Gettysburg--The First Day

Harry W. Pfanz

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780807871317, 9780807826249
• eBook ISBN: 9780807898406
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

For good reason, the second and third days of the Battle of Gettysburg have received the lion's share of attention from historians. With this book, however, the critical first day's fighting finally receives its due. After sketching the background of the Gettysburg campaign and recounting the events immediately preceding the battle, Harry Pfanz offers a detailed tactical description of events of the first day. He describes the engagements in McPherson Woods, at the Railroad Cuts, on Oak Ridge, on Seminary Ridge, and at Blocher's Knoll, as well as the retreat of Union forces through Gettysburg and the Federal rally on Cemetery Hill. Throughout, he draws on deep research in published and archival sources to challenge many long-held assumptions about the battle.

CHAPTER 1
Ewell's Raid

At 2:00 A.M. on 15 June cavalry bugles blared. Jenkins's brigade, “fatigued but hopeful” and encouraged by its successes in the “glorious battle” at Martinsburg the day before, began its march to the Potomac and to Maryland and Pennsylvania. It forded the Potomac above Williamsport, turned right, and trotted into that little town, driving a few Union troops from it. Some of the local folks must have known of the brigade's coming, for they set up tables in a street and gave its men a breakfast of milk, bread, and meat. After a hasty meal, the Virginians hurried on toward Hagerstown. Ladies and children welcomed them there about noon with flowers and shouts of “Hurrah for Jeff Davis.” Ladies begged them not to go on to Chambersburg where they might meet serious opposition, but the troopers pressed ahead for the Mason-Dixon Line and for Greencastle beyond. Before reaching Greencastle, Jenkins formed the brigade into two columns. Pistols in hand, the Virginians then charged into the village. Although they captured a lieutenant, his small command escaped. After burning Greencastle's railroad station and cutting telegraph wires, Jenkins's men rode ten miles north on the Valley Turnpike to Chambersburg.¹

Albert Gallatin Jenkins, born in 1830, was from Cabell County along the Ohio River about as far west from Richmond as a person could get and still be in Virginia. Not only was Cabell County a place of strong Unionist sentiment, but Jenkins had been schooled among northerners at Washington and Jefferson College at Washington, Pennsylvania, and at Harvard. Jenkins was a lawyer by profession, and he had served in Congress. Although he had no military training until after the war began, he raised a Confederate unit called the Border Rangers. He subsequently became colonel of the 8th Virginia Cavalry and in August 1862 a brigadier general.²

After Jenkins's brigade joined Ewell, its primary task was to collect cattle, horses, and supplies for the Army of Northern Virginia. In addition, it was to perform the usual cavalry duty of screening and gathering intelligence. It is ironic that a brigade of strangers to the Army of Northern Virginia should lead that army on its most critical campaign while the army's integral cavalry units either guarded its rear or rode with Stuart to the east and out of touch with it.

Three brigades of Rodes's division crossed the Potomac at Williamsport on the fifteenth while the other two bivouacked south of the river. Rodes's men were sorely in need of rest, and their bruised and bleeding feet made a halt necessary. They rested at Williamsport until the nineteenth when Ewell ordered them on to Hagerstown. Johnson's division crossed the river at Boteler's Ford a mile downstream near Shepherdstown and bivouacked around Sharpsburg. Early's division, which was threatening Shepherds-town from Harpers Ferry, forded the Potomac at Shepherdstown on the twenty-second. During their short stay near the Dunkard Church at Sharpsburg, men of the 1st and 3d North Carolina regiments held memorial services at the graves of comrades who had been killed there nine months before.³

General Lee ordered Ewell's corps into Pennsylvania on 21 June. Because he did not know Hooker's intentions, he gave Ewell broad instructions about his advance. On 17 June he had told Ewell to send Rodes's division to Hagerstown. Ewell's troops were to take supplies that could be used by the army, repress marauding, and give out that Lee was going to Harpers Ferry. Two days later Lee cautioned Ewell to be governed by circumstances around him, to supply his corps with provisions, and to send surplus supplies back to the army. On the twenty-second Lee advised Ewell to move toward the Susquehanna River on routes encompassing Emmitsburg, McConnellsburg, and Chambersburg. However, his trains were to follow the Valley Turnpike, which arced northeast from Hagerstown through Chambersburg and to Carlisle and Harrisburg. Moving on a broad front, especially to the east, would relieve some of the congestion on the center route, and it would confuse the enemy and cause him to pursue Lee east of the mountains and away from Lee's line of communications. Lee instructed also, “If Harrisburg comes within your means, capture it.”⁴

