For the most part, the story of the July 1 fighting at Gettysburg is a story of unrelieved defeat for the Federal troops, but during the morning hours there were moments of triumph. One of these came when Southern troops tried to advance down an unfinished railroad cutting north of the Chambersburg road and were overpowered and compelled to surrender. The artist who made this sketch wrote that he followed the description of a Union Officer who was engaged here and who said that Brigadier General James J. Archer’s Confederate brigade was the one that ran into trouble; the artist himself was doubtful that the capture took place here. Apparently Archer himself was taken prisoner south of the Chambersburg road, but his brigade—which was in Major General Harry Heth’s division of the III Corps—did lose some 500 men captured in the first day’s fight and the railroad cutting was the only place where any appreciable number of Confederates were taken prisoner on that day. (Illustrations 2.5)

  So the battle flared up anew and the Federals were overwhelmed. Howard’s corps was simply swamped, and though valiant rear-guard elements bought as much time as they could, the corps as a whole had to retreat pell-mell through Gettysburg to temporary safety on Cemetery Hill. When these men retreated, Double-day’s men could not hold their ground because the exultant Confederates were storming in behind them and attacking them furiously from in front as well. After a bitter last-ditch struggle around the Lutheran seminary, these Federals took off for Gettysburg, ran through the disorderly town (full of battle smoke and lost soldiers, bullets flying in every direction, victors and defeated mingling in a confused, bewildering turmoil), and made their way to Cemetery Hill and the long ridge that ran south from it, aligning their right flank with Howard’s left.

  While all this was happening, Reynolds’ messages had reached Meade, who had his headquarters fifteen miles to the south, and Meade at once acted to pull his army together. Learning that Reynolds had been killed, Meade sent Major General Winfield S. Hancock, commander of the II Corps, hurrying into Gettysburg with orders to assume general command there and to determine whether Gettysburg was a suitable place for the all-out fight with Lee that Meade was determined to fight sooner or later.

  Hancock came up just as the beaten Federals were assembling on the high ground south of Gettysburg. He seems to have had a brief dispute with Howard, who ranked him and who did not see why he himself should not continue to command this part of Meade’s army, but Hancock was a burly, energetic man who took this in his stride. He established his own authority, got the broken fragments of the I and XI Corps into position as best he could, sent word to Meade that Gettysburg would be a very good place to have a battle, and settled down to hold on until the rest of the army came up.

  If what Hancock feared was a renewal late that afternoon of the Confederate assault, he was agreeably disappointed, because the assault was not renewed. Confederate survivors argued about this for years to come—indeed, the argument is still going on, in the books—and Lee’s admirers have always asserted that a great chance was missed because General Ewell failed to follow up the day’s triumph with a sweeping assault on the disorganized Federals who were taking refuge on Cemetery Hill. Certainly the Federals had been roughly handled—between them, the two corps had lost close to half of their strength and it took time to get the fugitives sorted out and put into position for a new fight—and if Ewell’s men could have followed up their victory by surging on through the town and storming the insecure defenses on the heights, a momentous battle might have been won. In the years since July 1, 1863, a great deal of criticism has descended on General Dick Ewell.

  When he learned that Reynolds had been killed, General Meade sent Major General Winfield S. Hancock forward to take charge at Gettysburg. Hancock reached the scene early in the afternoon of July 1, just in time to see the overmatched Unionists driven away from their positions north and west of town. He determined that the high ground below Gettysburg—Culp’s Hill, Cemetery Hill, and the long stretch of Cemetery Ridge running south to the Round Tops—could and should be held. He organized what troops were at hand to hold this ground and sent word of his decision to Meade, who promptly ordered the rest of the army to Gettysburg and came on himself, reaching the scene around midnight. Here is a studio picture of Hancock; “Hancock the Superb,” newspaper writers called him, one of the dominant actors in the Union army’s greatest victory. (Illustrations 2.6)

  Most of the criticism is undeserved. It is true enough that for half an hour or so after the first Federals reached the high ground, the Federal army was not in good shape to stand off a vigorous attack, but it is mortally hard to see how such an attack could have been made. Ewell’s men just were not in shape to make it on the heels of the Federal retreat. Rodes’s division had suffered extremely heavy losses, Early’s was temporarily disorganized by the pursuit through town, Ewell’s third division was just beginning to come up, and during the half hour or so when the opportunity was really at its best, an attack was not quite practicable. Later in the day it might indeed have been made, but by that time the Federals probably were able to hold their ground. They held a strong defensive position, reinforcements were on their way, and it is probably true that by the time the Confederates were ready to launch an assault the opportunity had passed.

  As a matter of fact, Lee was on the scene, and if he had felt that an assault was in order he could have ordered it. He did not do so; nor did he join in the criticism of Ewell after the battle. He did indicate that he believed something, somehow, had been missed when he said, long afterward, that if he had had Stonewall Jackson with him, he would have won the battle of Gettysburg; but to say that Ewell was not Stonewall’s equal was not necessarily to criticize him. Nobody else was, either.

