The Illustrated Gettysburg Reader: An Eyewitness History of the Civil War's Greatest Battle Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  CHAPTER ONE - “Advance into Pennsylvania”

  “We Advanced toward the Potomac”

  “As Near Perfection as a Man Can Be”

  “There Is Always Hazard in Military Movements”

  “We Whip the Yankees Every Time We Catch up with Them”

  “A Soldier by Instinct, Intuition and Profession”

  “I Am Inclined to Think That We Shall Have to Acknowledge Their Independence”

  CHAPTER TWO - “Look at Pharaoh’s Army Going to the Red Sea”

  “Clouds of Dust Mingled with the Smoke of Discharging Firearms”

  “The Roadsides Were Soon Lined with Stragglers”

  “We Crossed the River in Primitive Style”

  “Look at Pharaoh’s Army Going to the Red Sea” - Lee’s Army Encounters a Land ...

  “He Acts like a Man without a Plan”

  “Meade Will Fight Well on His Own Dunghill”

  “We Endure the Fatigues of the March Well”

  “Should Any Person Find This Body”

  Gettyiesburg Pa

  CHAPTER THREE - “Into the Jaws of the Enemy”

  “We Rode, Rode, Rode”

  “Into the Jaws of the Enemy”

  “Union Cavalry Began to Arrive in the Town”

  “You Will Have to Fight like the Devil”

  “I Was Ignorant of What Force Was at or near Gettysburg”

  “We Must Hold This Position”

  “He Fell from His Horse Dead”

  “This Raised a Terrible Rebel Yell”

  “The Honors Were with the Boys in Blue”

  CHAPTER FOUR - “We Must Fight a Battle Here”

  “The Enemy Poured into Us a Withering Fire”

  “His Guns Are Fired with Precision and Effect”

  “Everybody Was Then Running for the Rear”

  “With a Ringing Yell, My Command Rushed upon the Union Right”

  “Covered with Glory”

  “He Was the Youngest Colonel I Ever Saw”

  “They Came On... Yelling like Demons”

  “Gettysburg Was Fully in the Enemy’s Possession”

  “It Was a Moment of Most Critical Importance”

  CHAPTER FIVE - “He Is There and I Am Going to Attack Him”

  “I Feel Fully the Responsibility Resting Upon Me”

  “The Enemy Is There and I Am Going to Attack Him”

  “I Saw That This Was the Key of the Whole Position”

  “Are You Not Too Much Extended, General?”

  “Fix Bayonets, My Brave Texans!”

  “Confusion Reigned Everywhere”

  “The Blood Stood in Puddles on the Rocks”

  “We Had Held the Ground-‘At All Costs’”

  CHAPTER SIX - “Advance, Colonel, and Take Those Colors”

  “The Men Must See Us Today”

  “O, the Awful, Deathly Surging Sound of Those Little Black Balls”

  “Tell My Wife I Am Shot, but We Fought like Hell”

  “My Officers, Men and Horses Were Shot Down”

  “Advance, Colonel, and Take Those Colors”

  CHAPTER SEVEN - “It Was a Close and Bloody Struggle”

  “Simply a Hell Infernal”

  “The Woods Were Flecked with Flashes from the Muskets”

  “It Was a Close and Bloody Struggle”

  “Tell My Father I Died with My Face to the Enemy”

  “Right Foot, Amputated”

  “I Captured Several Pieces of Artillery”

  “No, Dis Battery is Unser”

  “It Was a Strange Sight to See Men Fighting in Elegantly Furnished Rooms”

  “He Resolved to Aid in Driving Back the Invading Foe”

  “If Lee Attacks Tomorrow, It Will Be on Your Front”

  CHAPTER EIGHT - “The Whole Rebel Line Was Pouring Out Thunder and Iron”

  “It Is Murder, but It Is the Order”

  “I Noticed a Company of Fifty Men Digging Graves”

  “An Overwhelming Confidence Possessed Us All”

  “I Challenge the Annals of Warfare to Produce a More Brilliant Charge”

  “Let the Batteries Open”

  “The Whole Rebel Line Was Pouring Out Thunder and Iron”

  “The Enemy Was under the Mistaken Impression That He Had Silenced Our Guns”

  “For God’s Sake, Come on Quick”

  CHAPTER NINE - “Up, Men, and to Your Posts!”

  “Up, Men, and to Your Posts!”

  “Round Shots Tore through Their Ranks”

  “For the Honor of the Good Old North State, Forward”

  “Arms, Heads, Blankets, Guns and Knapsacks Were Tossed into the Air”

  “It Was a Slaughter-Pen”

  “You Can Never Know What This Has Cost Me”

  “At Every Volley, the Gray Uniforms Fall Thick and Fast”

  “The Two Lines Come with a Shock”

  “Boys, Give Them Cold Steel!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “The Plain in Our Front Was Strewn with Dead Men and Dead Horses”

  “All This Has Been My Fault”

  “It Has Been a Sad, Sad Day”

  “The Sights and Smells That Assailed Us Were Indescribable”

  “The Real Nature of War Appeared in All Its Repulsiveness”

  “The Children of the Battlefield”

  Whose Father Was He?

  “This Distressing Casualty”

  “Only the Flag of the Union Greets the Sky”

  APPENDIX 1 - Official After-Action Report of Major General George Meade

  APPENDIX 2 - Official After-Action Report of General Robert E. Lee

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Copyright Page

  For

  James Melvin Lindsey IV

  “Jate”

  Introduction

  “Whatever fatigues and sacrifices we may be called upon to undergo, let us have in view constantly the magnitude of the interests involved, and let each man determine to do his duty, leaving to an all-controlling Providence the decision of the contest.” So wrote Major General George Meade upon assuming command of the Federal Army of the Potomac on the eve of the battle of Gettysburg. “No troops could have displayed greater fortitude or better performed the arduous marches of the past ten days,” wrote General Robert E. Lee of his Army of Northern Virginia on the march northward to Pennsylvania. Soldiers of both armies would indeed be required to display “fortitude” and endure “fatigues and sacrifices” in the epic struggle that lay ahead.

  The three-day battle of Gettysburg would prove to be the largest engagement ever fought in North America and the bloodiest battle of the American Civil War. It would also prove to be the turning point of the war. The battle’s importance was immediately obvious to many of its survivors, including both common soldiers and officers. In letters, diaries, official reports, and memoirs, many of them tried to describe what they had seen and endured as the dramatic events of battle unfolded across the Pennsylvania countryside on July 1–3, 1863. Nothing written about the battle of Gettysburg is more powerful or evocative than the words of its eyewitnesses. “Every tree is riddled with bullets,” wrote one soldier, “and the dead and wounded lie thick among the rocks.” Observed another: “The regimental flags and guidons were plainly visible along the whole lin
e. The guns and bayonets in the sunlight shone like silver.”

  Their eyewitness accounts are surprisingly descriptive: “There it was again! and again! A sound filling the air above, below, around us, like the blast through the top of a dry cedar or the whirring sound made by the sudden flight of a flock of quail. It was grape and canister....” And at times their words are also astonishingly frank, robbing all romance from the record of war: “an officer [was] sitting with his back to the fence along the Emmitsburg road, having his lower jaw shot clean away; sitting there with staring eyes watching the men as they passed by to the charge.” Remarkably, even as they fought to destroy each other, they remained aware that they were Americans all, and did not hesitate to recognize the valor of the enemy. “This was indeed the great slaughter pen on the field of Gettysburg,” wrote a Northern soldier of his Southern opponents, “and in it lay hundreds of the brave heroes who an hour before buoyed up with hope and ambition were being led, as they fully believed, to victory....”

