THE FIRST DAY Chapter Sixteen

 

I would call it an ominous beginning. Under a cold drizzle in the predawn darkness of Wednesday, 1 July, 1863, the 7,000 veterans of 38 year old Major General Henry Heth's - pronounced “Heath” - division were roused from an uneasy sleep along the Chanbersburg Pike. The men in the ranks knew the enemy was nearby. They expected that some of them would be dead by noon, and that more would suffer the limited skills of the surgeons 

But who among their ranks would bleed this day, and which of them were witnessing their last sunrise they could not know. Still, they rose and ate their rude breakfasts, packed their meager belongings and formed up for the 7 mile march to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. They were brave men fighting for an evil cause.

The day before, Tuesday 30 June, 1863, the 1^st brigade under 35 year old Brigadier General James Johnson Pettigrew  (above) had spotted blue clad cavalry just entering the Gettysburg. Following General Lee's orders to “Avoid all contact with the enemy until the entire army has arrived”, Pettigrew immediately withdrew back to Cashtown and reported the Yankee's presence. 

Pettigrew suspected the Yankee horsemen were regulars. But his commander, the ambitious and charming Henry Heth (above), believed they were merely militia. The story is that Heth assured his Corps commander, Lieutenant General A.P. Hill, “... if there is no objection, I will take my division tomorrow and go to Gettysburg and get those shoes...Hill replied, “None in the world.”

This myth did not appear until 25 years after the war, in an article written by Heth.  There were no shoes in Gettysburg. Jubal Early's division had marched through Gettysburg the week before, Jenkin's cavalry too. They had stripped the town's businesses of most everything of use. And no one even mentioned shoes and Gettysburg in the same sentence until Henry Heth, a quarter of a century later. No veteran in the Army of Northern Virginia marched 140 miles into Pennsylvania on bare feet. We might as well believe they marched into battle already wounded. We have no photo's of either prisoners or war dead (above) without shoes. A soldier may want newer, better fitting shoes, but the barefoot rebel is a myth created to justify Henry Heth ignoring orders to “avoid all contact”. And the myth does a disservice to the men who followed Henry Heth down that road.

The truth was that Henry Heth was one of Lee's favorites, the only staff officer the aristocratic Lee ever called by his first name. Having served Lee early in the war, Heth transferred to East Tennessee for a year, where he proved himself a brave field commander. Returning to the Army of Northern Virginia in the spring of 1863, Heth's aggressiveness, almost to the point of insubordination, mirrored his mentor's aggressive nature, and endeared him to General Lee. 

That Wednesday morning, A.P. Hill ordered a 2 division “reconnaissance in force”, and Heth volunteered his division to lead the march. And the unit General Heth picked for point was the 1,200 man brigade – 3 Tennessee and 2 Alabama regiments - commanded by his “Little Gamecock” - the 45 year old irascible Marylander Brigadier General James Jay Archer (above).

Second in line was the 2,000 man brigade – 3 Mississippi and 2 North Carolina regiments – under Brigadier General Joseph Robert Davis. Then came the understrength 2^nd Brigade of 4 Virginia regiments, about 800 men under 33 year old Colonel John Brockenbrough. And finally, punished by being regulated to the rear of Heth's division, was the largest brigade in the entire Confederate Army, the 2,500 men - in 4 North Carolina regiments – under the scholar and plantation owner, Brigadier General James Pettigrew. With his weight in his tail, it appears General Heth anticipated brushing aside the militia cavalry like annoying flies. Taking to the Chambersburg turnpike (above)  about 2 hours behind Archer's brigade were the 6,700 man North Carolina division under 29 year old strict disciplinarian, Major General William Dorsey Pender.

Stepping off at about 6:00am, Archer's brigade moved at a route march – about 2 miles an hour - down the slope from Cashtown Pass toward Gettysburg. About 4 miles west of town – making it about 7:30am - the first shot was fired from atop Herr Ridge at the First Tennessee brigade, perhaps even at 25 year old Major Felix Grundy Buchanan. He threw his 281 men into a skirmish line centered on the road. But the outnumbered enemy pickets, armed with faster firing carbines, held their ground. So Heth was forced to throw his entire division into a line of battle on both sides of the Chambersburg Pike. Which took time.

First each regiment of Archer's 1,200 man brigade had to march in column to the head of the line of march. Then they “wheeled column left march” into the open ground south of the Pike. Each regiment then “double left oblique (marched) until they reached their position in the line of battle, when they faced FRONT, shouldering arms and dressing up...” And as soon as Archer's brigade had cleared the road, Davis' 2,000 man brigade had to do the same on the north side of the Chambersburg Pike. These were largely veterans, who had spent endless hours drilling these very maneuvers, but still it took time. And with the road finally cleared, Brockenbrough's half sized brigade came forward to occupy the center of the position in column.

The push up Herr Ridge finally began shortly after 8:00 that misty Wednesday morning. And with the advance of 3,000 men, the blue clad skirmishers grudgingly began to fall back – but not before their skill and tenacity convinced the rebels that these were not militia, but Federal regulars. Major General Heth remained unconvinced, but after capturing Herr Ridge he spread Lieutenant Colonel John Garnett's 4 batteries of artillery along the high ground to provide support for his men, as they flowed down the steep eastern face of the ridge into the tangle of wood along a creek called Willoughby Run.

The first shot from Garnett's guns brought accurate return shots from Federal cannon. This caused the advance to pause again. Frustrated, Heth ordered his two brigades to push across the creek and up the next slope – McPherson's Ridge. This order brought General Archer to seek out his superior on the battlefield, where Heth's “Gamecock” urged caution. Might it not be better to bring forward Pettigrew's large brigade, to extend his line, before Archer or Davis sent their troops across the creek? The weight of Lee's orders to “Avoid all contact” could be felt in Archer's hesitancy.

But Heth's temper was now up. This was taking too much time. He was still convinced the Federal Army was still camped in Maryland, and not within a 2 day march from this place. And every suggestion he was mistaken, made him angrier. Any delay was unacceptable. General Heth ordered Archer and Davis to not only cross Willoughby Run and the slope, but capture the crest of McPherson's ridge as well.

Henry Heth would write in his after action report, “It may not be improper to remark that at this time--9 o'clock on the morning of July 1--I was ignorant what force was at or near Gettysburg, and supposed it consisted of cavalry, most probably supported by a brigade or two of infantry. On reaching the summit...it became evident that there were infantry, cavalry, and artillery in and around the town. A few shots from...Marye's battery) scattered the cavalry vedettes...”  In point of fact, it did not. No Federal cavalry pickets (vedettes) anywhere on the Gettysburg battlefield scattered. They all withdrew as the trained, veteran soldiers they were.

Three miles to the east, in the high cupola of the Lutheran Theological Seminary, Brigadier General John Buford was watching the battle at Herr and McPherson ridges develop just as he had intended. In his after action report he wrote that “Colonel (William) Gamble made an admirable line of battle....we having the advantage of position, he (Heth) of numbers. The First Brigade held its own for more than two hours, and had to be literally dragged back a few hundred yards to a position more secure and better sheltered.” At which point, Buford ordered his Second Battalion under Colonel Thomas Casimer Devin, to extend the battle line along the east side of Willoughby Run.

Buford knew he could not stop a rebel infantry division. And he knew that he was asking his men to sacrifice their bodies and risk their lives by standing in Heth's way this morning. But he knew it was worth the sacrifice because close behind him was the First Crops of the Army of the Potomac, under Major General John Reynolds. And because the position Buford was defending was not Herr ridge, nor McPherson Ridge, nor even Seminary Ridge. The position Buford was actually defending at Herr Ridge was 4 miles to the southwest - the higher Cemetery Ridge.

Every Federal Trooper under Buford (above) knew the ground they were defending. But by just after 9:00am, Wednesday, 1 July, the rebel officers, like Henry Heth, had at best a hazy idea of the ground they were asking their men to die for.

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GETT YSBURG Chapter Thirteen

 

I believe the story because I believe the man. The story goes that on the evening of Sunday, 29 June 1863, 34 year old Federal Brigadier General John Buford (above) and some of this staff climbed Jack's Mountain, just northeast of  Fountain Dale, Pennsylvania, in the eastern mouth of Monterey Pass, and saw dust rising in the masked Cumberland Valley beyond. 

And being who he was – born in Kentucky, raised in Illinois, disowned by his slave owning family after he chose to defend the union - Buford could sense the brawl that was about to break out, he could smell the testosterone and adrenaline of 160, 000 approaching men. The General turned to his aides and told them, “Within 48 hours the concentration of both armies will take place on a field within view and a great battle will be fought.”