  In any case, when night came the armies stayed where they were, Federals on the hills south of Gettysburg, Confederates arrayed on the rolling country to the north and west. For whatever it was worth, the town itself was in Confederate possession, but this fight was not waged for possession of a town. It had begun as an almost accidental collision between two armies, it had continued because sheer force of circumstances made it impossible to break it off, and it was actually fought for possession of control over the future of America.

  Three

  SECOND DAY: FIGHTING BY COMPULSION

  On the morning of July 2 General Robert E. Lee appeared to be on the crest of the wave. He had won a smashing victory, he had his army in hand now, and there was good reason to suppose that he would complete the triumph today. By nightfall Confederate independence might well be very near.

  Certainly the Confederate rank and file believed so. They had been fighting the Army of the Potomac, off and on, for two years now and except for the stand-off fight at Antietam in the early fall of 1862 they had won every engagement. In December they had rebuffed the Yankees at Fredericksburg so handily that half of the Southern army did not even have to get into action. In May, at Chancellorsville, they had inflicted an ignominious defeat on foes who outnumbered them at least two to one. Now, invading the enemy heartland, they had won the first engagement decisively, inflicting ruinous losses and driving the Northerners away from their defensive positions. There seemed to be every reason to believe that the next twenty-four hours might see the job finished once and for all.

  Yet the situation was not as rosy as it looked. Winning the first encounter, Lee had in fact put himself in a position where he would have to fight at a disadvantage. For the first time in this war the Federal army—larger than the Army of Northern Virginia, as was always the case—was able to stand on the defensive on its own soil. Lee would have to force the fighting all the way.

  The pressure of time was on him and not on his opponent. Lee could not stand his ground and wait for the Federals to attack; living off the country as it was, his army had to keep moving, and unless it went back to Virginia immediately, tacitly admitting that the whole invasion had failed, it could not move until it had beaten the Army of the Potomac. It could not wait for the enemy to put himself in a false position and then pounce upon an exposed fragment, and it could not let the enemy wear himself out in a fruitless assault and then strike a crippling counterblow. It had to fight right there and right then—on the enemy’s terms.

  Furthermore, there was no possibility for the kind of maneuvering at which Lee excelled. Jeb Stuart was still not there, and without him Lee could not put his army on the march; if he did, he had no way to tell what he might run into. General Longstreet, stoutest of his corps commanders, had this impressed upon him as this day began.

  Longstreet came up to Lee’s headquarters in advance of his corps, which had camped for the night a few miles to the west and would be up fairly soon. Longstreet listened to the accounts of the first day’s fighting, took in as much of the general situation as could be seen from the ridge where the Lutheran seminary was, and then proposed that Lee move around to the south, circling past the Union left flank and striking for Meade’s rear. Logically, this was the correct move, and it was in fact what Meade feared Lee would do; but Lee could not do it because under the circumstances it would have been wildly rash. He did not know where all of Meade’s army was, he had no way to find out, and if he tried a flank march now he might run into a ruinous ambush.

  He had at last learned where Stuart was—he had got his cavalry corps up in the neighborhood of Carlisle, miles to the north, where it was not needed at all, and he and his horsemen would be on hand tomorrow; but Lee needed him today, this morning, and he was not going to have him. Without him he could not make the move Longstreet was urging, and he answered Longstreet in the only way he could answer: “No. The enemy is there and I am going to fight him there.”

  Lee outlined his battle plan without delay. He would strike at Meade’s flanks, trying to crush both ends of his line simultaneously. To be sure, the Federal position was powerful, but Lee’s army had the habit of victory, and Lee seems to have been confident that it could sweep everything before it, once it struck with all its might. He told Longstreet to lead his corps down behind Seminary Ridge and prepare to attack to the eastward. At the same time Ewell would assault the high ground that had not been taken the night before; and Hill, in the center of the line, would lend a hand in either of these assaults or move forward on his own, as circumstances might indicate. The fighting was to begin as soon as Longstreet got his men into position.

  It took several hours to do this, and after the war many Southerners bitterly criticized Longstreet, saying that he sulked because his own plan had been rejected and complaining that he could have moved much more rapidly if his heart had been in it. Sulky, Longstreet undoubtedly was, but he does seem to have moved as rapidly as possible—after all, it took time to get 12,000 infantry men off the road, move them cross-lots through wooded country, and then shake them out into a battle line ready to make a co-ordinated charge. It might be noted that to the end of his life Lee did not criticize Longstreet’s behavior on this day. In any case, Longstreet was ready by midafternoon or thereabouts and the great battle of the second day began.

  Meade’s army was fully confident. For the first time it was fighting on its own soil, and every soldier realized that the job now was to hold on and let the enemy force the fighting; all in all, the men believed that they were going to win this one, and if they drew no especial inspiration from Meade’s leadership that did not matter. From first to last, the generals who led this army owed more to the private soldiers than the soldiers owed to them. The men carried within themselves whatever the mysterious quality is that enables a soldier to surpass himself on the battlefield.

