A principal challenge of studying Civil War material culture is the frustratingly limited detail available in many sources. Surviving documents only rarely mention the fabric, color, construction, or manufacturer of uniform items and never in as much detail as the modern research would like. When reviewing Confederate quartermaster requisition forms, a tremendous diversity of uniform items is concealed behind the obliquitous label “jackets,” “pants,” or “shirts.” Sometimes, however, some long-dead quartermaster gives us a tiny window into the past by deciding to take an extra second 160 years ago and add an additional descriptive word or two to a now-faded form.
Assistant Quartermaster A. S. Stonebaker of the Second Virginia Infantry took just such an extra moment in early 1863 and unknowingly provided probable insight into the use of imported British Army shirts in the Army of Northern Virginia. Encamped near Fredericksburg, the regiment received a major shipment of quartermaster stores on February 14, 1863, including at least 224 shirts. Records only survive for eight of the Second Virginia’s ten companies, so the full number was likely about 50 additional shirts. Of the shirts issued, 143 (64%) were identified by Capt. Stonebaker as being cotton shirts, while he noted nine (4%) were woolen shirts. Perhaps struck by the novelty of what he was seeing, Stonebaker wrote that the remaining 72 shirts (32%) were “striped shirts.” The single descriptor Stonebaker added allows the identification of this batch of shirts as most likely being imported blue and white striped British Army issue shirts.1
February 14, 1863 requisition form for the Second Virginia Infantry, Company E. Note the 11 striped shirts, 20 cotton shirts, and a single wool shirt. (Credit: National Archives)
Isaac Campbell & Co.
The likely path the shirts took to reach Capt. Stonebaker and the soldiers of the Second Virginia had its origins on June 27, 1861, when Confederate Capt. Caleb Huse first stepped through the doors of the London offices of S. Isaac Campbell & Co. at 71 Jermyn Street. The Ordnance Department had dispatched Huse as a purchasing agent to obtain arms, munitions, and supplies from Europe. He discovered an eager partner in Silas Isaac, who offered to leverage his firm’s network of manufacturers and subcontractors to procure whatever Huse wished to order.2
In 1861, S. Isaac Campbell & Co. was one of Great Britain’s largest commission houses. These firms operated as agents for both the buyer and seller in a transaction, extracting a percentage fee from both parties. When buyers lacked established credit or the connections to purchase directly from manufacturers, as was the case with the young Confederacy, commission houses would step in as an intermediary, finding and contracting for the desired goods from multiple parties. They would often buy in bulk directly from manufacturers and either provide or obtain credit for the buyer. S. Isaac Campbell & Co. had formerly been one of the principal British Army contractors but had lost its official contracts in 1858 amidst allegations of bribery. While supplying British volunteer units had kept the firm profitable, the company saw an eager new customer in the young Confederacy.3
S. Isaac Campbell & Co. invoice for one pattern kit, including three shirts (Credit: South Carolina Confederate Relic Room)
During Huse’s first visit to S. Isaac Campbell & Co., he placed an initial order for 2,000 sets of accouterments. In the following weeks, he added 1,000 sabers and over 21,000 muskets to the order. Huse quickly realized that, with its extensive network of sub-contractors, S. Isaac Campbell & Co. could provide nearly anything he cared to buy. He wrote to Richmond proposing additional contracts that would make the firm almost the exclusive supplier to the Confederacy.4
The Ordnance Department responded requesting price estimates, so Huse ordered a single exemplar set of soldier’s kit from S. Isaac Campbell & Co. The kit included all the “necessities” the company had previously provided the British Army, including a knapsack, mess tin, haversack, boots, socks, shaving kit, boot black, knife and fork, towels, and other personal items. Among the items listed were three shirts, sold to Huse for 6 shillings 9 pence. The shirts and the rest of the kit arrived in Savannah on September 20, 1861 aboard the S.S. Bermuda and were forwarded to Richmond. These samples mirrored the British military practice of contractors providing a product exemplar that was then signed, sealed, and certified as being the “sealed pattern” for the contract. All future purchases could be compared against this benchmark to ensure consistent quality.5
Huse’s first major shipment left Great Britain in early October aboard the S. S. Fingal, wholly owned by the Confederate government. Its cargo of gunpowder, rifled muskets, blankets, apparel, pistols, accouterments, cartridges, shells, sabers, and bayonets arrived in Savannah on November 14, 1861. Even as these imported goods began to reach the hands of Confederate soldiers, Huse and S. Isaac Campbell & Co. were hard at work preparing even larger shipments to come. Those shipments would include thousands and thousands of shirts.6
Early and Smith, Wholesale Clothiers and Slop Sellers
One of the manufacturers with whom S. Isaac Campbell & Co. contracted was Early and Smith of Nos. 11, 12, and 13, Houndsditch, London. The firm’s two partners initially operated independently before forming a partnership in the late 1840s. Thomas Early appeared in legal proceedings as early as 1841 as a “slop seller”, a period term for dealers in cheap ready-made clothing. Thomas Early Smith similarly appeared as early as 1845 as a clothier in Houndsditch. The two men had apparently begun doing business together by 1849, when “Early and Smith, Houndsditch” were listed as creditors in the bankruptcy proceedings of a fellow clothier and outfitter. By 1851 the pair were listed as “wholesale clothiers and copartners in trade.”7
A portion of Early and Smith’s business was supplying clothing for the British military. In addition to being listed in the 1862 London Post Office Directory as wholesale clothiers, shirtmakers, outfitters, and warehousemen, Early and Smith were also identified as army clothiers. During an 1857 investigation into the British Army’s clothing contracting, a Parliamentary committee took testimony from David Ludlow, a sub-contractor who had produced nearly 100,000 garments in 1855 and 1856 for some of the principal army clothiers, including firms like Herbert & Co. and S. Issacs Campbell & Co. that would later supply the Confederacy. Ludlow reported that during this period he had also made a “great deal” of Navy clothing for Early and Smith, including Navy coats.8
Woodcut showing prisoners sewing clothing at Milbank Prison (Credit: The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of London Life)
In addition to sub-contractors like Ludlow, at least some of Early and Smith’s clothing was made by prison labor. In summer 1856, a British writer toured London’s Millbank Prison. Upon visiting the prison’s manufacturing department, a prison official stated that Millbank produced clothing for almost all of England’s prisons, as well as making garments on sub-contract for British military contractors. “Yonder’s a roll of blue and white yarn, you see, ready for shirting and handkerchiefs,” pointed out the official. “Yes, sir, our female prisoners do a great deal of work for slop-shops. We work for Jackson in Leadenhall Street; Early and Smith, Houndsditch; Stephens and Clark, Paul’s Wharf, Thames Street; Favell and Bousfield, St. Mary Axe; both shirts and coats we do for them. We do a great deal of Moses’ soldiers’ coats, and Dolan’s marine coats. We take about £3,000 a year altogether from the slop-shops.”9
1852 advertisement for Early and Smith’s civilian clothing (Credit: The British Banner)
While military clothing was part of Early and Smith’s business, they also sold ready-made clothing to the civilian sector. A portion of their business was outfitting travelers to Australia, as advertised in an 1852 notice for “Outfits to Australia and Elsewhere” sold by the firm at wholesale prices. They were also heavily involved in the export trade, being named as parties to multiple lawsuits related to overseas shipping. In 1857, the firm became entangled in a lawsuit connected to their charter of a ship transporting goods to Quebec. The company’s assets in 1864 included consignments of still unsold goods located in Havana and Melbourne.10
At least some of the clothing sold to Huse by S. Isaac Campbell & Co. was obtained from Early and Smith. On May 24, 1862 the blockade runner S.S. Cecile arrived in Charleston with a load of British goods. Among the cargo of rifles, gunpowder, and boots were 22 trunks, 6 bales, and 39 cases all marked as being shipped by S. Isaac Campbell & Co. While the contents of the cases were not identified, 28 of the cases were marked <SIC&Co/E&S> for S. Isaac Campbell & Co./Early and Smith. Early and Smith also shipped £3,751 worth of goods to the Confederacy in August 1862 on their own private account. While the destination of this shipment was not recorded, Charleston was the principle Confederate port for British imports at this time. The merchandise was “advantageously sold” and the proceeds invested in Confederate bonds. The firm also took out £7,603 of debt for advances on a February 1864 shipment to Nassau, most likely ultimately bound for the Confederacy.11
“Under instructions from Messrs. Isaac Campbell & Co.”
In February 1863 the Ordnance Department submitted a summary of Huse’s European purchasing efforts to the Secretary of War. In addition to arms, ammunition, and accouterments for the Ordnance Department, the summary detailed purchases of £110,525 (roughly $552,625 Confederate) worth of clothing Huse had bought and shipped to the Confederacy, including 74,006 boots, 62,025 blankets, 8,675 greatcoats, 8,250 pairs of trousers, 170,724 pairs of socks, 6,703 shirts, 78,520 yards of cloth, and 17,894 yards of flannel. In total, Huse had purchased over £1,068,000 ($5,340,000) of supplies, over half of which were from S. Isaac Campbell & Co. alone.12
Although much of this material successfully arrived on blockade runners like the Cecile, at least some was intercepted by Union warships. The S.S. Stephen Hart was captured on 29 January 1862 off the coast of southern Florida with a shipment claimed wholly by S. Isaac Campbell & Co. On 3 February 1863, the S.S. Springbok was seized making for the harbor of Nassau with a cargo jointly claimed by S. Isaac Campbell & Co. and T. S. Begbie & Co. Among the ship’s papers was a letter to the agent of the cosignee operating “under instructions from Messrs. Isaac Campbell & Co” and the ship’s cargo included Confederate military buttons stamped on the back with the firm’s name and address. Federal warships captured a third ship, the S.S. Gertrude, off the Bahamas on 16 April 1863 operating under contract for Begbie & Co.13
S.S. Gertrude in circa 1880 after its 1865 conversion into the merchant steamer S.S. Gussie Telfair (Credit: Coos County Historical Museum)
The ships contained different portions of larger purchases of shirts and other items made by Huse. When Union authorities searched the Springbok, they found four bales marked <A>, numbered 985-987 and 989, and containing “men’s colored traveling shirts.” The Gertrude contained five bales of colored traveling shirts similarly marked <A> and numbered 998, 990-992, and 998. The Hart’s manifest included four cases of men’s shirts marked <A> and numbered 994-997. Clearly, the bales were multiple parts of a single sequentially numbered shipment from S. Isaac Campbell & Co. Likewise, the Springbok had packages marked <A> S. I., C. & Co. and numbered 1221-1440, but with a gap from 1266 through 1289, the package marked 1289 being the first of several containing shirts. Some of the missing packages were to be found on the Gertrude, which had on board packages marked <A> and numbered 1170-1214, plus a package of shirts numbered 1285.14
While the Springbok, Stephen Hart, and Gertrude all became Federal prizes, the majority of the 6,703 shirts purchased by Huse successfully reached southern ports. Some of them likely ended up in the hands of Capt. Stonebaker and the Second Virginia. Importation records into the Confederacy for Wilmington and Charleston, the principal ports supporting the Army of Northern Virginia, are incredibly fragmentary. The records for Charleston are particularly poor, with limited surviving documentation. Many of the records which do survive for Charleston do not detail cargo contents and it is unclear whether shirts may have been found in bales labeled as “army clothing,” “clothing,” “wearing apparel,” or “ready-made clothing.” For instance, the S.S. Modern Greece reached the southern shores on June 17, 1862, but records only list unquantified and unspecified “bales of clothing.” At least some of these were shirts, as Wilmington firm O.S. Bladwin soon listed for sale items from the Modern Greece including 600 French Bosom dress shirts and 1,000 merino wool shirts. Charleston was likely the primary port for many of Huse’s 1862 shipments, as Wilmington was closed from August to December by an outbreak of yellow fever. After Wilmington reopened in the winter of 1863, it quickly surpassed Charleston as the principal port, particularly for government importations.15
Importation records compiled by researcher C. L. Webster includes the following shirt imports by the Confederate government into Wilmington and Charleston during the conflict:
2 cases wool shirts and 1 case “shirts blue” arrived on the S.S. Ella Wartley into Charleston on 3 January 1862
28 cases marked <SIC&Co/E&S> arrived on the S. S. Cecile into Charleston on 24 May 1862
4 cases clothing marked <SIC&Co> and 4 cases “cotton clothes” marked “JRW” arrived on the S.S. Antonica into Charleston on 18 December 1862
5 cases “Melins shirts” marked “TAC” arrived on the S.S. Flora into Charleston on 3 January 1863
3 bales of “military shirts” arrived on the S.S. Flora into Wilmington on 8 Dec 1863
1,290 wool shirts arrived on the S. S. Lucy into Wilmington on 9 Dec 1863
3 bales wool shirts (1,284 total) arrived on the S. S. Dee into Wilmington on 11 December 1863
11 bales (1,838 total) of flannel shirts arrived on the S. S. City of Petersburg into Wilmington on 2 February 1864
9 bales (1,292 total) “fancy shirts” shipped from Wilmington to Richmond on 12 April 1864 from an unknown ship
1 bale (52 total) of “fancy shirts” shipped from Wilmington to Richmond on 13 April 1864 from an unknown ship
4 cases (1,698 total) of “grey army shirts” arrived on the S. S. Lucy into Wilmington on 14 May 1864
38 bales of flannel shirts arrived on the S.S. City of Petersburg into Wilmington on 15 May 1864
3 cases woolen shirts arrived on an unknown ship into Wilmington on 4 August 1864
2 cases grey shirts marked “N” arrived on the S.S. Siren into Charleston on 9 October 1864
2 cases grey shirts marked “N” arrived on the S.S. Fox into Charleston on 10 October 1864
6 bales socks and shirts and 2 bales shirts arrived on the S.S. Lucy into Wilmington on 25 October 1864
6 bales (1,300 total) of shirts arrived on the S.S. Chicora into Charleston on 7 November 1864
60 bales of shirts arrived on the S.S. Owl into Wilmington on 2 December 1864
1 case shirts (348 total) shipped from Wilmington to Richmond on 11 January 1865 from an unknown ship16
While Webster’s outstanding research focuses on government imports, a significant amount of material also entered the Confederacy via private enterprise. Webster estimates that, of the circa 2,700 ships that successfully ran the blockade, less than 700 carried government stores. Once these commercial ships arrived safely on southern shores, however, both the Quartermaster Department and Ordnance Department purchased large quantities of items and material via auction or direct sale. Although Wilmington was the favored destination for government importation and Wilmington-bound ships usually staged in Bermuda, commercial firms favored Charleston and often set sail from Nassau. Early and Smith’s privately financed shipment to Nassau in February 1864 discussed above may, therefore, have ultimately arrived via Charleston. Federal siege operations began around Charleston in April 1863, significantly reducing traffic into the city by summer 1863. Ships still got through, however, and there was a brief revival of commercial trade in late 1864, with the final ship arrived in Charleston a single day before the surrender of the city.17
November 4, 1862 advertisement in the Richmond Daily Dispatch for English Army overshirts, merino wool shirts and drawers, and other items (Credit: Library of Congress)
Since commercial records are even more fragmented than the surviving records of government imports, some of our best insight into these operations comes from advertisements for the sale of imported goods. On July 14, 1862, commission merchants R.A. Pringle announced the auction of 2,000 packages of newly arrived British goods, including 936 shirts, over 7,500 military caps, and two cases of drab felt hats. In November 1862, the Richmond firm N. C. Barton & Co. announced their recent recipet of English Army overshirts and merino wool shirts and drawers. The Charleston firm Minor & Co. conducted a January 7, 1863 auction of the entire cargo of a newly arrived blockade runner. The cargo was primarily civilian goods and luxuries, but also included “Brown Linen and Worsted Army Shirts,” “40 dozen linen bosom shirts,” “Colored Bosom Shirts,” and “Gray and White Under Shirts.” Richmond papers on November 3, 1863 proclaimed the upcoming sale of goods from the blockade runner S.S. Banshee by the firm Ellett, Bell, and Fox, including 1,584 “men’s merino shirts and drawers.” Some of these shirts were undoubtedly purchased and worn by civilians, but many would have also found their way on to the backs of soldiers, either directly via purchase and issuance by the Quartermaster Department or indirectly by soldier’s families purchasing imported British shirts and then sending them to the front.18
Surviving Shirts
Of these thousands of government and commercially imported shirts, only one confirmed example of a British shirt imported into the Confederacy is known to exist. Now in the collection of The American Civil War Museum, the shirt belonged to Lt. John Selden. Born in Washington, DC, the 18-year-old Selden was studying at the University of Virginia when war began and enlisted in the Albemarle Light Artillery. He left service after a year, but reenlisted in October 1862 in the Second Company, Richmond Howitzers. He was appointed First Lieutenant and Ordnance Officer in February 1863 and was assigned to Hardaway’s Battalion Virginia Artillery. He served in this capacity until being reassigned to Cutshaw’s Battalion Virginia Artillery in late March 1865. He was paroled in Richmond on May 26, 1865.19
Lt. Selden’s British Army shirt (Credit: American Civil War Museum)
Selden’s garment is a white cotton shirt with blue stripes of alternating thickness, mirroring how Capt. Stonebaker described the “striped” shirts issued to the Second Virginia. Instead of the common construction style of folding the fabric at the shoulder and sewing both sides, the shirt is instead folded on one side and stitched down the other and across both shoulders. This saved material by using the full width of the bolt and eliminated the need to hem the bottom of the shirt, using the selvage instead. Along with the unusual construction, the fabric also has a weft stripe, running crosswise on the fabric, rather than the more common warp stripe that runs lengthwise. However, because the shirt is folded on the side rather than the shoulder, the stripes run vertically on the shirt.20
The shirt is constructed without pockets or placket, with the edges of the neck slit simply turned back and whip stitched. The sleeves are set with gussets at the armpits and gathered at the cuffs. The 1 ½” deep cuffs button backwards compared to modern shirt cuffs. The buttons on both cuffs and at the neck slit are all 7/8” bone three-hole buttons, while the button on the collar is a replacement porcelain Prosser patent button. An additional cloth reinforcement is behind the single neck slit button and a 1” wide reinforcement strip on each shoulder. All the seams are flat felled and sewn with a heavy unbleached cotton thread.21
Selden’s shirt is marked on the lower right in black with “WD” for “War Department” and “Early & Smith / C&M / 1859” under a broad arrow. “C&M” denotes that Early and Smith were approved Contractors and Manufactures for the British War Department, while the arrow marks the shirt as having passed inspection for use by the British military. Technically, the arrow meant the shirt remained official British Army property and should not have been sold to the Confederacy. Had the shirt been condemned or sold as surplus, a second arrow should have been added, facing the first one, to denote the shirt being taken out of service.22
Construction details of the Selden Shirt from analysis performed by Leslie Jensen (Credit: Military Collector and Historian)
While Selden’s shirt is the sole known surviving shirt of this style connected to the Confederacy, three nearly identical shirts have been discovered in Australia. 1832 regulations called for convicts deported to Australia to be issued “three striped shirts” annually. Two such shirts were recovered from the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney. Believed to date from the 1830s or early 1840s, the shirts, like Selden’s, are made from a plain weave unbleached cotton with a blue weft stripe of alternating thickness. Additional scraps of blue striped cotton have been found elsewhere at the Hyde Park site, almost certainly fragments of additional shirts which did not survive. The Hyde Park shirts share the uncommon construction of the Selden shirt, folded on the side and utilizing the selvedge instead of a bottom hem.23
A very well-preserved third shirt was discovered in the wall of the commandant’s cottage at a prison labor site in Bridgewater. Based on the date of construction on the site, it likely dates from around 1830. Possibly placed in the wall as part of a folk superstition, it appears to have never been worn. It is identical in construction and materials to the Hyde Park shirts.24
Convict shirt from Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney. Front (left), detail of the Bord of Ordnance and broad arrow stamp (middle), and back of the shirt (right). (Credit: Australian Dress Registry)
Much like the Selden shirt, these three Australian shirts are stamped as being official British military property. The Australian shirts are marked in the lower right with a broad arrow and “BO” for Board of Ordnance, the predecessor to the later War Department stamp seen on the Selden shirt. While these three surviving shirts were all issued to convicts, the style was standard British Army issue from the Napoleonic period through the later stages of the Crimean War.25
While they are nearly identical on most details, the biggest point of difference between the three Australian shirts and the Selden shirt is the collar. The Australian shirts have a higher, square collar, similar to that seen on U.S. Federal issue shirts. The fold-down collar was designed to roll over a neck stock or cravat and had an additional button on the collar at this folding point. The collar on the Selden shirt, however, is a short 1” band collar, omits the second collar button, and instead adds a single button on the neck slit that the Australian shirts lack. Interestingly, the Selden collar appears to have been a manufacturer modification, as, according to examination by researchers Craig Barry and David Burt, no fabric has been cut away. Instead, the extra fabric was simply folded down and overcast into place. The thread used was similar to that used for the rest of the shirt.26
Unknown Confederate soldier wearing a striped shirt (Credit: The Horse Soldier)
It is unclear whether all the British Army shirts imported into the Confederacy had this lowered collar or whether Selden’s shirt was an anomaly. A possible clue may be found in a photograph in a private collection of a Confederate soldier tentatively identified as possibly a Virginia volunteer. He wears a white striped shirt that appears visibly consistent with the Selden and Australian shirts. The shirt in the photograph appears to have a lower, band-style collar like the Selden shirt, rather than the fold down collars of the Australian shirts. If this photo does show an imported British Army shirt, it suggests the collar style seen on the Selden shirt was standard on the shirts imported into the Confederacy.27
The purpose of the modification is open to debate. Late in the Crimean War, the British Army adopted a new issue shirt of grey cotton or flannel, fitted closer to the body than the square cut seen in the Selden and Australian shirts, and having an overall different construction. Flannel had become popular in the British military because it repelled moister and was warmer in the winter. These “greyback” shirts, which saw active use through the end of World War I with only minor changes, have a distinctive band collar. The Selden shirt, which is marked as having been inspected in 1859, several years after the introduction of the greyback shirt, appears to have been modified to match the greyback’s band collar.28
Why such a modification would occur is unclear. There is no reason to believe it occurred after importation to the Confederacy, as the fold down collar style was common in America at the time and was also used in both Federal and Confederate military issue shirts. Craig Barry and David Burt suggest the Selden shirt and thousands of others were penitentiary shirts rendered surplus by the reduction in transportation of convicts to Australia by the 1850s. They posit that S. Isaac Campbell & Co., or another firm, purchased the inexpensive shirts and altered them to match the regulation greyback shirt before selling them to the Confederacy.29
The Selden shirt, however, is marked 1859, years after the decline in convict transport to Australia began. Additionally, the presence of War Department and Board of Ordnance markings on the Selden and Australian shirts indicate they were British Army garments, rather than shirts made solely for use by convicts. As noted above, as of the mid-1850s Milbank Prison was making shirting material using blue and white yarn and manufactured clothing for use by both the British penal system and the British military. It is also unclear why the shirts would need to be modified prior to being sold to the Confederacy, since the modification would cut into profit margins and is unlikely to have been demanded by Huse or other buyers, since, as noted above, the existing fold down collar was comparable to both Confederate and Federal military issue shirts.