But while the view from 1,775 feet above the Juniata River was and is magnificent, there were  no dust clouds in view.  A little further back down the road, near Emmitsburg, Maryland, marching with the 6^th Wisconsin Infantry, Lieutenant Colonel Rufus Dawes remembered “I don't think I ever before saw...such a long continued, misty, drizzling storm as we have been marching through since we crossed the Potomac.”  And two days before he had written to his wife of  "...trudging along all day in soaking rain, getting as wet as a drowned rat...and then wrapping up in a wet woolen blanket and lying down for a sleep.." There was plenty of mud in southern Pennsylvania this week , but there was little dust.

But this was the third year of a civil war, in which brother literately was killing brother. The vast majority of those 160,000 combat veterans knew what they were marching toward - knew it as sure as they knew it could not be stopped. As the great Historian Bruce Catton put it, The soldiers were, “...led together by the turns in the roads they followed. When they touched they began to fight, because the tension was so high that the first encounter snapped it, and once begun the fight was uncontrollable. What the generals intended ceased to matter; each man had to cope with what he got...” That was the reality I believe General Buford saw in the fading mist.

Perhaps the clearest glimpse of John Buford in this third year of the war was provided by what happened to a young civilian suspected of spying on the Federal cavalry near Frederick, Maryland. A quick “drum-head court martial” found the boy guilty, and he was promptly condemned, and left hanging by his neck from a roadside tree. When a committee of Frederick civilians demanded an explanation from Buford, the General explained he would have sent the boy back to Washington for trial, except he feared the bureaucrats and politicians there would make the spy a Brigadier General. That is what passed for a joke from John Buford, after 2 1/2 years of war.

Twenty miles to the south of Buford's cavalry  were the three leading corps of the Army of the Potomac. From south to north, they were the 13,000 men of the III Corps, under the 44 year old legally insane New Yorker and congressman, Major General Daniel Edgar Sickles (above)

They were following the 9,000 despised and disparaged “Damned Dutch” of the XI Corps under the 33 year old Puritanical nativist Major General Oliver Otis Howard, from Maine. 

But in the lead were the 12,200 men of the veteran First Crops, under the command of the 42 year old charismatic Pennsylvanian, Major General John Fulton Reynolds.

President Lincoln had wanted Reynolds to run the Army of the Potomac after the Chancellorsville debacle. But on Tuesday, 2 June, 1863, Reynolds made met the President one-on-one and told Lincoln he would take the job only if Lincoln kept politics out his decisions. Lincoln had his fill with Generals who decided which orders they would follow. He might even have explained to the niave General that all wars were as much political as martial. But whatever he told Reynolds, the top job had gone to Meade.

Meade immediately drew up plans to establish a 20 mile long defensive line facing north (above) - “roughly parallel to the Mason-Dixon line” - between Manchester and Middleburg, Maryland, along the south bank of Big Pipe Creek. It was an extraordinary defensive position. But perhaps still irritated at being passed over for the command, Reynolds expressed concern that Meade's cautious nature would allow the rebels to continue “ plundering the State of Pennsylvania”, referring to the Pipe Creek plans as “dilatory measures”. But Meade had already sent Reynolds west and north of that line.  First Crops and Howard's XI Corps made camp the night of 29 June, around Emmitsburg, Maryland. And as Meade explained in a post script to his orders issued that night, “Your present position was given more with a view to an advance on Gettysburg, than a defensive point.” And screening Reynolds 22,000 men by ten miles or so were the 2 battalions of John Buford's cavalry, just 6 miles outside of Gettysburg, that night.

The damp Sunday morning, 38 miles to the north, 37 year old rebel Brigadier General Henry Heth (above) had marched his infantry division down the eastern slope of South Mountain to occupy a small collection of houses and barns around a store and inn called Cashtown. They were the advance guard of Lieutenant General A.P. Hill's 22,000 man Third Corps, and Heath's task was to establish a defensive line to hold the pass. The next morning he would send a brigade 8 miles further down the Chambersburg Pike to the little town of Gettysburg, looking for supplies to feed and clothe his men. And looking for Federals.

Thirty miles north and east of Gettysburg on Sunday, 29 June, 1863, was Richard Ewell's 22,000 man Second Corps. Jubal Early's division was due east Gettysburg, at York, Pennsylvania, where they had cut the Baltimore and Harrisburg railroad. The day before a 1,200 man Georgia brigade under the often wounded General John Brown Gordon had even reached as far as Wrightsville, on the Susquehanna River. But after the Yankees burned the bridge, that Sunday Gordon's men returned to York.

The remaining two divisions of Ewell's Second Corps – commanded by 34 year old Major General Robert Emmett Rodes and 37 year old Major General Edward "Allegheny" Johnson - were further north, in Carlisle, fulfilling General Ewell's 4 day old prediction, “We will get fat here.” Georgia private Gordon Bradwell recalled his 20 man company had been issued “two hindquarters of very fine beef, a barrel or two of flour, some buckets of wine, sugar, clothing, shoes, etc.” 

Further east, in Mechanicsburg, Brigadier General Albert Jenkins' (above)  troopers demanded 1,500 rations from the civilians. After that demand was met within 90 minutes, the rebels started looting, as they had done in Chambersburg. Noted one bitter journalist, “Some people, with . . . antiquated ideas of business, might call it stealing...but Jenkins calls it business...”

On that same Sunday, 29 June, other troopers from Jenkin's cavalry were trading shots with Pennsylvania militia at Oyster's point on the river, while Jenkins himself, along with 3 of General Ewell's engineers,  were looking over the defenses of the state capital of Harrisburg (above)  Nobody was impressed. 

Even the burning of the Cumberland Valley Railroad bridge over the Susquehanna (above)  failed to discourage these rebels. That evening, General Ewell ordered his infantry to move toward the river, determined to capture Harrisburg. This was the proof that Hooker's delay in matching Lee's movement across the Potomac, was leading to disaster.

Then an exhausted courier arrived at Ewell's (above) headquarters outside of Carlisle, with orders issued by General Lee just 12 hours earlier, in Chambersburg. 

In Lee's typical passive-aggressive fashion they read in part, “...if you have no good reason against it, I desire you to move in the direction of Gettysburg....you can thus join your other divisions to Early's...Your trains and heavy artillery you can send, if you think proper, on the road to Chambersburg. But if the roads which your troops take are good, they had better follow you.” 

Ewell, who had some experience with Lee's choice of language, realized the urgency hidden in the message. He immediately called off his attack on Harrisburg, and prepared to swing Johnson's  division and his supply trains back down the Cumberland Valley toward Chambersburg, and Rodes division due south toward Gettysburg – first thing in the morning.

The next morning, on the last day of June, 1863, while Major General J.E.B. Stuart was clashing with Major General Pleasanton's Federal cavalry at Hanover, and General Rodes' division was just beginning their 30 mile march south from Carlisle, John Buford was riding onto the high ground south of Gettysburg, at the head of 3,000 troopers. On the ridge opposite the town, known as Seminary Hill, he could see rebel infantry on the Chambersburg turnpike. These were the 2,000 man infantry brigade Heath had sent forward, looking for supplies. But seeing blue cavalry about to enter the town before them, and aware of Lee's orders  to avoid a fight, they reversed their march, returning to Cashtown.

Seeing them retreat, Buford immediately galloped into the town of Gettysburg and arraigned his defenses

. 

His first battalion of 1,500 men, under Colonel William Gamble, (above) were spread out on ridges west of town above Marsh Creek, near where the Pennsylvania volunteers had been overrun the week before. 

The Second Battalion under Colonel Tom Devin (above) was ordered to post pickets as far as 4 miles west and north, and entrench his men along the Mummasberg road. Devin confidently said he thought the command could handle whatever rebels threw at them, but Buford cut him off, saying, “No, you won’t. They will attack you in the morning and they will come booming – skirmishers three-deep. You will have to fight like the devil until supports arrive.”

At 10:30 that night Buford sent his report 10 miles back to Reynolds, now north of Emmitsburg.  It read in part, “...I am satisfied that A. P. Hill's corps is massed just back of Cashtown, about 9 miles from this place...One of my parties captured a courier of Lee's...He says Ewell's corps is crossing the mountains from Carlisle...”.

In short, Lee's entire 75,000 man army was converging on Buford's 3,000 man force in Gettysburg. To have added a cry for help would have been superfluous. After the messengers had left, Buford's signal officer, First Lieutenant Aaron Brainard Jerome, noted that his commander seemed more anxious, “than I ever saw him.”

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