The following
examples come from Glory Road,
the second volume in Bruce Catton’s marvelous history of the Army of the Potomac.
By the fall of 1862 the State of Pennsylvania had sent
150,000 men to war. In the spring of 1863, the town of Berkeley was rocked by an anti-draft protest and
the militia had to be summoned, with four of five “insurgents” (Catton’s word)
killed.
In mid-August, 1862, the Iron Brigade had mustered 2,400
men in four regiments; now it was down to a thousand men. On October 9, the 24th
Michigan was added to the brigade, a regiment that would be one of the last all-volunteer units to enlist.
Heading east, the men were treated to a banquet at Pittsburgh. Every soldier was
presented a bouquet by a pretty girl, and remembered one, “a portion of the
regiment was in a fair way of being captured.” (15)
“About
as incompetent a general as Abraham Lincoln ever commissioned.”
Once again, the army had a new commander. “In some ways,”
Catton says, Gen. Burnside
was about as incompetent a
general as Abraham Lincoln ever commissioned, and he comes down in history
looking stiff and stuffy with frock coat and incredible whiskers, a man who
moved from disaster to disaster with an uncomprehending and wholly
unimaginative dignity.
He had once reached the altar with a Kentucky belle, only
to have her return a “no,” when asked the penultimate question.
A historian could write in 1906, that it was the Army of
Potomac’s misfortune to be cursed “by a line of brave and patriotic officers
whom some good fairy ought to have knocked on the head.”
Even Capt. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. despaired:
I have pretty much made up my
mind that the South have achieved their independence & I am almost ready to
hope spring will see an end….The army is tired with its hard and its terrible
experience & still more with its mismanagement & I think before long
the majority will say that we are vainly working to effect what never
happens—the subjugation (for that it is) of a great civilized nation. We shan’t
do it—at least this army can’t. (27-33)
A plan to make a sudden
strike across the Rappahannock River was aborted when bridge-building equipment
failed to arrive. After sitting for three weeks, stymied by the river, with cold
winter rains coming down and his army sinking in mud, Burnside decided to
“surprise” Lee, throw across bridges (now that materials were at hand), and
cross directly in front of Fredericksburg.
“A
simple exercise in the killing of Union soldiers.”
Catton sums up the battle succinctly, saying it would become nothing more than “a simple exercise in the
killing of Union soldiers.”
A teacher might do well to stress that line to students. What a waste of human life. And the soldiers
had to know it.
 |
| The Irish Brigade at the Battle of Fredericksburg. |
Before the battle really got going a Rebel shell passed
through a Union quartermaster’s tent just as he was preparing to pay his regiment.
Greenbacks “went whirling and dancing up about the wrecked tent like a green
blizzard, and the ensuing scramble by stragglers and orderlies was something
the army long remembered.”
The Rebel yell, “that hellish yell,” said one Michigan
soldier, could be heard by advancing blue attackers. A Federal surgeon said
later, “I have never, since I was born, heard so fearful a noise as that Rebel
yell.” He compared it to “a regular wildcat screech.” “There is nothing like it
this side of the infernal region,” another Yankee said, “and the peculiar
corkscrew sensation that it sends down your backbone under these circumstances
can never be told. You have to feel it, and if you say you did not feel it, and
heard the yell, you have never been
there.”
Stonewall Jackson, by comparison, called this
spine-chilling yell “the sweetest music I ever heard.” (41-42; 45-46)
Marye’s Height, held by strong Confederate forces, rose
above a sloping plain half a mile wide. A canal ran across the front, with only
two small bridges where it could be easily crossed. At the foot of the ridge
was a sunken road with a four-foot stone wall. Behind this, Lee’s men waited:
An infantry attack in that war
rarely implied an uninterrupted advance with the bayonet. It usually meant
getting the attackers to close quarter so that they could break the defensive
line with their own fire. This little rise was where the Federals must stand to
deliver the fire that would break the Rebel line—unless, indeed, it should
develop that this particular Rebel line could not be broken by any weight of
fire whatsoever, in which case this was where the boys would stand while they
found out.
It was a hopeless attack. “Up in front,” Catton writes, “in
that last deadly zone between fifty and one hundred yards from the stone wall,
one firing line would be crumbling and going to pieces under the fearful
Confederate fire…” Fresh brigades would be coming on in orderly lines, to
crumble in turn. The 5th New Hampshire had its commander shot down,
and then three more men who took over, all in ten minutes. Colonel Nelson Miles
asked to lead two regiments in a bayonet charge—took a bullet through the
throat—and went to the rear with blood dripping between his fingers. When smoke
lifted at one point, a Yankee general watching the attack exclaimed, “Oh, great
God! See how our men, our poor fellows, are falling!” Three Union soldiers were seen sheltering
behind a dead horse. Others lay behind the corpses of dead comrades. The
defenders behind their stone wall were relatively safe. One Yank admitted that,
“for every Johnny [Reb] hit a ton of lead was expended.”