A perhaps more plausible explanation is that the modifications were initially made, not for resale to the Confederacy, but for the burgeoning British volunteer market. An 1858-1859 war scare with France had triggered the widespread formation of volunteer rifle corps across Great Britain. These home defense groups were required to provide their own uniforms and equipment and S. Isaac Campbell & Co., barred from government contracts the previous year, quickly emerged as a major supplier. Equipment for the volunteers did not need to pass the rigorous standards demanded by the Regular Army, nor exactly match the standard pattern. Although appearing to be copies of standard equipment, surviving S. Isaac Campbell & Co. accouterments made for British volunteers but purchased by Huse are visibly poorer quality than equipment manufactured by other British firms with official contracts such as Alexander Ross & Co. With the Regular Army wearing the greyback shirt by this period, perhaps S. Isaac Campbell & Co. had the older blue striped shirts modified to appeal more to volunteers eager to look more like regular Army soldiers. Regardless of the reason for the change, thousands of shirts like this and in other patterns passed through S. Isaac Campbell & Co. to Huse and onward to the Confederate Quartermaster Department and eventually Confederate soldiers.30
Scandal and Collapse
The massive amounts of shirts, clothing, blankets, and fabric Huse purchased from S. Isaac Campbell & Co. were outside his role an agent of the Ordnance Department and were obtained on his own initiative for the Quartermaster Department. In late December 1862, Maj. James Boswell Ferguson Jr. arrived in England as the Confederate Quartermaster Department’s official purchasing agent. He quickly clashed with Huse, who refused to cease purchasing Quartermaster supplies via S. Isaac Campbell & Co. In a letter to Quartermaster General Alexander Lawton, Ferguson complained “Huse has caused me more annoyance than all the others combined on this side and has defeated my plans in a great measure for keeping up the supplies of our department.”31
Even more concerning, Ferguson had grave doubts regarding S. Isaac Campbell & Co. Unlike Huse, whose pre-war career had been as a soldier and educator, Ferguson had over twenty years of business experience. He was also intimately knowledgeable with the textile industry, having previously operated his own import and export firm, Ferguson JB, Jr. Bros & Co. Clothes, Cassimeres and Vestings. Reviewing Huse’s invoices, Ferguson believed the prices charged by S. Isaac Campbell & Co. were exorbitant. He also examined some of the fabric purchased by Huse from the firm and believed it worth only roughly half the price. On top of all these, Huse admitted to Ferguson he had personally accepted a commission from S. Isaac Campbell & Co.32
On May 26, 1863, Confederate financial agent Colin J. McRae was instructed to investigate Ferguson’s allegations of bribery and price gouging. He began an audit of Huse’s accounts in August and then began to look into Ferguson’s claims in October. As part of the investigation, McRae contracted with a London accounting firm to conduct a complete audit of S. Isaac Campbell & Co. The review took months, but finally in summery 1864 McRae determined that S. Isaac Campbell & Co. had been keeping two different sets of books. They had been systematically overcharging Huse by as much as 20%, well above the agreed upon commission. After the firm refused to pay back the money, the matter was submitted for legal arbitration, which continued through the end of the year.33
McRae’s final report in October 1864 acknowledged that Huse had been wrong to rely on a single commission house but cleared him of personal misconduct. “It was not our intention…” McRae wrote, “to clear him from blame, but to relieve him from any charge of collusion…. We wished to keep from speaking too severely of his mistakes because of the difficulties of his position, but not to endorse or overlook them.” Flawed though it may have been, Huse’s work with S. Isaac Campbell & Co. had brought massive amounts of critically needed supplies into the South. Confederate business with the firm had slowed significantly in 1863 following Ferguson’s arrival and now stopped almost altogether.34
Around the same time that McRae was bringing legal action against S. Isaac Campbell & Co., Early and Smith faced financial disaster. Much of the firm’s financing had come from the Leeds Banking Company. The bank failed on September 16 following “a long course of reckless extravagance” and “reckless management” by the bank’s director Edward Greenland. The bank was over £500,000 in debt, ruining the majority of the bank’s shareholders. Greenland was tried and convicted of perjury for falsifying official returns.35
May 26, 1865 notice in the London Gazette announcing the dissolution of Early and Smith (Credit: London Gazette)
The collapse of Leeds Banking Company caused the cascading failure of multiple firms backed by the bank. On September 30, Early and Smith were unable to make payments on their debt and entered bankruptcy proceedings. The firm was £81,369 in debt and had only £28,079 in assets. Among their liabilities were advances for their August 1862 shipment to the Confederacy and their February 1864 shipment to Nassau. They had £9,260 worth of assembled or partially assembled clothing still on hand. The company’s stock was sold at a heavy discount to cover the firm’s debts. On May 1, 1865, Early and Smith mutually agreed to formally dissolve their partnership. A year later, Smith remained in business as a clothier in the firm’s former offices at No. 11 Houndsditch. His business continued through at least 1868, when he gave his occupation as clothier during testimony in the prosecution of one of his employees for embezzlement.36
No Article More Serviceable to the Army
With the decline of Huse, S. Isaac Campbell & Co., and Early and Smith, Ferguson took over the preeminent role in procuring Quartermaster supplies from England. Huse’s inexperience had made the use of an intermediary like S. Isaac Campbell & Co. a necessary expedient. Instead of Huse’s cozy relationship with the London-based commission houses, Ferguson established his base of operations in Manchester, the heart of England’s cloth industry. This and his pre-war textile experience allowed him to deal more directly with manufacturers rather than middlemen. He appears to have focused on importing cloth and other raw materials rather than finished goods. Among his first orders was for 1,000,000 yards of wool cloth. Purchasing shirts does not appear to have been a major focus for him, particularly since they could be made from cotton, one of the few resources the Confederacy still had in relative abundance.37
What shirt purchases he did make, however, appear to have been largely made from wool flannel. On September 23, 1864, Lawton penned a letter to Ferguson with guidance on his procurement activities. “There is no article more serviceable to the Army for fall and winter wear,” he wrote, “than the flannel or worsted shirts, or the material for their manufacture.”38
World War I era grey flannel British Army “Greyback” shirt (Credit: Imperial War Museum)
Wool flannel shirts, often grey in color, had been arriving from England since at least January 1862, when two cases of wool shirts arrive in Charleston on the S.S. Ella Wartley. It is possible that some of the nine woolen shirts issued by Captain Stonebaker to the Second Virginia in early 1863 along with the “striped shirts” were imported from England. Between December 1863 and February 1864, 4,412 wool shirts arrived in Wilmington. Likely over 7,000 wool shirts arrived in May 1864 alone, with 1,698 “grey Army shirts” listed on the manifest of the S.S. Lucy and another 38 bales of flannels shirts on the S.S. City of Petersburg.39Despite the scandalous result of McRae’s audit several months before, Ferguson purchased 14 bales of grey wool shirts from S. Isaac Campbell & Co. on December 19, 1864, representing the last major Confederate purchase from the firm. It is unknown whether these roughly 2,000-3,000 shirts were ever successfully delivered.40
Little is known about the style and construction of these flannel shirts, as there are no known surviving examples of an identified imported British wool shirt. The May 1864 manifest of the S.S. Lucy specify that its cargo included “grey army shirts,” while the S.S. Siren and S.S. Fox delivered several cases of “grey shirts” into Charleston in October 1864. These suggest that at least some woolen shirts were modeled on the British Army’s standard issue flannel “greyback” shirt.41
Researchers Barry and Burt assess no “greyback” shirts were imported by the Confederacy, but at the very least, commercial firms offered the Confederacy shirts copied from the British Army issue garment. In December 1863, James Tait, representing the Limerick firm Peter Tait & Co., wrote to the Confederate Secretary of War with an offer to ship “50,000 Strong Grey Flannel shirts ready for sewing” within the first three months of 1864. The shirts would be cut according to the size rolls used by the British Army to cloth men between 5’6” and 6’ tall. Tait assured Seddon that the shirts would be “subjected to the same rigid inspections” and would be the same quality as those in use by the British military. Although Lawton wrote to Tait confirming the order a few days later, it does not appear to have ever been filled.42
Blue flannel shirt that belonged to Pvt. John MacRae (Credit: North Carolina Museum of History)
While it lacks any markings that would confirm British origin, a blue wool flannel shirt in the collection of the North Carolina Museum of History may represent a style imported from England or at least may have been made from British cloth. The shirt belonged to Pvt. John MacRae, a member of Company B of the 13th Battalion North Carolina light Artillery. MacRae reportedly wore the shirt during the Battle of Bentonville, and it survives in relatively good condition, strongly suggesting it was issued late in the conflict. The Museum notes that it may have been made of imported British cloth. Lending further credence to a potential British connection, the museum collection also includes a S. Isaac Campbell & Co. knapsack carried by MacRae.43
North Carolina conducted its own procurement and importation separate from that of the Confederate Quartermaster Department, and it is likely this state-run operation that supplied MacRae. Governor Zebulon Vance dispatched a special commissioner, John White, to England to sell cotton bonds and obtain supplies for the state. During the year that White spent in England from December 1862 through December 1863, he purchased significant amounts of material, mostly via Alexander Collie & Co. These included 9,792 gray flannel shirts and 1,956 “Angola” wool shirts, as well as 111,755 yards of grey flannel cloth, all of which were scheduled to be shipped prior to January 1864. As of September 30, 1864, the North Carolina Quartermaster Department had issued 6,000 flannel shirts obtained via foreign import. Another 3,960 flannel shirts remained in state warehouses at the time, and it is possible one of these shirts made it onto the back of Pvt. MacRae.44
MacRae’s shirt was made of plain weave blue and unbleached wool flannel. It has a short band collar, similar to collar seen on the “greyback” and Selden shirts and further supporting a possible British origin. In addition to a button on the collar, the shirt has three buttons on the placket, which is 2 ¼” wide and 12” long. All the buttons are ½” in diameter and, while three are likely replacements, a four-hole bone button on the placket may be original. The shirt has a 1 3/8” reinforcement at the shoulder line and a patch style pocket on the left breast. The pocket is set at an angle and has a rounded bottom. The one-piece sleeves are set without gathering and have square underarm gussets. The sleeve is pleated at the cuff, with a small gusset. The cuffs are 3 ¼” long and have a single button each. The shirt is handsewn using French seams.45
Wool shirts like MacRae’s, however, were never as widely issued to Confederate soldiers as cotton shirts were. Wool shirts represented only four percent of the shipment of shirts received by the Second Virginia in early 1863. In the final quarter of 1863, the Fifth Virginia Infantry was issued 312 cotton shirts, but only 100 wool shirts. In the final two quarters of 1864 and early weeks of 1865, the Confederate Quartermaster Department issued 157,727 cotton shirts and 21,063 flannel shirts to the Army of Northern Virginia. This means that just over 13% of the shirts issued during this period were wool.46
Conclusion
British import shirts likely saw only limited service in the Army of Northern Virginia. They would always be outnumbered by simple cotton shirts sewn from domestic southern cotton. Yet British imports constituted an important and mostly overlooked portion of the garments issued to Confederate soldiers throughout the war. While most of those over 150,000 cotton shirts issued to the Army of Northern Virginia late in the war were almost certainly domestically produced by the Richmond Clothing Bureau, that number probably also includes the British Army import shirt worn by Lt. Seddon, as its relatively good condition suggests he received it during this later period. Records are too fragmentary to state for certain the number of British shirts imported by the Confederacy. A rough estimate based on the government import records compiled by Webster includes the import of at least 40,000 British shirts, but given the fragmentary nature of surviving records, this likely represents a mere fraction of the actual number that ran the blockade.47
Even harder to quantify is how many shirts, particularly wool flannel shirts, were cut from imported British fabric. As the Confederacy’s domestic supplies of wool were exhausted, many of the late war wool shirt issues, like the 21,000 issued to the Army of Northern Virginia or the shirt worn by Pvt. MacRae, were probably made from imported British cloth or imported already manufactured in England. State quartermaster departments, private importation of English shirts for both the military and civilian sectors further challenge our ability to quantify the number of British shirts in the ranks of the Army of Northern Virginia.48
British shirts continued to flow into the Confederacy nearly to the end. On December 2, 1864, the S.S. Owl tied up in Wilmington with possibly the largest shipment of shirts in her cargo hole, a full 60 bales. If these bales were average sized, that could have been 9,000 shirts.49 Perhaps among these shirts was a white and blue striped British Army shirt, sewn by a British inmate five years before on commission for the firm of Early and Smith. The company, bankrupt and with just months before its final dissolution, might have sold the shirt in the fall of 1864 to another English firm as part of the liquidation of its few remaining assets. Perhaps Ferguson purchased the shirt and shipped it to Bermuda, where it was transferred to the Owl and sprinted past Federal ships into Wilmington. The bales of clothes would have then made their way north over the South’s deteriorating rail system and eventually into the besieged city of Petersburg. There, it found its way onto the back of a young Virginia artillery lieutenant. Unlike the thousands and thousands of such shirts, this one somehow survived. From surviving garments like those belonging to Lt. Seddon and Pvt. MacRae, photos like the unknown Confederate soldier in likely a British Army shirt, or rare detail in documents like Capt. Stonebaker’s requisition forms, we slowly expand our understanding of Civil War material culture.50
During Virginia’s secession debate in early April 1861, the state’s former governor Henry Wise dismissed concerns that the South lacked adequate modern weapons to win a war. Clutching a sword bayonet-tipped rifle as he spoke, Wise confidently stated that “it was not the improved arm, but the improved man, which would win the day.” “Let brave men advance with flint locks, and old-fashioned bayonets, on the popingjays of the Northern cities,” he cried, and “the Yankees would break and run.”1
Such bluster might be expected from politicians and fire-eater secessionists like Wise, but during the frantic weeks after Virginia left the Union and before the Confederate government assumed control of Virginian forces in mid-June, responsibility for arming Virginia’s fledgling military fell solely on Colonel Charles Dimmock. The long-serving superintendent of the Virginia armory who had been appointed Virginia’s Chief of Ordnance just two weeks before secession, Dimmock was immediately inundated with a rising flood of demands for arms from all corners of the state. Some of these cries came from the Shenandoah Valley, where existing volunteer companies and newly formed units would coalesce by July into the First Virginia Brigade, soon to be immortalized as the Stonewall Brigade.
Typical of these demands is a letter written on May 26 by Captain Frederick W. M. Holliday, commander of the Mountain Rangers, later to become the Thirty-Third Virginia Company D. Having sent a similar appeal unsuccessfully to the governor of Virginia two weeks before, Holliday wrote now to the senior staff officer for Colonel Thomas Jackson at Harpers Ferry. “Can I get arms &c. when I get to the Ferry? My men want Minnie Rifles, as it is a Rifle Company.” Almost a month later, John Avis, captain of the Fifth Virginia Company K, pleaded a similar case to his regimental commander. “I have not succeeded in getting the Minnie Rifles yet,” wrote Avis on June 18. “I have another plan on foot now. It is to have the Enclosed Requisition Signed by Yourself and Col. Jackson. Will you be kind Enough to do the best you can for me as I am very anxious to be prepared to do Service.”2
Regardless of how many letters Holliday wrote or how many endorsements Avis might attach to his request, the modern weapons they and other commanders sought were in exceedingly short supply in Spring 1861. Virginia had only recently begun to update its aging armaments, and so the weapons carried by the Stonewall Brigade onto the fields of Manassas ranged from the modern to the obsolete.
The Virginia Manufactory of Arms and the American Militia System
The foundation of Virginia’s self-defense long rested on the twin pillars of its militia system and the output of the Virginia Manufactory of Arms. Beginning production in Richmond in 1802, the Manufactory sought to make Virginia self-sufficient in arms for its militia. The bulk of the weapons produced by the Manufactory were .69 caliber smoothbore flintlock muskets, a unique design which blended elements of the official U.S. muskets produced at Federal armories with influences from the French Charleville musket. By the time the Manufactory ceased operations at the end of 1821, Virginia had amassed a stockpile of 79,259 muskets for its militia, the majority made by the Manufactory. A portion of these were stored at the Manufactory in Richmond, while the remainder went west to a second state armory opened in Lexington in 1816.3
Second Model Virginia Manufactory Flintlock Musket, dated 1816 (Source: National Museum of American History)
After weapons production ceased in 1821, the Manufactory transitioned to become the Virginia Armory, responsible only for storing and repairing weapons. Although Virginia would no longer produce military arms, new weapons continued to enter state hands from the Federal government. Under the terms of the Militia Act of 1808, every year the Secretary of War provided each state a proportional share of muskets based on the reported returns of their enrolled militia. States could choose to substitute the value of some of these muskets for other arms and equipment from Federal arsenals, such as rifles, accouterments, or artillery. For instance, in 1858, of the 14,615 muskets appropriated by Congress for arming the militia Virginia’s share was the value of 682 muskets. The state chose to utilize this to obtain 200 muskets, 200 cartridge boxes, 600 belt plates, 200 bayonet scabbards, and 600 belts.4
U.S. Government Infantry Ordnance Provided to Virginia 1856-18605
The American militia system, designed while memory of the Revolution remained fresh and the War of 1812 loomed, increasingly fell apart as memories of these conflicts faded. Although militia mobilization continued to be the underpinning of American defensive policy through the 1840s, public support for the militia faded during this period. Perceiving little threat of foreign invasion, annual drill days and the fees levied for missing these musters were increasingly seen as onerous. Militia officers took their duties less seriously and the annual muster progressively became more of a social event than a military one. An 1860 newspaper account of the muster of a regiment of Virginia militia noted that the “most remarkable feature… was, that notwithstanding a large quantity of the ‘O be joyful’ [that] was guzzled, the crowd dispersed” after the muster without any major drunken incidents.8
Alongside the line militia, in which most able-bodied men of military age were required to serve when called upon, the American militia system also contained a smaller parallel structure of volunteer units. While the line militia was intended to provide general infantry in a future conflict, the volunteers were envisioned as fulfilling more specialized duties which required greater training, such as light infantry, riflemen, cavalry, or artillery. In Virginia, men could voluntarily enlist in these units for a period of several years, during which they would be required to drill more frequently than line militia but would in turn earn privileges such as exemption from jury duty. Virginia law authorized volunteer companies to be armed after they were fully uniformed, whereas militia generally lacked uniforms and might only be issued weapons for their annual muster.9
It was these volunteer companies, rather than the line militia, which formed the backbone of military expansion during the Mexican War. This reliance on volunteers further reduced public interest in the militia. In the years following the Mexican War, many militia units simply stopped regularly providing their annual strength returns. State adjutant generals, responsible for their state’s militia, bemoaned this lack of attention to annual returns, as the size of their consolidated returns directly impacted the number of arms their state would receive under the Militia Act of 1808. Between 1846 and 1860, Virginia only provided nine full militia returns to the Federal government. Across the nation, militia returns steadily diminished from the mid-1840s, reaching their nadir between 1855 and 1858.10
They Should be Furnished with Equal Arms
Responding to their constituents’ desire to be rid of the burden of militia duty, Virginia’s Assembly passed a revised militia act in 1853 that essentially abolished Virginia’s line militia in favor of an entirely volunteer force. The new law eliminated annual musters except for volunteer units. Rather than militia officers being responsible for documenting strength returns during musters, local commissioners of revenue were now tasked with maintaining lists of those men eligible for militia service. This system never worked as intended and Virginia’s military forces plummeted precipitously. The year before the law, Virginia’s militia numbered 125,217 men. By 1856, long-serving Virginia Adjutant General William H. Richardson grimly reported that the civilian clerks charged with enrollment had reported only 18,415 enrolled militia. He lambasted the “monstrous absurdity of requiring military returns to be made by civil officers.” The following year the annual return was just 9,489 men.11
These changes to Virginia’s militia impacted its available armaments as well. Even with new weapons coming from Federal arsenals each year, the nearly 80,000 muskets amassed by Virginia in 1822 had fallen to roughly 53,000 in 1856. Richardson recounted how public arms were “often most wantonly wasted or destroyed” after being issued to the militia. After the dissolution of the line militia in 1853, many muskets were never returned by the former militiamen. “There are now dispersed over the state and irrecoverable,” wrote Richardson in 1859, “arms enough to equip a very large body of troops.” The cost to recover these arms, transport them back to Richmond, and repair them was judged too high.12
The muskets and rifles remaining in Richmond and Lexington were mostly decades-old U.S. and Virginia Manufactory flintlocks, obsolete following the U.S. Army’s conversion to percussion in the early 1840s. Richardson and Dimmock, who became superintendent of the Virginia Armory in 1844, wearily repeated the same recommendation each year that the state’s flintlocks be altered to percussion. In 1858 Dimmock wrote “There are a large number of flint muskets, which can be and should be altered into percussion locks, or sold, as they are not suitable for field service; nor should our volunteers be compelled to receive them. If our troops are expected to meet their equal numbers in the field, they should be furnished with equal arms….”13
Model 1816 Harpers Ferry Musket, dated 1837 and altered to percussion (Source: The Horse Soldier)
Some of the weapons received annually from the Federal government were little better. Federal authorities also sought to rid themselves of obsolete flintlocks. These were altered to percussion by the thousands in the 1840s and 1850s and provided to the states while the newest percussion muskets remained in Federal hands. “I have to insist that [the muskets provided by the U.S. government] are not such as the law of congress contemplated,” Dimmock reported in 1856. “Muskets twenty years old [and] no longer manufactured” were being sent to the states while “muskets of the present day, with all their improvements, can be had.”14
The Assembly ignored Dimmock and Richardson’s repeated request for the alteration of Virginia’s flintlocks, but some were converted to percussion by Federal authorities. These alterations were deducted from the muskets Virginia would have otherwise received. In 1856, Dimmock issued to militia units 551 Virginia percussion muskets, almost certainly Virginia Manufactory of Arms flintlocks which had been altered to percussion. The remainder of the state’s store of modern arms at this time consisted of 124 percussion muskets in Richmond and 500 Model 1851 cadet muskets held in the Lexington Arsenal and used by students at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI).15
Little Better Than Fence Rails
After five years, the Virginia Assembly admitted the Militia Act of 1853 had been a mistake and passed a new militia law in 1858 reactivating annual musters of the line militia and returning enrollment duties to militia officers. The following year Richardson wrote, “The act of April 1st, 1853 so completely prostrated the public defense of the state, that less than two years ago the commander in chief could not have assembled, upon any sudden emergency, 500 organized and armed troops.” The reorganization of the militia had been, he reported, “to a large extent been prompt and effective, beyond what could have been expected, after so long a period of total suspension…”16
Richardson, who penned those words at the end of November 1859, had a very specific sudden emergency fresh in his mind. Just over a month before, John Brown’s raid on the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry triggered an immediate mobilization of local militia units and volunteer companies. Large numbers of state troops remained active through Brown’s trial and execution. This experience highlighted the sorry state of Virginia’s armaments. Colonel Robert W. Baylor, who commanded the Virginia militia at Harpers Ferry during the raid noted that “the arms in the possession of the volunteer companies in this section of the state are almost worthless. I do not think we have 100 muskets in the county of Jefferson… With such arms as we have, it is butchery to require our troops to face an enemy much better equipped.” The commander of the Thirty-First Regiment of Virginia Militia in nearby Fredrick County reported that, of the 135 men on duty, he lacked even 30 muskets that would fire. A Richmond paper noted that Virginia’s massive stockpile of flintlock muskets were “little better than fence rails, and should be thrown out of use in Virginia as speedily as possible.”17
Brown’s raid abruptly revitalized Virginians’ interest in military matters. The volunteer force “has increased rapidly, and continues to increase” wrote Richardson in Fall 1860. Just after Brown’s raid, Virginia had 31 volunteer companies of light infantry and another 34 companies of riflemen. A year later, the volunteer force had surged to 111 companies of light infantry and 113 companies of riflemen.18
Each company clamored for arms as soon as they were organized and uniformed. Former U.S. President John Tyler informed his son that his native Virginia was “arming to the teeth—more than fifty thousand stand of arms already distributed and the demand for more daily increasing.” “In the press for arms and ammunition,” Richardson wrote, “it seems never to have occurred to any that the armory is not an arsenal, but simply a depot for arms…” Dimmock and his small staff issued weapons as quickly as they could, but the requisitions for the newest, most modern weapons far outpaced what was available.19
Model 1841 “Mississippi” Rifle, dated 1855 (Source: National Museum of American History)
A new volunteer company in Lexington was among the fortunate ones. Recruited in the immediate wake of Brown’s Raid, the Rockbridge Rifles were officially organized on November 17, 1859. They were issued 50 percussion rifles from the Lexington Arsenal, along with 50 cap pouches, 60 spare musket cones, 60 screwdrivers, 60 wipers, and 6 spring vises for maintenance. These were part of a batch of 200 rifles which had been noted the previous year as being U.S. model, suggesting they were most likely Model 1841 Mississippi rifles. Two years later, the Rockbridge Rifles would become part of the Stonewall Brigade as Company B of the Fifth Virginia.20
The Militia Act of 1858 and Brown’s Raid finally spurred action to address the long-ignored alteration of Virginia’s large stockpile of obsolete flintlocks. Already in the summer of 1859, Federal authorities had accepted 2,135 flint muskets as a credit to Virginia’s account with the U.S. Ordnance Department. Virginia also sent 600 Virginia Manufactory flintlock rifles to the Washington Arsenal to be altered. After determining existing hammers would not fit the unique Virginia rifles, the weapons were shipped to Harpers Ferry for the fabrication of custom hammers. Harpers Ferry successfully converted 565 of these rifles and fitted 98 of them with studs for a sword bayonet. Between these alterations, the musket trade-in, and their usual annual allotment under the Militia Act of 1808, in 1859 Virginia obtained 100 Model 1855 rifled muskets, 2,040 percussion muskets, and 573 percussion rifles. These went immediately into the hands of newly organized volunteer companies.21
The Federal government had conducted a major program in the 1840s to alter its existing flintlock muskets to percussion, including rifling some of these smoothbore pieces. By 1855 the program was drawing to a close after the conversion of 315,000 weapons exhausted the stockpile of suitable arms. The Ordnance Department was scheduled to formally end its program to alter and rifle Model 1816 muskets in late 1859, but the Secretary of War intervened in December so that a large number of muskets could be altered for Virginia.22
Virginia Manufactory Rifle dated 1820 and altered to percussion in 1860-1861 by Merrill, Thomas, and Co. of Baltimore (Source: College Hill Arsenal)
Virginia authorities also considered commercial contracts to address the state’s need for modern arms. Richardson submitted alongside his 1859 report to the Virginia Assembly a proposal from J. H. Hitchcock & Company of New York to alter Virginia’s flintlock muskets. In early 1861, between 250 and 360 Virginia Manufactory rifles were sent to Baltimore where Merrill, Thomas, and Company altered at least 270 prior to the start of hostilities. Contracts were explored with the Colt Firearm Manufacturing Company for pistols, rifles, and carbines, including a discussion of Colt opening a factory to produce arms in Richmond.23
On January 21, 1860, the Virginia Assembly authorized an aggressive escalation of Virginia’s munitions program. They appropriated $180,000 for the purchase of weapons and another $500,000 to resume weapons production at the Virginia Manufactory of Arms. The state contracted with Joseph R. Anderson & Company of the Tredegar Iron Works to construct the necessary machinery to produce a .58 caliber musket which blended elements of the U.S. Model 1855 rifled musket with the British Model 1853 Enfield rifled musket. In partial payment, Tredegar would accept Virginia’s outdated muskets at a value of $1.50 per piece. Although some 8,060 muskets would be transferred to Anderson in 1860, the start of the war prevented Anderson from fulfilling the contract.24
Return of ordnance stores purchased by the Commission of 1860 (Source: 1860 Report of the Adjutant General)
The act also created a commission to purchase weapons with the newly authorized funds. In his Fall 1860 report, Richardson indicated the commission had purchased 5,000 “excellent percussion muskets” and volunteer companies deficient in accouterments would soon be supplied from new contracts signed by the commission. His attached accounting of the commission’s purchases, however, included 204 cartridge boxes and 446 cap pouches, but no muskets. The muskets do not otherwise appear in the 1860 ordnance returns, suggesting they may have been contracted for, but not yet delivered to Richmond at the time. Subsequent records don’t clearly determine whether these muskets were ultimately delivered prior to the war and, if so, what model weapon they were.25
One secondary source indicates that Virginia purchased 5,000 altered percussion arms prior to the war for the cost of $2.50 each. While no date is provided for this purchase and no primary source cited, these may be the muskets purchased by the 1860 commission since the number of weapons match and records do not detail any other large pre-war purchase of percussion muskets. Virginia does appear to have acquired a significant number of altered muskets sometime between Fall 1860 and April 1861. Dimmock reported only 42 percussion muskets on hand in late 1860, yet 1,500 altered muskets were available in Richmond two weeks into the war and long before Virginia began domestic alteration.26
In his late 1860 report Richardson confidently predicted “although the state has not a large stock of modern arms, she has enough arms of all descriptions, fit for effective service, to arm a considerable military force.” As shown in the table below, despite the last-minute efforts to modernize Virginia’s armaments, most of Virginia’s weapons on the eve of war were still outdated flintlock muskets. Virginia lacked enough modern rifled muskets to outfit even a single regiment and all its percussion arms combined would not be enough for a full-strength brigade. Within six months, Richardson’s prediction would be put to the test.27
The call to arms in April 1861 found some elements of what would become the Stonewall Brigade already armed from pre-war stocks. A February 1861 report detailed the armaments of Virginia’s volunteer companies. Six companies were armed with the newest Model 1855 .58 caliber rifled musket, 75 companies with percussion muskets such as the .69 caliber Model 1842 smoothbore or altered muskets of various models, and 26 companies carried flintlocks. An additional four companies had “long range rifles” with sword bayonets, a likely reference to either Model 1855 rifles or Model 1841 rifles which had been upgraded to the Model 1855 standards. Another 24 companies, such as the Rockbridge Rifles in Lexington, had percussion rifles, either Model 1841 rifles or flintlock rifles altered to percussion. Ten companies shouldered flintlock rifles, while 80 volunteer companies were still without arms at all.29