Lee was greatly concerned with the collection of supplies. He urged Ewell to use Jenkins's brigade for this and, if necessary, to send a staff officer with it to make sure that it operated in accordance with Lee's instructions. Lee reminded Ewell that whether or not the rest of the army could follow him depended on the amount of supplies that he obtained. If Stuart's three brigades joined him, they could help with the foraging.⁵

Lee was mindful that foraging had to be controlled tightly to discourage abuse, looting, and the erosion of discipline. In General Order 72 he stated that private property would not be injured or destroyed by any person connected with the army or taken by any persons except the commissary, ordnance, quartermaster, and medical chiefs or their agents. These officials would make requisitions on the locals, indicate where the seized supplies were to be delivered, and pay the market price for them with Confederate money. Should the citizens not comply with the requisitions, their goods could be taken, and if they refused money, they were to be given a receipt. In this way Lee hoped to subsist his army without destroying its discipline and reputation.⁶

Jenkins's brigade reached Chambersburg at 11:00 P.M. on the fifteenth and charged “like a tempest with a thousand thunderbolts” through its streets, waking its citizens. One Union account tells of how one charge culminated ingloriously in a collision with a mortar bed left in the street. The crash broke this brave charge, a gun fired accidentally, and the paladins fell into disarray. It could not have been a pretty sight; perhaps it was a reasonable outcome to a long and tiring day. Once the charging was over, the troopers bivouacked on the eastern outskirts of the town.⁷

Over the next two days Jenkins's men collected supplies from the town's stores, houses, and barns. They destroyed the railroad depot, cut telegraph wires, demolished a railroad bridge, and confiscated some weapons. They also drove off some Union troops who attacked their pickets. All went well until about 11:00 A.M. on the seventeenth, when a picket reported the approach of a “strong Yankee force.” This could have been a squadron of the 1st New York Cavalry commanded by Capt. William Boyd or a small detachment of Maryland cavalry under Lt. Charles W. Palmer, both of which were in the area. Whichever it was, the picket's alarm prompted Jenkins to assemble his Virginians and retreat to Hagerstown, leaving Chambersburg to sixteen Federal troopers.⁸

Rodes became furious when he learned of Jenkins's retreat. He complained that Jenkins had been told to remain in Chambersburg until Rodes's division joined him there. Because of his retreat, Jenkins had lost much property useful to the Confederacy. From this time on, Jenkins operated directly under Ewell, who accompanied Rodes's division.⁹

Longstreet's corps crossed the Potomac at Williamsport on the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth and reached Chambersburg on the twenty-seventh. It rested there two days. Hill's corps forded the river at Boteler's Ford on the twenty-fifth. McGowan's brigade led Pender's division through the ford at Shepherdstown. Permission was given for the men of the 1st South Carolina to remove their pants and drawers if they wished, and most did. They then waded the river, which Capt. Thomas Littlejohn described as about 400 yards wide with a rapid current and water between knee and hip deep.¹⁰

Musician Julius A. Leinbach of the 26th North Carolina's band crossed the river naked below the waist. After he dressed, someone suggested that his band play “My Maryland.” Leinbach refused. Soon a request came from General Pettigrew that Leinbach play the tune, and the band did so.¹¹

Dr. LeGrand Wilson of Davis's brigade was with Heth's division when it crossed at Shepherdstown on the twenty-fourth. When he rounded a bend above the river, Wilson viewed a scene that “was enough to arouse enthusiasm in every southern heart.” He could see a column of cheering soldiers, their bright arms glittering in the sunshine. Below him, he saw men fording the river holding their cartridge boxes high to keep them dry. Artillery was crossing a short distance downstream, and wagons and ambulances crossed above the column. Bands on the Virginia side played “Dixie,” and those across the river played “My Maryland.” Wilson thought the scene “grand and inspiring.” G. W. Nichols of the 51st Georgia must not have been one of those cheering. He believed that the men did not want to cross the river. They had become tired of Maryland during the Antietam campaign in 1862, and they expected trouble north of the Potomac.¹²