Burnside kept putting in fresh troops and Lee’s defenders kept
shooting them down. Two untried brigades were ordered forward. As they advanced,
veteran troops hugging the ground tugged at their legs and told them not to go
forward. It was no use. The advancing line became disordered. A sheet of flame
in the dusk struck the new brigades and half the men went down. It was almost
dark when the last blue wave advanced. Eyewitnesses saw the whole field lit up,
as if by lightning, when the Rebels blasted the attack to a halt. Burnside was reportedly
distraught. He proposed to lead his old IX Corps in an attack himself. General
Darius Couch said he “could see that he wished his body was also lying in front
of Marye’s Heights.”
A correspondent for the Cincinnati
Commercial would write: “It can hardly be in human nature for men to show
more valor, or generals to manifest less judgment, than were perceptible on our
side that day.” (55-60; 62; 64)
*
Burnside was relieved of command and both the Army of the
Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia settled into their winter camps. Troops
guarding opposite banks of the Rappahannock became friendly. The 17th
Mississippi sent a little two-foot boat across to Yankee pickets. “We send you
some tobacco by our packet. Send us some coffee in return. Also a deck of
cards, if you have them, and we will send you more tobacco. Send us any late
papers if you have them.” The Rebels also sent over a book, Questions on the Gospels, which one of
the Federals carried the rest of the war.
The soldiers sang a great deal in this war. A favorite
song: “When This Cruel War is Over,”
by Charles Carroll Sawyer:
Dearest Love, do you remember,
When we last did meet,
How you told me that you loved me,
Kneeling at my feet?
Oh! How proud you stood before me,
In your suit of blue,
When you vow'd to me and country,
Ever to be true.
CHORUS:
Weeping, sad and lonely,
Hopes and fears how vain!
Yet praying, when this cruel war is over,
Praying that we meet
again.
When the summer breeze is sighing,
Mournfully along,
Or when autumn leaves are falling,
Sadly breathes the song.
Oft in dreams I see thee lying on the battle plain,
Lonely, wounded, even
dying,
Calling but in vain.
(CHORUS)
If amid the din of battle,
Nobly you should fall,
Far away from those who love you,
None to hear you call—
Who would whisper words of comfort,
Who would soothe your
pain?
Ah! The many cruel fancies,
Ever in my brain.
(CHORUS)
But our Country called you, Darling,
Angels cheer your way;
While our nation’s sons are fighting,
We can only pray.
Nobly strike for God and Liberty,
Let all nations see
How we loved the starry banner,
Emblem of the free.
(CHORUS)
(Full song found online.)
“Tenting
Tonight on the Old Camp Ground”
We’re tenting tonight on the old camp ground,
Give us a song to cheer
Our weary hearts, a song of home
And friends we love so dear.
CHORUS:
Many are the hearts that are weary tonight,
Wishing for the war to cease;
Many are the hearts looking for the right
To see the dawn of peace.
Tenting tonight, tenting tonight,
Tenting on the old camp ground.
We’ve been tenting tonight on the old camp ground,
Thinking of days gone by,
Of the loved ones at home that gave us the hand,
And the tear that said, “Good-bye!”
(CHORUS)
The lone wife kneels and prays with a sigh
That God his watch will keep
O’er the dear one away and the little dears nigh,
In the trundle bed fast asleep.
(CHORUS)
We are tenting tonight on the old camp ground.
The fires are flickering low.
Still are the sleepers that lie around,
As the sentinels come and go.
(CHORUS)
Alas for those comrades of days gone by
Whose forms are missed tonight.
Alas for the young and true who lie
Where the battle flag braved the fight.
(CHORUS)
No more on march or field of strife
Shall they lie so tired and worn,
Nor rouse again to hope and life
When the sound of drums beat at morn.
(CHORUS)
We are tired of war on the old camp ground,
Many are dead and gone,
Of the brave and true who’ve left their homes,
Others been wounded long.
(CHORUS)
We’ve been fighting today on the old camp ground,
Many are lying near;
Some are dead, and some are dying,
Many are in tears.
FINAL CHORUS:
Many are the hearts that are weary tonight,
Wishing for the war to cease;
Many are the hearts looking for the right,
To see the dawn of peace.
Dying tonight, dying tonight,
Dying on the old camp ground.
During the long winter the bands of the two opposing armies
would play songs. One evening, Union and Confederate bands traded tunes. “At
last,” says Catton, “the massed bands played ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ and 150,000 fighting men tried to sing it and
choked up and just sat there, silent, staring off into the darkness; and at
last the music died away and the bandsmen put up their instruments and both
armies went to bed.” (174)
I think it might be fun to have students write about what soldiers were thinking that
night.
 |
| Standing guard: always a thankless task. |
My classes always loved doing
skits—and it was easy to get four volunteers to take the roles of soldiers, two
from each side, and talk about “their” experiences during the war and take questions.
We sometimes used four girls in
the role of widows (who had letters their husbands had sent them) with good results.
