"Stand to It and Give Them Hell"

Gettysburg as the Soldiers Experienced it From Cemetery Ridge to Little Round Top, July 2, 1863

John Michael Priest

• Publisher: Savas Beatie
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781611213249
• eBook ISBN: 9781611211771
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

"[A] stirring narrative of the common soldier's experiences on the southern end of the battlefield on the second day of fighting at Gettysburg." — Civil War News "Stand to It and Give Them Hell" chronicles the Gettysburg fighting from Cemetery Ridge to Little Round Top on July 2, 1863, through the letters, memoirs, diaries, and postwar recollections of the men from both armies who struggled to control that "hallowed ground." John Michael Priest, dubbed the "Ernie Pyle" of the Civil War soldier by legendary historian Edwin C. Bearss, wrote this book to help readers understand and experience, as closely as possible through the written word, the stress and terror of that fateful day in Pennsylvania. Nearly sixty detailed maps, mostly on the regimental level, illustrate the tremendous troop congestion in the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard, and Devil's Den. They accurately establish, by regiment or company, the extent of the Federal skirmish line from Ziegler's Grove to the Slyder farm and portray the final Confederate push against the Codori farm and the center of Cemetery Ridge, which three Confederate divisions—in what is popularly known as Pickett's Charge—would unsuccessfully attack on the final day of fighting. " ' Stand to It and Give Them Hell' puts a human face on the second day of the nation's epic Civil War battle... Mike Priest has taken a familiar story and somehow made it fresh and new. It is simply first-rate." —Lance J. Herdegen, award-winning author of Union Soldiers in the American Civil War "Remarkable... Priest's distinctive style is rife with anecdotes, many drawn from obscure diaries and letters, artfully stitched together in an original manner." —David G. Martin, author of The Shiloh Campaign

Chapter 1

July 1, 1863

“I am going to whip them or they are going to whip me.”

—Robert E. Lee, Army of Northern Virginia

Daylight, II Army Corps Headquarters, Army of the Potomac
Unionville, Maryland, 25 miles south of Gettysburg

Lieutenant Colonel Charles H. Morgan, assistant adjutant general and chief of staff, II Corps, received two dispatches from Headquarters, Army of the Potomac, before breakfast. The first order commanded the corps to march. The second admonished the corps commanders not to lose any dispatches. Absentmindedly, he placed the fragile tissue paper on his field desk, and walked outside his tent to the quartermaster’s office to instruct him about managing the supply train.

When he returned to his quarters, he found his black servant packing up his bedding. Morgan’s eyes shot to his desk. The orders were not there. He panicked. The servant had not seen the papers. The two rifled the tent but to no avail. With his heart pounding, Morgan finally caught sight of a yellowing paper under the valet’s foot. Stuck to the sole, thoroughly soaked by the wet grass, the colonel found the now illegible command to march to Taneytown.

Relieved, Morgan verbally relayed the directive to Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, commander of II Corps. Passing up breakfast, he rode off for army headquarters at Taneytown, 10 miles distant, to get another copy of the orders.¹

V Army Corps, Army of the Potomac Union Mills, Maryland, 18 miles southeast of Gettysburg

The V Corps broke camp at the Littlestown-Westminster intersection before dawn and took to the road in the dark. Private Robert G. Carter (Company H, 22nd Massachusetts) and the rest of Col. William S. Tilton’s 1st brigade in the First Division did not have time to boil their morning coffee. With their uniforms still damp from the long grass, the men formed ranks. Carter gnawed on a hard cracker and washed down each mouthful with a swig of day-old cold sugared coffee from his canteen.²

The First Division, which led the corps the day before, rotated to the back of the column. This moved Tilton’s brigade to the back of the division, which in turn pushed the 118th Pennsylvania to the tail end of the entire column. Captain Francis A. Donaldson (Company K), too exhausted for active duty, remained with the brigade, under the care of the regimental surgeon, who decided to revive his run-down system with an opium pill and a shot of whiskey. The young captain awakened to the “Assembly” “feeling as tight as a musket” and ready to move on.

Before each regiment stepped off, the regimental commanders bluntly forbade straggling under any circumstances. They instructed all officers, under the penalty of arrest and court martial, to round up all skulkers, regardless of their unit and herd them forward. Everyone, including cooks and the accompanying black “contraband,” had to join the advance. They expected officers to summarily shoot anyone who refused to comply. Donaldson, erroneously assuming the commanding general would give the men more than a few hours respite, did not like eating dust at the tail of the column.³

Private Carter recalled seeing barefooted and severely chafed men limping along the route of march. Many wore varied colored handkerchiefs tied over their heads or around their necks and a considerable number stumbled forward in their muslin or cotton drawers. The enervating heat increased in intensity as the morning wore away. Companies and regiments sprawled along the roadside, some of the men downed by heat stroke.⁴