Lt. John L. Marye of the Fredericksburg Artillery recalled that though the water was deep and the current swift, the artillery crossed without trouble, and the mounted men stayed dry. Meanwhile the infantry of Heth's division, with cartridge boxes and shoes slung around their necks, crossed in a column of fours with hands joined. Occasionally, to the amusement of others, an infantryman would step in a hole and get wet up to his neck. After they reached the Maryland bank, they sloshed north toward Hagerstown.¹³

Obeying Lee's orders, Ewell's corps advanced over three routes. Rodes's and Johnson's divisions and the corps’ wagon trains followed the Valley Turnpike to Chambersburg, Shippensburg, and Carlisle. Early's division marched to the right over roads close to South Mountain via Waynesboro and Greenwood. It then turned east over the turnpike toward Cashtown Pass and Gettysburg. Before reaching the pass, it burned the iron furnace of Congressman Thaddeus Stevens and, in doing so, probably increased his already deep hatred of the South. After clearing the pass, Early's men marched toward York over two routes: White's cavalry (the 35th Virginia Cavalry Battalion) and Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon's brigade kept to the turnpike through Gettysburg to York and Wrightsville on the Susquehanna River. Early's three other brigades took lesser roads to the north through Mummasburg, Hunterstown, and East Berlin. In the meantime, George H. Steuart's brigade of Johnson's division and the 1st Maryland Cavalry Battalion feinted west from Greencastle to McConnellsburg and rejoined the main column at Chambersburg. It collected sixty cattle, forty horses, and some mules — hardly enough to have made such an arduous detour worthwhile.¹⁴

Jacob Hoke described the passing of one of Ewell's divisions through Chambersburg. First came some cavalry and then the brigades of infantry. Bands playing “Dixie” and “My Maryland” punctuated the column. Artillery followed the infantry brigades, and ammunition wagons followed the batteries. Teams of from four to six horses pulled the wagons, whose wheels made a grinding noise that suggested that they were heavily loaded. More artillery and more wagons followed, and a drove of 50 to 100 cattle brought up the rear. The soldiers wore various garb — some had portions of Union uniforms — but the color butternut predominated. Many men were ragged and dirty and had no shoes, but they were well armed and seemed to move as a vast fighting machine; they were not laughing as they might have been when marching at route order through the countryside. The division was an impressive sight.¹⁵

Apart from the brief alarm experienced by Jenkins's troopers in Chambersburg, only Gordon's brigade and White's battalion met any mentionable opposition. This was the 26th Pennsylvania Emergency Infantry Regiment, which had been sent to Gettysburg on a foolhardy and impossible mission: “to harass the enemy and to hold the mountains there.” The 26th had existed for three or four days when, on 26 June, it passed through Gettysburg and out the Chambersburg Pike to somewhere near Marsh Creek. The regiment's 700 members were well uniformed in blue, but they were greener than grass and no more than sacrificial lambs, victims of Minuteman and militia myths that had created the illusion that such untrained Americans could successfully oppose well-trained troops. The 26th formed a line when White's battalion appeared. There were a few shots, and the tyros of the 26th fled the field toward Harrisburg with some of White's men in pursuit.¹⁶

Gordon's brigade reached Gettysburg on the twenty-sixth. Salome Myers Stewart wrote with some exaggeration that several hundred cavalry arrived first, two of whom rode by her “brandishing their sabres and pointing pistols.” “Several thousand” infantry followed, yelling like fiends and with “their old red flag flying.” Some of them spent the night at the courthouse. They requisitioned supplies, and they left for York on the twenty-seventh after burning the railroad bridge over Rock Creek and some cars.¹⁷

The mayor of York surrendered his town when the Confederates approached, and Early occupied it. Gordon's brigade continued on to Wrightsville to seize its bridge over the Susquehanna. A few shots stampeded the militia guarding it, but they set fire to the great wooden structure and prevented the Confederates from capturing it. The fire spread into Wrightsville, and Gordon's men helped the civilians bring it under control. In the meantime others of Early's divisions burned railroad bridges in the area. They would have torched some factory and railroad buildings in York had Early not feared that the fires would spread.¹⁸

Ewell and Rodes's division reached Carlisle on the twenty-seventh after a halt of one day at Chambersburg to secure supplies. Ewell summoned Chambersburg's leading merchants to a meeting at a bank. They met with three members of his staff: Majors John A. Harmon, William Allen, and William J. Hawks — Ewell's quartermaster, ordnance, and commissary chiefs. Each had prepared requisitions. The merchants looked at their lists and claimed that the requisitions could not be filled. The officers replied that they had used county census records in making out their lists and told the merchants to collect what was wanted throughout the county. In reply the merchants submitted lists of what might be provided. Ewell did not like their offer and ordered them to go to their places of business, where details of soldiers visited them, took what they wanted, and paid for it in Confederate scrip.¹⁹