You always had at least one young man willing to play a widow. And you could
use at least one girl in the role of a female who masqueraded as a man.
(Recent historical works have uncovered dozens of cases of females
who served in the ranks.)
Catton notes that the troops built cabins with tent roofing
and mud-brick chimneys. One soldier remembered that a favorite trick at night was
to put a flat board over the top of some nearby cabin chimney and then escape
before the angry men inside were smoked out. (71-72)
Certainly, the men of the Army of the Potomac were gloomy. Major
Rufus Dawes considered this “the Valley Forge of the war.”
“I am
sick and tired of disaster and the fools that bring disaster upon us.”
William Thompson Lusk of the 79th New York could
confide in a letter, “Mother, do not wonder that my loyalty is growing weak….I
am sick and tired of disaster and the fools that bring disaster upon us.” (81)
Gen. Carl Schurz wrote to the president to warn that he was
hearing officers and men say “all these fatigues and hardships are for nothing,
and that they might as well go home.”
Two hundred men were deserting every day. There were some who
allowed themselves to be captured, signed a parole, and went home. By February
1863 the Army of the Potomac listed 85,123 desertions. That included many of the
wounded, who were sent to their home states to recover and often decided not to
return. The army had little authority to fetch them since regiments were under
state control. So many soldiers were granted discharge on the basis of
“rheumatism” by friendly doctors back home that the army had to prohibit all further
claims. (102-106)
A veteran from New Jersey was blunt: “In a company of one
hundred enlisted men, only about one
third of the number prove themselves physically able and possessing
sufficient courage to endure the hardships and face the dangers of active
campaigning; the rest, soon after going into the field, drift back to the
hospitals and finally out of the service.” (110)
Copper
heads from pennies.
The decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation was unpopular
even in many parts of the North. Catton notes that the state constitution of Indiana
(adopted 1851) forbid free Negroes from coming into the state and “provided
penalties for white folk who dared to hire them.” The anti-war “Copperheads”
organized, drilled, appointed their own major generals and some even went so
far as to call for Lincoln’s assassination. In Indiana they claimed 125,000
members. Copperheads had secret signs of recognition, even a code word,
“Nu-oh-lac,” or Calhoun, spelled backwards.
The 128th Illinois, recruited from the southern
part of the state, lost almost all its men to desertion. The soldiers declared
“they would lie in the woods until the moss grew on their backs rather than
help free the slaves.” (113)
Clement Laird Vallandingham, the Copperhead leader, posed
this question to an audience in a speech: “Ought this war to continue? I answer
no, not a day, not an hour. What then? Shall we separate? Again I answer no,
no, no! Stop the fighting. Make an armistice. Accept at once friendly foreign
mediation.” (227-228)
Gen. Burnside, sent to command a district behind the lines
where he would get fewer good men killed, issued Order Number 38. All who
declared sympathy for the enemy would be arrested and might be sent to the South.
Vallandingham challenged his order at a rally in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. The rally
featured 34 pretty girls, representing the 34 states, riding a horse-drawn
float. The men wore copper heads cut from pennies and mounted to pins and
clasps, from which the movement gained its name. Burnside arrested
Vallandingham and he was sent to prison. The Chicago Times, which had been expressing similar anti-war sentiments, was
shut down. Lincoln decided it was better to send Vallandingham across enemy
lines and suppression of the Times
was revoked. (232)
“Getting
shot and having your name spelled wrong in the newspapers.”
On St. Patrick’s Day in 1863 the men of two regiments
organized a party, with barrels of beer, a greased pole with a fifteen day
furlough pinned to the top, and horse races. Sadly, the pole was too well
greased and no man could climb it. An accident during a race killed two horses
and a rider—an ironic way for any soldier to meet an end. (126)
A man in the ranks noted that military glory boiled down to
nothing more than “getting shot and having your name spelled wrong in the
newspapers.” By this time states were paying bounties for enlistments, Vermont
as high as $1,500. One veteran grumbled that voters were all for bounties! Each
man who took a bounty meant the voter
was less likely to have to serve. (128)
Some men were steadfast in their convictions. Mayor Henry
Lee Higginson, a cavalry officer from Boston, put it this way: “We’ll beat
these men, fighting for slavery and for wickedness, out of house and home, beat
them to death, this summer, too.…We are right and are trying hard; we have at
last real soldiers, not recruits, in the field, and we shall reap our
harvest….My whole religion (that is, my whole belief and hope in everything, in
man, in woman, in music, in good, in the beautiful, in the real truth) rests on
the questions now really before us.” (133)
March 1863: the North institutes a draft; Governor Horatio Seymour
of New York makes it clear he is vehemently opposed. (Catton does not mention:
but anti-draft riots in New York City in July left more than a hundred dead.) Georgia
Governor Joseph E. Brown opposed the decision of Confederate lawmakers to start
a draft in almost exactly the same way as Gov. Seymour.
