Thus, as the great charge drew near to its objective, both its flanks had been broken. (Flanking fire was especially deadly, because the line that was being flanked could not make any reply to it and was itself utterly vulnerable; fire that came slicing along the length of an infantry line simply could not miss, and no troops could stand it very long.) Longstreet, looking on from the rear, saw what was happening and remarked to a British observer who was standing beside him that the attack was going to fail.

  But it had not failed yet, and if the flanks of the Confederate line crumbled, the center was strong. It built up its strength now, in front of the memorable clump of trees. (The trees are still there, protected by an iron fence, all set off with monuments and plaques.) As they came in close—whites-of-the-eyes range, at last—the Confederates halted. Standing, kneeling, or lying at full length, they opened their own rifle fire on the Federals. An infantry attack in the Civil War rarely involved an unbroken run forward followed by hand-to-hand work with the bayonet. The object usually was to try to build up an overpowering rifle fire at close range, gaining superior fire power at the point of contact. Even with their broken flanks, the Confederates were accomplishing this here, and along the low wall that marked the Union front just before and to the immediate right and left of the clump of trees there were more Confederates than Federals in action.

  A low stone wall topped by fence rails ran along the front and sides of the clump of trees and offered a good defensive position for Union infantry. In the ground shown in this picture, extremely quiet and peaceful-looking today, thousands of men struggled desperately at the great climax of the battle on July 3, when Major General George Pickett’s charge reached this point, hung on there for a moment, and then broke up in defeat. (Illustrations 4.3)

  For the next few minutes this irregular rectangle of ground, a hundred yards deep by two or three hundred yards wide, was the bloody cockpit of the whole war, the place where men on foot with guns in their hands would arrive at a verdict. In this rectangle there was little work by the artillery. The Confederate guns to the west could not fire into this place without hitting their own men, and the Union guns here were out of action. A regular army battery of six guns commanded by Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing had been posted just north of the trees; by the time the Confederates came up to close range, five of the six guns had been put out of action, and when Cushing got off a final shot from the one gun that remained, he was killed and most of the gun crew went down with him. The climax of Pickett’s charge was an infantry fight pure and simple.

  The climax of the battle came on the afternoon of July 3, when some 15,000 men under general control of George Pickett struck Hancock’s position on Cemetery Ridge after 140 Confederate guns had carried on an intensive bombardment. Aiming to strike the center of Hancock’s line, with a “little clump of trees” as their landmark, the Confederates struck a position too strong to be carried with the numbers available, and their costly repulse ended the battle. Earlier, Ewell had unsuccessfully attacked Culp’s Hill, while Union and Confederate cavalry fought a sharp but essentially meaningless engagement east of Gettysburg. (Illustrations 4.4)

  The artists have had a field day with Gettysburg for more than a century, and the most they can do is convey the impression of huge masses of men fighting furiously amid smoke and spurts of flame. Here are two conceptions of the supreme moments of Lee’s attempt to break Meade’s line on July 3. The degree of “realism” inherent in either picture is something for the individual viewer to determine for himself; the last of the men who might have borne personal, eyewitness testimony on the matter died long ago. (Illustrations 4.5)

  One on-the-spot artist visited the Union center on July 4 and sketched this grim picture of wrecked caissons and dead horses in one of the Federal battery positions. (Illustrations 4.6)

  It was fought out with unremitting fury. Some of Pickett’s men broke in across the stone wall and knelt amid Cushing’s idle guns to fire point-blank at the defending infantry. Some of the defenders found the fire too hot to bear and withdrew; on a narrow front, and for the moment, Pickett’s men had actually broken the Union line. If they could widen the break and hold on to the ground gained until help came, they would have the battle won.…

  Nowadays a visitor can stand by the clump of trees and see the whole battlefield, and it is hard to realize that hardly anything was visible to the men who were doing the fighting. This battle was fought in a blinding fog—a choking, reeking, impenetrable mist of powder smoke—smoke from the cannon and from the infantry rifles—lying close to the ground and drifting up toward the sky until some breeze might carry it away. Directly to the west of the focal point of the battle Lee himself watched and could see nothing—just an occasional glimpse of tossing flags and stabbing flames when the smoke would thin out temporarily. Longstreet ordered a brigade forward to reinforce Pickett, and the men could not see their objective because of the smoke clouds; they drifted far off to the right, came up against a waiting rank of Federal cannon and the spirited Vermonters, and were torn apart and compelled to retreat without having had the slightest effect on the course of the battle.

  Several miles to the eastward Stuart’s cavalry had at last gone into action, striking for the Union rear so that if the infantry assaults forced Meade to retreat, the Confederate horsemen could harry the fugitives and turn an orderly withdrawal into disordered rout. But the Federals were not retreating, and Union cavalry met Stuart’s men, fought hard with charge and countercharge, and at last drove them away. Nothing could help Pickett’s men. They would have to fight this one out on their own, there along the crest of Cemetery Ridge, with the broiling July sun shining down on the monstrous cloud blanket that piled thicker and thicker over the invisible scene of the fight.