It took the rear of the corps until 10:00 a.m. to reach the bivouac of the 118th Pennsylvania. Not very long after Captain Donaldson and his rear guard took to the road, they happened upon Pvt. James Godfrey (Company K) whom the captain described as a stout “poor, miserable, weak minded fellow, utterly unable to stand fire.” Godfrey, the headquarters’ packhorse driver, with his face downcast, begged for his freedom. He insisted he had to take care of the officers’ animals. Donaldson turned the pack train over to a wandering black man and ordered his men to herd the dejected private forward at bayonet point. Shortly thereafter, they provided Godfrey with a weapon and accoutrements. An obstinate Irishman from a New York regiment deliberately straggled behind the detail, forcing it to slow down. Donaldson, believing the man to be more a victim of fatigue than cowardice, did not want to drop him with a pistol shot. He placed two men with leveled bayonets behind the fellow with orders to kill him if he would not budge. Major General George Sykes (V Corps commander) startled him from behind. “Go ahead captain,” he shouted, “and leave this man to me. I’ll get him along.” The general slapped the man several sharp blows with his riding crop while ordering him to “double-quick.” The unflappable Irishman fixed his eyes on Sykes and sincerely asked, “I say Gineral, ‘ave ye any tobacky about ye?” Everyone burst into uncontrollable laughter. Urging his horse forward, Sykes said to Donaldson, as he passed, “Captain, let the man go, I’ll be responsible for him.” Before the captain’s party crossed the Pennsylvania line, he commandeered the regimental barber, whom he personally loathed, and strong-armed him into the column.⁵

At 11:00 a.m. as the head of the division staggered into Pennsylvania, the regiments unfurled their flags. Cheers rippled along the entire length of the corps, steadily increasing in volume as it progressed down the road.

Brigadier General Samuel Crawford halted his Pennsylvania Reserve division 100 yards short of the Mason-Dixon Line. The soldiers stood in ranks, while each regimental officer read a general order requiring every loyal Pennsylvanian to drive the Rebel’s from their native soil. Three resounding “huzzahs” rent the air, which the men thought resonated all the way to “Rebeldom.” Hurled kepis and slouch hats danced sporadically in the bright morning sky.

The soldiers resumed their march. When the lead regiment crossed into Pennsylvania, someone shouted, “Three cheers for the Keystone.” Again, the “manly” Union cheer surged along the column from regiment to regiment like a succession of waves crashing ashore.⁶

Caked with road dust, their faces streaked with sweat, the men of the 22nd Massachusetts heard bugles blaring faintly in the distance along a parallel road, followed immediately by the long rolls of drums. Brigadier General James Barnes’ First Division musicians picked up the strain and then Brig. Gen. Romeyn B. Ayres’ buglers and drummers, in his Second Division, continued it across the Pennsylvania countryside, the martial music acting like a tonic.

For the better part of the morning, in an effort to stay awake, the exhausted men in Brig. Gen. Samuel Crawford’s Third Division sang while the bands played. The moment Col. William McCandless’ 1st brigade crossed into its native state the band blared out “Home Again,” to which the veterans joined in the heartfelt refrain, many with tears etching salty trails down their dirty faces.⁷

The weary, filthy, and footsore men of the V Corps picked up their feet and plodded in step toward their afternoon bivouacs. “It was dry, dusty, and sultry. The heat was terrible,” Pvt. William H. Brown (Company D, 44th New York) recalled. Near Hanover Junction, destroyed fencerows lined both sides of the road. Dead horses, many of them branded “C.S.A.,” lay scattered everywhere. Brown latched his eyes onto a severely wounded but “fine horse” leaning in a fence corner. Badly torn up fields, indicative of the presence of large bodies of moving troops indicated to the veteran Donaldson of the 118th Pennsylvania that an extremely “hot” cavalry engagement had occurred there recently. A local told Pvt. Thomas Scott (Battery D, 5th U.S. Artillery), “They [the Rebels] went through here flying.”⁸

Captain Frank J. Bell (Company I, 13th Pennsylvania Reserves), along the way, watched the men from Company K, 1st Pennsylvania Reserves, break by files from the column to briefly visit relatives as they trudged along. The hometown boys from Adams County hurriedly gulped cups of water or milk then hugged their fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers, before scampering back to their company. “Goodbye all, I will be back when the battle is over,” one fellow shouted behind him. “God Speed to you,” wafted over his back.⁹

The corps stopped marching at Mudville—a small cluster of houses on Frederick Street, near the brickyard and the tannery, on the west side of Hanover. It was 4:00 p.m. Private Carter noticed that many stragglers had already rejoined their commands. The men pitched their tents and settled down for what they believed would be a long restful evening.¹⁰

With two hours between his regiment and the Pennsylvania border, Pvt. William P. Lamson, Jr. (Company B, 20th Maine) recalled how rapidly the pacifist German Baptist Brethren and Mennonites descended upon Colonel Tilton’s 1st brigade. Upon examining the men’s weapons and accoutrements, one fellow scoffed that the soldiers were “walking arsenals, licensed to do murder at their chieftain’s bidding.” The ladies wanted to know about the men’s provisions and their culinary skills.¹¹