Ask students if they
know how the draft works. In February 2019 there was a decision in a lower
federal court that women should have to register when they hit age 18, just like
young men.
 |
| Names for the draft were picked out of a large wheel. |
By the spring of 1863 the Army of the Potomac had another
commander, “Fighting Joe” Hooker, so nicknamed for his personal courage and hard-hitting
approach in combat. While his courage was not in doubt his ability to lead was.
“We all feel that General Hooker will be like the poor man that won the
elephant at the raffle,” one supporter wrote. “After he got the animal he did
not know what to do with him. So with fighting Joseph. He is now in command of
a mighty large elephant, and it will remain to be seen if he knows what to do
with him.” (140)
Not if he got to Richmond, but when.
He got off to an auspicious start. Realizing that supply officers
were sometimes selling fresh vegetables bound for the troops to civilians and
pocketing the cash, Hooker had them arrested. According to one veteran, he improved
the hospitals, let incompetent officers resign their commissions, and returned men
“who were playing sick” to active duty. New orders were published: “the men
should be required to wear their hair short, to bathe twice a week, and put on
clean underclothing at least once a week.” Furloughs were issued in a more
generous fashion. “How he did understand the road to the soldier’s heart!” said
one soldier of Hooker. “How he made out of defeated, discouraged men a
cheerful, plucky, and defiant army, ready to follow him anywhere!”
Hooker was filled with confidence himself, telling Lincoln
the question wasn’t if he would get to Richmond, but when. (143-145)
At the same time, many questioned Hooker’s character. According
to one officer, his headquarters was “a place no gentleman cared to go and no
lady could go.” The general was known to keep women of easy virtue about. Soldiers
sat about campfires and commented on “Hooker’s ladies.”
Soon they reduced that to “hookers.” (150-152)
“If
the enemy does not run, God help them!”
Hooker was supremely confident—much too sure of himself. “If
the enemy does not run, God help them!” he exclaimed. He said he hoped God would
have mercy on the Rebels, for he would have none.
The army, one soldier said, felt it finally had “a leader
who knew what to do and was going to do it.”
At first it appeared it did. The Army of the Potomac
managed to cross the Rappahannock in a surprise move, and position itself at Chancellorsville.
Hooker was in Lee’s rear, in position to cut railroads to Richmond and sever the
Confederate lines of supply. (156; 163; 167)
Lee turned quickly to face the threat and launched his attack.
The fighting was intense and Hooker decided to pull back slightly, telling one
officer, “It’s all right, Couch, I’ve got Lee just where I want him.”
“The Rebel army is now the legitimate property of the Army
of the Potomac,” Hooker exclaimed.
The “most
nightmarish” mistake of the war.
Lee decided on a brilliant gamble and sent Stonewall
Jackson with half his army, swinging wide to the left to get around Hooker’s
right flank. The XI Corps, holding that position, was filled with soldiers of German
descent. There were reports of Confederate troops moving to Lee’s left. Hooker
sent Gen. Oliver O. Howard, commanding the XI Corps, a note to consider the
possibility he might be flanked. The failure of Union officers to see disaster coming,
Catton calls the “most nightmarish” mistake of the war.
Gen. Charles Devens was new to the XI Corps—and Catton
paints him as a villain in the debacle. Colonel Lee of the 55th Ohio
had numerous reports from his pickets that Rebel forces were about to attack.
He relayed the news. “Devens pooh-poohed at him, but Lee stuck to his story,
insisting that big trouble was coming down the wind, whereupon Devens loftily
remarked that Western colonels were more scared than hurt.” (Ohio was
considered “Western” in those days.)
Colonel Richardson of the 25th Ohio was next,
saying scouts had seen massed gray infantry half a mile from the right and rear
of the XI Corps. Again, Devens blew off the report. A third warning from Lt.
Colonel Friend of the 75th Ohio finally moved Devens to send him to
Howard. Corps HQ begged Lt. Col. Friend not to spread panic—but did little to
prepare. Colonel Leopold von Gisla, previously of the Prussian army, was hearing
similar warnings from his pickets. The enemy was massing. “For God’s sake, make
disposition to receive him!” warned a junior officer. Von Gilsa went to Howard
to sound warning. Howard insisted the woods in front of XI Corps were too thick
for an enemy battle line to pass. Captain Hubert Dilger rode out for a look—ran
into a Rebel battle line a mile away—and rushed off to give warning—first to
Hooker, then Howard.
“All
the Rebels in the world.”
By this time it was late in the day. An XI Corps band played
“The Girl I Left Behind Me.” A private in the 75th Ohio wandered off
to a spring in the wood and dipped his tin cup for a drink. An officer lay idly
in some grass, the reins of his horse wrapped in one hand, as the animal
cropped the leaves. Suddenly, dozens of deer raced out of the trees to the west
and fled east. Howard’s men cheered this unusual scene—but their cheers were
drowned out by a thunderous blast of Rebel fire.
Von Gilsa’s skirmish line of
two German regiments looked up to see all of the Rebels in the world
shouldering their way through the tangle, firing their rifles and yelling like
fiends, their line extending far beyond vision to right and left. The Germans
got off a few hasty shots and then the flood rolled over them.
The 75th Ohio turned to face the threat and held
a few minutes before being overrun, with 150 killed or wounded. Various units
held briefly, only to be destroyed. Howard’s corps was shattered and with that,
for all intents and purposes, the Army of the Potomac was defeated again.
At some point, exploding shells set the woods on fire. Men
wounded too badly to crawl to safety died in the flames. One eyewitness
described those hours as “a scene like a
picture of hell.” (192)
During the battle, Hooker was leaning against a wooden
pillar of the Chancellorsville mansion. A Rebel cannonball struck the pillar,
knocking him to the ground and causing—probably—a concussion. Hooker was given
brandy and revived, rose from a blanket where he had been lying, and saw
another shell rip the spot he had vacated. Catton says Hooker planned his
campaign “like a master;” but when the battle came “the army to all intents and
purposes had had no commander at all.” (210)
Lincoln received a telegram announcing defeat the stunning
defeat. “My God! What will the country say?” he wondered. (211)
 |
| Hooker is confused: Cartoon by Bill Nye, 1893. |
“A
song that had suddenly taken on enormous meaning.”
The war itself was taking a new shape. Slavery was now
clearly doomed if the North prevailed. A young white soldier, commissioned to
officer a new “Negro regiment” that spring, heard his men singing:
Yes, we’ll rally round the flag, boys, we’ll rally once
again,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom.
He said he had never before heard such singing.
These colored men were not
just repeating the empty words of a good marching tune [Catton writes]. They
were putting everything they had into a song that had suddenly taken on
enormous meaning, and words like “the flag” and “freedom” had become
revolutionary, the keys to a great future. It might be, indeed, that this idea
of freedom was something that had no limits whatever.
(Writing in the 1950s, Catton still used “Negro” and
“colored.” If you go back to 1910, of course, it was a battle to get writers to
capitalize “negro.” An entire race was undeserving of grammatical equality with
Caucasians.)
Wendell Philips described the new reality of this new war:
“Never until we welcome the Negro, the foreigner, all races as equals, and
melted together in a common nationality, hurl them all at despotism, will the
North deserve triumph or earn it at the hands of a just God.” (219-220)
The North, of course, had huge economic advantages. The
factory system was taking deep root there. The North had thirty-eight arms
factories, capable of producing 5,000 rifles per day. The South could make
300—but shortages of workers cut that to 100. Hundreds of new engines and
thousands of railroad cars were built. A new machine to stich soles and uppers
revolutionized the boot-and-shoe industry. The sewing machine made it possible
to supply huge orders for uniforms. Packing plants in Chicago made fortunes for
owners, not for workers who were treated poorly in that era. Pennsylvania was
experiencing the first oil boom the nation had ever seen. Only 84,000 gallons had
been sold in 1859. By 1862 sales had reached 128 million gallons. Kerosene
lamps began replacing candles and whale oil lamps. An additional 800,000
immigrants arrived during the war, almost all settling in the North. The South
hoped England would step in to end the war, needing cotton to keep English textile
mills running. Catton says the English learned they needed Northern wheat more.
Fifteen new colleges and universities were founded in the
North, including Vassar (1861), only the second college for women in the United
States. Almost all institutions of higher learning barred females.
Meanwhile, the Homestead Act was passed (1862) and
2,500,000 acres were given away during the war.
Young John D. Rockefeller already had a sharp eye out for
any dollar in reach. He was willing to part with $300 to hire a substitute to keep
out of the draft. Teddy Roosevelt’s father did the same.
These examples do not come from Catton. Another historian estimates
the $300 in 1863 would be equal to something like $10,000 today.
*
June 1863 finds Lee’s army headed north once more, with
Hooker and his men following close on the Rebels’ heels. One Union regiment
passes the old Bull Run battlefield. There they see “bleached skulls and ribs
and shinbones lying in the meadows amid heaps of rotted clothing.”
Grim
humor: soldiers never change.
Finally they passed a
too-shallow grave by the roadside. From it there extended a dead hand, withered
to parchment, reaching bleakly toward the sky as if in some despairing,
unanswered supplication. A New Jersey soldier saw it, reflected upon it, and
was moved to mirth. “Look boys!” he called, pointing to the lifeless hand. “See
the soldier putting out his hand for back pay!” (251)
With blue units spread out for miles along the highways, Jeb
Stuart’s Rebel cavalry scouting Hooker’s movements are forced to make a wide
circuit to get round the Army of the Potomac and back to Lee. As Catton puts
it, Stuart “rode his cavalry right out of the campaign.”
Without cavalry to act as the eyes of his army, Lee is blind
to the movements of Hooker and his troops.
Once more, Hooker seems to be handling his troops well. But
he asks permission to pull a garrison out of Harpers Ferry—which has already been
captured once—and he is refused. With that his frustrations boil over and he offers
to resign. That offer is accepted. Gen. George Gordon Meade takes on June 28, just
three days before the Battle of Gettysburg. (257)
A soldier in the 3rd Michigan remembered the
cheering people, and the girls and the good roads, as they marched hard, to the
North, noting “the roads around here are beautiful and macadamized and we enjoy
marching over them very much. Every man in the ranks feels jubilant.” (260-261)
A teacher would need to point out to students that few roads were paved in that era.
Where
are your umbrellas?
The Army of the Potomac was about to fight its fifth major
battle in less than a year: Second Bull Run (August 1862), Antietam (September
1862), Fredericksburg (December 1862), Chancellorsville (May 1863) and Gettysburg
(July 1863). They were also under their fifth commander during that time. By this
point the three New York regiments in the Irish Brigade had been whittled down
by combat and consolidated into two companies each. One rainy day, these veterans
passed a new regiment. The “rookies” were wearing white, dress uniform gloves.
Scornfully, the experienced men told them to get out of the rain and asked
where their umbrellas were.
A loyal citizen described Rebel troops he saw heading for
Gettysburg:
Their dress was a wretched
mixture of all cuts and colors. There was not the slightest attempt at
uniformity in this respect. Every man seemed to have put on whatever he could
get hold of, without regard to shape or color….Their shoes, as a general thing,
were poor; some of the men were entirely barefooted. Their equipments were
light as compared with those of our men. They consisted of a thin woolen
blanket, coiled up and slung from the shoulder in the form of a sash, a
haversack swung from the opposite shoulder, and a cartridge box. The whole
cannot weight more than twelve or fourteen pounds.
He asked the men about tents. Did they have any? One Reb replied,
“I just wouldn’t tote one.” (265)
The moon was bright on the last day in June. Many regiments
kept going long after the sun was down. Colonel Strong Vincent led his troops through
one moonlight little town. Citizens came out to watch. He ordered his flags
unfurled and a mood came over him. “There could be worse fates than to die
fighting in Pennsylvania,” he said to an aide, “with that flag waving
overhead.” (267)
He would be killed on July 2.
Catton describes the start of a battle that neither army
expected. On the morning of July 1, Rebel forces were spotted by a Yankee
patrol near Willoughby Run, northwest of town. A corporal and three men of the
9th New York Cavalry saw them coming. The corporal sent his men back
to spread the word, rode across a little bridge, fired a few shots and was
fired upon. Gen. John Buford had several thousand blue cavalry nearby and
decided to block the Rebel path. A six gun battery wheeled into position and fired
a shot at a group of mounted gray officers three quarters of a mile away. For the
next two hours, Buford’s men held A.P. Hill’s gray infantry at bay, both armies
unsure what fresh troops might be arriving next, or from what direction. Buford
sent riders dashing away to notify Gen. John Reynolds, in charge of I Corps.
South of town Reynolds’ men could hear heavy firing and quickened their pace. (271)
At first, Hill’s men thought they might have run into Pennsylvania
militia called out to meet an emergency. Soon, veteran units of the Army of the
Potomac began arriving to block their way. Catton writes, “The Iron Brigade
could hear the Southerners telling each other: ‘Here are those damned black-hat
fellers again….‘Tain’t no militia—that’s the Army of the Potomac!”
The battle grew quickly in size and intensity. Confederate
regiments took position in an unfinished railroad cut in an effort to find shelter.
Yankee troops got into a position to enfilade their position and hundreds had
to surrender. An officer in blue accepted the surrender of a colonel in gray who
handed over his sword, and then six other officers, and ended up with an armful
of swords.
Dust clouds to the north of town gave hint that more Rebels
forces would soon be arriving. Lee’s battle line kept extending to the north
and then east, as more and more Confederate units reached the scene. Reynolds
was shot dead. General Howard, commanding the luckless XI Corps, placed his HQ
atop Cemetery Ridge. A soldier remembered batteries galloping into position,
knocking over tombstones in haste to take up positions. Howard sent off
messengers, begging Union commanders to hurry to Gettysburg.
With more and more Confederates coming into line against
them and hitting the XI Corps from the flank, Howard’s men began to break. The
75th New York had to change front to face an enemy attack. In
fifteen minutes they lost 111 men and had to run. General Francis Barlow was
badly wounded and left behind. The 16th Maine was ordered to hold a
low ridge. Their colonel protested that he had only 200 men and couldn’t possibly
do it. The order stood. He and his men got hit from front and rear. The color-bearer
told survivors to tear off pieces of the flag and then run for it and hope to make
Cemetery Ridge. Howard’s entire line crumbled and in the chaos thousands of
soldiers in blue were taken prisoner. It was Chancellorsville all over—and
there were many Confederates who would believe they might have won the war for
good that day, if only the attack had been pressed later in the day. (277)
“Each
man felt that upon his own arm hung the fate of the day and the nation.”
West of town, Union troops were fighting desperately. Col.