  For a brief time the Confederates had the advantage, but they could not hold it. Crowding in to lay fire on the Federals in and on both sides of the fated little grove, they had an advantage in numbers, but there were too many Union soldiers in the immediate vicinity, and these were called over on the double. They came in swarms, formal military formation lost as they ran up to get into action at close range. The crowd became so dense that some of these reinforcements, halting to open fire on their enemies, hit their own comrades in front of them—just as some of the distant Confederate cannon, reaching out to hurt the Federals, struck down Confederates in the blind confusion. From the crest of Cemetery Ridge, perhaps a hundred yards behind the point of break-through, the Union regiments that had retreated formed ranks anew, regained their nerve, and opened a sharp counterattack. General Hancock, riding up to see that the front was restored, was shot from his horse with a wound that would keep him out of action until the following spring. General Gibbon also was shot down, severely wounded; but the Federal line stiffened and held without further direction, because in the end this was the private soldier’s fight.

  On the Confederate side it was Armistead who had led the contingent that broke the Federal line. He was still waving his sword, his black felt hat that had been on the point of the sword had slipped all the way down to the hilt; he laid his hand on one of dead Cushing’s guns, urged his men on, a great figure of defiance—and then he fell with a mortal wound. An hour later, when Federal stretcher bearers were combing the littered field, he was still alive—enough so that he could stammer out a last message to his old friend Hancock. Then he died, while wounded Hancock was being carried from the field. The paths of these two men, which had parted in California more than two years earlier, had crossed again, for the last time.

  Probably the most dramatic single moment at Gettysburg came when the Confederate Brigadier General Lewis Armistead, his slouch hat poised on his sword, led the heroic surge of men that broke into the Union line and overran one of Hancock’s batteries near the clump of trees. Here is an artist’s conception of the scene. Armistead got two or three hundred of his men through the line, but he himself was killed and most of those who followed him were shot down or taken prisoner. (Illustrations 4.7)

  Cameras of the Civil War era were not capable of recording action shots, so no authentic photograph of men in combat in the battle of Gettysburg ever existed. The camera did make its record, however. These two scenes show a few of the many thousands killed at Gettysburg, waiting for the burial squads. (Illustrations 4.8)

  Then, suddenly, as the men from the North and the men from the South struggled in the dense battle smoke, the climax was passed. The Confederate wave had reached high-water mark and it began to ebb; watching from his post on the western ridge, Lee could see the human debris of a broken charge drifting back down the long slope. Military formations had been broken, but for the most part the men were going back sullenly, not panicky fugitives but soldiers ready to turn and fight if the Federals attempted a pursuit. The Federals made no attempt. They had beaten back the supreme effort Lee’s army could make, but they had just about exhausted themselves doing it. They were content to see their enemies go away.

  From his headquarters behind the lines Meade rode forward, saw the littered field, and learned that his soldiers had won a great victory. He took off his hat, apparently preparing to give a great shout, then thought better of it and said, reverently, “Thank God!” A mile away Lee rode forward to rally the men who had made the charge, telling them simply: “It is all my fault.”

  That night, after dark, Lee issued instructions for the organization of a wagon train to carry some of the thousands of wounded men back to Virginia. To an officer who received the orders, Lee said that he had never seen anything finer than the charge Pickett’s men had made. If it had been supported properly, he said, it would have succeeded. Then his emotions broke through, and he cried aloud: “Oh, too bad! Too bad!”

  Five

  LONG REMEMBER

  With the repulse of Pickett’s charge there was only one move Robert E. Lee could make. He had to get his army back to Virginia lest it be destroyed outright, as Abraham Lincoln hoped it might be. The bright possibilities that seemed to be open when general and army came north across the Potomac had vanished. What was left was the simple problem of survival.

  Facing this problem, Lee did not panic; indeed, he seemed full of confidence. For the moment his offensive power was gone and he had to get away without delay, but he did not propose to be hurried about it and if the Yankees wanted one more fight here he would give it to them. On the night of July 3, while the shattered brigades that had gone storming up the slope of Cemetery Ridge were getting themselves sorted out, Lee ordered a contraction of his lines. Ewell’s men were pulled back from the north and east of Cemetery Hill, and Longstreet’s troops were disengaged from the tangled thickets and fields in front of the Round Tops; the wagons containing such wounded men as could be moved were started west, heading for the gaps in South Mountain before swinging south for the river crossings; and on July 4 most of the army stood its ground, warily eyeing the Federals on the high ground to the east. The Confederates more than half expected Meade to attack them and more than half hoped he would try it; they had failed in their own attack, and the failure had left the army half crippled, but the men had not a doubt in the world that they could smash any offensive the Union soldiers might make. If such an attack were made and beaten back, the whole Gettysburg venture would look a good deal less like the Confederate disaster which in fact it was.