  Here, in the words of those who lived through the battle of Gettysburg—and some who did not—is an eyewitness history of the Civil War’s greatest battle. Forged as it was in the flame of battle by those who were there, and illustrated by period images, it is both authoritative and intimate, fascinating and unforgettable—it is the Illustrated Gettysburg Reader.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Advance into Pennsylvania”

  By late June of 1863, the gentle rains of spring and early warmth of summer had brought a rich green hue to the fields and forests around the southern Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. A dense green canopy of hardwood trees shaded the rocky crests of Little Round Top and Culp’s Hill, and cloaked the steep slope of Herbst Woods. Local waterways such as Willoughby Run, Marsh Creek, and Plum Run flowed briskly through the fields and woodlands that surrounded the town. In between Seminary Ridge and Cemetery Ridge the pastureland was green with grass and clover, marked here and there by pastel-colored patches of wheat, oats, and barley. Baked by the summer sun, the Emmitsburg Road entered town from the south in between rows of weathered wooden fences; to the west, the Chambersburg Turnpike entered town after rising and falling over Herr Ridge and McPherson’s Ridge.

  It was these two roads, among others, that would soon bring the storm of war to Gettysburg. A medium-sized farm-country town of approximately 2,400 residents, Gettysburg was the county seat of Adams County, and in some ways it appeared similar to the neighboring towns of York and Chambersburg—with the exception of its roads. Gettysburg radiated roads like the spokes of a wheel.

  Surrounded by peaceful ridges, fields, and forests, the southern Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg seemed an unlikely site for the Civil War’s bloodiest battle. National Archives

  No fewer than ten highways converged on the town—more roadways than found in the state capital of Harrisburg. The convergence of so many highways in Gettysburg made the town a geographic magnet in southern Pennsylvania. As two huge Northern and Southern armies lumbered through the region that summer searching for each other and for a place to do battle, both were drawn to Gettysburg. There they would engage in the greatest battle of the American Civil War.1

  “We Advanced toward the Potomac”

  General Robert E. Lee Launches the Gettysburg Campaign

  On the morning of Monday, June 15, 1863, a long, dust-covered column of Confederate cavalry reached the Virginia side of the Potomac River south of Williamsport, Maryland. Uniformed in gray and butternut, the Southern soldiers eagerly spurred their horses down the riverbank and splashed across the wide, shallow Potomac ford toward the Maryland shore and the road to Pennsylvania.

  Commanded by Brigadier General Albert G. Jenkins, they comprised the advance guard of General Robert E. Lee’s 75,000-man Army of Northern Virginia, which was advancing steadily through Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley bound for an invasion of Pennsylvania. There, on Northern soil, Lee hoped to fight and win a decisive battle that would hasten an end to America’s bloody Civil War and establish Southern nationhood.

  Jenkins’s Cavalry Brigade was screening the vanguard of Lee’s army—Lieutenant General Richard S. Ewell’s Second Army Corps—which a day earlier had defeated and dispersed a Federal garrison of troops at Martinsburg, Virginia. As they forded the Potomac near Williamsport and headed across Maryland toward the Mason-Dixon Line and Pennsylvania, the youthful cavalrymen were in high spirits, bolstered by their recent victory and the knowledge that as they rode into enemy territory, Robert E. Lee’s army followed behind them at peak strength.

  Among their ranks was a young junior officer, Lieutenant Hermann Schuricht of the 14th Virginia Cavalry, who carefully kept a personal diary during his time in the field. In it, he recorded the opening actions of the Gettysburg Campaign.

  Spearheading General Robert E. Lee’s 1863 invasion of the North, Confederate cavalry ford the Potomac River in this period newspaper illustration.

  Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper

  With a cigar in his mouth and a Colt revolver in his hand, a young Virginia cavalryman exhibits the bold attitude that typified Southern cavalry.

  Library of Congress

  June 15, 1863.—Fatigued, but hopeful, and encouraged by the result of our glorious battle of yesterday at Martinsburg, Virginia, we were called by the sound of the bugle to mount horses. As early as 2 o’clock in the morning we advanced towards the Potomac. We reconnoitered first to “Dam No. 5,” and, returning to the road to Williamsport, Maryland, we rapidly moved to the river.

  Fording the Potomac, we took possession of Williamsport, and were received very kindly by the inhabitants. Tables, with plenty of milk, bread, and meat, had been spread in the street, and we took a hasty breakfast. Soon after this we rode towards Hagerstown, Maryland, where we arrived at noon, and were enthusiastically welcomed by the ladies. They made us presents of flowers, and the children shouted, “Hurrah for Jeff. Davis!”

  The ladies entreated us not to advance into Pennsylvania, where we would be attacked by superior forces. However, we sped on, and when we came in sight of Greencastle, Pennsylvania, General Jenkins divided his brigade in two forces. My company belonged to the troops forming the right wing, and pistols and muskets in hand, traversing ditches and fences, we charged and took the town. The Federal cavalry escaped, and only one lieutenant was captured.

  After destroying the railroad depot, and cutting the telegraph wires, the brigade took up its advance to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. No other Confederate cavalry force seems to co-operate with our brigade, numbering about 3,200 officers and men. Our vanguard had several skirmishes with the retreating enemy. On the road we found several partly burned wagons, which they had destroyed; and at 11 o’clock at night, we entered the city of Chambersburg, and on its eastern outskirts we went into camp.2

  “As Near Perfection as a Man Can Be”

  An Eyewitness Description of Robert E. Lee

  * * *

  “The Ladies Entreated Us Not to Advance into Pennsylvania”

  * * *

  In early May of 1863—days after his greatest victory—General Robert E. Lee began planning an invasion of the North. Lee was a Virginian, the fifty-six-year-old commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. He had been brevetted for gallantry during the Mexican War, and had served as the superintendent of West Point. He was a member of the Virginia aristocracy, the son of an acclaimed Revolutionary War cavalry commander—Lieutenant Colonel Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee—and he had served with distinction in the prewar United States Army, rising to the rank of colonel. In the view of many, both Northern and Southern, he was also a military genius. “His name might be Audacity,” observed a fellow officer. “He will take more desperate chances, and take them quicker than any other general in this country, North or South....”

  Tall, gray-bearded, and dignified, he was a quietly devout Christian. “I am nothing but a poor sinner,” he once said, “trusting in Christ alone for my salvation....” He was also an ardent admi
rer of George Washington. Lee’s wife, Mary Anne Custis Lee, was the daughter of Washington’s adopted son, and Lee’s father had been Washington’s wartime subordinate and postwar friend. With such ties to the nation, Lee had come with regret and reluctance to Southern command. He considered slavery to be a “moral & political evil” and described secession as a “calamity,” but on the eve of the war he declined an offer to command the principal Northern army. Instead, he resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and returned to his family home on the Virginia side of the Potomac opposite Washington, D.C. “I shall return to my native state,” he asserted, “and share the miseries of my people....” When Virginia seceded, he agreed to accept command of the state’s troops, and when Virginia joined the Confederacy, he became a Confederate general. He held various posts during the first year of the war, eventually serving as the chief military advisor to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

  General Robert E. Lee, commander, Army of Northern Virginia.

  Library of Congress

  In June of 1862, he accepted command of the Confederate army defending Richmond, the Confederate capital, which was then threatened by the Federal Army of the Potomac under Major General George B. McClellan. Lee reorganized his forces into the Army of Northern Virginia, and in a series of engagements called the Seven Days Battles, he demolished McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign and drove the Federal army away from Richmond. In August of 1862, he boldly moved his army into northern Virginia, where he defeated Major General John Pope and another Federal army at the Battle of Second Bull Run. He subsequently attempted to lead his army on a campaign into Maryland, a potential invasion of the North, but was forced to withdraw following the bloody Battle of Antietam in September of 1862.