Roy Stone said his Pennsylvania men fought “as if each man felt that upon his
own arm hung the fate of the day and the nation.” The intensity of the fight
can be summed up in casualty figures. Robinson’s division, in the I Corps, lost
1,600 men out of 2,500, including Gen. Gabriel R. Paul, shot through both eyes.
The Iron Brigade was hammered from three directions. The brigade commander was
knocked out when his horse was killed and fell on him. Eight men carried the
colors for the 19th Indiana on July 1. All eight were killed or
wounded. Pvt. Patrick Maloney, who had proudly captured a Confederate general
earlier in the fight, was killed. The 24th Michigan, a regiment new
to the brigade, took 496 men into the fight and lost 399, a casualty rate of 80%.
*
My personal experiences altered the way I approached the
Civil War. Growing up, I watched too many John Wayne movies and thought going
into battle would be cool. I enlisted in the Marines in 1968 and volunteered
twice in the summer of 1969 to go to Vietnam. It was just dumb luck that I was
never sent. As a teacher, I felt it
was important to make clear to students that. I used to mention (delicately)
that you can be hit by bullets or shrapnel in
all parts of the body. One story I read about the Iraq War mentioned a soldier
who took a piece of shrapnel through the frontal lobe of his brain—the battlefield
equivalent of a lobotomy. Another story highlighted the 1,300 U.S. soldiers hit
in the genital areas in Iraq or Afghanistan. Improved medical
care means we have veterans who have survived triple amputations.
By comparison, I did my time as a clerk in a Marine supply
unit and never got closer to Vietnam than Camp Pendleton, California. I used to
tell students I defended our country with a staple gun.
Our school did have phenomenal success bringing in veterans
to talk and we tried to ensure they described some of their worst experiences.
You can read about how that worked on my blog, The Veterans Come to Loveland
Middle School or Sham Standards: Governor Kasich
and Standardized Testing Fetish.
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| Veterans from five wars visit Loveland Middle School in 2005. We had continued the program now for sixteen years. |
*
On the morning of July 2, church bells rang in a convent at
Emmitsburg, eight miles from Gettysburg. A soldier in the II Corps, still marching
hard to reach the scene of battle, felt a twinge of homesickness, remembering
how bells at home chimed before mass. Soon the II Corps arrived, took position
along Cemetery Ridge and placed its 120 ambulances on the back side of the
ridge.
The fighting was renewed. Gen. Alexander Hays led his troops
forward. At one point an orderly on a white horse was detailed to ride with him
for a closer look at Confederate positions. Hays asked, “Will you follow me,
sir?” The man smiled but did not reply. Hays asked with a touch of anger again:
Would he follow? The soldier, an Irishman, saluted: “General, if ye’s are
killed and go to hell it will not be long before I am tapping on the window.”
(287)
As teachers probably know, Gen. Daniel Sickles’ nearly lost
the battle when he advanced his III Corps too far out in front of the main
Union line and got hit from two directions. A Massachusetts battery, in its
first battle, lost all 60 horses, half its men, and had every officer killed or
wounded. The survivors tried to remove their six guns by hand but could only
save two. A soldier watching the men struggle wrote later, “It is a mystery to
me that they were not all hit by the enemy’s fire, as they were surrounded and
fired upon from almost every direction.” (296)
Gen. William Barksdale was leading a Rebel attack when an
entire Federal company was ordered to concentrate fire on him. He was hit five
times and killed. Colonel George Ward of the 15th Massachusetts had
lost a leg early in the war. Now he was walking along behind his battle line, with
a cane and a peg leg. He too was killed.
Two
desperate charges save the day—and perhaps the nation.
Twice on July 2, desperation charges saved the day—and
perhaps the nation. Atop Little Round Top, Col. Joshua Chamberlain (who had
been “a college professor and a minister of the gospel before the war”) was in
command of the 20th Maine. Given orders to hold his position at all
costs he realized his men were running out of ammunition. With no other choice,
he ordered them to make a bayonet charge, a great rarity in the Civil War. This
unexpected downhill attack sent Rebel troops coming up the slope flying.
Chamberlain had trouble stopping his men, who called out that they were “on the
road to Richmond.” The 20th Maine captured 400 prisoners and control
of Little Round Top remained in Northern hands. (293)
My students enjoyed
a 20-minute segment from the movie Gettysburg,
showing the fight of the 20th Maine.
It’s PG-rated bloodshed—and a little too much like the old
John Wayne movies—still, I liked it myself.
Our students also loved
the original version of Glory,
the story of African American soldiers in the 54th Massachusetts.
That film is R-rated for violence and we ran into parents who complained, even after
we received permission slips from all the students who watched it. The school
version is less impactful but good. Plus Denzel Washington wins an Academy
Award.
The second charge that saved the day came after Sickles’
line collapsed and the main Union position on Cemetery Ridge was threatened.
Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock said later that he realized he had to buy five
minutes to plug a yawning gap in the line and bought those five minutes with the
only forces he had at hand.
