Battle of Gettysburg- July 3, 1863- 161st Anniversary Special

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As Dawn approached on July 3, Robert E. Lee considered his options. The attacks of the day before had achieved limited success, with the capture of ground, the wrecking of the Federal Third Corps and the bloodying of two others. Yet, the Confederates had not accomplished their objective of driving the Union soldiers off of Cemetery Hill. It had been touch-and-go many times, but every breakthrough had been met with Union reinforcements. But, in war, even limited success could be considered something to build on to achieve victory.

 

According to his after-battle report, Lee wrote that the plan had remained unchanged from the day before. Reinforcing their gains on Culp's Hill from the night before and renewing the attack on the Union Right would be Richard Ewell's Corps.

 

During the growing darkness of the night before, the Confederates had captured some vacant Union fortifications. A renewal of the attacks on the Union position could threaten the Army of the Potomac and their avenue of resupply along the Baltimore Pike. At the same time, reinforced with a fresh division of Virginians under George Pickett, James Longstreet was to renew his attack from the day before on the southern end of the battlefield on the Union Left. While such a plan was indicated in his report after the battle, Longstreet would contend that he did not receive orders to that effect the night before when he had visited with Lee. It was a confusion of orders that would ultimately lead to inaction on the southern end of the battlefield on the morning of July 3.

 

The same could not be said about what occurred on the Union Right.

 

The Union forces would initiate an attack for the first time since the battle began. Union 12th Corps soldiers returning from being sent to reinforce the southern end of the battlefield would find in the darkness of the morning that the fortifications they had built were now occupied by some squatters with unfriendly dispositions.

 

When informed of this, Union 12th Corps commander Henry Slocum declared that the men of the 12th Corps would drive them out in the morning. At around 4 in the morning, the Union artillery opened fire. A Union artillerist would later write, "We poured shot and shell into them." These missiles of death and destruction would splinter trees and send branches careening to the earth and on top of Rebel soldiers.

 

This morning, the fighting on Culp's Hill foreshadowed what the war would become. It was not the pageantry of bayonets gleaming in the sunlight, banners fluttering in the air, or officers leading their men with their hats on the tips of their swords across open fields. Instead, wave upon wave of Rebel soldiers, including the vaunted Stonewall Brigade, would throw themselves into the hellfire sent their way by the enemy in relative safety behind breastworks or in trenches.

 

Some Union soldiers reported that they fired as many as 200 rounds.

 

Still, the Confederates came on as reinforcements arrived. Every attack was futile and found limited or no success.

 

But the futile attacks were not restricted to the Confederates that morning.

 

The 2nd Massachusetts and the 27th Indiana were ordered to charge across Spangler's Meadow toward Confederates behind a stone wall. Lt. Colonel Mudge, upon receiving the order, stated, "It is murder, but it is the order." Then, to his men, he yelled, "Up, men, over the works! Forward, double quick !" Both regiments would attack and were bloodily repulsed. Mudge, who had been a sparring partner of Robert E. Lee's son at Harvard before the war, would be killed in the attempt.

 

 

By late morning, the last Confederate attacks from Maryland and Virginia units were repulsed, and the fighting died down. No ground was gained, and the Union forces still held the critical high ground covering the Baltimore Pike.

 

There had been no attack on the southern end of the battlefield. Still, Lee had one final option: the division under George Pickett.

 

Lee, now, turned his attention to the Union Center. Lee had often asked his men to do the unthinkable before the Battle of Gettysburg. Almost every time, they had delivered him victory. So long as there was a chance for victory with these men, Lee would take it.

 

The plan was a simple one. It called for the massing of just under 150 cannons to bombard the Union Center, softening its defenses to provide an infantry assault with a better chance of success. Collecting this many cannons to bombard a position during a land battle had not been attempted before during the war and, on paper, was enough to accomplish the task. Once the position was adequately softened, the Confederate infantry was to step off and cross the field. George Pickett and his division would be reinforced by the division under James J. Pettigrew and by two brigades under Isaac Trimble. The brigades of Cadmus Wilcox and David Lang were added late in the planning. In all, 12,500 men. The evening before, Wright's Brigade of Georgians had managed to pierce the Union Center along the same ground as this proposed attack. With adequate preparation, three divisions would have a better chance of success.

 

The Confederates got into position. Some even inched forward to get a peek at the situation. More than a few compared it to the battle of Malvern Hill. Veteran soldiers knew what was in store for them.

 

The Union soldiers were not wholly unaware of what was going on. Some of the regiments in the center had collected muskets from the night before, providing men with multiple muskets near them, loaded and ready to fire. After the Council of War had disbanded the night before, Meade would turn to John Gibbon, the Union commander in this area, and say to Gibbon that the fighting would be along his front. Gibbon would soon find out how correct Meade was.

 

According to Lt. Colonel E.P. Alexander, around 1:00 in the afternoon, the Confederate artillery opened fire.

 

A Union colonel on the receiving end of the barrage would write in his diary that day that "The air was filled with shot and shell and the earth groaned and trembled under the terrible concussions."

 

The Union artillery would open fire in response.

 

It was such a cacophony of noise with such cataclysmic suddenness that soldiers miles away would stop what they were doing to glance in the direction of the sudden eruption.

 

If the Confederate infantry were to have any chance in their assault, Confederate artillery would have to silence the Union artillery in preparation. As minutes turned into an hour, the smoke from the deadly exchange would fill the area.

 

Understanding what this artillery barrage meant, Union artillery commander Henry Hunt ordered his batteries to stop their fire to conserve ammunition. Winfield Scott Hancock, the man who had been crucial to the Union effort so far in the battle, disagreed with this decision, arguing that having the Union artillery fire back would give a morale boost to his men. Hunt was not moved. As a result, only Hancock's cannons of the Second Corps Artillery Brigade continued to fire.

 

On the Confederate side, interactions between infantry commanders and artillery commanders would also dictate the course of events. James Longstreet, in charge of the assault, had charged Confederate artillery commander E.P. Alexander with sending the order for the infantry to commence the assault when Alexander determined that the Confederate artillery had made enough of an impact. It was a strange situation as, typically, an assault order did not come from an artillery commander. When Hunt ordered his guns to be silent on the Union side, the fire slackened; when Alexander could see through the smoke, he saw that a Union battery was being withdrawn. It was at this time that Alexander sent the message to commence the attack. With the area filled with smoke, the only way to determine whether the fire from the Confederate side had any effect would be in the return fire from the Union side. With a reduction in the return fire, and based on what he saw and could hear, Alexander advised that if the Confederate infantry assault were to occur, it had to happen then. James Longstreet could only nod his consent.

 

The Confederate artillery slackened its fire.

 

Union artillerists manning cannons on Cemetery Hill in the Evergreen Cemetery among damaged headstones would start exclaiming, "Here comes the infantry!' as they serviced their pieces.

 

The Confederate infantry now rose to their feet, with many sinking right back down to the ground or not rising at all, having laid in the hot July sun all afternoon under artillery bombardment. As if on parade, the remaining mass of men and metal lurched forward to cross what would become the most famous mile in American History.

 

A gentle wind typical of Pennsylvania summers blew in and lifted the smoke like a curtain was being raised. The Union defenders could now see a nearly mile-wide, almost irresistible, wave of men in butternut and gray, their red flags fluttering in the breeze advanced toward them.

 

Then, the Union artillery opened fire.

 

Cannons from Little Round Top to Cemetery Hill found the range, tearing gaping voids in the Confederate lines.

 

With every step, new gaps formed and would be closed by the Confederate foot soldiers as orders were given to close up by their file closers. The intense artillery fire and a flanking maneuver by an Ohio regiment caused Brockenbrough's brigade of Virginians to break and run back to the safety of their lines. Despite that setback, the Confederates pushed on. With every yard, casualties mounted, causing the lines to condense and start funneling towards an angle in the stone wall along the Union lines. The major obstacle to the advance was the Emmitsburg Road, which ran across the Rebel's path. In some places, a post and rail fence prevented a smooth advance, hindering the cohesion of the attack. Even so, thousands of men still found their way across the road but found themselves under short-range artillery fire and musket fire. One Union artillery battery commander ordered his battery to fire double canister at 10 yards as the Confederate infantry neared the stone wall. 

Brigadier General Lewis Armistead, at the head of his brigade, started to lead who was left of the Confederate attack over the wall. They made it a short way into the lines before Armistead was mortally wounded. Union soldiers rushed to the breakthrough to close up the gap. 

12,500 men started the attack; by the time the advance reached the ridge, maybe a couple thousand had made it to the wall; some estimated that perhaps only a few hundred men had crossed the wall. This handful that made it over were either killed, wounded, or captured. Armistead would be taken to a Union field hospital at the George Spangler Farm, where he would pass away from his wounds.

 

Union Second Corps Commander Winfield Scott Hancock would also be wounded. As he was starting to organize the advance of a brigade of men from Vermont, a bullet ripped through the pummel in his saddle and lodged itself in his groin. It was a wound, even with the bullet being taken out, that would plague him for the rest of his life.

 

With the plugging of the breakthrough at the Angle and the repulse of the assault, the last card that Robert E. Lee had to play was spent. It had been a calamity for his army. Casualty figures are difficult to estimate with absolute accuracy. Pettigrew's and Trimble's men had seen action on July 1, and battle casualties that are tallied factor in both days for those commands. Moreover, Robert E. Lee had a habit of underreporting his casualties. Even so, from what we do know, it was devastating. Pickett's Division of Virginians suffered over 2,600 casualties in the assault, just about half of that command at Gettysburg. In the field between the Stone Wall and the Emmittsburg Road, 522 dead Confederates were buried in a mass grave. 

 

The casualties among the officer corps were also appalling. Three Brigade commanders, Armistead, Garnett, and Marshall, would be killed or mortally wounded; generals James Kemper and Isaac Trimble would be wounded and captured. Pettigrew's Brigade, which had started the battle under the command of Pettigrew, would end the charge on July 3 under the command of Major John Jones, who had been the third in command of his regiment when the battle started. 

The Union defenders did not have a bloodless experience either. Historians James Hessler and Wayne Motts estimate that between the divisions of Hays and Gibbon, the Union defenders suffered just over 1,900 casualties repelling the assault. The Second Corps Artillery Brigade was all but wrecked, with two battery commanders, Alonzo Cushing and George Woodruff, losing their lives in defense of the position. General Hancock was severely wounded but survived.

 

The great Confederate charge was a failure, something the Southern boys were unaccustomed to. But for the Union defenders, it was a victory that felt like a victory. Not a triumph declared to the men by a flowery circular from headquarters, but as witnessed by the wreckage of the enemy force, lying lifeless in the fields before them, writhing in pain with ghastly wounds or missing limbs or streaming to their rear, hundreds of Johnny-Reb prisoners. There was no ambiguity in the outcome of the Pickett's Charge.

 

The charge was not the only fighting that occurred that afternoon.

There was fighting elsewhere on the field that day; the skirmishing that was going on in the southern portions of the town continued to simmer, a sharp cavalry fight to the east near the Low Dutch Road and Hanover Road intersection, where a young Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer blunted a Confederate cavalry charge exhorting his men with "Come on you Wolverines!' and a hopeless Union cavalry charge on the southern end of the field meant to capitalize on the failure of the Confederate infantry assault, only resulted in more death including that of Brigadier General Elon Farnsworth who led the charge. Even the Pennsylvania Reserves would drive out Georgia forces from the Devil's Den area during the evening hours. Despite all these actions, Meade, the commander of the Union forces, ordered no great counterattack.

 

Following the failure, all Lee could do was gather the pieces of his bloodied army and prepare for a counterattack that never happened. He made preparations to coalesce his army to prepare for a retreat.

 

Both armies were tired. Both armies were bloody, and then it started to rain.

 

The great hell-on-Earth that was the Battle of Gettysburg ended in a torrential downpour as the heavens opened up on the night of July 3, cleansing the earth of the gallons of blood spilled in order to save a nation.