Sketch of the burning of the Harpers Ferry Arsenal. Note the civilians in the foreground carrying armfuls of muskets. (Source: Library of Congress)
Although some companies of the future Stonewall Brigade thus likely arrived already armed at Harpers Ferry, it is possible some units obtained weapons from April 18 capture of the arsenal. The historical record, however, is unclear on exactly how many weapons were seized in the capture of Harpers Ferry. The U.S. Army officer commanding the arsenal’s small garrison reported his men had set ablaze buildings with nearly 15,000 arms inside. “It is probable,” he wrote, “not a single gun was saved from them.” This same 15,000 number was quoted in an April 19 letter from an arsenal employee. However, the U.S. War Department informed Congress that, although Harpers Ferry had contained 20,507 arms as of mid-1860, by the time the armory was set ablaze it contained only 4,287 arms of all kinds. No explanation was provided for this significant reduction or why it differs from the 15,000 reported by those on the scene.30
Confederate records add no additional clarity. Colonel Kenton Harper, commander of the Virginia militia units which captured the arsenal reported the following day that he would forward the captured weapons to Winchester, retaining “only such of the arms which are complete, and rescued from the burning as are thought necessary to equip the troops, imperfectly armed as they came in.” On April 22 he stated that he had recovered an unspecified number of weapons from the fire along with the components for 7,000-10,000 arms. He put the remaining arsenal staff to work assembling weapons from these components at a rate of several hundred Model 1855 rifled muskets a day. After Colonel Thomas Jackson assumed command at Harpers Ferry, he informed Richmond that the arsenal staff claimed they could assemble 1,500 rifled muskets within 30 days.31
Regardless of how many weapons were captured, they were not distributed in an organized manner. Richardson’s office received no returns for the munitions captured and he wryly noted only that he understood that “all have been promptly and freely appropriated for the service of the Confederate States.” On April 28 Robert E. Lee, commanding Virginia’s forces, ordered Jackson to recover all of the Harpers Ferry arms from the local militia except for those in the hands of volunteer units Jackson was mustering into state service. This was evidently not easily accomplished, as about a week later Lee authorized Jackson to offer a $5 bounty for each musket turned in by the local population around Harpers Ferry.32
Cartridge box carried at the Battle of Manassas by Pvt. Clarence A. Fonerden of the 27th Virginia Co. A (Source: American Civil War Museum)
In addition to weapons, Virginia faced critical shortages of accouterments of all kinds even before the war. In 1860 Richardson reported that many of the armed volunteer companies still lacked accouterments but were being supplied as quickly as possible under contracts made by the commissioners of the Act of January 21, 1860. At that time, Virginia had just over 11,000 armed volunteers, but only around 4,600 of these men had cartridge boxes. The armories in Richmond and Lexington held only 498 cartridge boxes on the eve of conflict, many in need of repair before they could be reissued. As late as June 6, 1861, General Johnston complained his troops at Harpers Ferry were “not equipped for a campaign. More than two regiments are without cartridge-boxes.” On the eve of the Battle of Manassas, the Stonewall Brigade was still deficient 627 cartridge boxes, 733 cap pouches, 168 belts, and 783 bayonet scabbards.33
Dimmock issued as many accouterments as he could and found expedients like widespread issuance of white fabric webbing in lieu of leather belts and slings. 57,912 yards of such webbing was issued to Virginia forces between October 1859 and November 1861. During the same period, 12,000 cap pouches, 24,284 cartridge boxes, 12,979 bayonet scabbards, and 7,350 slings and belts all flowed from the Virginia Arsenal into the hands of eager volunteers.34
Left to right: Belt plate made with the W. H. Horstmann die; Contracted belt plate made by J. S. Smith of New York; Back of the same plate, showing Smith’s makers mark (Source: Confederate Belt Buckles and Plates Expanded Edition)
Also issued during this period were 12,916 waist belt plates and 9,630 breast plates. In 1851 Richardson had a die made to apply the Virginia state seal on brass plates for volunteers in lieu of the U.S. stamped plates obtained from the Federal government. A die was purchased later that year from William H. Horstmann & Sons of Philadelphia. A full year later, however, the die was still unused, as Richardson recommended that plates be purchased and stamped with the new die rather than including plates in Virginia’s annual arms quote. His recommendation was only partially followed, however, as Virginia still obtained 2,255 U.S. stamped plates from Federal armories between 1856 and 1860. The state also contracted with James S. Smith & Sons of New York for additional Virginia-stamped plates similar to the Horstmann design. The firm also provided unmarked rectangular plates with clipped corners and unmarked oval breast plates.35
Left to right: Rectangular Virginia belt plate; Oval breast plate made by Smith of New York; Rear of the same plate, showing Smith’s makers mark (Source: Confederate Belt Buckles and Plates Expanded Edition)
Between April 1 and June 13, detailed records from the Virginia Armory recount ordnance issues to specific companies which would ultimately form portions of the Stonewall Brigade. Among the best armed companies in the brigade was the Berkeley Border Guards, later the Second Virginia Company D. During this period they were issued 80 rifled muskets, probably the Model 1855 rifled musket. The company also received 80 sets of cartridge boxes, bayonet scabbards, cap boxes, and belt plates. Due the shortages of accouterments, however, the company was issued 450 yards of white fabric webbing from which to make belts and slings. Their ordnance requisition was rounded out with 1,000 cartridges and 1,200 percussion caps.36
Pvt. Joseph Hisey of the 2nd Virginia Co. E, carrying a percussion musket (Source: Second Virginia Regimental History)
While the Virginia Armory did not provide detailed ordnance issues to the remainder of the Second Virginia, they were also armed with percussion weapons. A shipment of ammunition sent to Colonel James W. Allen in Charlestown consisted of 10,000 cartridges and 12,000 percussion caps. A likely late June or early July ordnance report for the regiment indicated that in addition to the Berkeley Border Guards carrying .58 caliber rifled muskets, three companies carried .69 caliber altered muskets and another had .58 caliber smoothbore muskets. The remaining five companies shouldered a blended mix of .69 and .58 caliber weapons, some smoothbore and some rifled.37
A company in the Fourth Virginia, the Fort Lewis Volunteers (Company B), appears to have already been partially armed upon entering service, as they received only a handful of ordnance stores. They were issued one altered musket, a single cartridge box and cap pouch, 3 bayonet scabbards, six breast plates, four belt plates, and six wipers and 12 screwdrivers for weapon cleaning.38
Captain James Walker, who would rise to command the Stonewall Brigade two years later, commanded the Pulaski Guards. This unit, later to be designated the Fourth Virginia Company C, was issued 78 altered muskets. Their issues of accouterments, however, were incomplete, as they received 78 cap pouches, but just 16 cartridge boxes, 10 bayonet scabbards, and 20 belt plates. They also received 90 yards of webbing.39
Sgt. John B. Darst of the 4th Virginia Co. C, likely holding an altered musket. Note also his oval breast plate and white slings, possibly of webbing. (Source: Fourth Virginia Regimental History)
The Fourth Virginia Company D, known as the Smythe Blues, also received 90 yards of webbing to go along with 14 altered muskets, and 14 sets of cap pouches, bayonet scabbards, and belt plates. This small number suggests they, like the Fort Lewis Volunteers, were already partially armed.40
The last company in the Fourth Virginia for which we have ordnance records from the period is the Grayson Dare Devils, later Company F. They may have been among the best armed in the Fourth Virginia, as they received 80 Harpers Ferry rifles with sword bayonets. This is most likely a reference to the Model 1855 rifle, which was produced exclusively at Harpers Ferry. It is also possible it refers to older Model 1841 “Mississippi” rifles, as several thousand of these were rebored and modified at Harpers Ferry during the late 1850s to make them functionally similar to the Model 1855 rifle, including adding a lug for a sword bayonet. The company also received 90 cartridge boxes, 100 sets of bayonet scabbards, cap pouches, waist belts, bayonet frogs, and belt plates, as well as 90 yards of webbing.41
Pvt. William P. Ott, possibly carrying a Model 1851 Cadet Musket (Source: Library of Congress)
Some companies from the Upper Valley drew their weapons directly from the armory in Lexington before marching north. The Rockbridge Grays and the Liberty Hall Volunteers (Fourth Virginia Company H and I respectively) were both issued some of the 496 Model 1851 cadet muskets held in Lexington for use by the VMI Corps of Cadets. These were a scaled down version of the Model 1842 musket, but in a smaller .57 caliber and with a shorter socket bayonet. The Liberty Hall Volunteers may have carried these weapons only a short time before probably being issued altered. On September 26, 1861, Jackson informed an aide to the Virginia governor that he would be unable to return the cadet muskets still carried by the Rockbridge Grays until they could be replaced with other percussion muskets.42
Virginia Armory records include only ammunition and accouterment issues to the Fifth Virginia, with no weapons listed. 1,500 cartridges and 2,000 percussion caps were sent to regimental commander Colonel William Baylor, suggesting the pre-war volunteer core of the Fifth Virginia was among those armed with percussion muskets prior to the outbreak of hostilities. Ordnance reports from likely summer 1861 indicate five companies of the regiment carried .58 caliber rifled muskets, probably the Model 1855. The Rockbridge Rifles (initially Company B of the Fifth but subsequently transferred to the Twenty-Seventh and then Thirty-Third Virginia) were almost certainly still carrying the percussion rifles issued to them from the Lexington Armory in 1859. They received from the Virginia Armory 80 sets of cartridge boxes and cap pouches, along with 25 belt plates and 90 yards of webbing. The Mountain Guard (Company C) received 300 yards of webbing and 60 cartridge boxes, while the Augusta Rifles (Company H) were issued 50 sets of cartridge boxes, cap pouches, and belt plates along with 300 yards of webbing.43
My Duty to Give the Best Arms to the Virginia Troops
While companies like the Rockbridge Grays with their cadet muskets or the Grayson Dare Devils with their rifles had unique and relatively modern arms, the majority of the men who joined the Stonewall Brigade in 1861 likely shouldered an altered musket. By early May, 2,000 of these had been sent from Richmond to Jackson. Lee informed Jackson on May 9 that an additional 1,000 altered muskets newly arrived from North Carolina were being sent to arm Jackson’s command. “Orders,” wrote Lee, “have been given to fill your requisition for arms, ammunition, and accouterments as far as possible”44
Just two days later Jackson claimed he could get enough volunteers to swell his force to 4,500 men but “they are without arms, accouterments, and ammunition.” He requested 5,000 good muskets and rifles be sent. Lee quickly responded that he did not understand why Jackson would need 5,000 more weapons as he already had nearly 3,000 armed men plus the 3,000 altered muskets sent. “We have no rifles” Lee informed Jackson, but “ammunition has also been ordered to you.” Jackson also ordered 1,000 flintlocks from Lexington sent to Harpers Ferry, although these may have gone to soldiers from other southern states as Jackson felt that “it is my duty to give the best arms to the Virginia troops.”45
By May 23 a Confederate inspector reported that the 8,000 men at Harpers Ferry were organized in five Virginia regiments (including the Stonewall Brigade’s Second, Fourth, and Fifth Virginia), two from Mississippi, a battalion from Maryland, and a regiment each from Kentucky and Alabama. The Virginia regiments had “good arms” but were deficient in cartridge boxes, belts, and ball screws. A shipment of ammunition for Johnson’s growing army at Harpers Ferry a few days later included 62,500 cartridges for .69 caliber smoothbore muskets and 37,500 were .58 caliber Minié balls for the Model 1855 rifled musket and Model 1855 Harpers Ferry rifle. This suggests roughly three-eighths of Johnson’s force carried modern arms, while the remainder wielded a mixture of older percussion, altered, or flintlock muskets.46
By the time the last two regiments in the Stonewall Brigade, the Twenty-Seventh and Thirty-Third Virginia, were organized, the supply of modern weapons was largely exhausted. Lieutenant Colonel John Echols arrived in Staunton on May 15 with four companies from Monroe, Greenbrier, and Alleghany counties. These companies, soon part of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia, were most likely the Monroe Guards (Company D), the Greenbrier Rifles (Company E), the Greenbrier Sharpshooters (Company F), and the Allegheny Light Infantry (Company A).47 Three of these companies arrived unarmed, with the fourth had only 55 flintlock muskets in poor order. “We are not armed with anything,” wrote a member of the Greenbrier Rifles, “except each of us boys… have a tremendous bowie-knife.”48
Model 1855 Harpers Ferry Rifle, dated 1861 and possibly among those captured by Virginia forces in April (Source: Heritage Auctions)
These companies arrived in Harpers Ferry on May 20 and were issued their first muskets. The Greenbrier Rifles, however, steadfastly refused to accept the “very homely old ‘Mountain Muskets’” they were initially offered. Their insubordination was tolerated and the unit soon proudly carried Model 1855 rifles. These rifles had been burnt during the destruction of the armory the previous month, but had “having been repaired and refinished,” wrote one of the recipients, “are quite as good as new.”49
Pvt. John P. Hite, 33rd Virginia Co. H, carrying a North-Hall Carbine (Source: University of Virginia)
A company of the Thirty-Third Virginia might have obtained particularly unique arms, but this is based solely on questionable photographic evidence. A photo of John P. Hite of the Page Grays, later Company H, shows Hite carrying a Model 1843 Hall-North carbine. The first breechloading rifle adopted by the U.S. Army, the Hall rifle was later also produced as a carbine and in its final years of production in the 1840s was made with percussion. Virginia held a number of these carbines in her pre-war stockpile and 680 were issued to Virginia soldiers between October 1859 and November 1861. It would be unusual, however, for an infantry unit like the Page Grays to be issued a cavalry carbine and thus it is possible Hite’s weapon is a photographer’s prop and not the weapon he carried in 1861.50
When the Potomac Guards and Independent Greys, subsequently the Thirty-Third Virginia Companies A and F, were organized around Romney, they were issued a combination of altered muskets and flintlocks that had been sent from Harpers Ferry. The final company to join the Thirty-Third Virginia, the Shenandoah Sharpshooters (Company K), arrived unarmed and so were issued flintlock muskets. These muskets were probably from a batch of 1,200 U.S. flintlock muskets and bayonets sent from Richmond to General Johnson at Winchester in circa late June-early July 1861.51
Stonewall Brigade member J. Tripplett, carrying a flintlock musket (Courtesy of VMI)
Another company which possibly carried flintlocks is the Mount Jackson Rifles (Thirty-Third Virginia Company G), but this is based on questionable . A photo in the collection of VMI shows a soldier identified only as J. Tripplet of the Stonewall Brigade. Tripplet is holding a flintlock musket. Because his family was reportedly from the Mount Jackson area, it is possible he served in the Mount Jackson Rifles. However, surviving records show no soldier matching Tripplet’s description in the Mount Jackson Rifles or anywhere in the Stonewall Brigade. As it is not uncommon for soldiers who served under Jackson’s command outside the Stonewall Brigade to be misidentified as a brigade member, Tripplet’s potential service with the Mount Jackson rifles cannot be verified. 52
Virginia worked diligently to replace the flintlock muskets initially rushed into service. Beginning in July 1861, a contract was finally made with Samuel C. Robinson of Richmond to alter Virginia’s remaining flintlock muskets. Contracts with other firms would follow. By November Dimmock reported that 5,000 flint muskets had been altered and 100 more were added to this number daily. Flintlock muskets issued to Virginia troops at the start of the war were being recalled and replaced with these altered muskets as quickly as possible. Thus, Virginia’s final ordnance issues to the Stonewall Brigade before responsibility was turned entirely to the Confederate government were likely issues of altered muskets in the fall and winter of 1861 to any companies still carrying flintlocks.53
The accomplishments of Richardson, Dimmock, Lee, and other Virginia authorities in arming the state’s forces at the beginning of the conflict were impressive. Between April 1 and June 14, 1861, when primary responsibility for ordnance was transferred from the state to the Confederate government, Dimmock issued 4,118 percussion rifled muskets and muskets, 11,636 altered muskets, 25,850 flint muskets, and 2,054 assorted rifles and carbines, plus around 13,000 mostly flintlock muskets from Lexington. Between then and the end of October, another 4,514 percussion muskets (likely the S. C. Robinson alterations mentioned above), 9,905 flintlock muskets, 56 percussion rifles, and 74 flint rifles were placed in the hands of Virginia soldiers.54
The weapons Virginia provided to the Stonewall Brigade in 1861 were a mixture of modern and outdated. The most commonly carried weapon in this period appears to have been the altered musket, an apt mid-point between the modern rifled muskets a few companies carried, and the obsolete flintlock muskets shouldered by a few less fortunate companies. By early 1862 imported weapons and battlefield captures began to make an appearance in the ranks of the brigade, replacing some of the older weapons rushed into the hands of eager recruits in Spring 1861. In the meantime, though, the Stonewall Brigade proved on the fields of Manassas and in the early battles of 1862 that Virginia’s weapons were indeed fit for effective service.
Curious ladies and young boys lined the streets of Richmond on the morning of July 15, 1862, eager to catch a glimpse of Stonewall Jackson’s veterans as their columns marched through the city. Over the preceding months, the Richmond newspapers had breathlessly described the exploits of these men in the Shenandoah Valley and their timely arrival to help drive back the Union army which had threatened the city with capture only weeks before. “Imagin[ing] them to be more than common mortals,” wrote an officer in the Stonewall Brigade, “I think the boys and ladies are somewhat disappointed when they find us looking so much like the rest of humanity.”1
The Stonewall Brigade, along with the rest of Jackson’s command, had spent the previous two weeks warily monitoring the Union Army of the Potomac, which had been driven back to the James River during the recent Seven Days Battles. Marching from its camp near Mechanicsville on the morning of July 15, the brigade wound its way through Richmond’s streets, bound for trains headed north. Although the threat to Richmond from the Army of the Potomac had been contained, news had recently come south of the formation of a new Union army under Major General John Pope. The freshly christened Army of Virginia had been formed by uniting several scattered Union commands, including several Jackson had so recently outmaneuvered in the Shenandoah Valley. Advancing south, this Pope’s army presented a fresh threat to Richmond that needed to be dealt with.2
Lt. Alfred M. Edgar, Co. E of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia
The Stonewall Brigade waited nearly two hours at the Richmond train station as other troops clambered aboard the cars. Seventeen freight trains of around fifteen cars each would work around the clock for the next two days to transport Jackson’s command north to counter Pope. Having been recently paid, the waiting Virginians flocked to the shops and restaurants surrounding the depot. In the Twenty-Seventh Virginia, Lieutenant Alfred M. Edgar eagerly purchased four apple pies. The young man’s stomach, however, could accommodate only three of the pies, forcing him to share the fourth with another member of the unit.3
The trains that day took the Stonewall Brigade to just north of Hanover Junction, where Union cavalry had burnt the bridge over the South Anna River. The following day, they clambered back onto the cars and rode as far as Louisa Court House, where they remained until the morning of July 19. That day’s march took them to Gordonsville and just beyond, where they remained for a couple days. On July 21, the soldiers of the brigade broke their bivouac and directed their line of march north along the road leading towards Madison Court House. Ascending over the low Southwest Mountains, about three miles from Gordonsville the column took a road off to the left. Halting after covering a final mile, the Virginia infantrymen established camp in “a fine piece of woods, on high, dry ground.” The camp was quickly named Camp Magruder, as the woods were jointly owned by Oliver H. P. Terrell and Major Allan B. Magruder, a brother of the Confederate general.4
Everything Has a Happy, Quiet Appearance
Veterans of the Stonewall Brigade would fondly remember the next few weeks. Two days after arriving at Camp Magruder, staff officer Major Elisha F. Paxton wrote, “Everything here seems so quiet. The troops are drilling, and there is every indication that the troops will rest here for some time. Considering the severe hardships through which they have passed since the war began, it is very much needed. Everything has a happy, quiet appearance, such as I have not seen in the army since we were in camp this time last year after the battle of Manassas.” The men conducted only light drilling and junior officers, such as Captain Michael Shuler of the Thirty-Third Virginia, busied themselves updating long neglected company muster and pay rolls.5
Capt. Michael Shuler, Thirty-Third Virginia
The men’s rest was interrupted on the morning of July 24 by reports of an enemy advance on Orange Court House. Ordered to immediately cook two days rations, the Stonewall Brigade marched from Camp Magruder at about 9 AM and withdrew to a position near Gordonsville. They spent the day lying in line of battle in a stand of woods until word arrived that the enemy probe had been repelled. By evening, the brigade had returned to Camp Magruder.6
Reveille sounded for the Stonewall Brigade at 2:30 AM on July 29 and by sunrise they again left Camp Magruder behind. Captain Shuler took a moment to note in his diary, “Nothing known, as usual, as to where we were going.” The brigade marched back to Gordonsville and then south along the Green Spring Road. Having covered about eleven miles, the brigade halted just past a tiny hamlet called Mechanicsville. There at “the edge of the rich ‘Green Spring’ oasis” near the Three Notch Road and around nineteen miles east of Charlottesville, the unit established a new camp.7
Another period of rest followed for the brigade, with the men enjoying the beautiful surroundings and mostly fair, if warm, weather. Soon after arriving in the Green Springs area, Captain Shuler wrote, “We have been drilling and setting up camp as though we were going into Regular Encampment.” Rations included flour, beef, sugar, salt, rice, and occasionally molasses. Private Thomas Smiley of the Fifth Virginia told his aunt, “We have had very good living for a few days… apples are plenty and we make a great many pies and dumplings which though not quite so good as home manufacture are a very good substitute.”8
Sketch of Union Soldier Bucked and Gagged
All was not entirely idyllic, however. The men dubbed their encampment Camp Garnett, after their former commander Brigadier General Richard B. Garnett, whom Jackson had court-martialed earlier that year. The man who replaced Garnett as commander of the Stonewall Brigade, Brigadier General Charles S. Winder, had a well-earned reputation as a strict disciplinarian. By early August, tensions began to boil over. Winder placed the commander of the Thirty-Third Virginia, Colonel John F. Neff, under arrest over a minor protocol disagreement. Then, determined to limit straggling in the unit, Winder ordered anyone absent at evening roll call to spend the following day bucked and gagged, a punishment in which a man’s hands would be bound at the wrists, his arms slipped over his knees, and a stick placed between his legs to hold him in the uncomfortable position. Winder’s officers reportedly protested that the punishment was too harsh, but the general would not relent.9
The day after Winder’s order, Private John Casler of the Thirty-Third Virginia and about thirty other men of the Stonewall Brigade made their way into camp after the evening roll. Accordingly, Winder ordered they spend the following day bound and gagged under guard. Casler claimed half of the punished men promptly deserted the following night. Some of the officers complained to Jackson, who promptly informed Winder that he did not want to hear of any further bucking in his former brigade. Years after the war, Casler would write that Winder was “a good general and a brave man… but was very severe, and very tyrannical.” Casler claimed that after the bucking incident, hardly a day would pass without someone in the Stonewall Brigade darkly muttering that Winder’s next battle would be his last. Casler, however, is the only source to record such claims and, as Casler claimed to be among those punished by Winder, there must be some question to the accuracy of his mutinous allegations.10
The Hottest Day I Ever Experienced
On August 4, reveille rang through camp at 2:30 AM. The men prepared to march at first light, but soon the orders were countermanded, and the rest of the day passed uninterrupted. Later that day, however, the Twenty-Seventh Virginia received a notable delivery from the Quartermaster Department. Their commander acknowledged receipt of a new battle flag and staff. Since the previous fall, the Twenty-Seventh and its sister regiments had fought under the Virginia state flag. Now they would march for the first time under the blue Saint Andrews cross against a red background adorned with white stars. Battle flags produced in Richmond during this period were of wool bunting, trimmed on three sides with orange bunting. No records have yet been found for similar issues of flags to the other regiments of the brigade in this period, although a surviving flag believed to have belonged to the Fifth Virginia bears the orange trim indicative of flags issued around this time. While we cannot be certain whether the other regiments also received new flags in early August, it is possible the Stonewall Brigade would march into the coming battle carrying pristine new banners.11
Voucher acknowledging receipt of a battle flag for the Twenty-Seventh Virginia
The following day’s quiet was shattered in mid-afternoon by the unexpected beating of drums sounding the long roll. The men quickly broke camp and were on the move by 3 PM. They marched north through Gordonsville under a blazingly hot sun. Private Smiley recorded that “it is so warm now that it is very laborious marching.” Making their way along familiar roads, the Stonewall Brigade soon found itself back in the pleasant shade of Camp Magruder.12
After nearly three weeks of monitoring Pope’s movements, Jackson had learned that a portion of Pope’s army was isolated in an advanced position near Culpepper Court House. He resolved to attack and crush this detachment before Pope could concentrate his forces. On August 7, Jackson issued orders for his command to advance from the Gordonsville area. At around noon, the men of the Stonewall Brigade received orders to cook two days rations and were issued eight days’ worth of hard tack. They spent the afternoon poised to move, until orders finally arrived at about 4 PM. With the Stonewall Brigade leading the column, their division marched northeast towards Orange Court House. They halted after covering about six miles, laying down to sleep that night in a wheatfield around a mile and a half from Orange.13
They had marched, however, without their general. For the past few days, Winder had been stricken with a high fever and the brigade surgeon had implored him not to ride with the unit. Winder, however, feared leaving his men without a commander if there was to be battle and sent one of his staff officers, Lieutenant McHenry Howard, to question Jackson as to the army’s plans. Howard found Jackson on his knees packing an old-fashioned carpet bag. The young officer nervously asked Winder’s question, expecting a repute from the famously secretive Jackson. Instead, Jackson responded with a slight smile, “Say to General Winder that I am truly sorry he is sick – that there will be a battle, but not tomorrow, and I hope he will be up.” Jackson had Howard relay to Winder that he should stay behind to rest and could rejoin his command the following day near Madison Mills along the Rapidan River.14
The Stonewall Brigade marched through Orange Court House on August 8, sweating under a remorseless sun. Temperatures soared as high as 96 degrees. In the Thirty-Third Virginia, several men dropped from heat stroke. The soldiers were further annoyed by Confederate cavalry galloping by their column, the infantry complaining of the “impertinence” of their mounted comrades. That cavalry, however, was rushing to the front to push back Union troopers patrolling the north bank of the Rapidan River. Their way now clear, the Stonewall Brigade and the rest of Jackson’s command splashed across the Rapidan and bivouacked in some woods about a mile past the river.15
Soon after they halted, Winder rode into camp and immediately laid down to rest, without formally notifying anyone of his arrival. The ill general’s sleep that night was interrupted by the sound of scattered firing to the west as Union cavalry took advantage of a nearly full moon to launch a probe along the road from Madison Court House. The following morning, one of Jackson’s staff officers rode up to Winder’s tent. Believing a battle to be imminent, relayed the staff officer, Jackson instructed Winder to turn over command of his brigade to his senior subordinate and head to the rear. Winder promptly refused, proclaiming that he would not abandon his post on the eve of battle.16
Unsure what to do in the face of Winder’s refusal, the staff officer took Winder to speak with Jackson. Jackson repeated his order and Winder again refused. “Well, General, I will stick to my order as to the brigade,” Jackson replied. “If you will not go to the rear, you will take command of the division.” Ever since Jackson had risen to higher command, his own division had been without a permanent commander. With its most senior officer, Brigadier General Alexander R. Lawton, detailed with his brigade to guard the wagon train, Winder was the division’s ranking officer. The two men shook hands. Jackson rode towards the front and Winder wheeled his horse to take command of his division. It would be the last time the two men would see each other.17
With Winder now leading the division, command of the Stonewall Brigade fell to Colonel Charles A. Ronald of the Fourth Virginia. His regiment would be led into the coming battle by Lieutenant Colonel Robert D. Gardner. Lieutenant Colonel Lawson Botts was in command of the Second Virginia and Major Hazel Williams led the Fifth Virginia. With Colonel Neff still technically under arrest, Lieutenant Colonel Edwin G. Lee was the ranking officer in the Thirty-Third Virginia. The Twenty-Seventh Virginia, always the smallest regiment in the brigade, was led by a junior officer, Captain Charles L. Haynes.18
Left to right: Lt. Col. Robert Gardner, Lt. Col. Lawson Botts, Maj. Hazel Williams, Lt. Col. Edwin Lee, and Capt. Charles Haynes. No photo is known to exist of Colonel Ronald.
No solid evidence exists for the strength of the Stonewall Brigade on August 9. Just three months before, they had numbered nearly thirty-seven hundred men. Since then, however, their ranks had been severely thinned by battle, disease, and desertion. In July, Colonel Neff had complained that around three hundred and fifty men from his regiment were absent without leave. The only regiments which recorded their strength for August 9 were the Twenty-Seventh Virginia, which went into battle with less than one hundred and thirty men, and the Thirty-Third Virginia, which marched out of camp with one hundred and sixty men in the ranks. Assuming the strength of the other regiments had deteriorated at roughly the same rate as these two units, the Stonewall Brigade was possible somewhere around nine hundred and forty men as they stepped off from Madison Mills on the morning of Saturday, August 9, 1862.19
The new dawn brought no respite from the previous day’s scorching heat. Lieutenant Edgar recalled it as “the hottest day I ever experienced,” while a Federal soldier marching towards the Stonewall Brigade stated that “the air was as hot as a bake oven.” In the Thirty-Third Virginia, as least ten men fell out of the ranks due to the heat, further reducing the already small regiment’s strength. The sweating Virginians choked on the oppressive dust kicked up by the division marching before them. These units would occasionally halt for no reason readily apparent to the suffering Stonewall Brigade, causing innumerable delays as the sun bore down on the paused column of men. Captain Samuel J. C. Moore of the Second Virginia described the day’s march as “slowly feeling our way for seven or eight miles.” North of the Rapidan, the Culpepper Road upon which the men toiled gently rises and falls in a series of low ridges. As they crested each of those ridges, the men of the Stonewall Brigade could see, growing ever closer off to their right, a dark, imposing height the locals called Slaughter Mountain.20
My Poor, Poor Wife
As the advance guard of Jackson’s command neared Slaughter Mountain, they spotted Union cavalry in the fields to the right of the Culpepper Road. Jackson ordered the first division in his column, under Major General Richard S. Ewell, to drive back the Union troopers. Brigadier General Jubal A. Early deployed his brigade in the open fields to the right of the road and began to press forward. Cresting a small ridge, they saw before them open and broken country bisected by the Culpepper Road. On their right off to the east rose the mass of Slaughter Mountain, which in the years after the battle would come to be more commonly known as Cedar Mountain. Directly to their front was a large cornfield, through which the Union cavalry was retreating. To the west of the Culpepper Road, a stand of woods advanced some distance before it met a freshly-cut wheatfield. North of the wheatfield rose a hill covered in dense timber. Spotting Union batteries deploying on the far side of the cornfield, Early withdrew his brigade to just behind the crest of the slight ridge and had his artillery begin a “rapid and well-directed fire” on the Union guns.21
Sketch of the Battle of Cedar Mountain, drawn from the Union perspective. Slaughter Mountain rises on the left, the cornfield is in the middle of the image and the wheatfield is visible against the right edge. The Culpepper Road is visible cutting through the right side of the image, while the position of Ewell’s Division is in the center background.
The Union battle lines deploying opposite Jackson were from the Army of Virginia’s Second Corps, commanded by Major General Nathaniel Banks. Pope, realizing that Jackson was moving against Culpepper, had on August 8 begun to concentrate his forces and directed Bank’s corps, then at Culpepper, to advance and delay Jackson’s advance. Nearly as soon as the last echo of gunfire from the Battle of Cedar Mountain fell away, the first shots would be fired of a battle of words between Pope and Banks as to what exactly Pope’s intentions for Banks had been and whether Banks had sought battle against Pope’s wishes. Regardless of what Pope had intended, Bank’s circa 9,000 men in two divisions would soon be facing off against Jackson’s roughly 22,500 men.22
Banks had initially deployed a brigade of infantry under Brigadier General Samuel W. Crawford and Battery E of the Pennsylvania Light Artillery, commanded by Captain Joseph M. Knapp, to support the cavalry. When Early’s men drove back the troopers just a little after noon, it was a few shots from Knapp’s four guns which caused Early to pause and reposition his line. By 1:30 PM, additional Union soldiers had streamed onto the field. To the east of the Culpepper Road, replacing the cavalry and Crawford’s Brigade, Banks posted the three brigades of his Second Division under the command of Brigadier General Christopher C. Augur. He then shifted Crawford’s Brigade, part of his First Division commanded by Brigadier General Alpheus S. Williams, to the west of the road. The other brigade of Williams’ division, under the command of Brigadier General George H. Gordon, formed in reserve behind and to the right of Crawford’s Brigade. Additional Union batteries wheeled into place along Augur’s line, preparing to duel with the growing number of Confederate guns opposite them.23
Modern view of the location of Confederate batteries next to the Culpepper Road, looking north. The cornfield would have been in the center midground of this image.
Meanwhile, Ewell swung his other two brigades far to the right of Early, positioning them on the western slope of Slaughter Mountain. At around 2 PM the vanguard of Winder’s Division reached the field, its column having halted in the road while Ewell’s Division deployed. Winder and his staff rode forward along the Culpepper Road until they reached the point where the woods east of the road met the wheatfield. There, Winder could make out the Union batteries exchanging fire with Ewell’s guns. Seeing an opportunity to enfilade the Union artillery, Winder ordered all the rifled, long-distance guns of his command to be brought forward and massed at that point. He also directed Lieutenant Howard to guide the brigade led by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas S. Garnett into the woods west of the road, while the brigade led by Colonel Alexander G. Taliaferro was ordered to deploy east of the road in support of the artillery and the Stonewall Brigade was directed to remain in reserve. As aides scurried off with his orders, the general and his remaining staff began tearing down the fence along the Culpepper Road to allow the guns to roll into position.24
By about 2:30 PM Winder’s batteries were prepared to open fire. Their opening shots triggered a general artillery duel across the battlefield, the boom of the guns echoing through the Virginia countryside. “Soon the din of bursting shells… was quite appalling,” recounted a member of Winder’s staff, “made more so from the splintering of tree branches overhead.” As shells burst around him, Winder calmly directed the return fire. Still feverish, the general had removed his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Gazing through binoculars, he called out range adjustments to the gunners as they zeroed in on the enemy guns.25
Winder shouted one of these corrections to the crew manning a Parrott rifled gun to his immediate right. Over the din, the artillerymen could not hear what he had said, and a gunner ran towards Winder to ask him to repeat the order. The general cupped his hands to his mouth and had shouted only a word or two when a shell passed between his left arm and his side, completely tearing away the flesh of the inside of his arm and lacerating the left side of his torso as far back as the spine. Winder “fell straight back at full length, and lay quivering on the ground,” according to an observer.26
Gen. Charles Winder, Stonewall Brigade Commander
A group of artillerymen placed the general on a stretcher. Lieutenant Howard had just returned from deploying Garnett’s Brigade and asked his fallen commander, “General, do you know me?” “Oh yes,” Winder replied, before he began muttering “My poor, poor wife” and mumbling of his children as “my little pets.” A surgeon galloped up, but quickly saw there was nothing to be done. A chaplain knelt at Winder’s side and said, “General, lift up your heart to God.” “I do, I do lift it up to him,” replied Winder. Within ten minutes of being hit, Winder slipped out of consciousness.27
As they carried the fallen general to the rear, the stretcher party passed by the Stonewall Brigade, drawn up in reserve with muskets stacked along the Culpepper Road. The men quickly recognized their commander and a crowd of officers formed around Winder’s stretcher. Lieutenant Howard watched as the enlisted men silently took “a last look at the leader who had so well won their confidence and attachment.” Captain Moore noted that the men of his unit “said nothing, but seem sternly to resolve that for every drop of his blood, they would pour out a gallon of Yankee blood.” The stretcher party continued on a short distance before stopping at a small grove west of the road. There, with Lieutenant Howard gently supporting his head, Winder gave his final breath.28
Private Casler, whose punishment Winder had ordered just a short time before, was among those soldiers who watched the stretcher pass with his mortally wounded commander. “His death was not much lamented by the brigade,” Casler claimed, “for it probably saved some of them the trouble of carrying out their threats to kill him.” Not everyone in the brigade, however, shared Casler’s embittered view of their fallen leader. A captain in the Fourth Virginia noted that Winder “was a most gallant soldier, and by his admirable discipline, was not only keeping the Brigade efficient, but was making it better, I think, than it ever was before.”29
The highest praise came from Jackson himself. In his official account of the battle, Jackson wrote, “It is difficult within the proper reserve of an official report to do justice to the merits of this accomplished officer. Urged by the medical director to take no part in the movements of the day because of the then enfeebled state of his health, his ardent patriotism and military pride could bear no such restraint. Richly endowed with those qualities of mind and person which fit an officer for command and which attract the admiration and excite the enthusiasm of troops, he was rapidly rising to the front rank of his profession. His loss has been severely felt.”30
Charge, Charge and Yell!
Winder’s death thrust Colonel Taliaferro into command of the division. Having no knowledge of what Winder’s plans had been, he rode forward to examine the position of Garnett’s Brigade. He found Garnett’s command, currently the only Confederate unit to the west of the Culpepper Road, deployed in an L-shape, part of the brigade facing the wheatfield and part parallel to the road. They were in an excellent position to enfilade any Union advance through the cornfield but were nearly 200 yards in advance of the main Confederate line and had no troops covering their left flank. Taliaferro rode past Garnett’s regiments and into the wheatfield, where he saw no sign of Federal activity. Confident that the battle’s main action would be against the Confederate right, Taliaferro rode back to next examine the position of the division’s artillery. He was soon overtaken, however, by an officer bearing word that Union skirmishers had appeared in the wheatfield just visited by Taliaferro. He immediately ordered the Tenth Virginia to be detached from his own brigade and sent to reinforce Garnett. He also sent word to Colonel Ronald to advance the Stonewall Brigade to the left of Garnett’s line.31
View of the battlefield looking west. The Culpepper Road, marked by fences and a few scattered trees, runs through the middle of the photo. The edge of the cornfield is visible as the lighter area on the right edge of the picture and the wheatfield, with its dimly visible shocks of wheat, fills the middle background.
The enemy skirmishers spied by Garnett’s troops were from Crawford’s Brigade. With the artillery duel still sending waves of thunder across the battlefield, at around 4 PM Crawford advanced the Fifth Connecticut, the Twenty-Eight New York, and the Forty-Sixth Pennsylvania into the dense woods to the west of the Culpepper Road. The largest regiment of his brigade, the Tenth Maine, remained behind to support the artillery. The woods were choked with underbrush and sharp briars yanked at the men’s uniforms. Nearly impassible, the tangled woods prevented a man from seeing a person standing only a few yards away. Just before the Union regiments reached the edge of the woods, the brush began to thin, and Crawford ordered a halt along a narrow logging path which meandered through the timber. As officers rushed to dress the brigade’s line, Crawford removed his coat and sword and dropped to the ground. Crawling on his belly through the brush, Crawford made his way forward to the edge of the forest.32
Before him Crawford saw a wheatfield, the stubble of the freshly cut wheat dotted with neat shocks of cut grain. The eastern end of the circa 30-acre wheatfield was roughly 600 yards wide where it ran along the Culpepper Road. Roughly 800 yards to the west, the field, now only around 400 yards wide, came to an end. Farther to the west beyond the wheat was a second field, which had not been planted for several years and had become overgrown with scrub oak, dwarf chestnut, and other brush as high in some places as a man’s shoulder. This bushy field was about 125 yards wide, but over 500 yards long and covered about two acres. A high log fence separated the wheatfield from the woods in which Crawford’s men were now dressing their lines. The wheatfield rose gradually for about a third of its width and then fell gently to a slight hollow cut by a mostly dry creek bed. Beyond the hollow to the south, the ground rose more sharply to another high log fence. In the woods behind this fence lurked Confederate infantry, but Crawford was unsure of their strength.33
The general crawled back to his command and ordered it forward to the edge of the woods. As his men began to tear down portions of the fence, a sergeant led a small group of skirmishers from the Fifth Connecticut into the wheatfield. After making their way as far as the hollow, they soon returned, believing they had escaped detection. These men were, however, likely the ones spotted by Garnett’s men, prompting Taliaferro to order the advance of the Stonewall Brigade and thus dramatically alter the outcome of the brewing fight.34
Gen. Samuel Crawford, Union Brigade Commander
Banks had originally ordered Crawford to advance through the woods and attack the enemy’s left with a single regiment. This regiment’s objective would be to silence the Confederate batteries positioned by Winder along the Culpepper Road. From his reconnaissance and reports from the Fifth Connecticut’s skirmishers, it was apparent to Crawford that the Confederates on the far side of the wheatfield were too numerous for a single regiment to rout. Instead, he obtained Banks’s approval to attack with his entire brigade. Crawford also requested a section of smoothbore Napoleon guns be brought up to support his assault and sought additional troops to cover his right flank.35
The soldiers from which Crawford sought help were six companies of the Third Wisconsin, part of the other brigade in Williams’ Division commanded by Brigadier General George H. Gordon. They had initially been dispatched as skirmishers in the woods north of the wheatfield to screen the front of Williams’ Division, spread out along a 500-yard line. Soon after Crawford’s men advanced through their skirmish line, Crawford sent word back requesting they join his attack. Colonel Thomas H. Ruger, commanding the Third Wisconsin, replied that he was waiting for orders from his own brigade commander and could not join the attack on his own initiative.36
Just before 5 PM, however, General Williams received word from Banks that a Union attack through the cornfield east of the Culpepper Road was having success and Crawford should attack immediately. A staff officer from Williams galloped up to Crawford and relayed the order to advance without delay. Guiding his horse along the narrow lane through the dense woods, the officer next came upon Lieutenant Colonel Louis H. D. Crane of the Third Wisconsin chatting with one of his company commanders. Stating that the six companies’ cooperation would be necessary to take the Confederate batteries and assure victory, the staff officer ordered the Wisconsin soldiers to join Crawford’s attack.37
Ruger began recalling his dispersed unit, reforming on one of his center companies. Marching his short battle line slightly to the right so as to bring them up on Crawford’s right flank, the colonel halted his men near the edge of the bushy field. Ruger informed his soldiers that a Confederate battery needed to be taken and that the honor of the regiment rested in their hands. After ordering them not to cheer or yell until they had broken the enemy, the command soon came—“Forward!”—and a moment later “Double quick!” as the Wisconsin soldiers charged into the bushy field.38
Meanwhile, urged by Banks to attack immediately, Crawford had not waited for the Third Wisconsin. In the Fifth Connecticut, Colonel George D. Chapman briefly reminded his men to remember their good name and do credit to their themselves and their state. Crawford’s command to fix bayonets was repeated up and down the brigade line. Then came the shouted order, “Charge, charge and yell!” Clambering over what remained of the fence with loud cheers, the brigade paused in the open wheatfield only long enough to dress its line and then surged across the stubble field. A Union officer watching the assault stated Crawford’s men “burst with loud cries from the woods, [and] swept like a torrent across the wheat-field.”39
Annihilation to Remain
About an hour earlier, Colonel Ronald had received Taliaferro’s order to advance the Stonewall Brigade to support Garnett’s left flank. Had the brigade advanced promptly, soon after Taliaferro had received word of Crawford’s men amidst the wheat shocks, the coming action might have proceeded very differently. Confusion in the Confederate command, however, would hinder Ronald’s advance. Jackson had retained most of his divisional staff when he became a de facto corps commander and Winder had relied on the Stonewall Brigade’s staff during his less than twelve hours in command of the division. Now, much of that staff had departed with their slain leader, forcing Ronald to rely on Captain John H. Fulton of the Fourth Virginia and Major Fredrick W. M. Holliday of the Thirty-Third Virginia as acting aides. Officers from multiple staffs galloped across the field, relaying contradictory orders of unknown origin.40
Ronald deployed the Stonewall Brigade in a line of battle perpendicular to the Culpepper Road and ordered his men to load their weapons. The Twenty-Seventh Virginia anchored the brigade’s right flank along the road, followed to the left by the Thirty-Third Virginia and then the Fifth Virginia. Next came the Second Virginia, with the Fourth Virginia forming the brigade’s left flank. No sooner had Ronald directed the line to advance through the woods towards Garnett’s position when orders arrived to change the brigade formation into a column of regiments. Although unsure from whom this order came, Ronald dutifully halted his advance and formed a column led by the Twenty-Seventh Virginia. Just as he was about to again order the advance, another staff officer galloped up with orders to revert back to a line of battle. The almost certainly frustrated Ronald once again changed the brigade’s formation and ordered the advance before any further orders could arrive.41
Marching through the dense forest, the Stonewall Brigade soon came under “a heavy fire of spherical case and canister shot” from Union batteries shelling the woods. Leaves showered down on the men as the savage lead ripped through the branches over their heads. A shell fell amidst the Fifth Virginia, causing six men to fall either dead or wounded. An officer rushed over to the bloody gap in the line, calmly and firmly calling out “Steady, men, steady! Close up!”42
Modern view of part of the bushy field. The tree line in the background would have been several hundred yards farther back at the time of the battle. Note how the ground rises slightly just before the modern tree line.
The Stonewall Brigade, marching diagonally to the right behind Garnett’s line, eventually reaching a fence running along the southern end of the bushy field. Ronald called out a halt and then directed that the men begin tearing down the fence. His soldiers thus occupied, the colonel dispatched Captain Fulton to report the brigade’s position to Taliaferro and seek additional orders. The brigade’s regimental and company officers busied themselves in straightening the line and the men caught some rest in the cool shade of the trees. About twenty minutes later, Fulton returned with orders from Taliaferro to continue the advance. Because the bushy field went farther south than the western end of the wheatfield, Ronald’s line was still a few hundred yards behind Garnett’s flank, leaving a dangerous gap in the Confederate line which Taliaferro wanted filled as soon as possible.43
A mounted Ronald led the Stonewall Brigade forward into the bushy field. As the brigade line was longer than the width of the field, only the Second and Fifth Virginia were entirely in the open. On the left, the Fourth Virginia was mostly within the woods west of the field. To the right, the Twenty-Seventh Virginia was entirely in the woods, moving up towards the left flank of Garnett’s Brigade. Half of the Thirty-Third Virginia was also concealed in the trees, while the regiment’s left wing spilled out into the cleared field.44
Like the adjacent wheatfield, the southern end of the bushy field dipped down to a small depression before climbing to a slight rise near the middle of the field. As the Stonewall Brigade began to march steadily up the gentle slope of this rise, Ronald rode forward alone to see what lay concealed on the other side of the elevation. Cresting the rolling ground, the colonel suddenly saw a line of Union infantry just 300 yards away, advancing directly towards him. Wheeling his horse and galloping back towards his men before he could be spotted, Ronald shouted for them to prepare to open fire.45
The troops discovered by Ronald were the six companies of the Third Wisconsin, advancing alone across the bushy field. Although they had intended to move forward alongside Crawford’s men, they had been delayed as they moved at the right oblique through the snarl of undergrowth. Colonel Ruger also misjudged the length of Crawford’s line, causing the six companies to move well to the right of Crawford’s last regiment. The Midwesterners scaled the high rail fence and, pausing only briefly to reform their line, advanced alone into the bushy field.46
Col. Thomas Ruger, Commander of the Third Wisconsin
Suddenly, in front of them, a solid line of Confederate infantry appeared, stretching all the way across the field beyond the flanks of the isolated Third Wisconsin. As the Stonewall Brigade crested the small rise in the middle of the field, it appeared to the Union soldiers “as though they arose from out of the ground.” The Confederates gave the startled Union soldiers no time to react, letting loose a volley which an officer in the Second Virginia later judged was “one of the most effective that he ever saw delivered in a battle.” The men of the Third Wisconsin would have agreed, with one of the Union officers on the receiving end of the volley calling it the “the most destructive fire that I experienced in the whole course of the war.”47
On the left of the Stonewall Brigade’s line, the Fourth Virginia enjoyed both the protection of the trees and a slight advantage in elevation. Only puffs of gun smoke marked the regiment’s position to the Third Wisconsin. With no enemy directly to his front, Gardner threw his left flank forward and wheeled his command to the right, enfilading the Union flank from a distance of only some 20 yards. The left wing of the Second Virginia followed suit, wheeling to bring additional fire on the suddenly beleaguered Union right flank.48
The rightmost companies of the Third Wisconsin were hardly in a position to effectively respond. Their advance through the woods having been slowed by an encounter with a patch of blackberry briers, the Wisconsinites’ right wing still lagged slightly behind the regiment’s left wing when the firing began. One of the Federal soldiers judged that “under such a concentered fire it was annihilation to remain. Men were falling by scores each instant.” Captain William Hawley, commander of Company K on the far right, fell wounded in the first volley with a bullet through the ankle and began limping to the rear. “It hardly seemed a minute,” recalled one of the regiment’s other company commanders, “before all of Co. K and nearly all of F were back again in the woods.” Lieutenant Colonel Crane tried to steady the right of the line “while the storm of bullets rained through the cloud of smoke in front.” Astride a nervous roan horse which “kept him busy trying to stay on its back,” Colonel Ruger rode back and forth trying to rally his men. Seeing his right flank melt away, he called on his men to retreat to the protection of the woods.49
Battlefield monument to the Third Wisconsin. Lt. Col. Crane’s name tops the list of fatalities.
Noting that his command’s volleys had disrupted the Union regiment before him, Colonel Ronald judged the time was right for a charge. In clear voice he called out “First Brigade, prepare for a charge bayonet!” Forward went the Virginians, emerging like demons with a “terrible yell” from the smoke of their most recent volley. As they surged forward, Crane galloped across the brigade’s front, endeavoring to rally his retreating men. Calling for the Wisconsin regiment to reform behind the fence, he slowly turned his small dark cream-colored horse through a gap in the barrier. In the Second Virginia, Captain Moore called out for one of the members of his Company I who had a reputation as a marksman. A crack, a puff of smoke, and the Union officer fell from his horse, killed instantly.50
With the enemy fleeing before him, Colonel Ronald must have been pleased with the outcome of his first combat experience as a brigade commander. Spotting the Third Wisconsin attempting to rally in the trees behind the fence, Ronald began to prepare a second charge to sweep the Midwesterners entirely from the field. Just as he was about to order the coup de grace, however, troubling news reached Ronald from his right flank.51
The fight in the bushy field had been brief and lopsided. The six companies of the Third Wisconsin were entirely outmatched by the combined firepower of almost an entire brigade. The three rightmost companies were hit particularly hard, with more than a third of their number falling killed or wounded. Two hundred and seventy-six men of the Third Wisconsin had marched into the bushy field and, in an encounter which one Union participant estimated lasted a mere two minutes, they had left eighty of their number killed or wounded amidst the scrub oak. Although Ruger had escaped unharmed, Crane’s corpse lay next to the fence and the regiment’s major had taken a ball through the shoulder, crippling his left arm for the remainder of his life.52
Jackson Will Lead You
When Ronald had ordered the Stonewall Brigade to attack the Third Wisconsin, only his left and centermost regiments had been able to comply. While the left wing of the Thirty-Third Virginia joined in the brigade’s opening volleys, the remainder of the regiment and the entirety of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia continued to struggle through the fallen timber, thick undergrowth, and dense trees flanking the bushy field. As half of his Thirty-Third Virginia opened fire, Colonel Lee’s horse became excited, forcing Lee to proceed on foot as his men joined in the brigade’s advance.53
As the Wisconsin soldiers fell back, the right wing of the Thirty-Third Virginia finally emerged from the trees at the southwestern edge of the wheatfield. With his full regiment now exposed to enemy view, Lee halted his men behind the wheatfield’s fence and commenced firing at the retreating Third Wisconsin.54
Suddenly, shouts came from Company A on the far right of the regiment. Federal troops were in the trees on the Thirty-Third Virginia’s right flank, less than 40 paces from Company A and in a position to bring a devastating enfilade fire to bear on the regiment. Lee shouted for his three right companies, Companies A, F, and D, to immediately refuse the line, drawing them back at a right angle to protect the regiment’s flank. He then dispatched his adjutant, Lieutenant David H. Walton, to ensure the Twenty-Seventh Virginia was aware of this new threat. Walton soon ran back to report that the regiment, which only moments before had been just to Lee’s right, was nowhere to be found.55
The Twenty-Seventh Virginia had gotten caught up in the Union assault that had swept like a cyclone across the wheatfield moments before the Stonewall Brigade routed the Third Wisconsin. Crawford’s Brigade had charged from the northern woods with a yell, the Forty-Sixth Pennsylvania on the right, the Twenty-Eight New York in the center, and the Fifth Connecticut on the left. The Union soldiers surged over the rail fence on the Confederate side of the wheatfield and smashed into Garnett’s Brigade with little warning. The Confederates’ attention had been occupied by a Union brigade making an attack through the cornfield to the east of the Culpepper Road. “We pushed the fence over on them,” reported an officer in the Twenty-Eight New York, “which was the first warning they had.”56
Fanciful illustration of Crawford’s attack, little of which aligns with actual events. The artist has Garnett’s men standing in the open rather than in the woods and has drawn Union artillery and Slaughter Mountain to the right of Crawford’s men, when historically they would have been to the left.
“The storm,” noted a Union observer, “burst suddenly upon the enemy.” Garnett’s command crumbled in a brief melee of hand-to-hand fighting. The Tenth Virginia, dispatched earlier to reinforce Garnett’s left flank, could only briefly slow the Forty-Sixth Pennsylvania before they too were forced to fall back. A Union officer watching the assault observed how Garnett’s Brigade “had been thrown, helpless and confused, into a disordered mass, over which, with cries of exultation, our troops poured, while field and woods were filled with clamor and horrid rout—poured like an all-destroying torrent, until the left of Jackson’s line was turned and its rear gained.”57
Advancing through the woods just to the left of the Tenth Virginia and Garnett’s left flank, the Twenty-Seventh Virginia suddenly discovered the troops to their right had melted away. With refugees from Garnett’s Brigade and the Tenth Virginia streaming through their formation, the Twenty-Seventh’s line began to waver. As the Forty-Sixth Pennsylvania crashed against their flank and rear, Captain Haynes found his regiment caught in a crossfire. At risk of being cut off and overrun, Haynes ordered his men back. With the thick underbrush and fallen timbers further scattering the Virginians, the retreat quickly became a rout as the Twenty-Seventh Virginia fled through the trees.58
Running through the forest back towards the Culpepper Road, the broken Twenty-Seventh Virginia streamed through the ranks of Confederate reinforcements advancing to plug the gap which Crawford’s assault had ripped in Jackson’s line. Brigadier General Lawrence Branch, commanding the advancing Confederate relief, wrote after the battle that “I had not gone 100 yards through the woods before we met the celebrated Stonewall Brigade, utterly routed and fleeing as fast as they could run.” Branch’s report would later lead to false claims that the entire Stonewall Brigade had been routed at the Battle of Cedar Mountain, whereas in reality the Twenty-Seventh Virginia was the only portion of the brigade which broke.59
As he neared the Culpepper Road, Captain Haynes began to regain control over some of his scattered and panicked men. Among the mass of soldiers was Lieutenant Edgar, the same young officer who had attempted to consume four apple pies prior to boarding the trains in Richmond. “At this critical moment, Stonewall Jackson gallops up to us in a most excited manner and draws his sword,” recounted Edgar. “I am within ten feet of him and see and hear him distinctly. He shouted ‘Rally brave men. Rally and follow me. Jackson will lead you.’ We rallied and pressed forward. Our line was soon restored. Jackson rode along the front and shouted, ‘Give them the bayonet! Give them the bayonet! Forward and drive them!’”60
Jackson’s personal intervention to rally the Twenty-Seventh Virginia and the other Confederate units routed by Crawford’s assault is shrouded in layers of legend. None of the accounts from the Stonewall Brigade recount the famous story that Jackson’s sword had rusted in its scabbard, forcing the general to instead wave the sheathed weapon while rallying his troops. Lieutenant Edgar’s eyewitness account explicitly stated Jackson drew his sword. Captain Haynes, in his official report submitted just days after the battle, confirmed Jackson’s role rallying the Twenty-Seventh Virginia. The men of the regiment, Haynes recounted, gave a cheer at Jackson’s approach and “at the personal order of General Jackson followed him again to the battlefield.”61
The Union wave, meanwhile, had begun to loss its momentum. Men of the Twenty-Eight New York, led by the regiment’s adjutant, advanced as far as the Confederate batteries along the Culpepper Road before the adjutant fell dead alongside one of the guns. But Crawford’s units had lost all semblance of order in their melee with Garnett’s Brigade. What officers remained in the Union brigade struggled to rally and reform their men in the tangled underbrush as they faced a determined Confederate counterattack by Branch’s Brigade and the fragments of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia and Garnett’s Brigade rallied by Jackson. The greatest danger, however, would come from the remainder of the Stonewall Brigade.62
Deliberately into a Fiery Furnace
Back in the bushy field, Ronald had been about to order his brigade into the woods hot on the heels of the Third Wisconsin when he learned of the collapse of his right flank and the rout of Garnett’s command. With the Twenty-Seventh Virginia swept away, the Thirty-Third Virginia became the new right flank of Ronald’s command. The three rightmost companies that Lee had drawn back at a right angle immediately opened fire on the Forty-Seventh Pennsylvania. “In a few moments the ground was dotted with their blue uniforms,” reported Lee with satisfaction.63
Since the Third Wisconsin had disappeared back into the thick woods beyond the bushy field, Ronald concluded that the threat to his right was more pressing than that from the retreating Midwesterners. He ordered a single company of skirmishers from the Second Virginia, under the command of Captain Moore, forward into the woods to guard against any renewed advance from the Third Wisconsin. He then called for a change in front, wheeling his three left regiments and the remainder of the Thirty-Third Virginia to the right to the new line established by Lee’s three rightmost companies. This new formation would bring the Stonewall Brigade out of the bushy field and stench their battle line across the western edge of the wheatfield perpendicular to their original line.64
Maj. Fredrick Holliday, Thirty-Third Virginia
Major Holliday, temporarily acting as an aide to Ronald, relayed the order to advance to the left wing of the Thirty-Third Virginia. Seeing some of the men hesitating to advance into the open wheatfield, the major yelled to the regimental color bearer, “Get over the fence and I know the men will follow!” The color bearer sprang forward over the obstacle, followed closely by the rest of the regiment. A shot rang out and the color bearer fell to the ground. The battle flag had barely touched the ground before another man leapt forward to raise the banner.65
As his company wheeled with the Thirty-Third Virginia, Captain White paused a moment to take in the vista before him. “The scene on the battle field was more like the pictures of battles than any I had ever witnessed. As we, on the left, moved forward and gained the top of a ridge before us, we could see the line of battle extending around to the extreme right, all along which the smoke rolled up in great clouds, and fire from the two sides flashed fiercely at each other. I did not have time to look long at this scene, for a little smoke, and some fire too, nearer at hand engaged my attention.”66
With the Stonewall Brigade emerging into the wheatfield, Crawford’s position was rapidly becoming untenable. Caught between Branch’s Brigade to their front and the Stonewall Brigade sweeping into their right and rear, the Union soldiers could soon be cut off and surrounded. “Nothing was left for the gallant few but to find their way to the rear across the wheat field as best they could,” recalled one of the Connecticut soldiers in Crawford’s command. “Slowly at first, more rapidly afterwards, they fell back by the way of their advance.”67
As the blue-clad soldiers began to stream back across the field, the Stonewall Brigade’s volleys cut them down like wheat before the scythe. The Union retreat through the open field “exposed his broken columns to a deadly cross-fire from Branch’s and this brigade,” reported Ronald. “Pen and thought combined cannot do this subject justice,” recalled a captain in the Fifth Connecticut struggling to convey the perilous situation. “It was as if the men had deliberately walked into a fiery furnace and I only wonder how many escaped from certain death upon that field.” A Union soldier elsewhere on the battlefield described hearing “the most tremendous volleys we had ever heard. Crash succeeded crash; the mighty thump of the shells against the forest trees was not heard for the din of the musketry.”68
Within moments, the Stonewall Brigade began to decimate the fleeing Federals. A shot from an unknown Virginian mortally wounded Colonel Donnelly, commander of the Twenty-Eight New York, just before the officer could reach the safety of the far wood line. Donnelly was taken from the field by his orderly supporting the dying man on his horse. The Fifth Connecticut’s Major E. W. Blake, who had that morning dressed in a brand-new uniform, fell dead somewhere amidst the wheat. The Forty-Seventh Pennsylvania’s Colonel Joseph F. Knipe also fell, severely wounded.69
With Union men and officers dropping by the dozen, Major Williams ordered the Fifth Virginia to charge forward into the confused Union ranks. As the Virginians’ line surged forward, Color Sergeant John M. Gabbert raced several paces in front of the regiment, holding the regimental colors in one hand and waving a sword in the other as he shouted for the men to follow him. Moments later, he tumbled to the ground, shot in both the shoulder and leg. Carried from the field, Gabbert would die of his wounds the following month.70
The Fifth Virginia smashed into the mass of fleeing men, capturing scores. A young man in the regiment chased down a fleeing Union soldier, grabbing him by the belt. Another soldier smashed his musket butt against the head of a Connecticut captain, throwing the officer to the ground and taking him captive. Colonel George D. Chapman, commanding the Fifth Connecticut, had already been briefly captured during the melee with Garnett’s Brigade in the woods, but had gotten free. As the Fifth Virginia surged forward, Chapman found himself surrounded. A handful of his men rallied and sallied forth to rescue their commander but failed to reach him before he fell into Confederate hands.71
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Edwin F. Brown, briefly in command of the Twenty-Eight New York after Colonel Donnelly suffered his mortal wound, had his left arm shattered by a musket ball. Advancing Confederates captured the grievously wounded officer and began to march him to the rear under guard. As the Union officer and his escort made their way back through the wheatfield, a private in the Fifth Connecticut, lying on the ground wounded in both legs, fired a final shot at the Confederate soldier escorting Brown. Seeing his captor fall at his feet, Brown turned and began to make his way back towards the Union side of the wheatfield. Bleeding profusely from his wounded arm, Brown collapsed short of the trees and laid there until a corporal braved the Confederate fire to run forward and drag Brown to safety. Brown spent that night in a field hospital and his arm was amputated the following day.72
Along with their prisoners, the Fifth Virginia also captured at least two and probably three stands of Union colors. Major Williams reported his command captured three Union flags and some members of the regiment later claimed all three had been captured by a single man, Corporal Narcissus F. Quarles. If this lone soldier did achieve this improbable feat, Quarles had little time to boast of his accomplishment, as he would be dead on the fields near Manassas by the end of the month. Confusingly, Ronald’s report stated the Fifth Virginia captured two colors. He claimed a third flag had been captured but was improperly taken from a private of the Stonewall Brigade by an officer from some other brigade. Jackson’s report, however, credited all three flags to the Stonewall Brigade and identified two of these colors as having belonged to the Fifth Connecticut and Twenty-Eight New York.73
Union accounts do not further clarify the matter. General Williams went out of his way to state in his report that Crawford’s Brigade retained all their colors. Crawford’s own report is silent on the issue, only stating that the Fifth Connecticut’s banner had been shot down three times. However, the Fifth Connecticut’s regimental history freely admitted that their colors were captured by the Fifth Virginia, after at least five previous color bearers had been killed or wounded. A battle account written by a member of the Third Wisconsin further confirmed that the Fifth Connecticut and Twenty-Eight New York both lost their colors.74
Perhaps causing some of the confusion, at least the Fifth Connecticut also carried a state flag, which survived the fight after its twice-wounded color bearer wrapped the flag under his bloody uniform and crawled back to safety. The third captured flag may have been a state flag belonging to the Twenty-Eight New York, which would explain why Jackson’s report mentioned three flags but then only identified two regiments. If it was from a third unit, the Forty-Sixth Pennsylvania would be a top candidate, particularly as they were on the end of the Union line closest to the Stonewall Brigade when the Fifth Virginia charged. No sources explicitly discussed the fate of the Pennsylvania regiment’s colors and it is also possible the flag was captured from a completely separate Union unit during the final Federal retreat later in the battle.75
The losses in Crawford’s three regiments were devastating. Every single field officer and adjutant in the three regiments had been killed, wounded, or captured. The Twenty-Eight New York lost all of its company officers, while the Fifth Connecticut had only eight junior officers remaining, and the Forty-Sixth Pennsylvania could muster only five company commanders after the fighting. Of the just over 1,300 men and officers who advanced across the wheatfield, 694 became casualties. Advancing Confederates had captured 370 Federal men and officers, many by the Fifth Virginia. The day’s battle was the greatest loss the Fifth Connecticut suffered during its four years of service and was one of the top three deadliest days for any Connecticut regiment during the entire war. Crawford’s official report paid a grim tribute to his men’s losses; “The vacant place of my officers and the skeleton regiments of my brigade… speak more earnestly than I can do of the part they played in that day’s content.”76
Bullets Going Past in Sheets
With three of his regiments routed and being cut to pieces by the Stonewall Brigade, Crawford still had one card left to play. His fourth and largest regiment, the Tenth Maine, had remained behind supporting artillery batteries near the center of the Union line when the rest of Crawford’s brigade went forward. Soon after Crawford unleased his men across the wheatfield, he ordered the Tenth Maine to advance into the woods north of the wheatfield. Their left resting near the Culpepper Road, the Union regiment lay in the cover of the trees while their comrades were locked in struggle on the other side of the wheatfield.77
With the rest of Crawford’s Brigade now fleeing from the field, a staff officer from Banks galloped up and ordered Colonel George L. Beal to advance his regiment to cover the retreat. Only knowing that his brigade was somewhere in front, Beal got the Tenth Maine to its feet and ordered the men forward. As the Maine men picked their way through the tangled undergrowth, the occasional Confederate artillery shell ripped through the trees overhead. One shell scored a direct hit on a tree just in front of the regiment, sending the tree crashing to the ground and forcing Companies B and D to maneuver around the obstacle.78
Col. George Beal, Commander of the Tenth Maine
The Tenth Maine emerged from the woods and spilled into the wheatfield. Mounted and riding in front of his men, Colonel Beal swung his hat over his head and called out “Give them three down-east cheers!” His men advanced with a yell, surging forward through the stubble. As they crested the small rise in the middle of the field, however, they were presented with a grim sight. The shattered remnants of their sister regiments streamed by to their right, running to escape the Confederate volleys sweeping the field. As they ran by, panicked fugitives from the decimated units called out to Beal that there were too many Confederates for the Maine men to handle. Seeing the woods in front of him swarming with ever increasing numbers of Confederates, Beal prudently ordered his men to face to the rear and march back behind the protection of the rise.79
The regiment had gotten only a few steps when Major L. H. Pelouze, one of Banks’s staff officers, galloped up and shouted for the men to halt. He screamed that Banks forbade the retreat and that they should instead face the enemy and attack. Colonel Beal ignored Pelouze and directed his men to continue their withdrawal. Infuriated, Pelouze yelled at Beal to turn his men around, punctuating his words with such animated gestures that to the enlisted men it appeared as if the staff officer was in a fist fight with their colonel. Beal waited until his men had gained a degree of protection behind the ridge slope and ordered them to face about and open fire. The sole Union unit still intact in the immediate area, the Tenth Maine would stand and sacrifice itself to gain time for the rest of its brigade to reach safety.80
Confederate fire began to rip through the regiment even before it halted. Sergeant John M. Marston of Company F, a former English marine acting as the left general guide on the flank of the regiment, was one of the first to fall. Captain Andrew C. Cloudman, working to properly align his Company E, dropped dead as a musket ball smashed through his skull. Within moments, the unheeded Major Pelouze fell wounded as well. As each man successively got into position, they opened fire without waiting for orders. A Maine veteran recalled “the bright sunset dazzling our eyes and adding another drop to our bucketful of disadvantages” as the sun set behind the trees directly in front of the Union regiment. From the growing shadows, the blaze of muskets marked the Confederate positions.81
“Their bullets began to fly and our line began to wilt in a way none of us ever knew before or since,” recounted the unit’s adjutant Lieutenant John M. Gould. There were so many wounded men withering in agony that “it looked as if we had a crowd of howling dervishes dancing and kicking around in our ranks.” Seeking what cover they could, some of the Federals dropped to their knees to load and fire, while others hugged the ground on their stomachs. The single regiment was absorbing the fire of more than three Confederate brigades, with the Stonewall Brigade enfilading their right flank and the woods to their front swarming with Branch’s Brigade and rallied squads from the Twenty-Seventh Virginia and Garnett’s Brigade. Confederate bullets seemed, to Lieutenant Gould, to be “going past in sheets, all around and above us.”82
Finally, Beal spotted Union skirmishers coming up at a run to the right of the Tenth Maine. Behind them, about 300 yards away he could make out a line of fresh Federal regiments. His men falling all around him, Beal shouted for his men to retreat. “The carnage in our ranks during the few seconds preceding this order,” recounted Gould, “was terrible and altogether beyond description. There were huge gaps in our lines – more places for bullets to go through, it is true – yet it seemed as if the rebels were cooling down, and taking deliberate aim now, and of course they were less annoyed from our fire, as our numbers decreased.”83
Survivors of the Tenth Maine posing on the battlefield soon after the fighting. Note the dead horse on the right.
Over the din of battle, not all the men heard the order to retreat, and the Tenth Maine’s formation broke up as they pulled back towards the safety of the woods. As their officers worked to keep their men together, the Maine soldiers generally gathered around their colors. By this point in the battle, the banner was held aloft by a corporal, who had taken the flag after the color sergeant fell wounded. The entirety of the rest of the color guard lay dead or wounded on the field alongside many of their comrades.84
Afterwards, the Maine men could not agree on how long they had been caught in the maelstrom of the wheatfield. Beal’s report stated they had been in the field around 30 minutes, but some men said it had been as little as five minutes. Some men had only fired five or six cartridges and few had used up more than the 20 rounds held in the top of their cartridge boxes. However brief their engagement, the stand of the Tenth Maine had bought valuable time, but at a devastating cost. The regiment had advanced with 26 officers and 435 men. Now, 39 members of the regiment lay dead or mortally wounded, with another 134 wounded and six taken prisoner.85
An Unbroken Roar
The Union troops who had advanced to the relief of the Tenth Maine were part of the other brigade in Williams’ Division, commanded by Brigadier General George H. Gordon. They had spent the battle thus far in reserve near the pretty white cottage and picket fence of the Brown Farm, on a ridge roughly a mile west of the Culpepper Road. There, the men had broken ranks and spent the afternoon laying in the shade, napping, brewing coffee, or watching the battle unfold before them. The female and child occupants of the farm nervously asked General Gordon what they should do, repeating their question without waiting for an answer. Despite Gordon’s admonition that they should flee the area at once, they refused to leave.86
Gen. George Gordon, Union Brigade Commander
While the rest of the brigade rested, Gordon had dispatched six companies of the Third Wisconsin forward as skirmishers into the woods on the other side of Cedar Run. These men would soon face the Stonewall Brigade alone in the bushy field. Fearing possible movement by Confederate cavalry around the Union right flank, Colonel Silas F. Colgrove of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana dispatched two companies of his regiment to a hill about a half mile away which offered a clear view of the surrounding area. These men would never be engaged and, in the panic of the ultimate Union withdrawal, they would be forgotten. The orphaned companies would only rejoin their regiment late that night, after having taken a circuitous route to avoid encountering the advancing Confederates.87
As he prepared to send Crawford’s Brigade forward at around 5 PM, General Williams had sent word to Gordon that he should be prepared to support Crawford’s attack if necessary. Williams told Gordon to watch him closely and, should Gordon see him signal by waving his handkerchief, Gordon should advance with his whole brigade. Gordon reformed his men, establishing his battle line near the Brown Farm with the Twenty-Seventh Indiana on the right, the Second Massachusetts on the left, and the remaining companies of the Third Wisconsin in the center. Gordon kept his field glasses locked on Williams as the sound of Crawford’s assault grew to a crescendo. To the men of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana, the musketry here at Cedar Mountain sounded “unusually energetic and terrifying.”88
As the sounds of fighting swelled, Gordon became increasingly impatient. He put down his field glass briefly at around 6 PM when a messenger rode up from Banks with orders to dispatch the Second Massachusetts to support the Union center. Gordon promptly gave the order and the regiment had just begun to march off to the left when one of Williams’ aides galloped up. “General Williams directs you to move your whole command to the support of General Crawford,” relayed the aide. Reflecting later, Gordon judged that he had likely missed Williams’ signal during the time he was dealing with Banks’s order.89
Perhaps because he was impatient to get into the fight or perhaps because he was embarrassed to have missed his cue, Gordon decided to advance with all possible speed. “Forward, double-quick!” came the order and his men surged forward, running down the slope of the hill and splashing through Cedar Run. On the opposite bank the ground rose rapidly into the thick woods which separated them from the wheatfield. Broken with ravines, ledges of rock, and loose stones, the men struggled to get through the woods just as much as the Third Wisconsin and Crawford’s men had earlier. “Trees and low bushes stand thick, with fallen tops and limbs and a tangle of vines and briars in many places, next to impenetrable,” recalled an Indiana soldier.90
Officers were soon urging Gordon to slow the advance, warning him that the men could not keep up this pace for much longer. The distance from the Brown Farm to the edge of the wheatfield was a bit over three quarters of a mile, 400 yards of which was through the woods. One of the officers judged the fact that the men were able to cover this distance “all at a double quick, with any one able to stand on his feet at the end of it is more than incredible – it is miraculous.” Ahead, however, Gordon could see “a thick smoke curling through the tree-tops, as it rose in clouds from corn and wheat fields, marked the place to which we were ordered—the place where the narrow valley was strewn with dead.”91
Panting and out of breath as they ran through the trees, the Twenty-Seventh Indiana abruptly stumbled upon a few scattered Confederates. These were the members of Captain Moore’s Company I of the Second Virginia, dispatched as skirmishers in the woods while the remainder of the brigade wheeled into the flank of Crawford’s retreating columns. The thick underbrush meant that the Union regiment was almost on top of Moore’s position before the Federals discovered his presence. Moore shouted for his men to fire, causing several Hoosiers to fall amidst the brush. The Federal regiment recoiled, retiring briefly in the face of an enemy whose strength they could not determine. But soon they pushed on, driving Moore’s men back towards the rest of the Stonewall Brigade.92
Capt. Moses O’Brien, Third Wisconsin
About 300 yards into the woods, Gordon’s men stumbled upon the rest of the Third Wisconsin. Most of the six companies which had clashed with the Stonewall Brigade had reformed near Cedar Run, passing around the flank of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana and rejoining the Third Wisconsin as Gordon’s Brigade sprinted by. Most of Company D and I, along with some men from Company F, C, and H, however, had been rallied in the woods by the wounded Captain O’Brien. He had led them down the wood lane a short distance to the cover of a little ravine. There, as the men reformed, a soldier helped O’Brien bind his wounded thigh with a handkerchief. Blood had run down the officer’s leg and filled his shoe, but O’Brien refused to head to the rear. As Gordon’s line passed through the woods, Colonel Ruger ordered O’Brien’s small band back into the ranks. Their fight was not yet over.93
“Red in the face, panting for breath, almost ready to drop down with heat and fatigue,” Gordon’s men finally reached the edge of the wheatfield. Gordon’s line had become disorganized and scattered by the run through the woods, with portions of the regiments lagging and many men still making their way forward to the new battle line. The brigade emerged into the northwestern corner of the wheatfield, the Twenty-Seventh Indiana’s right flank near where the wheatfield gave way to the bushy field and the Second Massachusetts about 300 yards from the now rapidly retreating Tenth Maine.94
About 400 yards away, Gordon could make out heavy Confederate battle lines emerging from the trees into the wheatfield. These were Branch’s men, along with the soldiers rallied by Jackson and a freshly arrived brigade under Brigadier General James J. Archer. The Stonewall Brigade was to Gordon’s left, likely opposite the Twenty-Seventh Indiana. This unit reported that a Virginia regiment was to their immediate front, almost certainly one of Ronald’s regiments, while fire the Hoosiers took from the bushy field probably also came from members of the Stonewall Brigade.95
In his report, Ronald does not specify how he repositioned his line to deal with Gordon’s advance, as leaving it in the position from which they engaged Crawford would have allowed Gordon to flank the Stonewall Brigade. Ronald almost certainly drew his line back to the left so that they were once again parallel with the rest of the Confederate line. Gardner noted that his Fourth Virginia had become somewhat scattered while engaging Crawford and needed to fall back a short distance and reform, while in the Fifth Virginia, the regimental adjutant had to rally the left wing of the regiment to the colors. Farther to the right, firing had died down near the Thirty-Third Virginia, so Lee pulled his unit back 100 yards to collect men who had become “somewhat scattered in the eagerness of the fight” with Crawford’s regiments. After rallying his men and gathering parts of some other regiments, Lee advanced to rejoin Ronald and the rest of the Stonewall Brigade as they opened fire on Gordon’s newly arrived troops.96
Col. George Andrews, Second Massachusetts Commander
One of the first volleys from the Stonewall Brigade smashed into the Twenty-Seventh Indiana and “seemed to mow down a dozen or so men” of the color company. The Twenty-Seventh Indiana and the Third Wisconsin immediately opened fire, but Gordon heard only silence from the left end of his line. Riding over, he discovered that the Second Massachusetts had veered farther to the left, creating a gap between them and the Third Wisconsin. “Why don’t you order your men to fire?” Gordon shouted to Colonel George L. Andrews, commander of the Massachusetts unit. “Don’t see anything to fire at,” replied Andrews. A likely frustrated Gordon ordered Andrews to move his regiment by the right flank and close the gap with the Third Wisconsin, telling him “You will soon find enough to fire at.”97
Soon the Second Massachusetts, firing by files, added their muskets to the fire of their sister regiments. The fire now, noted a member of the Bay State regiment, became “an unbroken roar.” “There was no intermission,” observed Gordon, “the crackling of musketry was incessant.” Lieutenant Colonel Lee noted that the men of his Thirty-Third Virginia kept firing until they had emptied their cartridge boxes and stated, “their aim was steady and their fire effective, inflicting under my own eye severe loss upon the enemy”. The Confederate fire soon began to show its effect on the line of blue. A bullet struck Colonel Andrew’s horse in the shoulder, followed soon after by another ball in the neck. The wounded horse reared, sending Andrews flying back into the branches and underbrush. In the Third Wisconsin, Captain O’Brien remained at the head of his company despite the blood pouring down his leg from the wound he had suffered in the bushy field. Now, a second bullet struck his body, dropping the officer for a second time. He would spend that night laying alone on the field in agony before being found by a Union burial party the next day. O’Brien would die later that day on the porch of a Culpepper hotel requisitioned as a hospital.98
With his regiment facing a Confederate force many times larger, Colonel Andrews received a puzzling order from Banks. A staff officer rode up to Andrews and ordered him to charge the Second Massachusetts across the wheatfield. A stunned Andrews replied “Why, it will be the destruction of the regiment, and will do no good!” The staff officer simply shrugged. Andrews relayed the order to Gordon, who told him to simply ignore it. Later it came to light that the order was delivered in error, as Banks believed the Second Massachusetts was located near the Union center, where he had ordered it dispatched just before Gordon advanced.99
Gordon, however, was also soon in receipt of a puzzling order from Banks. A member of the commanding general’s staff came up to Gordon and stated, “General Banks wishes you to charge across that field.” What field?” asked an incredulous Gordon. “I don’t know,” replied the man, “I supposed this field.” “Well sir,” shot back Gordon, “‘suppose’ ‘won’t do at such a time as this. Go back to General Banks and get explicit instructions as to what field he wishes me to charge over.”100
Meanwhile, the Twenty-Seventh Indiana spotted large bodies of troops maneuvering in the bushy field past their right flank. In the dying evening light, the uniforms of these soldiers appeared to be blue. “We are firing upon our own men!” shouted some of the Hoosiers. Colgrove relayed the concern to Gordon and asked whether he should cease fire. “We have no men there,” replied the general, “the enemy is there. Order your men to open fire upon him.” Seeing Colgrove was still hesitant least he fire on friendly troops, Gordon directed his horse past the end of Colgrove’s line. Gordon had just reached the edge of the bushy field when he “received a fire that settled the matter at once.”101
The fire likely came from portions of the Stonewall Brigade advancing in the bushy field. From their position on the right flank of Gordon’s Brigade, the Virginians poured fire into the Twenty-Seventh Indiana. Colgrove rode back and forth on his horse, “apparently oblivious of the storm of bullets that hissed about him.” Part of the regiment began to drift back into the cover of the trees. “No regiment could stand the fierce fire that poured in from front and flank,” observed a Wisconsin soldier watching from farther down the line. “It gave way.”102
With his regiment falling back through the trees, Colgrove tried desperately to halt his men. The dense brush and roar of battle, however, meant that no member of the regiment could see or hear more than ten of his comrades at a time. It was only upon reaching a small clearing about 150-200 yards back that Colgrove was able to rally and reform his men. His command “Forward!” was met with cheers. The colonel paused his regiment just before they returned to the fence line to allow the men to catch their breath and adjust the battle line. Then they plunged right back into the maelstrom.103
Annihilation or Retreat
Gordon’s small brigade could only hold back the Confederate tide for so long as darkness began to rapidly overtake the battlefield. The Confederate battle line had emerged from the trees into the wheatfield, where, in the words of a member of the Second Massachusetts, they were “received with a savage fire.” The Confederates, however, outnumbered Gordon’s men by several orders of magnitude and the same Massachusetts soldier grimly noted that the blue-clad “line is thinning fast.” From the perspective of a member of the newly-rallied Twenty-Seventh Indiana, the “enemy was pouring upon us such a deluge of missiles,” but, despite their numerical advantage, the Confederates ominously were not advancing to drive back the Federal line.104
Second Lieutenant Willian Van Arsdol was in his position several paces behind the rear rank of his Company A of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana when he happened to glance off to the right, past the flank of his regiment. To his horror, he spotted a heavy column of Confederate regiments advancing rapidly towards the Union rear. The junior officer shouted a warning to his men and ordered them to open fire on this new threat. He also sent urgent word to Colonel Colgrove, who galloped over to investigate.105
These gray-clad ranks belonged to the brigade commanded by Brigadier General William D. Pender, newly arrived on the field and moving up on the left flank of the Stonewall Brigade. Advancing in a column of companies along the western edge of the bushy field, the brigade suddenly wheeled each company simultaneously to the right to throw four full regiments against the flank of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana. By the time Colgrove rode up, Pender’s line was a mere 20 paces from the Union flank. Colgrove shouted for Van Arsdol’s Company A and the adjacent Company D to change their front to meet the Confederate onslaught.106
The two companies were still halfway through this maneuver when Pender’s advancing line suddenly “blazed a withering volley into the faces of our men on the right,” recalled one of the Indiana soldiers. “Following the volley they charged literally into the midst of [the flank companies] and, at the point of the bayonet, demanded their surrender.” A bullet hit Colgrove’s horse and a lock of the colonel’s hair was seared off by a ball grazing his scalp. Still more bullets “ventilated his clothing in different places.” All around the officer, his men stood and fired at the charging Confederates at a distance of less than two yards.107
In front of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana, the Stonewall Brigade joined in Pender’s advance in what Ronald described as “a short but very vigorous contest… here the enemy’s loss was very heavy.” The right flank of Gordon’s Brigade stood little chance against the combined assault of two southern brigades. Soldiers of Colgrove’s crumbling right flank “fired from behind trees until… their surrender was demanded and when fired at in return,” their foes were so close that “the powder burned their faces and singed their hair.” Gordon ordered the left wing of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana to withdraw before it too was crushed by the Confederate steamroller.108
The withdrawal of the Indiana regiment left their comrades in the Third Wisconsin little choice but to follow or risk capture. They too began retreating through the woods. A handful attempted to rally and make a stand among the trees, but they were rapidly overrun, and several taken prisoner. With its sister regiments melting away, the Second Massachusetts suddenly found itself alone with the Stonewall Brigade and Pender’s men sweeping towards their right flank.109
View of the battlefield looking east, with Slaughter Mountain in the background. Note the freshly dug graves amidst the men standing in the midground.
“A heavy fire comes down on the right flank,” recounted a Massachusetts soldier. “The bullets come like hail.” The first Confederate volley obliterated Company K, the right flank company of the regiment, killing the company’s captain and 20 of the men instantly. As the Confederate line rolled forward, 15 members of Company K were captured. Major James Savage, mounted and overseeing the right wing of the regiment, found himself “in the very face of this deadly blast.” In the initial Confederate volley, one round struck the major’s horse and another sent Savage tumbling to the ground, severely wounded. Captain Henry S. Russel ran to the fallen major and shielded him with his body. The advancing Confederates would capture both men, but Savage would soon perish from his wounds. It was, observed Gordon as he watched his final regiment cut down, a “dreadful and remorseless fire, that came like a whirlwind.”110
“The line shrivels up,” observed the chaplain of the Second Massachusetts. “It is a question of annihilation or retreat.” With 35% of the regiment killed or wounded and only seven of the regiment’s 23 officers remaining alive and uninjured, Colonel Andrews ordered the Second Massachusetts to withdrawal through the woods. Despite the destruction of their right flank, the Massachusetts unit fell back in good order, the Confederates hot on their heels. They soon encountered Gordon, who had rallied 30-50 men from the Third Wisconsin and Twenty-Seventh Indiana. Together, the remnants of Gordon’s Brigade formed a shaky battle line just to the rear of the Brown Farm, where Banks was rallying his broken troops.111
Men Never Behaved Better in Battle
While the Stonewall Brigade, the rest of Jackson’s Division, and their reenforcing brigades had swept Williams’ Division from the wheatfield, Confederate forces east of the Culpepper Road had similarly forced the withdrawal of Union forces in the cornfield. A brief, futile charge by four companies of the First Pennsylvania Reserve Cavalry near the Culpepper Road failed to stem the tide. The grey-clad battle lines swept through the woods beyond the wheatfield, capturing a number of prisoners. Captain Phillip F. Frazier of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia personally captured a Union captain, a sergeant, and two privates and, without any other guard, marched the men to the rear where he presented them to Jackson.112
The woods, growing darker by the minute as it was now past 7 PM, disorganized the advancing Confederates just as much it had earlier challenged the movements of Crawford and Gordon’s troops. The Second, Fifth, and Fourth Virginia pushed on in “hot pursuit” of the retreating Federals until they were ordered to halt on a hill covered by a cornfield. Here, they were overtaken by the Thirty-Third Virginia, which pushed further on. The Fourth Virginia deployed skirmishers forward some 200-300 yards, as fresh Confederate brigades surged by to take up the pursuit. Jackson hoped to drive the defeated Federals all the way to Culpepper by morning.113
These newly-arrived troops pushed through the dimming twilight along the Culpepper Road. They splashed through Cedar Run and into a stand of trees surrounding a small church just west of the road. Emerging from the trees, the Confederate vanguard encountered newly arrived Union brigades from Brigadier General James B. Ricketts’s division, which had established a line across the road roughly a mile and a half from the battlefield. Behind Ricketts’s line, which stretched from near the Brown Farm to the Hudson Farm east of the Culpepper Road, Banks cobbled together a second piecemeal line from rallied soldiers of his command. Concealed by the long shadows cast by the trees and fading light, Confederate batteries unlimbered their guns and let loose with canister and case shot on a Federal battery in the process of deploying near the Hudson Farm. Union artillery roared back in response, ultimately driving back the southern guns after a heated 15-minute exchange. Faced with a fresh Union position and with the growing darkness making it difficult to identify friendly units, Jackson called off the pursuit and pulled back his troops.114
The exhausted men of the Stonewall Brigade bivouacked that night just past the cornfield, where the Union artillery had been positioned for most of the fighting. Both side’s guns kept up the cannonade all night. “We could see the flash of our cannon, sometimes the bright track of the shell, and then the bursting of it,” wrote Captain White in the Thirty-Third Virginia. One or two Union shells fell within the Stonewall Brigade’s camp, prompting some of the men to move their bedrolls a short distance before dozing off for the rest of the night.115
Not all the men were asleep, however. From the Twenty-Seventh Virginia, Lieutenant Edgar decided to explore the battlefield along with Sergeant Charles L. Davis, Private John B. Patton, and Color Sergeant William H. Powell. “Curiosity leads us further than discretion dictates,” Edgar wryly observed afterwards. A bright summer moon illuminated the shattered landscape, littered with the refuse of battle. Patton, a physician before the war and currently detailed to assist the regimental surgeon, had discovered a medical case and was looting it for supplies, while Edgar was chasing after two loose horses, and Powell was absorbed with some trophy of his own. Davis, the only one of the four men carrying a loaded musket, was wandering a few paces ahead when suddenly he stumbled in the dark upon a Federal picket post. The dimly visible Union soldiers called out for Davis to surrender.116
“You are the men to surrender!” bluffed Davis. “You are our prisoners. Throw down your arms.” Catching on to the ruse, Edgar yelled out to non-existent additional soldiers, “Come up boys, all of you, quick, we have some prisoners.” A Union sergeant and twelve privates emerged from the darkness and threw down their weapons in the face of what they believed to be superior numbers. The group of “meek looking Yankees” were much chagrined when they discovered they had been captured by just four men, armed only with a single loaded musket, an unloaded musket, Edgar’s sword, and the Twenty-Seventh Virginia’s battle flag. “It is not strange they would be deceived, as the moon gave a dim light, and the men were raw recruits,” recalled Edgar, “It is very evident that those men will never again lose sight of discretion.” Edgar’s small party marched their prisoners to the camp of the Fourth Virginia, where they turned the captives over to the guard.117
By dawn, reinforcements had swelled the Union force, causing Jackson to call off any further advance on Culpepper Court House. His command spent the day tending to their wounded, burying the dead, and collecting some 5,300 muskets from the battlefield. On August 11, Union burial parties visited the battlefield under a flag of truce. They found a shattered landscape, still covered with the dead and dying. In the wheatfield and woods where Gordon’s Brigade had fought, “there were ghastly piles of dead, with here and there a living sufferer, who had drawn his painful breath through more than thirty-six hours of exposure.” Near the former position of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana, the trees were “cut and scored” with musket balls, so thick that one man’s palm could cover seven bullet holes.118
Battlefield marker for the Stonewall Brigade, located roughly where they entered the bushy field
The Stonewall Brigade had played a critical role in turning a possible Confederate defeat into victory. Although the Twenty-Seventh Virginia had been routed along with Garnett’s Brigade, the remainder of the brigade had been at exactly the right place at the right time to sweep aside the Third Wisconsin and get into the rear of Crawford’s Brigade. They then joined with Branch’s Brigade and Archer’s Brigade to hold Gordon’s attention long enough for Pender’s attack to crush the Union right flank. Colonel Taliaferro, as acting division commander, stated in his report that the Stonewall Brigade “fully sustained its ancient reputation.” Ronald wrote of his command that “men never behaved better in battle.”119
Despite being pivotal to the outcome of the fighting, the Stonewall Brigade suffered relatively minimal casualties. Their brigade commander, General Winder, and ten other men lay dead. Another 48 members of the brigade had been wounded, well over half of which were from the Fifth Virginia and Thirty-Third Virginia. The Twenty-Seventh Virginia, which was only briefly engaged before being routed, suffered just four casualties. Among the wounded was Major Holliday of the Thirty-Third Virginia, who had served as a volunteer aide to Ronald. A ball severely wounded his right arm early in the engagement. A surgeon would soon remove his arm and he would never return to active duty with his regiment.120
Soon after the battle, Captain White of the Thirty-Third Virginia wrote a letter home to his family. “We have met the boastful outlaw, Pope, and whipped him thoroughly, and this, I trust will discourage the Yankees still more, and fill our hearts with more lively hope and confidence in God.” Pope, however, was not yet defeated and Jackson would face him again before August drew to a close. The Stonewall Brigade would be in the thick of the fighting for what would become one of the storied unit’s deadliest engagements. Within weeks Captain White, and many other members of the Stonewall Brigade, would be lying dead on the fields of Manassas.121
For all the attention placed during the Civil War on protecting one’s own battle flag and capturing those of the enemy, it can be surprisingly difficult for modern researchers to track down specifics regarding the fate of a unit’s colors. Accounts of the capture of a regiment’s flag are often uncorroborated and lack details or a whole body of modern secondary sources will all repeat the same single mistaken original source. Particularly when a unit is as celebrated as the Stonewall Brigade, there may be a tendency for opposing units to want to believe they have captured the famous unit’s colors. While researching the role of the Stonewall Brigade at the Battle of Gettysburg, readers will encounter three separate claims of flags belonging to the brigade being captured during the fighting. A closer examination of the historical record, however, provides compelling evidence that all of these claims are false. The Stonewall Brigade most likely retreated to Virginia bearing all the same colors with which they marched into Gettysburg on July 1, 1863.
Capture of Brigade Colors by the Sixtieth New York
In his official after-action report, Brigadier General John W. Geary, commander of the Second Division of the Union XII Corps, reported that the Sixtieth New York Volunteers of his command captured “the brigade colors of the Stonewall Brigade”, along with the battle flag of an unidentified Virginia regiment.1 The day after the battle, XII Corps commander Major General Henry W. Slocum forwarded to his superiors the two flags captured by the Sixtieth New York. He wrote, “One was borne by the ‘Stonewall Brigade,’ and is represented as the brigade flag.”2
Although from later in the war, this sketch depicts Union soldiers posing with captured battle flags.
Although Stonewall Brigade commander Brigadier General James A. Walker made no mention of losing a brigade flag in his official report, Geary’s claim initially seems at least plausible upon examination of the actions of the Sixtieth New York.3 The Sixtieth New York, part of the brigade commanded by Brigadier General George S. Greene, was among those units who held the line of Federal breastworks on Culp’s Hill during the attacks by the Stonewall Brigade on July 3. Although they do not appear to have been in the trenches during the Stonewall Brigade’s attack on this portion of the line around 10 a.m., the Sixtieth was responsible for dispatching the skirmishers who advanced following the failure of the Stonewall Brigade’s attack. Members of this regiment, therefore, would have been among the first Union units to advance over the ground where the Stonewall Brigade made its attack and could plausibly have recovered the battle flag among the Confederate dead and wounded.4
While plausible, however, this theory appears to be incorrect. In the official report submitted by the Sixtieth New York’s commander, Colonel Abel Godard, he specified that around nine in the evening on July 2, he ordered a portion of his regiment forward against a stalled Confederate attack. This advance surrounded roughly fifty Confederates and resulted in the capture of both a brigade flag and a regimental banner.5 Godard does not make any claims that the flags belonged to the Stonewall Brigade, but they are certainly the same flags discussed by Geary and Slocum.
As the Stonewall Brigade did not participate in the fighting on Culp’s Hill on July 2, it is impossible for the flag captured by the Sixtieth New York to have belonged to the brigade. After having spent the day skirmishing with Union cavalry on the extreme Confederate left flank, the Stonewall Brigade only moved into position on Culp’s Hill around two or three in the morning on July 3.6 The regimental history of the Sixtieth New York, furthermore, clarifies that the captured brigade flag belonged to the brigade of Virginians commanded by Brigadier General John M. Jones, whose assault of July 2 was directly against the position held by the Sixtieth New York.7 Although neither Jones nor any of his subordinate commanders mentioned losing multiple flags during their attack, it would not be uncommon for commanders to omit such potentially embarrassing news from their official battle accounts.8
Capture of Fourth Virginia Colors by the Fourteenth Connecticut
Flag of the Fourth Virginia, Issued September 30, 1863 and Captured at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House
The next claim to consider is that the battle flag of the Fourth Virginia was captured on July 3 by the Fourteenth Connecticut Volunteers. Jeffry D. Wert, in his excellent dual history of the Stonewall Brigade and the Iron Brigade, wrote that after the failure of the final Confederate assault on Culp’s Hill, the Fourteenth Connecticut rushed forward in a counterattack as the Confederates tried to withdraw. Unable to retreat quickly enough, 61 men of the Fourth Virginia were surrounded and captured by the Fourteenth Connecticut, along with the Fourth’s regimental colors.9
Wert’s narrative of this incident is largely based on after-action reports from the Official Records. Major William Terry, commander of the Fourth Virginia, recounted how a portion of his regiment was captured at the conclusion of the final Confederate assault, indicating that 61 members of his regiment were missing after the engagement.10 Likewise, Major Theodore G. Ellis of the Fourteenth Connecticut recounted his unit’s capture of an impressive five stands of regimental colors on July 3. Included in these, he wrote, were the colors of the Fourth Virginia, which were turned over to the provost guard after the battle.11
Major Ellis, however, was mistaken. The Fourteenth Connecticut, part of the Union II Corps, did not fight on Culp’s Hill on July 3. Rather, they were among those who repelled Pickett’s Charge, in which the Stonewall Brigade and the Fourth Virginia did not participate. The other four colors captured by the Fourteenth Connecticut belonged to Tennessee and North Carolina units of Pettigrew’s Division who participated in the assault.12 If the flag captured by the Fourteenth indeed belonged to a Virginia regiment, it was more likely one of Pickett’s Virginia regiments, rather than the Stonewall Brigade.
Capture of Fourth Virginia Colors by the Seventh Ohio
Perhaps because a portion of the regiment was forced to surrender on the slope of Culp’s Hill, there is a second Federal regiment that also reportedly captured the Fourth Virginia’s flag at Gettysburg. Renowned Gettysburg historian Harry W. Pfanz wrote in his book Gettysburg: Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill that Corporal John Pollack of the Seventh Ohio captured the Fourth Virginia’s battle flag when part of that unit was cut off after their final attack on July 3.13 This claim is repeated in secondary sources elsewhere, citing Pfanz as their source for the flag’s capture.14
Col. William R. Creighton, Seventh Ohio
As discussed above, Wert’s claim that the Fourteenth Connecticut was responsible for the capture of portions of the Fourth Virginia is almost certainly incorrect and the weight of evidence indicates that the Seventh Ohio was actually the primary unit to accept the surrender of the Virginians. Colonel William R. Creighton of the Seventh Ohio reported capturing 78 Confederates at around 11 a.m. on July 315. A later account by one of Creighton’s soldiers, Sergeant Lawrence Wilson of Company D, indicated that many of these men were from the Fourth Virginia.16. Union descriptions of the surrender match those of soldiers of the Stonewall Brigade, corroborating that the Seventh Ohio was likely the unit to whom members of the Fourth Virginia turned over their arms.17
However, neither Creighton nor Wilson’s accounts make any claims of capturing a flag in connection with the surrender of the members of the Stonewall Brigade.18 Rather, Creighton wrote that Corporal John Pollock of Company H advanced over the entrenchments and captured the flag of the Fourteenth Virginia a full day later, early on the morning of July 4.19Division commander Geary’s account also lists the flag of the Fourteenth Virginia as among the three captured by his command, the other two being the brigade standard and Virginia regimental colors captured by the Sixtieth New York and discussed above.20 It is possible Creighton misidentified the flag, as the Fourteenth Virginia was part of Brigadier General Lewis Armistead’s brigade and participated in Pickett’s Charge rather than the fighting on Culp’s Hill.21. Since Creighton clearly make a mistake in his report, possibly due to battle damage to the banner, we cannot positively rule out the possibility that Pollack found the fallen colors of the Fourth Virginia from the slopes of Culp’s Hill on July 4, but this possibility is no more likely than many other regiments. Perhaps it actually belonged to the Forty-Fourth Virginia, part of Jones’ Brigade or the Fourteenth Louisiana, part of Nicholl’s Brigade, both of which were also engaged on Culp’s Hill. The available evidence does, however, strongly indicate that the Seventh Ohio most likely did not capture the Fourth Virginia’s battle standard during the fighting on July 3 as described by Pfanz.
Post-Gettysburg Colors
Requisition for a New Battle Flag for the Fourth Virginia
Although the Stonewall Brigade likely marched away from Gettysburg still carrying the flags it bore at the start of the campaign, these banners would only be used a short time further. The Stonewall Brigade and the rest of Johnson’s Divisions received new battle flags from the Richmond Depot in September 1863.22 These colors included the battle honor for Gettysburg alongside the Stonewall Brigade’s many previous clashes. Along the papers in the service record of the Fourth Virginia’s commander at Gettysburg, Major William Terry, is the requisition form for the Fourth Virginia’s new battle flag, issued to the regiment on September 30, 1863. Similar requests survive for a flag for the Thirty-Third Virginia (issued August 31, 1863) and the Twenty-Seventh Virginia (issued September 30, 1863).23 The flag requested by Terry and pictured above, as well as the post-Gettysburg issue flag of the Second Virginia and a fragment from the post-Gettysburg flag of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia, all now reside in the collection of the American Civil War Museum.24 The flag likely issued to the Fifth Virginia after Gettysburg was once in the Collection of the State Historical Society of Delaware, but has sadly since disappeared.25
The dark air lay heavy and humid as Lieutenant Alfred M. Edgar of Company E of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia picked his way cautiously around the boulders and trees littering the southeastern slope of Culp’s Hill. The blazing heat of July 2 had lessened somewhat after the sun dipped below the western horizon, but the humidity remained, spreading a heavy mist through the low ground along Rock Creek at the base of the heights. A few hours after midnight on July 3, Edgar and 75 men from the Stonewall Brigade went forward as pickets while the rest of the brigade caught a few brief moments of rest. Although the misty air muffled the air somewhat, as Edgar and his men made their way forward, they could plainly hear the rattling of artillery pieces being rolled into place and the tramp of Union soldiers in great numbers moving into position for the coming day’s fight.1
Lt. Alfred M. Edgar, Co. E of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia
Edgar dropped to his stomach and began carefully crawling forward. Undetected, he made his way to within hearing distance of the Union picket line and thought he heard a Union officer command “fall in the Seventh Massachusetts.” More likely, he actually heard an officer of the Second Massachusetts, whose skirmishers had sparred with the Stonewall Brigade on the slopes of Wolf’s Hill the previous morning. Company F of the Second Massachusetts had been deployed on a mission identical to Edgar’s own; feel for the enemy position and report back. In the confused blackness, two members of the Twenty-Third Virginia, part of Steuart’s Brigade, stumbled into the Massachusetts men’s picket line and one was captured. The Second Massachusetts skirmishers took 23 prisoners that night, including a captain, but Edgar and his men escaped safely. He sought a superior officer to relay what his pickets had learned but could not locate one in the darkness.2
The Massachusetts soldiers Edgar encountered had arrived at Culp’s Hill late in the morning of July 2 after Union commander George G. Meade recalled the XII Corps and V Corps from their extended position east of Wolf’s Hill. Williams’ Division, including the Second Massachusetts, joined the other XII Corps division around Culp’s Hill. Around this time, Major General Henry W. Slocum was placed in command of the entire Union right flank and devolved command of XII Corps to Brigadier General Alpheus S. Williams. The commander of the brigade containing the Second Massachusetts, Brigadier General Thomas H. Ruger, became acting commander of Williams’ Division and Colonel Silas Colgrove, whose Twenty-Seventh Indiana had also skirmished with the Stonewall Brigade early on July 2, took over command of Ruger’s Brigade. The division took up positions on Culp’s Hill to the right of the XII Corps division led by Brigadier General John W. Geary.
Lying southeast of the town of Gettysburg, the summit of Culp’s Hill rises some 180 feet above Rock Creek, which runs along the hill’s eastern base. About 400 yards south of the hill’s peak lies a second summit, almost 100 feet lower than the peak. This lower spur is separated from the main summit by a narrow saddle that cuts across the hill from east to west. In 1863 heavy oak and chestnut timber covered the hill’s slopes, while the ground beneath was clear and free of undergrowth. The steep terrain was further broken by numerous rocky outcroppings and huge boulders, which one Union soldier described as looking like “hundreds of sleeping elephants” scattered amidst the trees.3
When the XII Corps arrived on Culp’s Hill on July 2, Geary called together his brigade commanders and sought his subordinates’ opinion regarding the construction of breastworks. The general stated that he himself did not favor the idea as he believed “it unfitted men for fighting without them.” One of Geary’s brigade commanders, former regular U.S. Army officer Brigadier General George S. Greene, replied that preserving the lives of his men was more important to him than any theory and that his brigade would entrench regardless of orders.4
Union Breastworks on Culp’s Hill
Thus, up and down the Union line, the men spent much of July 2 improving their positions. A captain in one of Greene’s regiments, the Sixtieth New York, recalled the construction process; “Right and left the men felled the trees and blocked them up into a close log fence. Piles of cordwood which lay nearby were quickly appropriated. The sticks, set slanting on end against the outer face of the logs, made excellent battening…. Fortunate regiments, which had spades and picks, strengthened their work with earth.” Where they could, soldiers adjusted their lines to incorporate the hill’s rocks and boulders. The portion of Greene’s line held by the One Hundred and Forty-Ninth New York, for instance, crowned a low escarpment that allowed the unit’s muskets to dominate the slopes to their front.5
Most of the XII Corps, however, soon left their freshly constructed fortifications. As the July 2 Confederate attack on the Union flank at Little Round Top intensified and the right flank at Culp’s Hill remained quiet, nearly the entire corps was withdrawn and sent to reinforce the opposite flank. Thus only a single brigade, Greene’s New Yorkers, remained in the corps’ breastworks when Major General Edward Johnson launched his Confederate division at the hill late on July 2. Thoroughly outnumbered, Greene was forced to draw back his right flank, allowing the Confederates of Brigadier General George H. Steuart’s brigade to overrun the XII Corps breastworks on the lower spur of Culp’s Hill. With the Stonewall Brigade still occupied by the Union cavalry on Brinkerhoff’s Ridge, however, Johnson could not exploit his gains before darkness brought an end to the fighting.6
Drive Them Out at Daylight
Throughout the night, both sides moved additional forces to Culp’s Hill in anticipation of renewed combat on July 3. Johnson ordered Brigadier General James A. Walker to march the Stonewall Brigade from its position near Brinkerhoff’s Ridge, leaving a portion of the Second Virginia to maintain pickets along the Hanover Pike. The Virginians behind on Johnson’s left, about 30 yards downhill from the captured breastworks occupied by Steuart’s men and with the brigade’s left flank resting on Rock Creek. To the right of Steuart’s Brigade, Nicholl’s Brigade and Jones’ Brigade maintained the positions halfway up the slope of the main hill that they had held at the conclusion of the previous day’s fighting. Staff officers, meanwhile, were busy bringing up additional men from Rodes’ Division and Early’s Division to add further weight to Johnson, which had been the most successful of the Second Corps’ July 2 attacks. When they arrived at around 4 a.m., Daniel’s Brigade and O’Neal’s Brigade formed to the right of the Stonewall Brigade, behind Nicholl’s and Jones’ Brigades respectively. His division in place, Johnson issued orders to renew the attack at first light, although the details of his plan went unrecorded.7
Meanwhile, the remainder of the Union XII Corps had hurried back to Culp’s Hill after darkness brought an end to the fighting around Little Round Top, only to discover a significant portion of their breastworks now in enemy hands. Greene’s men retained their line of breastworks on the eastern slope of the main hill, his left near the summit and his right ending just before the saddle separating the main hill from the spur. To the right of Greene, Geary deployed the brigade commanded by Brigadier General Thomas L. Kane at almost a right angle to Greene’s line. Geary’s right flank consisted of two regiments of Colonel Charles Candy’s brigade, while the rest of Candy’s regiments formed behind Greene as a divisional reserve.8
Ruger’s Division had approaching its former position from the south, until its skirmish line bumped into Lieutenant Edgar and the other Confederate pickets arrayed on the southern slope of the spur. On the division’s right, Colgrove’s Brigade reoccupied the vacant portion of their breastworks in McAllister’s Woods, separated from the base of Culp’s Hill by an open, marshy meadow containing Spangler’s Spring. Ruger formed the brigade led by Colonel Archibald L. McDougall near the Baltimore Pike, on high ground to the west of McAllister’s Woods. Behind them, Williams deployed much of the corps’ artillery and positioned a brigade along the Baltimore Pike to act as a corps reserve. Altogether, approximately 11,200 Union soldiers would square off with the roughly 9,600 men under Johnson’s command.9
General Slocum had directed Williams to “drive them out at daylight,” but in Williams’ opinion this order was “more easily made than executed.” As Ruger’s Division would need to cross open fields to attack the Confederate left flank on the spur, Williams instead planned for the main assault to be made by Geary’s Division, supported by feints from Ruger’s infantry and heavy artillery fire from the right of the corps. This fire would come from three batteries on Powers Hill and McAllister’s Hill, with an additional two batteries just west of the Baltimore Pike. Their muzzles directed north, these guns commanded the entire valley of Rock Creek and could enfilade any Confederate force facing Geary. The guns along the Baltimore Pike included ten smoothbore Napoleons whose canister could shred any Confederate attack coming south across the meadows towards the Pike.10
Few men slept well on the slopes of Culp’s Hill that night. One Connecticut soldier in McDougall’s Brigade recalled how his sleep was constantly interrupted by firing along the picket line. At each outbreak of firing the men would leap to their feet, officers shouting commands to form line of battle. Then, just as quickly as it started, “the pattering fire along the picket line gradually slackening, would finally die out altogether, and all… would again stench themselves out to rest, only to be rousted again shortly by a similar alarm.”11
Warmly Engaged Along My Entire Line
Just before the first faint streaks of light, hushed commands from Union officers formed dark lines of men, massed for the planned attack. As the earliest hints of dawn, sometime between 3:30 a.m. and 4 a.m. depending on the account, battery commanders gave the signal to fire and flame lept out of the barrels of almost two dozen guns. Williams had arranged for the guns to fire constantly for fifteen minutes, after which his infantry would advance. As the minutes ticked by, the guns poured forth “a most furious fire.” The Union soldiers along the Baltimore Pike watched in awe as the artillery “began its thunders, sending solid shot, shell, and cannister over the heads of the men in our infantry line, into the woods among the rebel masses.”12
With dense mist further restricting the already limited visibility, the guns fired not at any specific target, but sought to take the Confederate left of the Stonewall Brigade and Steuart’s Brigade in a crossfire. The Confederates, however, were largely protected by the captured breastworks and the reverse slope of the spur. Though Steuart called it a “terrific fire of artillery,” he noted that only his rightmost regiments, partially exposed on the lower summit of Culp’s Hill and without the protection of breastworks, were affected by the bombardment.13
After a quarter hour of thunder, the Union guns fell silent, the signal for Geary’s infantry to begin their attack. On right flank of the division, the men of one of Candy’s regiments received orders to commence firing. With the sun still below the eastern horizon, the men protested that “we can see no rebs to fire at.” Their company commander shrugged and responded, “our orders are to keep firing continually and without intermission through these trees in our front.”14
Geary would later report that his division’s attack was “most furious” and that it “staggered the enemy, by whom it was seemingly unexpected.” Hardly any of Geary’s subordinate commanders, however, made any mention in their reports or post-war histories of conducting an attack. In reality, Geary’s attack was over before it began, as, with the rumble of the last artillery shells still echoing off the hills, Johnson launched his own assault. Williams’ plan to retake the breastworks on the spur was quickly abandoned, as his corps soon had all they could handle preventing any further Confederate advances.15
Kane’s Brigade, in the center of Geary’s line, braced for the renewed Confederate attack. General Kane had been severely sick for several weeks, only rejoining his unit via ambulance the previous day. His health swiftly failed him, however, and he relinquished command to his senior subordinate, Colonel George A. Cobham of the One-Hundred and Eleventh Pennsylvania. Quickly abandoning the planned Union attack, Cobham ordered his regiments to withdrawal 50 yards to gain the protection of a ledge of rocks and a short traverse line of breastworks Greene’s men had constructed the previous day to protect their flank. The brigade’s left flank thus connected with the end of Greene’s breastworks, while the right rested on a stone wall that cut across the slope of the spur about 30 yards south of the breastworks all the way to Rock Creek. The three Pennsylvanian regiments braced for the coming Confederate attack across the saddle.16
Attack of Steuart’s Brigade on the Morning of July 3
They had only moments to wait. Steuart’s Brigade came charging out of the misty morning darkness, “yelling in their peculiar style.” Although prisoners would later explain that Steuart’s men attacked in multiple lines, to the Union soldiers it looked like a single massed column of Confederate troops bearing down on them in the dim light. Union officers shouted desperate commands and suddenly Steuart’s attack was met “at every point by the unswerving line and deadly fire.” The sudden wall of musket fire checked Steuart’s advance and drove his men behind the shelter of the saddle’s rocks and trees, from which they began to return fire.17
Firing down the slope at Steuart’s lines on the opposite side of the saddle, some of Kane’s men failed to adjust their aim to account for firing downhill, their shots thus passing harmlessly over their targets. The colonel of a Pennsylvania regiment noticed that each volley by his men was marked with a corresponding shower of clipped leaves from the branches above the Confederate lines. He began pacing up and down his line, ordering his men to aim for the rebels’ knees to better account for the change in elevation.18
Twenty minutes after they had ceased firing, the Union artillery opened up again, hurling shot and shell towards the left flank of Steuart’s Brigade. A Union soldier supporting the batteries recalled “the sharp and almost continuous reports of the twelve pounders, the screaming, shrieking shell that went crashing through the tree tops; the deadened thud of the exploding shell; the whizzing sound of the pieces as they flew in different directions.” While the Union guns exploded with this renewed barrage, the Confederate guns remained silent. The ground around Culp’s Hill prevented Johnson from bringing his guns closer to the fight and any artillery fire from the north side of Rock Creek would risk falling among Johnson’s own men. After the battle a member of the Thirty-Third Virginia bitterly complained that “we could not get any artillery near enough to do any good.”19
On the far right of Geary’s position, the ranks of the One Hundred and Forty-Seventh Pennsylvania, part of Candy’s Brigade, began the day facing a shallow wooded ravine with a triangular, uncultivated open field beyond. The field sloped upward towards the timbered crest of the spur, where Steuart’s Confederates were exchanging shots with Kane’s Brigade. Seeking to gain the protection of the wooded ravine and improve their field of fire, the Pennsylvanians advanced into the narrow depression. Realizing that their position allowed them to fire in the flank of any further Confederate advance on Kane’s men, at around 5 a.m. the regiment charged across the small field and seized the stone wall. From this protected position, they let loose volley after volley into Steuart’s lines, causing considerable casualties and havoc. Exposed and alone at the wall, they could stay for only a short time and soon fell back to the wooded ravine. The field across which the One Hundred and Forty-Seventh Pennsylvania had charged would henceforth be known as Pardee Field, named after the unit’s commander.20
With Kane’s line refusing to budge, a crossfire of Union artillery, and the Pennsylvanians enfilading his ranks, it was likely around this time that Steuart called upon Walker for assistance. Neither Walker nor Steuart recorded the details of the Stonewall Brigade’s advance, with Walker simply stating that upon Steuart’s request for assistance, the brigade “moved up in support and I became warmly engaged along my whole line.” According to the reports of Walker’s regimental commanders, portions of the Stonewall Brigade occupied part of the captured breastworks, from whence they likely exchanged fire with Kane’s Brigade and the One Hundred and Forty-Seventh Pennsylvania and Fifth Ohio of Candy’s Brigade on Kane’s right.21
Among the first members of the Stonewall Brigade to fall from the fire of Kane and Candy’s men was Private Henry D. Gilliland. Hailing from the rugged Appalachian Mountains west of the Shenandoah Valley, Gilliland had enlisted in March 1862 as part of the second wave of Confederate volunteers. During his unit’s first charge early in the morning of July 3, Gilliland was shot in the breast and fell dead. He was left unburied on the field.22
On the right end of Stonewall Brigade’s line, the Fourth Virginia extended past the captured breastworks and so lacked their protection. The regiment found itself on the western slope of the spur’s crest, where they faced Kane’s Brigade across the saddle to their left and, to the right, Greene’s Brigade in their breastworks on the higher summit of Culp’s Hill. Walker reported that this part of his line “suffered very heavily,” while Major William Terry of the Fourth Virginia asserted that his regiment was “exposed to a heavy and destructive fire of shot, shell, and musketry, from which the regiment sustained a heavy loss in killed, wounded, and missing.”23
Maj. William W. Goldsborough, First Maryland Battalion
Alongside the Fourth Virginia in this exposed position were the First Maryland Battalion and the Third North Carolina, the right flank of Steuart’s Brigade. Major William W. Goldsborough, leading the First Maryland, made his way down the line at one point to check on his rightmost company. Huddled with the company’s commander, who reported that his unit was suffering heavy casualties, the pair were soon joined by Major William M. Parsley, commanding the Third North Carolina to the right of the Marylanders. Parsley, speaking hyperbolically, reported that his exposed unit had been almost annihilated. He told Goldsborough that he had only 19 men left. Just as he spoke, a man fell dead at the feet of the three officers. “And now,” he said, “I have but eighteen.”24
After almost an hour holding this exposed flank and with their cartridge boxes emptying, Walker ordered the Fifth Virginia to the Fourth Virginia’s assistance. Cresting the summit of the spur, the Fifth Virginia immediately found itself in a vortex of fire. While Kane’s Brigade was the most immediate threat on the opposite side of the saddle, the rightmost regiments of Greene’s Brigade could obliquely fire at the Virginian’s exposed flank. Referencing Greene’s position, one of Steuart’s staff officers reported that the right of Steuart’s Brigade and the Stonewall Brigade was commanded “by the works on the crest of the hill to our right, whence a galling fire was poured into our ranks.”25
We Could have Stood as Long as the Rebs Chose to Show Themselves
The men of the One Hundred and Thirty-Seventh New York and the One Hundred and Forty-Ninth New York held the right end of Greene’s line and were the ones pouring that galling fire into the flank of the Fifth Virginia. Just before daybreak, Lieutenant Colonel Charles B. Randall of the One Hundred and Forty-Ninth New York had walked down his regiment’s portion of the breastworks with a bottle of whiskey, offering each officer a sip in turn. He told each of his subordinates that it may be the last drink they would have together and that he hoped it would sustain them in doing their duty. Just as the last officer emptied the bottle, Steuart’s Brigade commenced the Confederate attack on Kane’s men and Randall ordered his men to the breastworks.26
Greene’s troops, who had held these lines alone against almost an entire division the previous night, had rapidly become well-versed in fighting from behind their works. The fortifications provided excellent protection, with the greatest risk being to the head or upper body. The green logs placed atop the breastworks to protect the men’s’ heads while firing, however, occasionally caused bullets to glance off them at unpredictable angles to strike the men behind the works. A member of the One Hundred and Forty-Ninth New York described the appearance of Greene’s men in the trenches, “Their clothes ragged and dirty, their faces black from smoke, sweat and burnt powder, their lips cracked and bleeding from salt-petre in the cartridge bitten by them, and… loading and firing for dear life.”27
Scene behind the Breastworks on Culp’s Hill, Morning of July 3, 1863
The Fifth Virginia had likely been holding the lower summit for only a short time when they heard loud cheers coming from the Union lines. Geary had retained over half of Candy’s Brigade in reserve and, with ammunition beginning to run low among his frontline regiments, Geary began to rotate in his fresh regiments starting around 6 a.m. The Twenty-Ninth Ohio advanced to relieve the One Hundred and Thirty-Seventh New York opposite the Fifth Virginia in “splendid style,” cheering as they advanced at a run. The Ohio men held their fire until they had reached the safety of the breastworks, passing through the New Yorkers and resuming fire with hardly a pause. Under the cover of the Ohio regiment’s fire, the One Hundred and Thirty-Seventh withdrew a short distance to a protected hollow behind Greene’s lines.28
To their left, the One Hundred and Forty-Ninth New York was similarly relieved by their cheering supports, the New Yorkers retreating under the new regiment’s fire until they too had reached the safety of the hollow. Once there, Randall proposed three cheers for the regiment’s colors, which had been shot through several times during the morning’s fight. The men gave the cheers “with a tiger,” after which they gave three cheers “for the gallant Randall.” The men were then directed to clean their rifles, “which were so foul that a ball could not be driven home without difficulty, and the barrels so hot as to be painful to the touch.”29
This rotation of units would occur throughout the rest of the day up and down the lines of Greene’s and Kane’s brigades and would be central to the ultimate Union victory at Culp’s Hill. A member of the One Hundred and Thirty-Seventh New York described how the process worked; “A regiment would use up their ammunition in about two hours, when another one would relieve them and they fall back to the hollow where the balls would whistle over their heads. They would clean their guns and get some more ammunition and be ready to relieve another regiment… In this way we could have stood as long as the rebs chose to show themselves below.” After the battle, General Greene noted that his brigade’s breastworks held no more than 1,300 men at a time, but that throughout the day some 3,105 men had rotated through the front lines. Each renewed Confederate attack on Greene’s already strong position would face fresh troops with replenished ammunition.30
A Murderous Fire
Although his plans for an assault by Geary’s Division had been derailed by Johnson’s attack, the second part of Williams’ original plan for the XII Corps continued tragically on. Throughout the morning, Ruger’s Division would launch a bloody series of piecemeal feints from their positions along the Baltimore Pike and McAllister’s Woods. Sideshows to the primary action on Culp’s Hill proper, this fighting around Spangler’s Spring was confused and poorly documented. An accurate timeline of actions is nearly impossible to reconstruct, with different participants putting the same attack as early as 5:30 a.m. or as late as 11 a.m. Only by putting those accounts in context with other simultaneous events can the historian begin to develop a plausible account of these actions south of Culp’s Hill.
The crisis triggered by the Confederate invasion of the north had drawn to Gettysburg men who never expected to see serious combat. In June 1863, Brigadier General Henry H. Lockwood received orders to march north with his two regiments of Maryland home guard from their sleepy positions on the lower Potomac. While passing through Baltimore, they were joined by the One Hundred and Fiftieth New York from the city’s defenses. Sent west to guard rail lines, Lockwood’s ad hoc command became attached to the XII Corps as an independent brigade. When Williams positioned his troops in the early hours of July 3, he directed the two regiments of Lockwood’s Brigade then present to form battle lines along the Baltimore Pike in support of the artillery batteries.31
View from near the Baltimore Pike, facing northeast. The trees to the left are Culp’s Hill, while Wolf’s Hill is visible in the right background. The First Potomac Home Brigade attacked along the left edge of this image.
From their position along the Pike, the men of the First Potomac Home Brigade watched the Union field artillery bombard the Confederate lines on Culp’s Hill. The oddly named regiment had originally been formed to protect the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad along the Potomac and later supported supply lines for Union troops in the Shenandoah Valley. The regiment surrendered as part of the Harper’s Ferry garrison in 1862 and, after being formally exchanged, had joined Lockwood’s command on the lower Potomac. Their ranks largely untouched by combat, the regiment of between 700 and 800 men was nearly twice the size of the average Union regiment at Gettysburg.32
At around 5 a.m., Lockwood received orders, likely from Williams or Ruger, to deploy a regiment to engage the enemy in the woods on the northern side of the Baltimore Pike. He selected the First Potomac Home Brigade, under Colonel William P. Maulsby, and personally led the regiment across the road and into the dense woods. Passing to the left of the swampy ground around Spangler’s Spring, the solitary Union regiment skirted along the southern slope of the spur, charging directly into the left flank of the Confederate position.33
When Steuart ordered his columns forward that morning, he had dispatched the First North Carolina to shield his right flank from any threats emanating from the south. The regiment’s commander sent four of his companies across Rock Creek to establish a skirmish line on Wolf’s Hill, while the remaining six companies occupied the woods and boulders along the southeastern base of Culp’s Hill. Their attention was initially held by a few companies of skirmishers that Colgrove’s Brigade had deployed at the edge of McAllister’s Woods across the marshy meadow. The sudden advance of the Marylanders, however, threatened to punch through the thin line of Confederate skirmishers. To Confederate commanders, it appeared the enemy was attempting to turn their left flank and enfilade the captured breastworks. Walker ordered the Second Virginia, still missing the two and a half companies previously detailed to picket the Hanover Road, to support the First North Carolina and keep the flank of Johnson’s Division clear. Colonel John Q. A. Nadenbousch sent Lieutenant John S. Harrison and his Company D across Rock Creek to reinforce the North Carolinians on Wolf’s Hill and threw the rest of his command into the woods north of Spangler’s Spring in preparation for the Union attack.34
Keeping their left within the cover of the timber, the right half of the Marylanders’ dense battle line spilled into the open meadow as the regiment advanced. In the dim morning light, they could just make out a stone wall cutting through the trees ahead. This was the eastern end of the same stone wall from which the One Hundred and Forty-Seventh Pennsylvania briefly enfiladed Steuart’s attack on Kane’s Brigade. Crouched behind the wall and among the captured breastworks, the First North Carolina and Second Virginia poured a “severe musketry fire” into the First Potomac Home Brigade. The right half of the Second Virginia opened an oblique fire on the Federal line, while sharpshooters from Lieutenant Harrison’s company on the other side of Rock Creek enfiladed the blue-clad ranks.35
Just 30-35 feet from the stone wall, Colonel Maulsby halted his regiment’s advance and straightened his lines, momentarily disrupted by the regiment’s advance over the broken ground at the base of Culp’s Hill. Colonel Nadenbousch used the brief pause to send two of his companies about 60 yards to the left and rear, to a bend in Rock Creek where they had a clear view of the right flank of the Marylanders’ line. His men falling around him, Maulsby had just shouted the command to fix bayonets in anticipation of a charge on the wall when word suddenly reached him to withdraw. At the time, he believed the order was to prevent his men from accidently firing on Federal troops advancing on his left. If so, this may refer to the charge of the One Hundred and Forty-Seventh Pennsylvania across Pardee Field or possibly to the advance of the Twentieth Connecticut of McDougall’s Brigade, which moved forward around this time to harass Steuart’s attack and help direct Union artillery fire. Reflecting years later, however, Maulsby judged the order was given to save his command from the “murderous fire to which it was exposed.”36
The attack of the raw Marylanders against the Second Virginia and First North Carolina lasted less than a half an hour. Yet, as the commands to cease fire and march to the rear rang out along the line, the First Potomac Home Brigade had paid a devastating price for their feint against the Confederate flank. While the probe was barely mentioned by his superiors, Maulsby noted in his official report that “the number of lamented dead and suffering wounded attest the severity of this engagement.” Of the 739 men who marched forward from the Baltimore Pike, 23 were killed, 80 fell wounded, and one was likely captured.37
It Is Murder, But It Is the Order
While the Second Virginia and First North Carolina had been sufficient to beat back the attack of a single, if oversized, Union regiment, they would be insufficient if Ruger attacked with his entire division. At just about the time that the Marylanders launched their attack, however, additional reinforcements were arriving to bolster Johnson’s forces. Two regiments of Smith’s Brigade, the Forty-Ninth Virginia and the Fifty-Second Virginia, reported to Johnson at around 5 a.m. They were met by Major Henry K. Douglas, a former member of the Second Virginia now serving on Johnson’s staff. Eager to get the fresh men into the fight quickly, Douglas rode up to Brigadier General William Smith, a 67-year-old who had recently been elected for the second time as governor of Virginia. Sacrificing protocol for expediency, Douglas asked Smith to temporarily turn command of the brigade over to him so that he could lead them to the correct position. Smith assented and his small brigade began marching to join the Second Virginia.38
Maj. Henry K. Douglas, Staff of Johnson’s Division
Meanwhile, across the swale in McAllister’s Woods, the men of Colgrove’s Brigade had been exchanging scattered fire with the First North Carolina and Second Virginia since dawn. From their lines, the Federals found themselves exposed to the “fire of myriads of sharpshooters from our front and our right flank across the creek.” As soon as it was light enough to see, Colgrove dispatched skirmishers from the Third Wisconsin and Second Massachusetts forward to the belt of timber at the edge of the meadow to help suppress the Confederate marksmen. Crouched behind the skirmish line, Captain Julian W. Hinkley of the Third Wisconsin used a pair of field glasses to help spot targets for his sharpshooters.39
Behind his line of skirmishers, Colgrove positioned his regiments in McAllister’s Woods, partially protected by the breastworks the brigade had constructed the previous day. The Third Wisconsin and Second Massachusetts faced the meadow, while the Thirteenth New Jersey was bent back at a right angle with half of the regiment facing the meadow and the other facing Rock Creek. Earlier that morning Colgrove had shifted his own regiment, the Twenty-Seventh Indiana, to occupy breastworks facing Rock Creek on the brigade’s right flank. Although posted in advance of the rest of their division, Colgrove’s men were well supported by the artillery on Power’s Hill and McAllister’s Hill.40
Some two hours into the day’s fighting, General Ruger received orders, most likely from Williams, to probe the Confederate left with two regiments. Such a limited effort, similar to the attack by the First Potomac Home Brigade, would be consistent with Williams’ overall plan to conduct feints on the Confederate flank with Ruger’s Division. Rather than convey the orders himself, however, Ruger sent a staff officer. Either the staff officer made a mistake or Colgrove misunderstood Ruger’s intent, which the general claimed after the battle was that an attempt should only be made after ascertaining the strength of the opposing enemy by advancing first with skirmishers.41
To Colgrove, however, it was clearly impractical to send skirmishers out into the open meadow against Confederates protected by trees, rocks, breastworks, and the stone wall running across the northern edge of the swale. He claimed the advance of Federal troops at a right angle to his line, possibly a reference to the aborted attack of the First Potomac Home Brigade, limited any advance across the meadow to no more than two regiments. The nuance of Ruger’s intent or the connection to Williams’ broader plan was lost. Colgrove heard the order as a command to charge directly across the open ground and recapture the breastworks on the far side. He asked the staff officer to repeat the order again and then a third time. Colgrove pulled on his nose, a personal tick he exhibited whenever deep in thought, and muttered to himself “It cannot be done, it cannot be done. If it can be done, the Second Massachusetts and Twenty-Seventh Indiana can do it.”42
Lieutenant Colonel Charles R. Mudge, commanding the Second Massachusetts, was incredulous when he received the order to charge. “Are you sure this is the order?” he asked. When assured it was, he replied, “Well, it is murder, but it is the order.” Turning to his men he shouted “Up, men, over the works! Forward, double-quick!”43
The Twenty-Seventh Indiana, meanwhile, was struggling to get into position to attack. Colgrove likely selected the Twenty-Seventh because it was his own regiment and he either trusted them the most or did not want to show favoritism by excusing his own men from the dangerous task. The Hoosiers, however, were on the flank of the brigade, facing the wrong way and with the Thirteenth New Jersey between them and their objective. The Indiana men expected their sister regiment to move out of the way, but the Thirteenth never received orders to do so, possibly due to Colgrove’s inexperience as a brigade commander. The two regiments “ran pump into each other,” recalled a member of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana. “For a brief space they were intermingled upon the same ground, in some confusion.”
Colgrove came running over to straighten out the mess. He shouted to his men, “Twenty-Seventh, charge! Charge those works in your front!” Acting regimental commander Lieutenant Colonel John R. Fesler added his voice to the din and the regiment leapt forward over the breastworks with a “wild, prolonged shout.”44
With the Twenty-Seventh Indiana lagging a little behind and obliquing to the right of the Second Massachusetts, the two regiments advanced swiftly down the slight slope from McAllister’s Woods towards the meadow. For the first 100 yards their path was covered by oak and hickory saplings, partially shielding them from the sporadic fire of the Second Virginia. At the base of some of the young trees lay the bodies of several men of the Second Massachusetts killed during the morning’s skirmishing.45
As they broke out of the trees into the open, the volume of musket fire from the Virginians began to increase. At the point where Colgrove’s men attacked, the meadow was about 100 yards wide, with soft, boggy ground. A small ditch cut across the middle of the swale, draining into Rock Creek on the east side of the meadow. The ground on the far side of the ditch grew rose more sharply and several boulders jutted above the grass just before the far tree line.46
In that tree line, concealed behind the rocks and among the breastworks, Colonel Nadenbousch had widely dispersed the men he still had on the west side of Rock Creek. Prepared to contest every inch of ground until reinforcements could be brought up, the Virginias fired “with a rapidity and precision that materially delayed and disconcerted the enemy.” As the Federals neared the middle of the meadow, the Second Virginia let loose a volley. On the other side of Rock Creek, Nadenbousch’s skirmishers lying concealed in the grass rose up, firing directly into the right flank of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana.47
The effect of the volley was startling. To the major of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana, it appeared as if his three right companies had been knocked down in a single instant. To those in the rear watching the Hoosiers’ advance, “it almost appeared that a crevasse had opened in the earth and swallowed the regiment, bodily.” The volley left only one or two members of the regiment’s nine-man color guard still standing. Recovering from the shock of the abrupt fire, the Indiana veterans closed ranks and pushed forward. To the men watching their advance, the regiment appeared to advance “under a perfect hail of balls, men and officers falling at every step.”48
To the left of the Hoosiers, the Second Massachusetts had made better progress. Emerging into the meadow with a cheer, the regiment charged through terrible fire, moving across the open ground as quickly as the boggy terrain would allow. Lieutenant Colonel Mudge, on foot and waving his sword as he cheered his men forward, was struck by a Confederate ball and fell dead halfway across the meadow. The regiment’s colors toppled down as the color bearer was struck. A man picked up the flag, only to be shot down as well. A third soldier picked up the colors as the regiment surged forward into the cover of the trees. Driving the Confederate defenders back before them, the Second Massachusetts overran a portion of the breastworks, the same section they themselves had constructed the previous day.49
Scarcely a Man Could Live to Gain the Position
Meanwhile, Douglas had arrived with Smith’s Brigade in the rear of the Second Virginia. As he formed the fresh troops in line of battle, someone pointed out to Douglas that he was the sole officer still on horseback. No sooner had Douglas ordered the brigade to begin marching at the left oblique into position when a dozen Union soldiers appeared a couple hundred yards up the spur of Culp’s Hill to the right. Puffs of smoke, the rattle of muskets, and Douglas fell from his horse, a ball having smashed into his left shoulder, lodging part of the major’s coat and shirt under his clavicle and briefly paralyzing his arm. Smith paused for a moment to check on Douglas before advancing forward with his brigade.50
Smith’s Brigade advanced in a sudden rush as the firing swelled to a new crescendo. The orders Smith shouted were “not in the conventional forms prescribed by Hardee, Upton, or Gilham,” according to a Confederate staff officer, but his men understood his intent and advanced with “a sprint and a vim.” Cries of “Hurrah for Governor Smith!” rang out from the dry throats of the Virginians and North Carolinians in the sector as the fresh troops streamed into the fight.51
After recovering from the shock of the initial Confederate volley, the Twenty-Seventh Indiana advanced a short distance further into the storm of fire. “The air,” recalled one Indiana soldier, “was alive with singing, hissing, and zipping bullets.” Momentum quickly drained from the charge and it ground to a halt as men stopped to fire their muskets. The final member of the unit’s color guard slumped to the ground, the regiment’s flag falling from his hands. The unit’s adjutant snatched them up and, unable to spare a man to carry the colors, he planted the flag staff in the meadow’s soft ground.52
1880s view from the position of the Second Virginia, and later Smith’s Brigade, from behind the stone wall. The trees on the left mark McAllister’s Woods, while those on the right are the base of Culp’s Hill. Power’s Hill is visible in the middle background.
