsworth, rode into the midst of the maelstrom and ordered Harney to fall back. The New Yorkers fled either across the Railroad Cut toward the McPherson Farm or along the cut itself. Nearly all of those who followed the cut, however, were quickly corralled and taken prisoner.

With 301 of the 380 men who engaged that morning killed, wounded, or captured, it had been a catastrophic 20 minutes of combat for the 147th,

That fall, when Gettysburg historian and artist John Bachelder published an isometric map of the battle, he mistakenly showed the 147th positioned on the same line as the 56th Pennsylvania and 76th New York. Fourteen years later, when Bachelder published separate maps for each day of the battle, he made the same error. The mistake, however, was an honest one, as a staff officer from Wadsworth’s staff had written him in 1865 that the three regiments had all been on one line when they became engaged. Then in 1868, Henry H. Lyman, the 147th’s adjutant during the battle, sent Bachelder a report of the regiment’s experiences at Gettysburg, noting they were “on left of 56th, 76th NY.” From these statements Bachelder assumed the 147th had begun fighting while on the same line as the other two regiments.

On July 1, 1888, the monument to the 147th was dedicated in its present position. Bachelder did not select the location, although the members of the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association, working with veterans of the unit, likely used Bachelder’s maps. It is also possible the GBMA wanted the monument to be on the same line as the 56th Pennsylvania and 76th New York for ease of access for park visitors. Although most 147th veterans grudgingly accepted the erroneous position, Lyman led a concerted effort to set the record straight. Aware that Bachelder was writing an official history of the battle, the 147th veterans did not want it also to be incorrect. Lyman corresponded with more than a dozen officers and men, including one 2nd Mississippi officer, to document the regiment’s correct position, and forwarded what he learned to Bachelder.

His efforts paid off. On March 5, 1889, Bachelder wrote to Lyman that he had changed the narrative about the 147th’s location in his still unpublished history, thanking him “for establishing the truth.” Unfortunately Bachelder’s ponderous history is today read by only a handful of the most ardent Gettysburg students while hundreds of thousands of visitors drive by the regiment’s monument none the wiser that the men it represents actually fought and bled on the gentle rise about 200 yards to the west.

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg, Pa.

During the East Woods fighting early in the Battle of Antietam, the 10th Maine Infantry found itself hotly engaged with Confederates concealed within the woods. Looking to his right at one point, Lieutenant John Mead Gould, the regiment’s adjutant, happened to notice several mounted men on a nearby knoll, including his corps commander, Maj. Gen. Joseph King Fenno Mansfield, who was frantically motioning at the 10th to cease firing. “As this was the very last thing we proposed to do,” Gould recalled, “the few who saw him did not understand what his motions meant, and so no attention was paid to him.” In response, the 58-year-old Mansfield, accompanied by a single orderly, galloped in their direction, shouting that they were firing on their own men. But when he reached the regiment’s left flank, an officer and a sergeant in Company C raced up to inform him that he was mistaken and pointed at several soldiers, clearly Confederate, now only about 20 yards away. Mansfield had no time to react. Within moments, he had been shot through the lungs.

Gould was the first to reach the general, and with the assistance of three comrades carried him to the rear. Soldiers from the 125th Pennsylvania lent help, and also provided a blanket, as Mansfield was transported back along the Smoketown Road to a woodlot where Gould had located an ambulance and two medical officers. Mansfield was loaded on the ambulance and taken to the George Line Farm, about a mile to the north, but would die of his wounds the following morning.

The 22-year-old Gould was an intelligent, observant young man from Portland, Maine. In 1861 he had enlisted in the 1st Maine Infantry, a three-month regiment. Upon his discharge from the 1st, Gould promptly enlisted in the newly forming 10th Maine, a two-year regiment. He was promoted to sergeant major, then to second lieutenant, and in August 1862 to first lieutenant. The latter promotion meant Gould would serve as the regimental adjutant, a position that typically required a bright person with good attention to detail.