The 1st Minnesota was ordered to counterattack. Outnumbered
roughly 6 to 1, they slammed into an advancing Rebel brigade, losing all but 47
men of 262 men. That meant a regiment that had already seen stiff losses in
other battles suffered a casualty rate of 82% at Gettysburg. (300)
I think I’d ask students what those last 47 men talked about that evening around their campfires.
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| Charge of the 1st Minnesota. |
The Rebels were finally driven back on July 2, although fighting
continued on Culp’s Hill long after dark. Union troops reaching the field said
that “the high screech of the Rebel yell coming out of the darkness ahead was ‘more
devilish than anything which could come from human throats.’” A soldier remembered passing the home of an “old
crone.” “Never mind, boys—they’re nothing but men,” she reminded the soldiers. Her words seemed to have a calming
effect.
That night, units on both sides were still marching hard in
hopes of joining the fight on July 3. There were regiments that marched 30
miles in 24-hours with only the briefest stops for rest.
One local citizen appeared at Meade’s headquarters early on
July 3. He began complaining because troops were using his home as a hospital,
burying the dead in his garden and piling amputated arms and legs, hands and
feet on his lawn. As you might expect, Meade kicked him out.
Lee, of course, ordered Gen. George Pickett to take 15,000
men and break the Union line on July 3. A huge artillery duel preceded his attack.
On Cemetery Ridge, General Henry Hunt, in charge of the Army of Potomac’s
artillery, eventually rode down the line telling gunners to save ammunition for
when the expected attack came. Smoke hung two feet off the ground, so that only
the legs of the men working the guns could be seen. A horse pulling an
ambulance went flying past, with three legs, one having been taken off by a
cannonball. Meade stood in the door of a cottage where he had his HQ; a shell
smashed the doorjamb, missing him by inches.
Catton relates the story of Gen. Hancock and Gen. Lewis
Armistead, old friends now fighting on opposite sides at Gettysburg. In the
spring of 1861, as officers in the U.S. Army chose sides, Hancock had given a
party at the army post in Los Angeles. Mrs. Albert Sidney Johnston (whose
husband would be killed at Shiloh the following year) played “Kathleen
Mavoureen” on the piano. Armistead, who was resigning to join the Confederacy,
“put his hands on Hancock’s shoulders, tears streaming down his cheeks, and
said, ‘Hancock, good-by—you can never know what this has cost me.’” (315)
Hancock was badly wounded at Gettysburg when a bullet
passed through the horn of his saddle, driving bits of leather and a small nail
deep into his thigh. A messenger came to him after Pickett’s attack was smashed
and handed over a watch, spurs and other personal items and a message from Gen.
Armistead: “Tell Hancock I have done him and my country a great injustice which
I shall never cease to regret.” (321)
Armistead had been shot down during the attack but lived
long enough to ask that his effects be passed along.
The terrible fire Pickett and his men faced is well known. Catton
says a shell might rip through their ranks, “sometimes striking down ten men
before it burst.” When the Rebel attack came close enough a mighty blast of
artillery fire tore Pickett’s regiments to shreds. At that moment “a moan went
up from the field, distinctly to be heard amid the roar of battle.” These were
human beings—and they were being slaughtered. Long after the war, Pickett
refused to forgive Lee for ordering his men to make what he always felt was a
hopeless attack. Told that the charge had been turned back, Meade exclaimed,
“Thank God!” (318)
The ground in front of Cemetery Ridge was now littered with
the dead and dying. Recent writers have noted that at least one of the gray dead
turned out to be a female. Some less badly wounded men could be seen waving white
handkerchiefs. A wounded Yankee would write home after the battle. Again, this
comes from a more recent history of the battle. His spelling and punctuation
were poor, but the story he related was unusual. “I must tel you,” he scribbled,
“we have got a female secesh here. she was wounded at Gettysburg but out
doctors soon found her out. I have not seen her but the say she is very good
looking the poor girl as lost a leg.”
Meade might have attacked Lee in turn on July 4; but both
armies were almost too battered to continue. A soldier described the scene that
day: “As far as the eye could reach on both sides of the Cashtown road you see
blue-coated boys, swollen up to look as giants, quite black in the face, but
nearly all on their backs, looking into the clear blue with open eyes, with
their clothes torn apart.” (324)
For three days, another writer has said, at Gettysburg the future
of the United States “hung by a spider’s thread.”
The Army of the Potomac paid a bloody price but with their
first real victory they made sure that thread was never broken.
*
If you are interested I have a number of Civil War readings for students for sale at Middle School History and Tips for Teachers, on TpT.
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*
One of these days, I’ll get around to taking notes on the
third volume in Catton’s series: A
Stillness at Appomattox. Hope these notes are of some use to you, if you
read this far. I’m retired and still putter around with my old materials.
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| If I was still teaching, I'd use this as a writing prompt. What did this soldier think after he recovered from being knocked out by the impact of this bullet? |
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