Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg Read online

  Lee's intent was to attack both Union flanks on July 2. But after looking over the position on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill, he agreed with Ewell that the Union right was too strong. Lee therefore ordered Longstreet to take his two divisions (the third, Pick-ett's, would not arrive in time) plus Hill's one division that had not fought the previous day and attack the Union left. Ewell would demonstrate against the enemy in his front, and convert the demonstration into an attack if Meade weakened that flank to reinforce his left against Longstreet's assault.

  Longstreet took a long time getting his troops into position for the attack. A large part of the delay was not his fault. The shortage of cavalry had made it difficult to scout a route to the jump-off point. (Stuart's troopers were finally on their way to Gettysburg, but would not get there until evening.) Because the Confederates did not want to telegraph the point of attack, Longstreet had to countermarch several miles after discovering that the original approach road could be seen from a Union signal station on Little Round Top.

  Part of Longstreet's slowness on July 2 may also have resulted from a lack of enthusiasm for the attack he had been ordered to make. After the war, he became a target of withering criticism from Virginians who dominated the writing of Confederate history. They accused him of insubordination and tardiness at Gettysburg. They held him responsible for losing the battle—and, by implication, the war. But some of this criticism was self-serving, intended to shield Lee and other Virginians (chiefly Ewell and Stuart) from blame. In the eyes of unreconstructed Southern whites, Longstreet also made the mistake of urging them to accept the results of the war. Even worse, he became a Republican and received a federal appointment from President Ulysses S. Grant, a friend of Longstreet from their days together at West Point.

  We will leave Longstreet's troops for a while and proceed south along Seminary Ridge on the park road called West Confederate Avenue, which follows part of the Confederate line of July 2 and 3. Along the way we will see many cannons and monuments of various kinds—as indeed we have been seeing since the beginning of our tour. The numbers of monuments and cannons and other physical artifacts of the battle and its commemoration are far greater than at any other battlefield. There are something like 1,400 monuments and markers of various sorts, and almost four hundred cannons. The carriages of the latter are replicas, but most of the guns themselves actually date from the war, and some of them were at Gettysburg in 1863. They are placed today in the approximate position where they, or ones like them, fought during the battle (there were more than four hundred cannons with the two armies at Gettysburg).

  About a hundred battery markers today indicate the principal locations of each six- or four-gun artillery battery during the battle. Other official bronze markers (placed by the War Department a century ago, when it administered the battlefield) stand where each of the seventy Union and fifty-six Confederate brigades fought. Union brigade markers have a square base, and Confederate markers a round base. Granite markers with a bronze tablet stand at or near the command sites of the twenty-two Union divisions (2,500 to 5,000 men) and ten Confederate divisions (5,500 to 8,000 men). Similar corps markers indicate the headquarters of the seven Union infantry and one cavalry corps and the three Confederate infantry corps and one cavalry division. These markers describe the actions and casualties of those units during the battle.

  The monuments of greatest interest to most visitors are those erected by the veterans (or their descendants) of many Union regiments and a few Confederate regiments that fought at Gettysburg, or by their states. Conforming to no single pattern or material or size, regimental monuments commemorate the actions and casualties of those regiments during the battle. Sometimes they list all the battles (and casualties) of the regiment during the entire war. Union regimental associations began placing monuments in the 1880s— forty-seven in 1885 alone—and by 1904 there were some 360 regimental and state monuments on the battlefield, nearly all of them Union. Many Northern states appropriated five hundred dollars or more to supplement private contributions for regimental monuments, and appropriated larger sums for the imposing state monuments.

  Few Southern veterans or states had the resources or interest to commemorate a battle they had lost. Beginning with Virginia in 1917, however, Southern states and Confederate heritage groups began placing monuments, some of them of impressive size and beauty. My favorite, from an aesthetic standpoint, is the Virginia monument at midpoint on West Confederate Avenue. By one count, however, in the year 2000 there were 472 Union regimental and state monuments in the park, compared with only twenty-seven such Confederate monuments.

  Our next stop will be at one of those Confederate monuments—and one of the park's newest—the equestrian statue of Longstreet near the Pitzer Woods sign on West Confederate Avenue, several hundred yards north of the observation tower visible in the distance. This is the first monument to Longstreet anywhere—testimony to his lack of popularity in the South. And for many years the North Carolina branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which launched the drive for a Longstreet monument with the slogan “It's About Time,” had difficulty raising funds. With the support of other groups (some in the North), they finally succeeded, and the monument was dedicated before a crowd of four thousand people on July 3, 1998, the 135th anniversary of the battle's final day.

  It is about time for Longstreet to get his due. Historians have long recognized his abilities and have absolved him of responsibility for “losing” Gettysburg. Michael Shaara's novel The Killer Angels (1974) and the 1993 movie Gettysburg based on the novel have given Longstreet's role at Gettysburg high and favorable visibility. Nevertheless, his monument has not escaped controversy. The careful observer will note that one hoof of the horse is off the ground. Yet Longstreet was not wounded in the battle, so the monument does not conform to the Gettysburg pattern. The sculptor wanted to portray Longstreet as reining in his galloping horse as he arrives to deal with a crisis. He received permission from the Park Service to show the left front hoof of the horse in the air as its rider pulls back the reins. Fair enough. The sculptor also placed the monument at ground level instead of on a pedestal, for greater realism. Many visitors like that notion. But in a milieu where all of the other equestrian statues of generals are on pedestals, conveying an idea of heroic stature, the down-to-earth Longstreet seems to some observers to be somehow demeaned.

  And almost everyone notices that the horse is too small in comparison with the man. Curiously, that was intentional. I dropped in on the sculptor one day when he was working on the clay model for this bronze sculpture. He explained that Longstreet was full size and the horse four-fifths size so that when one looked up at the monument on its pedestal, the proportions would appear correct. But then why put it at ground level? If that was a later idea, why not then make the horse full size? There is a mystery here that no one has yet explained to me. In any event, a colleague commented that the Virginian Jubal Early, an unreconstructed rebel who led the postwar campaign against Longstreet's reputation, would have selected precisely this kind of monument for Longstreet.

  We must now cast our imagination back to 1863. It is almost 4:00 P.M. on July 2 of that year. Longstreet's troops have finally arrived and deployed for attack after their roundabout march of several miles to avoid detection from enemy observers on Little Round Top. One of Longstreet's brigades, Alabamians commanded by Evander Law, had marched twenty-five miles since breaking camp at 1:00 A.M. Our walk will take us only four-tenths of a mile south from the Long-street monument to climb the observation tower, which is located near the site of Longstreet's headquarters during the ensuing attack. From the tower we get a panoramic view of the southern half of the battlefield, and can even see the Eternal Light Peace Memorial more than three miles to the north. Behind us as we face to the east is the Eisenhower National Historic Site, a beautiful farm to which Dwight Eisenhower retired after his presidency. Tickets to visit the farm can be obtained at the park visitor center.

  But
our concern is with the events that took place in our front during the three hours after 4:00 P.M. on July 2, 1863—some of the most intense fighting and concentrated carnage of the whole Civil War. One-third of a mile due east is the famous Peach Orchard. The peach trees there today cover less than half the acreage of its historic predecessor. A quarter-mile south of the orchard we see the surviving buildings of the Rose farm, where some of the most famous photographs of Confederate soldiers killed in the battle were taken. Visible a half-mile east of the Peach Orchard is the Trostle farm, where the most famous wartime photographs of dead artillery horses were taken.

  Beyond the woods behind the Rose farm was the Wheatfield, a thirty-two-acre field over which attacks and counterattacks surged back and forth, leaving so many dead and wounded that one soldier afterward said (no doubt with some exaggeration) that he could have walked over it without touching the ground. Beyond the Wheatfield, a mile southeast of our tower, is Devil's Den, a geological marvel of huge granite boulders tumbled together to form a strong defensive position that Confederates nevertheless managed to capture. From our tower the woods block our view of the Wheatfield and Devil's Den. But another five hundred yards east of Devil's Den we can see the steep and rocky rise of Little Round Top, open and mostly free of trees on its western face. Just south of Little Round Top towers Big Round Top, more than a hundred feet higher, rugged and wooded today as it was in 1863.

  When one of Lee's staff officers had scouted the Union position in this vicinity early that morning, he had spotted its left flank on Little Round Top and the line running north through low ground a half-mile east of the Wheatfield before gradually rising to Cemetery Ridge. But when Longstreet deployed for attack that afternoon, scouts reported that the Union line had moved forward with its left flank now in Devil's Den, an apex in the Peach Orchard, and a division deployed for a half-mile north along the Emmitsburg Road (today's Business Route 15) and disconnected from the rest of the Union line back on Cemetery Ridge. What had happened? Thereby hangs a tale that spawned one of the sharpest controversies on the Union side at Gettysburg.

  At the center of this controversy was Major General Daniel E. Sickles, commander of the Union Third Corps holding the south end of Cemetery Ridge with its left flank on Little Round Top. At least that was where they were supposed to be. In a war with many colorful characters, Sickles stood out with the gaudiest hues. He was the only nonprofessional (not a West Point graduate) corps commander in either army. A New York lawyer and politician, he was prominent in the Tammany Hall political machine during the 1850s. He was also a notorious womanizer, despite the beauty and charms of his wife, Teresa. Elected to Congress in 1856, Sickles may have regretted that he ever came to Washington. His wife began an affair there with Philip Barton Key, son of the composer of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” When Sickles finally discovered what was going on, in February 1859, he seized a revolver and shot Key dead in Lafayette Park, directly across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.

  The sensational trial ended in Sickles's acquittal. One of his attorneys was Edwin M. Stanton, who became Lincoln's secretary of war in 1862. Stanton argued for acquittal on grounds of temporary insanity —the first use of that defense in the history of American jurisprudence. This argument may have helped sway the jury, but the real reason they acquitted Sickles was the “unwritten law” that justified a husband's murder of his wife's lover. Although freed under the law, Sickles was shunned by polite society. To recoup his standing, he raised a brigade (four regiments) in New York City when the war broke out, and was rewarded with appointment as brigadier general to command the brigade.

  Demonstrating military ability despite no training or previous experience, Sickles hitched his star to General Joseph Hooker, who had charge of the Third Corps for a time in 1862-63. Sickles won promotion to division command and then took over the corps when Hooker became army commander in January 1863. Although he was Hooker's protege, he had opposed the commander's decision to pull Sickles back from the high ground at Hazel Grove to straighten Union lines during the battle of Chancellorsville. The Confederates had promptly moved artillery to Hazel Grove, from where they dominated Union guns on lower ground and played a key role in the Southern victory—or at least that was how Sickles saw it.

  At Gettysburg he was determined not to let the same thing happen again. Sickles was unhappy about the vulnerability of his position just north of Little Round Top, which was commanded by the higher ground in the Peach Orchard almost a mile to the west. When skirmishers discovered signs of Confederate activity in his front in early afternoon, Sickles feared that the enemy would occupy the Peach Orchard and turn it into another Hazel Grove. Therefore, without notifying Meade—indeed, in violation of Meade's orders—Sickles moved his two divisions forward to take up an inverted V position with its apex at the Peach Orchard.

  For the remaining fifty-one years of his life, Sickles insisted that his action saved the Union army at Gettysburg. If so, it was at the cost of 4,200 casualties (including Sickles, who lost a leg) to his ten-thousand-man corps. But Sickles's critics—who have been legion—insisted that he almost lost the battle because his forward move left Little Round Top undefended. If the Confederates had managed to seize that hill, they could have dominated the whole Union position and perhaps have rolled up the exposed flank on Cemetery Ridge.

  The argument will never be settled. When we go forward to the Peach Orchard and look east toward the position that Sickles had been ordered to hold, it will become clear why he considered the Peach Orchard a dominant site. When we later ascend Little Round Top, it will become even more clear why this rocky elevation was an even more crucial position. In any event, by the time Meade learned what Sickles had done, it was too late to order him back to the original line.

  At 4:00 P.M. Longstreet's attack exploded from the woods along Warfield and Seminary Ridges. From right to left, one brigade after another, nineteen thousand rebels (including three brigades of A. P. Hill's corps) hit the Yankees at the Rose farm, the Wheat-field, Devil's Den, the Peach Orchard, and the Trostle farm. After bitter, costly fighting they captured each of these famous locales. Mounted on his horse while watching the action from his headquarters at the Trostle farm, Sickles felt a sharp pain in his right leg and looked down to see it hanging in shreds from his thigh, almost severed by a cannonball. Although Sickles remained conscious, a rumor began to spread among his troops that he was dead. To forestall a panic, Sickles had an aide light a cigar and stick it in his mouth. He puffed away jauntily as he was carried to the rear on a stretcher. His amputated leg was preserved in formaldehyde at a medical laboratory in Washington, where in later years Sickles would take visitors to see it. We can visit his shinbone today at the Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington.

  Descending from the observation tower, we will make our way to the Peach Orchard. From there a stroll of half a mile south will take us to the Rose farm and the woods beyond. A half-mile to the east of the Peach Orchard will bring us to the Wheatfield, and a half-mile to the northeast to the Trostle farm. At each place, interpretive markers and numerous monuments explain the actions that occurred there. A further stroll a quarter-mile south of the Wheatfield will take us to the fantastic landscape at Devil's Den, and more markers and monuments. After three hours of fighting in these places, the ground was covered with at least eight thousand dead and wounded soldiers, about evenly divided between blue and gray. Meade and his subordinates skillfully fed units from the Fifth and Second Corps into the battle, using the interior lines that made the Union position so strong. These reinforcements counterattacked to regain some of the positions lost by Sickles's corps and to prevent a Confederate breakthrough on Cemetery Ridge. But when dusk turned into darkness at about 8:00 P.M., the Confederates still held Devil's Den, the Wheat-field, the Peach Orchard, and the Trostle farm.

  Just across the road north of the Peach Orchard is the foundation of a farmhouse. In 1863 John and Mary Wentz, both in their seventies, lived in this h
ouse. Their son Henry, a carriage-maker, had moved to Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), several years before the war. In 1862 he enlisted in a Virginia artillery battery and fought at Gettysburg with that unit. Soon after the battle a legend arose that “Captain” Wentz had commanded a battery that shelled his parents’ house after Wentz had sent them to the cellar to protect them. Then he was killed in a Union counterattack and buried in his father's backyard, his parents refusing even to look at their apostate rebel son. An enthralling story, but there is not a bit of truth to it. Henry Wentz was a sergeant, not a captain; he was nowhere near the house during the battle; and he survived both the battle and the war.