Throughout the war Gould maintained a detailed diary and devoted considerable space to the Battle of Antietam and to Mansfield’s mortal wounding. But by early December, when Gould still hadn’t seen anything in print about the events surrounding the general’s death, he composed a memorandum about what had unfolded before him that day. He also sent a detailed letter to Mansfield’s widow describing what had occurred.

Perhaps because of Mansfield’s death, Antietam became a lifelong fascination for Gould. In 1890, curious about what Confederate units his regiment fought in the East Woods, he began looking for answers by corresponding with Confederate veterans. An 1892 account he wrote for the National Tribune, however, would be disputed by veterans of the 125th Pennsylvania, who claimed Gould was “radically and entirely mistaken when he says that General Mansfield was killed in front of his regiment.” Gould was energized by this questioning. As a combat veteran he understood how the chaos of battle could cloud the memories of some participants. He began eagerly exploring all aspects of the battle not only surrounding Mansfield’s wounding but also the fighting elsewhere in the East Woods and the nearby Cornfield. He wrote and received hundreds of letters from veterans of nearly every regiment and battery in the Union 1st Corps (Hooker’s) and 12th Corps (Mansfield’s), and Confederates from John Bell Hood’s, D.H. Hill’s, and Alexander Lawton’s divisions.

Gould was tireless, methodical, and thorough in his efforts to track down men from every unit that fought in those sectors of the battlefield. If, for example, he could find no contacts for a Confederate unit, he often wrote the postmaster in a town he believed might have veterans from a certain regiment and asked him to deliver his circular letter to them. Rarely did he come up empty-handed. Former Confederates sensed that he bore no grudge against them and was genuinely interested in their side of the story and in getting at the truth of what had happened during the battle. Most replied eagerly and graciously to Gould’s inquiries.

Ben Millikin of the 27th Georgia for instance, wrote Gould three letters in 1895, one of 18 pages, and the others both eight pages long. J.D. Smither of the 5th Texas, at the end of a 13-page letter, apologized; “Pardon the loquacity of an old soldier. You know when they start they never know when to stop off.” Such lengthy letters were typical and Gould responded to them all. Millikin grew so fond of Gould through their correspondence that he encouraged the New Englander to invest in a local bank in Millikin’s home town. Gould had a dry sense of humor and often joked with his former enemies. In responding to a letter from Millikin, Gould wrote, “Now all you fellows of the 27th fought well—most too well to suit me—but such a poor set of correspondents I never struck.”

Because Gould was a veteran, his correspondents tended to be frank and honest with him. An example was Lewis Stegman, a captain with the 102nd New York, who minced no words when he described Lt. Col. James C. Lane, the regiment’s commander at Antietam, as an “incubus” and added, “[W]hen his name is mentioned it is with a damn.” A corporal in the same regiment concurred, writing Gould that he grouped Lane with “the brigade of coffee cooking, sneaking hospital bummers.” John Rankin, a 27th Indiana veteran, fumed about veterans who exaggerated things. “What is it about war that upsets men’s intellects and starts their minds wandering over a vast ocean of fiction,” he wrote.

Gould became an expert on the battle on the northern end of the field and often included notes in the margins of letters when veterans made mistakes. In an 1891 letter, former Confederate Brig. Gen. Evander M. Law made an error regarding the 5th Texas. At the bottom of Law’s letter Gould wrote, “In my answer I tried to set him right on the matter of the 5th Texas & to tell him all I had learned so far. It was perhaps too much for the General. He never wrote again! JMG.” When W.T. Hill of the 5th Texas wrote that there was a “fearful slaughter” of Union troops in his regiment’s front, Gould, who knew better, noted, “So it appeared to most of them.”

Gould shared all that he learned with Ezra Carman, former colonel of the 13th New Jersey, who in the 1890s was the government historian at Antietam tasked with marking the positions of both armies on the field. Much of what Carman learned of the battle around the Cornfield and East Woods came to him via Gould. Today, Gould’s Antietam collection resides at Dartmouth College. Except to careful Antietam students, he is largely unknown, but much of what we know about the fighting in those sectors of the battlefield the morning of September 17 is the result of Gould’s exhaustive efforts to uncover as much of the truth as possible.

Scott Hartwig writes from the crossroads of Gettysburg.