  General Robert E. Lee, looking as always a little larger than life-size … the knight “sans peur et sans reproche.” (The Bettmann Archive, Inc.) (Illustrations 5.1)

  General Meade had no intention of making such an attack. His army had fought and won the most prodigious battle of the war, and if the victory had been purely defensive it had nevertheless been decisive. Meade would not risk diminishing the victory by making what looked to him like an unnecessary attack. Lee had to retreat anyway, his entire invasion scheme in collapse, but if his army had been beaten, it was still as dangerous as a wounded panther. Meade would follow it closely, and if a good chance presented itself he would strike, but he would be very cautious. For the moment he would be happy enough to see the Confederate army leave Northern soil.

  Most of Meade’s men agreed with him, and the Confederates later asserted that they would have had everything to gain and nothing to lose if Meade had gone over to the offensive immediately after Gettysburg. Indeed, the one man who was seriously displeased by Meade’s decision was Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States and, under the Constitution, commander in chief of the nation’s armed forces. Lincoln from the beginning had seen what the professional soldiers had mostly failed to see—that when Lee cut his ties with Virginia and marched deep into Northern territory he risked losing his whole army. In the North he could be cut off and compelled to destroy himself in a vain fight to escape. The victory at Gettysburg had been notable, but it was only half of the story as Lincoln saw it. One way or another, Lee’s army should be kept from ever going south across the Potomac. To rejoice that he had been driven away from “our soil,” as so many Northern patriots were doing, was beside the point, and Lincoln angrily asked his private secretary, John Hay: “Will our generals never get that idea out of their heads? The whole country is our soil.” … The union was endangered, as Lincoln saw it, not because Lee’s army was north of the Potomac but because Lee’s army existed at all.

  Lee got his army down to the Potomac crossings at last, followed by Meade’s army but not actively pursued, and because the river was swollen past fording and Lee had no pontoon train, the Confederates had to wait for a few days, in and around Williamsport. Meade assembled his troops facing Lee, found at a council of war that his generals did not think an attack advisable, made up his mind at last to make such an attack anyway—and on the morning of July 14, when his infantry moved forward to make its fight, learned that Lee had gone across the river during the night, leaving nothing but a rear guard to impede the Yankee advance. The great Gettysburg campaign was over. If, as Lincoln believed, Lee had been in danger of losing his army then and there, he had at last escaped. But in any case this chapter of the war was finished. The invasion of the North had failed, once and for all.

  Retreating from Gettysburg, Lee sent his wagon train (including the wagons loaded with wounded men) roundabout by Chambersburg, and with the bulk of his army cut cross-country to Hagerstown and over to the Potomac crossing at Williamsport. Meade followed on a long arc that led down through Frederick, cutting west via Middletown to come up against Lee’s temporary lines at Williamsport. Lee was delayed here because of high water in the Potomac, but he built an impromptu bridge and on July 13 got his army safely across. Meade had ordered an assault for the next day, but when his troops moved forward the Confederate lines were empty. Lee’s army had escaped. The momentous Gettysburg campaign had passed into history. (Illustrations 5.2)

  It is easier to see it now than it was at the time, but in fact the great turning point of the war had been reached and passed. Gettysburg drew a good part of its significance from something that happened simultaneously a thousand miles to the southwest. At Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 4, while the armies in Pennsylvania stared at each other across fields reeking with the dreadful presence of thousands of unburied bodies, General John Pemberton surrendered 30,000 Confederate soldiers, the great stronghold at Vicksburg, and control of the Mississippi Valley to General U. S. Grant. In Lincoln’s memorable phrase, the Father of Waters now rolled unvexed to the sea. The Southern Confederacy had been cut in half. Now it could not hope to muster the strength to overthrow the Federal government.

  Lee had just time enough, after the defeat at Gettysburg, to get his army safely south of the Potomac; when Meade assaulted his lines, at Falling Waters near Williamsport, Maryland, on July 13, all but a Confederate rear guard had got back into Virginia. Here the artist depicts an assault on part of the rear guard by a Federal cavalry regiment. (Illustrations 5.3)

  For some thousands of dejected Confederates, the road away from Gettysburg led to a Northern prison camp. Here an artist shows a column of prisoners starting the long march to captivity after the repulse of Pickett’s charge on the afternoon of July 3. (Illustrations 5.4)

  This gave Gettysburg added significance. As Lincoln privately complained, Lee had escaped when he might have been destroyed, but Gettysburg nevertheless had been a prodigious Federal achievement. Here the Confederacy had made its supreme bid to win its independence by a decisive triumph north of the Potomac. It had failed—when all was said and done—had failed because it simply was not strong enough. It could not knock the North out of the war or win the overwhelming advantage that would bring recognition by the British. It might yet win the war, to be sure, by hanging on in a grim defensive until the Northern people and their government concluded that victory was not going to be worth what it would cost; but outright victory, forcing the kind of decision the government at Richmond wanted, just was not in the cards. Not after Gettysburg; not after Gettysburg interpreted in the light of Vicksburg.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7