In his report Ewell summed up this part of the campaign in Pennsylvania by writing simply, “At Carlisle, Chambersburg, and Shippensburg, requisitions were made for supplies, and the shops were searched, many valuable stores being secured.” A Shippensburg merchant claimed that the Rebels had plundered his town for four days and that five sergeants had visited his store at different times in search of drugs. He estimated that they had taken drugs worth $20,000 to $25,000 from Shippensburg alone. After Gettysburg's officials had declared their inability to furnish any supplies, the Confederates had searched stores and found only a small quantity. However, they did find about 2,000 rations in ten or so railroad cars parked on a siding there. These were given to Gordon's brigade, and they burned the cars. In York the authorities answered the Confederate requisitions by furnishing Early with 1,500 to 2,000 pairs of shoes, 1,000 hats, and 1,000 pairs of socks, but they produced only $28,000 instead of the $100,000 demanded. Early, who could be more lenient than his reputation suggests, believed that the York authorities had made an honest effort and asked for no more. Ewell sent a wagon train south from Chambers-burg with medical and ordnance stores along with a drove of 3,000 cattle. In addition he notified the army's quartermaster of the location of 5,000 barrels of flour that had been collected. Getting so many barrels of flour back in Virginia would not have been easy to do.²⁰

Gathering supplies from individual farmers was not always pleasant. Forage parties received little or no opposition, for the farmers were thoroughly frightened. A soldier in the 8th Louisiana wrote that it was sad to see women in Waynesboro crying and wringing their hands at the sight of the Confederates. People watched from a distance “with every appearance of fear, very much in the same manner as the wild beeves of Louisiana gather round a person creeping through the grass in hunting ducks.” They were so afraid that they would give the Rebels anything that they wanted if only they would not destroy their property. Lieutenant Marye, who led details in search of horses, thought it a distasteful duty; it seemed that every other animal seized was a family pet, a favorite of the women and children who “with wailing and crying” begged that their pets might be spared. He believed that most of the draft horses taken were too large and clumsy for use by the artillery.²¹

Lt. John H. (Ham) Chamberlayne of Virginia's Crenshaw Battery hit the jackpot at a Dunkard church. Services were going on inside, and there were horses and buggies outside. While his men secured the horses, Chamberlayne passed out receipts to their owners. But his luck ran out. A Union patrol intercepted the artillerymen on their return to their battery, and Chamberlayne became a prisoner at Fort Delaware and at Johnson's Island.²²

The Rebels took advantage of the Pennsylvanians’ fear o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Gettysburg—The First Day
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• MAPS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION Fredericksburg to the Potomac
• CHAPTER 1 Ewell's Raid
• CHAPTER 2 Lee's Army Concentrates
• CHAPTER 3 Meade's Pursuit
• CHAPTER 4 Meade and Reynolds
• CHAPTER 5 Reconnaissance in Force
• CHAPTER 6 Reynolds's Final and Finest Hour
• CHAPTER 7 Cutler's Cock Fight
• CHAPTER 8 McPherson Woods
• CHAPTER 9 The Railroad Cut
• CHAPTER 10 Noon Lull
• CHAPTER 11 Howard and the Eleventh Corps
• CHAPTER 12 Ewell and Rodes Reach the Field
• CHAPTER 13 Oak Ridge
• CHAPTER 14 Daniel's and Ramseur's Brigades Attack
• CHAPTER 15 Daniel Strikes Stone
• CHAPTER 16 Schurz Prepares for Battle
• CHAPTER 17 Early's Division Attacks
• CHAPTER 18 Gordon and Doles Sweep the Field
• CHAPTER 19 The Brickyard Fight
• CHAPTER 20 Heth Attacks
• CHAPTER 21 Retreat from McPherson Ridge
• CHAPTER 22 Seminary Ridge
• CHAPTER 23 Retreat through the Town
• CHAPTER 24 Cemetery Hill
• CHAPTER 25 Epilogue
• APPENDIX A John Burns
• APPENDIX B The Color Episode of the 149th P.V.I.
• APPENDIX C Children of the Battlefield
• APPENDIX D Order of Battle
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX