JULY 2,
1863…GETTYSBURG DAY TWO
Robert E. Lee’s most trusted soldier
and his second in command, his “old war horse,” Lieutenant General James
Longstreet, known affectionately to his troops as “Old Pete,” and to his
friends simply as “Pete,” arrived at Gettysburg ahead of his 1st
Corps, still on the march, just in time to witness the end of the first day’s
fighting. Unlike the jubilant Confederate troops at the scene of the action, he
was not pleased at all. As he looked through his field glasses he could see the
Yanks digging in on the high hills south of the town, in the better positon of
the high ground, supported by a wall of artillery arrayed all along the
hilltops along Cemetery Ridge. Unlike “Stonewall” Jackson, killed just that
past May at Chancellorsville, Longstreet was a somber man, having lost three of
his children, all under the age of six, during one week of a scarlet fever outbreak
in January of 1862. With his knowledge of modern warfare, especially in
relation to the use of artillery and rifles from cover as opposed to the
typical open, en masse attacks
typical of the time, he tended to favor fighting a defensive war, forcing the
enemy to come to him, at a place of his choice, where circumstances were in his
favor. It was his troops at the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862,
which annihilated wave after wave of Union troops who repeatedly charged across
open ground towards his entrenched positons, leaving 10,000 Union dead and
wounded. Looking at the ground of Gettysburg, he could see Fredericksburg again
― but this time in reverse.
In view of the previous day’s
fighting, Longstreet held strongly to the idea that the best thing to do was to
disengage from Gettysburg and move southward so as to place the Confederate
forces between the Army of the Potomac and Washington D.C., take up a strong
positon, and wait for General Meade to attack as he must, to protect
Washington. He strongly suggested this to General Lee but Lee refused the
suggestion. Lee had tasted victory and would not be swayed. “If he (Meade and
the Union army) is there tomorrow, I’m going to attack him.” Longstreet’s reply
was, “General, if he is there tomorrow it is because he wants you to attack
him. A good enough reason in my judgment for not doing so,” establishing a major
point of conflict between the two commanders in the middle of a major battle
which ultimately would have a deadly effect on its final outcome.[i]
General Meade
As to General Meade, he was tired,
stressed and more ill-tempered than normal, particularly when he arrived at
Hancock’s headquarters east of Cemetery Ridge sometime after midnight, where he
was briefed by General Howard and General Hancock on the events of the day. The
commanders of III Corps and XII Corps, Major Generals Sickles and Slocum,
reported the arrival of their fresh troops to Meade as well. Later, Chief
Engineer, Brigadier General Gouverneur Warren guided Meade on a tour of the
Union positons. Meade approved Hancock’s choice of battlefield, “Well, we might
as well fight it out here.” He then issued orders for the three corps who had
not yet arrived, Hancock’s II, Sykes V, and Sedgwick’s VI to move to Gettysburg
with all haste. In response to that order, some units conducted forced marches
of up to 35 miles in order to be there by the next afternoon. By the end of the
day on July 2, Meade estimated that he would have close to 95,000 men to defend
his three-mile long “fishhook” position. He’d then wait for Lee and his
estimated 77,000 men to come to him.
On the morning of July 2, Lee awoke
and walked out of his tent, quickly taking note that the Union forces were
still there and proceeded to lay out his plan of attack to Longstreet’s great
dismay. General Richard S. Ewell would be ordered to again try to take Cemetery
Hill and Culp’s Hill on the Union right flank. At the same time, Longstreet’s
two divisions, newly arrived and rested on Seminary Ridge, would strike the
Union left flank in parallel formations at an oblique angle ― one going in
first and then the next, progressively moving to the north along the axis of
attack. Longstreet’s third division under Major General George Pickett, the
last in line travelling up the Chambersburg Pike, was not expected until late
that day. The two-thirds of A. P. Hills 3rd Corps were to be held in
reserve while his remaining division would strike near the center of the Union
lines under the leadership of Major General R. H. Anderson. But Lee was
mistaken. The Union left was not exposed and vulnerable and subject to a
massive glancing attack like at Chancellorsville as he thought. Without
information from “Jeb” Stuart on what lay before him, Lee and his staff could
only guess on the status and location of Union positons and they got it wrong.
Longstreet decided to “drag his feet”
and it wasn’t until mid-afternoon that “Old Pete” gathered his two divisions
together under Major General John Bell Hood and Major General Lafayette McLaws
and move them into position, minus one of Hoods Brigades that had not yet
arrived on the field of battle. Longstreet, if he had to fight, wanted to fight
with his compete division, and would have felt much more confident had Pickett
been present. As he told Hood, “I don’t like going into battle with one boot
off.”
Lee was growing impatient and ordered Longstreet
to do what he had to do and to get moving. And so Longstreet marched from
Seminary Ridge to the place where the attack would be launched, well south of
town; but that took twice as long as Lee expected with Longstreet backtracking
along the way to avoid his 14,000 men from being spotted by the Union forces on
Little Round Top. It wasn’t until 4:30 p.m. when a less than enthusiastic
Longstreet was finally in positon. His troops had expected to face an exposed
Union left flank but instead, as General McLaws stated, “The view astonished me
as the enemy was massed in my front, and extended to my right and left as far
as I could see: ― a solid wall of blue” ― General Dan Sickles entire III Corps,
900 yards out in front of Meade’s main battle line on Cemetery Ridge. Lee’s
scouts had managed to miss this detail.
Sickles had been a tempestuous New
York politician and was not a professional soldier. Finding himself in charge
of a Union corps, he was livid to find his assigned place in the battle at the
southern end of Cemetery Ridge, a place that was not much more than a light
rise in the terrain. Not to be bested, he moved his III Corps west to slightly
higher ground adjacent to Sherfy’s Peach Orchard, opening a half-mile gap in
Meade’s line, and Sickles 9,800 men was insufficient to cover it, leaving the
defense of Little Round Top in jeopardy. His move did manage, however, to delay
Longstreet even longer, for another hour, as “Old Pete” was forced to change
his battle plan. Hood’s division was re-positioned farther to the right,
forcing him to fight uphill through a field of massive boulders, shallow
streams, and stone fences (the “Devil’s Den”) at the base of Little Round Top.
As Hood complained to Longstreet, “They don’t even need to shoot. All they have
to do is roll rocks down on us…I’ll lose half my division!” Three times he
asked “Pete” for permission to move farther to the right with an eye on going
around the Round Tops and hitting the Union from the rear. Three times
Longstreet had to refuse. He had argued with Lee that morning, had argued against
even attacking, but that was General Lee’s order. “The time is up. Attack at
once!”
General Hood
In the meanwhile, Meade had ridden out
to Sickles and in the open, yelled that his position was indefensible because
the Rebel artillery could sweep it and the Rebel infantry could attack from two
sides and there was no close support. Sickles asked Meade if he should pull
back then, but it was too late ― the Southern guns opened up.
At about 5 p.m. as the sun began to
set, with artillery support, the Rebel army charged toward the Union lines in
wave after wave. To the northeast, General Ewell’s forces launched their
assault on Cemetery and Culp’s Hills. In the Devil’s Den, in the Peach Orchard,
and in the surrounding farmland, first Hood and then Anderson launched a two-mile
wide offensive ― one of the fiercest attacks of the Civil War. Both sides
fought like demons possessed. As one Texas veteran later said, “The balls were
flying so thick that you could have held your hat up and caught it full.” The
cannons of both sides blasted away without stopping, plowing down their
opposite sides. At close range, rather than hard ball shot or hollow, fused
shells full of explosives, “canister” was fired, containing hundreds of iron
balls that turned artillery pieces into giant shotguns, with incredibly
devastating results. The sounds of battle could be heard for miles.
Just as Meade said would happen,
Sickles could not hold under the ruthless assault of General William Barksdale
of Mississippi, through the Peach Orchard. Sickles line ultimately collapsed
with Sickles himself having a leg torn off by a round of solid cannon shot.
Meade remained calm, methodically stripping troops from other parts of his
positions and from his reserve V and VI Corps, feeding them into the breach to
stem the flow of Confederates.
Little Round Top
Over on Little Round Top, Chief
Engineer Warren was shocked to find the hill almost totally undefended. Seeing
Hood headed his way, he frantically rode his horse down the steep back slope
and sent couriers off to inform General Meade. The first unit to respond was
Colonel Strong Vincent’s brigade from the V Corps. Vincent hadn’t even waited
for orders to come though the chain of command, but took his unit up to near
the top of Little Round Top, just in time to throw back the Confederates who
were climbing up the hill. The fighting was fierce, often hand to hand as the
lines moved up and down the hill. If Hood could take the hill, then Rebel
artillery situated there could have decimated the Union positons below.
At the very end of Vincent’s line, on
the south side of Little Round Top was the 20th Main Volunteer
Regiment under Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a professor from Bowdoin
College, under strict orders not to vacate their positon at any cost. The
fighting was terrible as the Rebels time and again tried to take his line.
Determined not to give ground he “refused” the end of his line, extending his
troops uphill at a 90 degree angle so if the Confederates tried to come up from
his side and rear, they would face another line of men. Ultimately,
Chamberlain’s men found themselves practically out of ammunition with nowhere
to go. As the sun set and the Rebels made one last charge up the steep slope of
Little Round Top, Chamberlain made a fateful decision. He ordered all the men
in the line to fix bayonets, and then ordered a charge downhill, using his
refused line as a door, swinging not just downhill but to the right, sweeping
all the Confederate troops in front of them. Those that did not surrender were
either trampled, shot, or stabbed. It was a route with the exhausted
Southerners fleeing down the hill and then in all directions in front of the desperate
70th Maine. Little Round Top was saved, the Union line was saved,
and for his bravery and that of his men, Chamberlain was awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor.
Cemetery Ridge
By sundown it became obvious that the
Union positions were holding. The Confederate attack had failed. At one point,
during the height of battle, Lee saw one of Anderson’s brigades advance up to
the Union center and penetrate all the way to the crest of Cemetery Ridge. He
remarked about this to General Longstreet, “At one time, I saw our flag at the
top of the hill. We were so close, victory was in our grasp,” to which
Longstreet replied sarcastically, “Not even close.”
The Devil's Den
Of the three days of fighting at
Gettysburg, July 2 was the bloodiest and saw some of the most severe combat of
the entire war. Approximately 9,000 Confederates and 10,000 Union men were cut
down in just a few hours. Confederate General Pender was killed and General
Hood, struck by shrapnel lost the use of his left arm. For the North, several
division and brigade commanders had fallen. After all of that, nothing had been
decided.
That night, General Longstreet again
suggested that Lee, in view of the lack of any significant gain, that he move
south and take the defensive. Lee had had enough of Longstreet and uncharacteristically,
out in the open, curtly told his “old war horse” that he would “have none of
it,” adding, “I am going to whip him here, or he’s going to whip me.”
[i]. In March of1863, Lee was struck by a
sudden and fell off his horse. On examination, in addition to a throat
infection, the diagnosis included acute pericarditis (subsequent medical
opinions are that he did indeed suffer a heart attack). He was sufficiently ill
enough to require treatment, away from the public and especially away from his
army. He suffered greatly from pain in the chest and arms, often quite sharp by
his own admission. By April he was able to return to duty, with the public
excuse that he had in fact been injured in the fall, but that he was now quite
recovered. In fact, the pain continued to bother him and there are many public
accounts to support that. His ability to ride a horse was visibly compromised
and he was known to be frequently confused, anxious, and depressed. Both
medical and historical opinions now concede that his heart disease may well
have affected his overall judgment, which would explain some of the otherwise
inexplicable and uncharacteristic decisions he made during the Battle of
Gettysburg; most prominently, the decision to launch what is now referred to as
“Pickett’s Charge” on July 3.
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