Private Henry Clay McCauley (Company B, 1st Pennsylvania Reserves), having gotten permission to throw his knapsack upon the company wagon so he could keep up with the column, wheezed to a halt in a nearby woods with his regiment. The commissary wagon stopped among the trees, and the sergeant began distributing rations. When they played out, and the wagon headed back to the supply train to get some more, McCauley hitched a ride to retrieve his knapsack. Much to his chagrin, “Some damd theaven rascal” had stolen his knapsack. Returning empty handed, he munched his hard crackers and fumed over his loss.¹²

II Army Corps, Army of the Potomac Uniontown, Maryland, 20 miles southeast of Gettysburg

Brigadier General John G. Caldwell’s First Division of the II Corps arrived in Uniontown early in the morning. He assigned Brig. Gen. Samuel K. Zook’s 3rd brigade to march behind the supply train as the corps’s rearguard. While the rest of the corps trudged ahead, Zook’s people slogged along behind the lurching wagons. A short distance into the advance, however, headquarters countermanded the directive. The 145th Pennsylvania from Col. John R. Brooke’s 4th brigade relieved them. The brigade slowly walked back to Uniontown, where the wagons went into park, and Zook’s regiments countermarched in an effort to catch up with the division. A death premonition overshadowed Lt. James J. Purman (Company A, 140th Pennsylvania). Turning to his orderly sergeant, John A. Burns, he asked him to act as his executor upon his demise. The sergeant laughed the matter aside, but Purman could not shake his sense of eminent doom.¹³

Shortly before noon, Brig. Gen. John Gibbon’s Second Division took its place in the column. From his bivouac southeast of Uniontown Lt. William Lochren (Company K, 1st Minnesota) listened apprehensively to the dull booming to the north as the brigade took to the road back to town. Once they reached the village, the column turned right toward Gettysburg. The reverberations of the artillery fire intensified the closer they got to the town.¹⁴

III Army Corps, Army of the Potomac Emmitsburg, Maryland, 10 miles southwest of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Farther to the west, it rained. The wet morning found Maj. Gen. Daniel Sickles’ III Corps bivouacked in the vicinity of Emmitsburg, Maryland, apparently to protect the flanks and the rear of the army, the lead elements of which were headed north toward Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Part of Maj. Gen. David Birney’s First Division had moved northwest along the road to Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, to cover the Fairfield Road, which branched north about five miles beyond the town. The men of the 105th Pennsylvania never forgot the terribly mucky roads, created by the heavy rain. The division was strung out from Taneytown to Emmitsburg with the 57th Pennsylvania bivouacked at Bridgeport, midway between the two towns.¹⁵

Brigadier General J. H. Hobart Ward’s 2nd brigade had halted within two miles of Emmitsburg. The beautiful Maryland countryside completely captivated Adj. Peter B. Ayars (99th Pennsylvania). Unmolested by warfare, the verdant farms with well-maintained outbuildings and intact fences were so completely different from the devastated homesteads he had seen throughout Virginia. Around noon, a mud-spattered officer raced up on horseback to Capt. George Winslow, commanding Battery D, 1st New York, as he stood alongside the railroad line, which ran into the village from the north. The man asked for General Sickles, and the captain pointed him in the right direction.¹⁶

Simultaneously, the adjutant of the 110th Pennsylvania, which belonged to Col. P. Regis De Trobriand’s 3rd brigade, formed the regiment for its monthly muster, which he should have done the day before. While the company first sergeants called the rolls, the staff officer galloped past the regiment frantically asking for Sickles. The general was not with his corps. Having ridden forward to reconnoiter the South Mountain gap ...

Table of contents

• Coverpage
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: July 1, 1863, Daylight
• Chapter 2: July 2, 1863, 1:00 a.m.-9:00 a.m.
• Chapter 3: July 2, 1863, 9:00 a.m.-Noon
• Chapter 4: July 2, 1863, Noon-3:00 p.m.
• Chapter 5: July 2, 1863, 3:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m.
• Chapter 6: July 2, 1863, 4:00 p.m.-4:30 p.m.
• Chapter 7: July 2, 1863, 4:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m.
• Chapter 8: July 2, 1863, 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.
• Chapter 9: July 2, 1863, 5:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m.
• Chapter 10: July 2, 1863, 5:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.
• Chapter 11: July 2, 1863, 5:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m.
• Chapter 12: July 2, 1863, 6:00 p.m.-6:20 p.m.
• Chapter 13: July 2, 1863, 6:20 p.m.-6:30 p.m.
• Chapter 14: July 2, 1863: 6:30 p.m.-7:00 p.m.
• Chapter 15: July 2, 1863, 7:00 p.m.-7:30 p.m.
• Chapter 16: July 2, 1863, 7:30 p.m.-Late Evening
• Appendix Order of Battle for the Troops on Cemetery and Seminary Ridges, July 2, 1863
• Bibliography
• Index