  The Federal position was strong. Hancock had been right when he told Meade that this was a good place to fight a battle, and Meade—who had reached the field around midnight on the night of July 1—fully agreed once he had studied the layout.

  The Federal right was posted on Culp’s Hill, a massive, wooded height southeast of Gettysburg. This was held by the XII Corps under Major General Henry W. Slocum, and on the corps’ left, occupying slightly lower ground that swung westward just south of Gettysburg to the high ground of Cemetery Hill, were elements from the shattered I Corps. (Meade was not satisfied with the way Doubleday handled the corps and appointed Major General John Newton to replace him.) Cemetery Hill and the high ground around it was held by Howard and his XI Corps, with artillery posted to sweep the approaches. South from this strong point went Cemetery Ridge, a more or less open stretch whose height diminished as it ran south, and here the II Corps, under Hancock, was stationed, with General Dan Sickles’ III Corps on its left.

  Major General George Sykes and the V Corps were in immediate reserve, ready to reinforce any part of the left, and coming up from the rear was the reliable VI Corps led by Major General John Sedgwick. It had been far to the east when the order to bring the army together went out, and it was now making a tremendous forced march under a blistering July sun. It probably would not be ready for much action today, but it would be a powerful reserve in case anything went wrong.

  The army’s left was supposed to be anchored on rocky heights a couple of miles south of Cemetery Hill—Little Round Top, a craggy knob at the foot of Cemetery Ridge, and Big Round Top half a mile to the south. But General Sickles, who held the left, suspected that the Confederates were about to attack him and believed he would be in a stronger position if he moved forward to elevated ground along the Emmitsburg road, half a mile or more to the west of the ground he had been ordered to occupy. He asked for Meade’s permission to move forward, failed to get it, and then moved out on his own hook, posting one of his two divisions on the Emmitsburg road facing west and the other one in a peach orchard and a wheat field facing almost south. He had no sooner got them established there than Longstreet opened his attack.

  Lee’s major effort in the battle of July 2 was a furious attack by Lieutenant General James Longstreet’s I Corps on the Union left, which Major General Dan Sickles, commander of the III Corps, had advanced to the Emmitsburg road, the peach orchard, and a wheat field—a salient jutting out a mile in advance of the position on Little Round Top and lower Cemetery Ridge which Sickles had been ordered to hold. Longstreet’s men struck this salient with tremendous power, breaking the defending force and threatening to destroy the entire Union position. This unfinished sketch by an artist catches one of the desperate moments when a Union battery, in the center of the picture, supported by infantry, tries desperately to hold the ground in the face of a Confederate attack coming from the right and right-center of the picture. (Illustrations 3.1)

  Some of the worst fighting of the battle came on the afternoon of July 2 when Longstreet’s men drove Federal defenders out of a tangle of rocky ground known as the Devil’s Den. Here a battlefield sketch of the beginning of this Federal defeat catches the sense of confusion that possessed this disordered part of a desperate field. (Illustrations 3.2)

  Longstreet was deliberate in getting into position, but when he did strike he hit with great power. He was fighting with only two of his divisions today, under Major Generals Lafayette McLaws and John B. Hood; his third, Pickett’s, had been doing rear-guard duty around Chambersburg, and although it was on its way to Gettysburg, it would not be ready for action until tomorrow—when, as a matter of fact, there would be more than enough grim work for it to do. Longstreet was putting between 12,000 and 14,000 men into action and he struck Dan Sickles’ corps with overwhelming force.

  The defects of Sickles’ chosen position were revealed at once, and many good Union soldiers paid with their lives for this general’s lack of battlefield savvy. From the southwest Longstreet’s artillery pounded the angle of Sickles’ line, and while Hood’s division swarmed in against the southern face of the line, McLaws’ division attacked the western face. In effect, Sickles was struck on three sides at once, and his undersized army corps was swamped. Sickles himself was carried off the field with one leg shattered by a cannon ball, and Confederate General Hood was disabled by a painful wound in the arm; but the fury of the Confederate attack and the tenacity of the Federal resistance were not diminished, and the battle rose to an unendurable intensity.

  Meade ordered one of Hancock’s divisions to come to the rescue; then, when the Federals were driven out of wheat field and peach orchard and tried stubbornly to hold on in a formless jumble of rocks and scrub trees south of the wheat field—the soldiers called this place “the Devil’s Den,” and they named it well—Meade told General Sykes to bring the V Corps into action.

  Sykes’s men were veterans, and in their ranks was a division of regulars, who gave a special flavor of disciplined toughness to the entire corps. The regulars were shock troops fit for any emergency, but the whole left of Meade’s battle line had come unraveled and to stitch it together again under fire was almost impossible. The first essential was to find a secure anchorage for the left flank, and the only possible spot for this was Little Round Top, the hill which Sickles had so blithely abandoned when he moved forward to what he thought was a better position. Hood’s troops now were in the Devil’s Den, moving on for Little Round Top. If they took it, Meade’s entire position on Cemetery Ridge would be untenable and the battle would end in a smashing Confederate victory.

 

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