Colgrove called it “one of the most terrible fires I have ever witnessed.” “At every volley of the enemy,” he recounted, “gaps were being cut through [the Twenty-Seventh Indiana’s] ranks. It became evident to me that scarcely a man could live to gain the position of the enemy.” He hurriedly ordered his regiment to fall back to the breastworks in McAllister’s Woods. Facing to the rear, the shattered unit marched back across the meadow in an orderly but rapid retreat.53
The Second Massachusetts now found itself alone and without support, clinging to its toehold in the breastworks. “From behind every tree and rock,” recalled one man, “the enemy poured an overwhelming fire.” Yet another color bearer had been killed and ten of the regiment’s officers were lying on the field dead or wounded. Without support to their right, Smith’s advancing Confederates began to press the battered regiment’s flank. Furthermore, as the Massachusetts soldiers had advanced across the swale, they had borne slightly to the left, blocking the troops in their rear from supporting them with musket fire. His men about to be overrun, the major of the Second Massachusetts ordered the regiment to retire.54
Smith’s Confederates came roaring out of the trees after the retreating Federals. Smith was in the lead of his men, his voice audible over the cacophony of battle. “Reckless of shot and shell, with sword in hand, pointing at the enemy,” observed one Confederate officer, “he harangued each regiment, as it double-quicked past into the arena of blood and fire.” He sent the Forty-Ninth Virginia forward against Colgrove’s retiring men, supported by the Fifty-Second Virginia. From across Rock Creek, the Second Virginia’s sharpshooters continued to sweep the meadow with their enfilading fire.55
The Second Massachusetts, however, still had some fight left in it. Rather than retire directly back, the regiment moved at an oblique farther to the west, uncovering the front of Colgrove’s Brigade and allowing the Third Wisconsin, Twenty-Seventh Indiana, and a portion of the Thirteen New Jersey to pour volleys into Smith’s advancing ranks. The Second Massachusetts, upon reaching a ruined stone wall, wheeled back to face their pursuers and opened fire again. A Union observer noted “I never saw a finer sight than to see that regiment, coming back over that terrible meadow, face about and form in line as steady as if on parade.”56
Smith’s confident advance now found itself checked by an explosion of fire from their front and enfilading fire from the Second Massachusetts. The Union artillery along the Baltimore Pike, carefully positioned to prevent any Confederate advance southward, now swept the meadow with canister fire. A captain in the Thirty-First Virginia recalled it as “the most deadly fire of musketry and cannon I was ever under.” The commander of the Fifty-Second Virginia pleaded for Smith to either order a charge or allow them to fall back to the cover of the trees, for they could not stay exposed in the meadow. Colgrove reported that while his brigade’s first volley had halted Smith’s advance, at his second volley the Confederates broke and ran for the protection of the trees, their dead and wounded littering the meadow. The Forty-Ninth Virginia lost around 40 percent of its manpower in the aborted charge.57
Whether Ruger had ever intended Colgrove to make a serious attack or not, the effort had been futile from the start. “The regiments were a handful against the mass of enemy opposite,” judged one Massachusetts soldier, “even without any regard to their formidable position.” The Second Massachusetts advanced into the meadow with 316 men, while the Twenty-Seventh Indiana had fielded 339 men. In the assault, the Hoosier regiment recorded 112 men killed or wounded, while the Massachusetts unit suffered the loss of 136 men. Although Smith’s assault on Colgrove’s position served little purpose, his brigade had been critical in repulsing the threat to Johnson’s flank. But the Second Virginia had held their ground until the arrival of Smith’s men and the enfilading fire from the Stonewall Brigade skirmishers across Rock Creek played a key role in repulsing the Twenty-Seventh Indiana in particular.58
Of note, the exact timing of these events is open to interpretation. Ruger reported that he ordered Colgrove to attack at 10 a.m. Elements of Colgrove’s report and the regimental history of the Third Wisconsin similarly suggest the attack occurred later in the morning. Prominent Gettysburg historian Harry Pfanz adopts this later time in his treatment of the fighting on Culp’s Hill. However, Colgrove’s report also states his attack occurred roughly two hours after dawn, putting it closer to 6 a.m. The report of the Second Massachusetts claimed their attack was at 5:30 a.m. and the unit’s regimental history states 7 a.m.59
Although these times vary widely, when put in context of other related events, the earlier time estimates appear more accurate. Colgrove reported that, just before his advance, he noted loud cheering to his left. While Union troops cheered throughout the morning as fresh regiments rotated into the firing line, the fact that Colgrove specifically made note of the cheering suggests it may have been the very first relief of Kane and Greene’s troops by some of Candy’s regiments around 6 and 7 a.m. Colgrove also mentioned that just prior to his attack, elements of McDougall’s Brigade had advanced into the woods at the foot of Culp’s Hill and formed a line nearly at right angles to his own. This does not match any movement recorded for McDougall’s men, but may match the charge of the Potomac Home Brigade, which would have been clearly visible to Colgrove across the meadow. He did not separately make mention of the Maryland troops, suggesting he may have mistaken then for McDougall’s Brigade. This, then, would put Colgrove’s attack soon after the repulse of the First Potomac Home Brigade, which occurred between five and six in the morning.60
The view from the Confederate perspective supports an earlier time as well. The Second Virginia reported being replaced in the breastworks by Smith’s Brigade at 7 a.m.. While accounts from Smith’s Brigade do not specify a time for their actions near Spangler’s Spring, they do record Smith counter-attacking and driving back a body of Union troops that threatened Johnson’s flank. This most likely refers to dislodging the Second Massachusetts from the captured breastworks and the subsequent Confederate counterattack on Colgrove’s men in McAllister’s Woods. Multiple Confederate first person accounts, including the wounded Major Douglas, indicate Smith’s Brigade launched its counterattack immediately upon reaching the field. As will be discussed later, Smith’s Brigade also made further movements on July 3 that seem to have occurred later in the morning. Taken together, both Union and Confederate accounts best support Colgrove’s attack occurring closer to 6 or 7 a.m. then the later times cited by Ruger and used by Pfanz.61
Impossible That Any Can Live Fifteen Minutes Longer
While the Second Virginia parried threats to the Confederate flank, the remainder of the Stonewall Brigade remained locked in combat with Geary’s Division. Just before 8 a.m., Johnson’s men redoubled their attempts to sweep the Federals off Culp’s Hill. Nicholls’ Brigade, to the right of the Stonewall Brigade and Steuart’s Brigade, had not yet made a serious attack on Greene’s breastworks, which were nearly 30 or 40 feet higher in elevation than that portion of the Confederate line. They entered the attack in earnest around eight in the morning, just as Walker and Steuart sent their men forward in renewed charges on Kane’s Brigade. Geary later reported that the Confederates massed “all the force against us that the ground would admit, pressed forward with an evident determination to carry the position at all hazards.”62
Attack of the Stonewall Brigade at Culp’s Hill
With the Twenty-Seventh Virginia, Lieutenant Edgar urged his men forward into what he described as “the most destructive fire that has ever been during the war.” Earlier in the day much of the Union fire had been too high, passing over the Virginian’s heads. With the enemy having now found the correct range, “minnie balls and shells came lower and execute their work more fatally. Even the very air seems thick with the missiles of death, from the small arms as well as from the artillery. It seems impossible that any of us can live fifteen minutes longer exposed to so much fire.” Nearby, “the whole hillside” above Major Goldsborough’s Marylanders and the Fifth Virginia “seemed enveloped in a blaze… and the balls could be heard to strike the breastworks like hailstones upon the roof tops.”63
Geary’s men stood firm as the Confederate wave smashed into their lines. As the Confederate attack neared one of Candy’s regiments, “the well-aimed rifles of the boys in blue invariably sent leaden hail into his ranks, cutting his advancing columns down with frightful carnage.” In the thick of the fighting, Colonel Cobham briefly forgot his role as a brigade commander. After several bullets whizzed just past his head, the officer borrowed a musket and, taking careful aim, fired at a cluster of rocks from whence the offending shots originated. After the fighting concluded, his men found a dead Confederate among the rocks with a bullet hole through his skull.64
A skilled deer hunter in civilian life, First Sergeant Caster G. Malin of the One Hundred and Eleventh Pennsylvania was justifiably proud of his marksmanship. From his position in Kane’s lines, he spotted repeated puffs of smoke from the rocks down in the saddle where members of the Stonewall Brigade were taking cover. He took careful aim and squeezed the trigger, only to see another puff of smoke from the rocks. Frustrated, he aimed and fired again and again and again, only to be taunted by continued puffs of smoke. The annoyed sergeant walked out to the rocks after the battle concluded, where he discovered five dead Confederates piled behind the rock where he had shot them each in turn.65
With the Confederate attack reaching a crescendo, additional Union reinforcements streamed into the fight. Wadsworth’s Division of the Union I Corps, whose units had been decimated in the desperate fighting of July 1, held the quiet western face of Culp’s Hill. A little after 8:30 a.m., Wadsworth dispatched the Fourteenth New York State Militia and the One Hundred and Forty-Seventh New York to support Geary. They were allocated to support Kane’s line, which was facing the brunt of the attack by the Stonewall Brigade and Steuart’s Brigade. The Fourteenth New York State Militia, also called the Fourteenth Brooklyn and the Eighty-Fourth New York, still retained its early war chasseur-style militia uniform, with a red cap, short blue jacket, red vest, and red pantaloons. The unit’s “tidy and smart appearance” and reputation as a “bully fighting unit” attracted a few curious onlookers from among Greene’s troops resting behind the lines before the gaudy New Yorkers advanced to the firing line.66
Following their clash with the Second Virginia earlier that morning, the men of the First Potomac Home Brigade spend a couple hours resting in the grass near the Baltimore Pike. Just before 8 a.m. General Slocum rode by leading the final regiment of Lockwood’s Brigade, the First Eastern Shore Maryland Infantry, which had just arrived on the field. Slocum called for the regiment to follow him as the Marylanders leapt to their feet. Along with Lockwood’s other regiment, the One Hundred and Fiftieth New York, the column made its way up Culp’s Hill and formed behind Greene’s lines.67
Geary made quick use of the fresh troops, rotating them into the firing line so that “several already overworked regiments of my division were allowed a much needed respite for their energies.” With Lockwood’s men coming up, the two regiments on loan from I Corps soon returned to their command. An additional brigade of reinforcements, Shaler’s Brigade from the VI Corps, marched up the back slope of Culp’s Hill around 8:45 a.m. Geary, however, was instructed to use the VI Corps men only if absolutely necessary and, for now, they formed in the rear of Kane’s position.68
His men formed in the hollow behind the summit of Culp’s Hill, Lockwood ordered the One Hundred and Fiftieth New York forward to relieve the center-left of Greene’s line. To their right Lockwood deployed the newly arrived First Eastern Shore. The unit’s colonel and several members of the regiment were slaveholders and, when the regiment had been ordered to occupy Virginia’s Eastern Shore in 1861, some members of the unit had defected and now fought elsewhere on Culp’s Hill with the Confederate First Maryland Battalion. In fact, the man carrying the colors of the First Eastern Shore at Gettysburg was a cousin to the color bearer of the Confederate First Maryland. Having spent their two years of service assigned to quiet guard duty along the Chesapeake, the Marylanders had not seen combat prior to Gettysburg.69
The untested regiment advanced with a shout up the steep slope to the summit of Culp’s Hill. Confused about which regiment he was supposed to relieve, Colonel James Wallace led half of his regiment straight forward, while the unit’s lieutenant colonel took the other half of the regiment several hundred yards to the left. As soon as Wallace’s companies crested the brow of the hill, they became exposed to musket fire, likely from Nicholl’s Brigade and the right flank of the Stonewall Brigade. Finding themselves in the open level ground behind the breastworks of the One Hundred and Forty-Ninth New York, Wallace halted his men. Believing the enemy was about to rush the works, Wallace quickly ordered his men to fire a volley over the New Yorkers’ heads. The New Yorkers’ commander, believing the Marylanders were firing on his men, angerly ordered Wallace to cease fire. Wallace claimed that the First Eastern Shore’s timely volley checked the enemy advance. The veteran New Yorkers, however, saw things differently, claiming the raw Marylanders had advanced to only within about 25 yards of the breastworks and fired a single ineffectual, panicked volley into the treetops before scampering away.70
Lt. Randolph McKim, Staff Officer for Steuart’s Brigade
With the Confederate assaults failing to make progress in the face of a constant rotation of fresh Union units, Johnson committed another of his reserve brigades. After spending the morning waiting in reserve behind Nicholl’s Brigade, orders now rang out for the Alabama regiments of O’Neal’s Brigade to advance. The fresh troops marched forward in “fine style, under a terrific fire of grape and small-arms” along the northern slope of the spur, advancing to support the imperiled right flank of the Stonewall Brigade and Steuart’s men. As they crested the spur, the Union position before them had the appearance of a “log fort” atop a mountain, from which poured a “murderous fire” from the right flank regiments of Greene’s line.71
Having been engaged for several hours, the Stonewall Brigade was running troublingly low on ammunition. Throughout the morning, the men had salvaged what they could from the wounded and dead on the field, but additional ammunition was needed. Since heading to the rear meant leaving the protection of the breastworks, rocks, and trees, Lieutenant Edgar reported that a handful of the “most fearless men” in the brigade made the dash to return with several boxes of ammunition. Lieutenant Randolph McKim, one of Steuart’s staff officers, took three men with him to the rear to bring up ammunition for the men in the captured breastworks. Returning to the base of Culp’s Hill, the men dumped the cartridges out on blankets and slung the blankets between fence rails. Running the gauntlet to reach the safety of the works, McKim felt the searing pain of a ball glazing his shoulder. Another round went through his haversack and ripped the back off of a bible he was carrying in his pocket. Soon after delivering his cargo, the officer was struck a third time by a spent shell in the back.72
With Union reinforcements entering the fight and ammunition running low, the Confederate attack ground to a halt. His men exhausted, Walker ordered the Stonewall Brigade to fall back some distance behind the lines to rest, clean their muskets, and refill their cartridge boxes. Behind them, the North Carolinians of Daniel’s Brigade advanced to replace the Virginians on the firing line but did not press the attack. For now, the fury of the morning Confederate attack settled down into a constant, lower volume of musket fire between the lines.73
A Bullet was Sure to Come Unpleasantly Near
While the rest of the Stonewall Brigade rested, the Second Virginia continued its action on Wolf’s Hill. After the arrival of Smith’s Brigade, Colonel Nadenbousch shifted the entirety of his regiment across Rock Creek to reinforce Lieutenant Harrison and his skirmishers. The Federals in McAllister’s Woods noted an increase in the number of skirmishers on the eastern bank of the stream soon after their repulse of Smith’s attack as the Second Virginia took up positions. Nadenbousch ordered Captain William W. Randolph of Company C, supervising the left wing of the regiment, to push his men forward and take possession of the heights.74
From the rocks and trees of Wolf’s Hill, the Second Virginia could direct fire on the right and rear of Colgrove’s Brigade. The Thirteenth New Jersey and Twenty-Seventh Indiana found themselves particularly exposed. The breastworks facing Rock Creek had been hastily constructed and were not very high, therefore “it required utmost watchfulness not to expose the person above them, while a rifle ball was liable to come through in many places.” A member of the Thirteenth New Jersey recalled that “whenever a head was projected above the breastworks a bullet was sure to come unpleasantly near it.”75
View from near Spangler’s Spring looking across Rock Creek (marked by the dark area cutting across the center of the image) towards the Zephaniah Taney farmhouse, with Wolf’s Hill in the background. McAllister’s Woods begins to the right of the image.
The Twenty-Seventh Indiana, who had themselves skirmished with the Stonewall Brigade on Wolf’s Hill the previous morning, found themselves pinned down behind their breastworks. One soldier recalled that the “rockey ledges on the hill… were really somewhat behind us, and the sharp-shooters with which they were infested had a raking fire along our line, rather from our rear.” The Hoosier’s primary protection came from the foliage of McAllister’s Woods, which at least concealed them from the Virginian marksmen. The leaves did little, however, to stop bullets and “stray shots would find their way to us, from several directions, at almost any time and without provocation.”76
Even as they sought cover from the Confederate skirmishers, Colgrove’s men heard the plaintive cries for water and help from the men wounded during the failed charge across the meadow. Unable to bear the cries any longer, a member of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana clambered over the breastworks and ran forward with a stretcher to bring back some of the wounded. He had not made it 30 feet before he crumpled in a heap at the foot a tree, a Confederate bullet having smashed through his head.77
The men of Colgrove’s command pleaded for someone to do something about Nadenbousch’s men at Zephaniah Taney’s house. Firing from behind the stone farm building and through its windows and doors, the Second Virginia men had almost “perfect protection from the bullets of our riflemen,” complained a Union infantryman, “while they caused many a poor fellow on the union side to bite the dust.” In response to their appeals, Lieutenant Charles Winegar, commanding Battery M of the First New York Artillery, came down to study the problem. He advanced one of his Parrot rifles from Power’s Hill to just across the Baltimore Pike from where he judged it could get a good shot at the stone building. The gun’s first shot scored a direct hit, sending dust and splinters flying and prompting a prolonged cheer from Colgrove’s long-suffering men. A handful of shells followed, nearly demolishing the structure, while the Union infantry observed with satisfaction that “the frightened rebels left on the double quick.” However, as soon as the artillery fire ceased, Nadenbousch’s soldiers made their way back to the ruins and soon resumed their harassment of Colgrove’s line.78
After the battle Colgrove reported that “during the whole day my entire line was exposed to the enemy’s sharpshooters, and quite a number in all the regiments were killed and wounded by them.” The Twenty-Seventh Indiana, already cut to piece in their charge across the swale, lost another four men killed and 15-20 men wounded from the Second Virginia’s rifles. Helpless to do much but hunker behind their breastworks, Colgrove’s men could not understand why Union infantry was not sent to clear the Confederates off Wolf’s Hill.79
Exercise your Discretion, Colonel
What they did not realize is that help had indeed been dispatched. Earlier that day a VI Corps brigade, under the command of Brigadier General Thomas H. Neill, was dispatched to reinforce the XII Corps around Culp’s Hill. At some unspecified time during the morning, General Slocum directed Neill to take two of his regiments to the extreme right, cross Rock Creek, and prevent the enemy from turning the Union flank. Wolf’s Hill was occupied at this time only by the Second Virginia and a handful of North Carolinians, who were in no position to threaten the flank of the Federal army. Regardless, the Seventh Maine and Forty-Third New York soon found themselves deploying skirmishers at the southern base of Wolf’s Hill.80
Lt. Col. Seldon Connor, Seventh Maine
With his two regiments advancing from the Baltimore Pike up the steep slope, Neill and his staff rode alongside Lieutenant Colonel Seldon Connor of the Seventh Maine. Reaching the brow of a slight elevation near the foot of the hill, the officers spotted the John Taney farmhouse on the main hill beyond. Neill was just ordering Connor to have his men advance to the house when Confederate skirmishers let loose a sharp volley from in and around the building. Turning his horse to the rear, Neill shouted back to his subordinate “Exercise your discretion, Colonel Connor; I will bring up the rest of the brigade.”81
With the Forty-Third New York advancing on his right, Connor ordered his men forward down the open slope at their front. About 100 yards down the slight decline lay a stone wall on Jeremiah Taney’s farm where Connor hoped to obtain some protection for his men. As the Union line surged forward, a Virginia marksman took careful aim and Captain W. H. Gilfillan of the Forty-Third New York dropped dead. Reaching the wall, the Maine and New York infantry opened fire on the Second Virginia and deployed skirmishers on both flanks to begin to press the Confederates back.82
Soon, Neill arrived with enough additional troops to overwhelm Nadenbousch’s undersized command. The Forty-Ninth New York crashed into the woods to the left of the Seventh Maine, extending the Federal line towards Rock Creek. To the right, the Sixty-First Pennsylvania deployed on the steep southern spur of Wolf’s Hill, giving them the distinction of forming the right flank of the Army of the Potomac’s infantry. Four companies of the Pennsylvania soldiers extended in a picket line farther to the right, linking up with Union cavalry around Brinkerhoff’s Ridge to the east.83
Most likely in response to the advance of Neill’s men, additional Confederates were dispatched to augment the Second Virginia’s outnumbered skirmishers on Wolf’s Hill. Although a time was not specified, at some point in the morning Smith received orders to move his command across Rock Creek. By this time, his third regiment, the Thirty-First Virginia, had rejoined the brigade. Smith left the Forty-Ninth Virginia to hold the wall near Spangler’s Spring and marched his other two regiments across the creek. Reaching the far bank, they formed line of battle and advanced to the southeast, likely in the direction of the woods near the Zephaniah Taney house.84
If this movement was in response to Neill’s Brigade, however, Smith’s men were never needed. Neill advanced his command no further, never seriously challenging the Second Virginia’s hold on Wolf’s Hill. Instead, the Federals maintained their positions on the Jeremiah Taney Farm and exchanged sporadic skirmish fire. “Through the day,” recalled Colonel Connor, “there was only an occasional shot, whenever the sharpshooters on either side saw the slightest opportunity to make one.” The threat from Neill contained, the Second Virginia was free to continue its daylong harassment of Colgrove’s men west of Rock Creek.85
Pvt. John Wesley Culp, Second Virginia Company B
The fighting on Wolf’s Hill, a sideshow to a sideshow, was relatively bloodless compared to the intense combat experienced elsewhere on the field on July 3. The Seventh Maine lost seven men wounded, two of whom later died of their wounds. In addition to the slain Captain Gilfillan, the Forty-Third New York lost one man killed, two wounded, and one missing. The remainder of the Neill’s Brigade reported three men wounded and one missing.86
The Second Virginia, meanwhile. reported several men wounded, but only one killed. John Wesley Culp had been born in Gettysburg and his cousin owned the farm after which Culp’s Hill received its name. When the carriage maker for whom Wesley worked moved the business to Virginia, Wesley moved with it. He chose to stand with his adopted neighbors when war broke out and enlisted in Company B of the Second Virginia. Major Douglas had, in fact, been Wesley’s first captain and had to acquire a special cut-down musket for the diminutive Wesley to carry. Family lore claims that Wesley found an opportunity to visit his sister and other relatives prior to July 3. While the details are unrecorded, Wesley fell dead sometime during that day’s fighting, within sight of his family’s property. His body, falling somewhere on Wolf’s Hill, was never found.87
All We Have Been Through in the Past is Child’s Play
The rest of the Stonewall Brigade, meanwhile, was busily occupied in cleaning their muskets and refilling cartridge boxes after a morning of hard fighting. General Johnson came upon the unit and angrily asked a soldier, “What brigade is this?” “Stonewall, sir,” came the reply. “Where is your commander?” asked the furious general. “What in the ____ are you doing here?” The soldier pointed towards Walker and the two generals sent some time discussing the situation. Johnson, preparing his division to make another push to take Culp’s Hill, ordered Walker to march his brigade to the right and renew the assault.88
Walker hurriedly reformed his brigade and marched them to a point about 400 yards to the right of where they had fought earlier that morning. There, they replaced Nicholl’s Brigade, which had unsuccessfully thrown itself against Greene’s entrenchments during the 8 a.m. assault. Now, just less than two hours later, the Stonewall Brigade would attempt to storm one of the strongest parts of the Union line on Culp’s Hill. The ground here was steeper than where the brigade had attacked earlier in the day. Greene’s breastworks lay some 30 to 40 feet above the point from which the Stonewall Brigade’s attack commenced.89
In the breastworks, the One-Hundred and Forty-Ninth New York had rotated back into the fortifications. Geary’s Division had expended an incredible amount of ammunition thus far that morning and orders went up and down the line for the men to hold their fire until they saw a target and could take deliberate aim. Soon after the order had been given, one New York soldier rose, waited a moment, and then raised his musket and fired. Infuriated at having his order ignored, Lieutenant Colonel Randall ran over and asked the man if he had seen anything to fire at. “Yes,” replied the man. “Where?” demanded Randall. “Right there,” the soldier said, pointing to a point down the slope. As the smoke from the soldier’s musket cleared, Randall could make out the Stonewall Brigade’s line advancing through the trees. “Give them hell boys,” the officer shouted, “give it to them right and left!”90
Advance of the Twenty-Ninth Pennsylvania during the final Confederate assault on Culp’s Hill
Alongside the One-Hundred and Forty-Ninth New York were a mixture of regiments from Candy’s, Lockwood’s and Greene’s Brigades. The attack came just before some of Candy’s regiments were about to be relieved by Greene’s men. The constant rotation of units in and out of the trenches makes it difficult to determine the exact composition and location of the Federal units at 10 a.m. Likely to the left of the New Yorkers lay the Twenty-Eighth Pennsylvania, the First Potomac Home Brigade, and the Seventh Ohio. The unit to their right was most likely the One-Hundred and Thirty-Seventh New York. The Twenty-Ninth Ohio was just returning from being sent to support Candy’s two regiments at Pardee Field and would enter the breastworks at one point in the fight, possibly replacing the One Hundred and Forty-Ninth New York. Up and down the Union line, muskets were leveled atop the breastworks and a wall of lead smashed into the Stonewall Brigade’s advance up the steep slope.91
On the receiving end of that lead, Lieutenant Edgar and his men in the Twenty-Seventh Virginia were shocked by the awesome power of the Federal fire. “We veterans had thought we had been through much danger before and been exposed to powerful artillery and fearful infantry fires, and some frightful destruction of human life,” recalled Edgar. “But as we hear the terrific and deafening roar of their cannons and the men cut down as grain before the sickle, we concluded that all we have been through in the past is nothing but child’s play compared to this and slides into utter insignificance.” To the men of the Stonewall Brigade, the “dense smoke and stifling smell of powder” gave the impression that they were attacking into the very gates of Hell.92
Cpt. John Welsh, Twenty-Seventh Virginia Company B
Elsewhere in the Twenty-Seventh Virginia, Corporal John H. Hart had taken up the colors and was urging the regiment forward. The 23-year-old had been wounded just two months before in the Battle of Chancellorsville, but had recovered sufficiently to accompany his regiment in the march north. Now, a bullet struck him in the hand where he was carrying the regimental battle flag, the banner tumbling forward until another man picked it up.Nearby, Hart’s company commander, Captain John W. P. Welsh, was leading his men up the slope when he suffered what he described in a letter to his wife as a “severe flesh wound to my right hip.” Due to the quirks of fate all too common in this civil strife, John had a brother, James, who fought for the Union in an Illinois regiment. Corporal Hart, his hand bleeding, carried Captain Welsh from the battlefield and stayed with him as the pair attempted to make their way back to Virginia. They would be captured ten days later in Maryland but Welsh survived only a few days in captivity before dying of his wounds on July 15. Corporal Hart survived his time in Union prison and, upon his release, returned Captain Welsh’s bible and haversack to his commander’s widow. The captain’s brother, James, would survive the war.93
Up the slope, Greene, Lockwood, and Candy’s men were loading and firing as quickly as they could. Colonel Maulsby reported that his Marylanders “poured upon the enemy a direct and deliberately aimed fire.” At one point along the lines, a soldier was seen standing on the bank a few feet to the rear of the breastworks, looking for something to shoot at. He raised his musket and aimed, but before he could fire “a sound was heard like a blow given upon fresh meat.” He stood motionless for a moment and then the musket tumbled to the ground. The soldier remained upright a moment longer before tipping forward “like a falling tree.” A ball had entered the soldier’s head at the bridge of his nose and smashed out the back of his skull.94
Midway through the fight, the One-Hundred and Forty-Ninth New York learned that one of the newly-arrived regiments from Shaler’s Brigade was made up of men from an adjacent New York county. The men gave a cheer, as this was the first time they had encountered their neighbors since leaving home. As one of the regiment’s captains was leading a cheer, cap in hand, a ball struck his uplifted arm, shattering the bone and crippling the arm for life. Lieutenant Colonel Randall rushed to the wounded officer and was stooping over to check on him when he was struck in the left breast and arm himself. Although at the time his men feared the wound was fatal, Randall would ultimately survive. The unit’s senior captain took temporary command of the regiment.95
Confederate attack on Culp’s Hill. The rocks in the foreground can still be found near the position of the Seventy-Eight and One Hundred and Second New York.
Although the precise order of the Stonewall Brigade’s regiments was never recorded, the Fifth Virginia was likely on the right of the line, as they had been earlier that morning in the fighting at the saddle. They found themselves now in a “murderous and enfilading fire” on the steep slopes of Culp’s Hill. That enfilading fire may have come from the Sixty-Sixth Ohio, one of Candy’s regiments. Just before 6 a.m., the regiment had advanced outside of Greene’s breastworks and taken up a perpendicular position from which they could enfilade the Confederate attackers. Although Jones’ Brigade held the Confederate right and could have forced the single regiment back by threatening the Ohioans’ own flank, the steep slope here made an assault nearly impossible. Jones’ skirmishers near the base of the hill harassed the Federals, but the Sixty-Sixth Ohio was able to hold its exposed position throughout the day. Their volleys would smash into the Stonewall Brigade’s right flank throughout its attack.96
Its right facing the threat of the Sixty-Sixth Ohio, the Stonewall Brigade’s left flank was only marginally better. In addition to the Stonewall Brigade, Johnson hurled Daniel’s Brigade and Steuart’s Brigade forward against Kane’s line at the saddle. Although the three units attacked simultaneously, they did not present a single unified mass. A gap of perhaps several hundred yards existed between Daniel’s men and the Stonewall Brigade, screened by a thin line of skirmishers from the Second North Carolina Battalion. Furthermore, Daniel’s Brigade did not advance much beyond the line of captured breastworks, leaving most of the assault to Steuart and Walker’s commands.97
As the minutes ticked by and the Stonewall Brigade stalled midway up the hill with minimal support on its flanks, Lieutenant Edgar recalled that the “firing from the enemy gets heavier and the carnage and bloodshed more frightful. The wounded and dying are literally heaped up around us and their groans and cries for help and mercy rise above the roar of battle.” As the young lieutenant urged his men to keep up their fire, Edgar saw one of his friends crumble to the ground at the officer’s feet. The wounded man fixed his eyes on Edgar, imploring him for help. Unable to abandon his duties to render assistance, Edgar watched while his friend slowly bled to death in front of him.98
The Hardest Battle We Ever Had
On the left of the Stonewall Brigade, the Thirty-Third Virginia surged forward in a push to overrun the works at their front. Men began dropping left and right. Captain William Powell, commanding Company A, suffered a severe leg wound. He made his way back to a field hospital, but would never return to active duty with the regiment. Nearby, Captain George R. Bedinger of Company E fell dead “perhaps farther in advance of the line of battle than any other officer or man.”99
Above the Union breastworks, the colors of the One Hundred and Forty-Ninth New York flapped defiantly. Bullets had snapped the flag’s shaft twice already. Each time, the color sergeant had spliced the pole back together using splints from a cracker box and straps from his knapsack. As the Confederates surged nearly up to the works, a first sergeant, possibly First Sergeant James W. Menifee of the Thirty-Third Virginia Company H, lunged for the colors. He was shot down two feet from the banner, five bullets riddling his body. After the battle, the New Yorkers counted 81 bullet holes in the flag and seven in the flag’s shaft.100
Menifee’s Company H was in the thick of the fighting, making up a third of the regiment’s fatalities. Afterwards, Corporal Benjamin F. Coffman recounted the grim toll, judging in a letter home, “I think it was the hardest battle we ever had.” In addition to First Sergeant Menifee, Coffman watched Privates William Jenkins and Haley Morris shot dead before him. When Sergeant John W. Rosenberger fell dead as well, Coffman dug through the man’s pockets and removed his personal effects to send to Rosenberger’s widow. As the fighting drew to a close, the severely wounded Sergeant John P. Hite was near death and could not be moved. Private David C. Hite stayed with John and they were both captured. John Hite would die on July 5, while David would remain in captivity until exchanged in early 1864. He would be killed during the Battle of Third Winchester later that year. All told, the small company lost at Gettysburg four killed and 14 wounded, four of those mortally.101
Left to right, Capt. William Powell, Capt. George R. Bedinger, Sgt. John P. Hite, and Pvt. David C. Hite, all of the Thirty-Third Virginia
With the Thirty-Third Virginia being cut to pieces and unable to breach the Union line, Walker rushed the Fourth Virginia to their assistance. The Virginians charged forward, led by Major William Terry, “who gallantly led his regiment almost to the breastworks of the enemy.” Union soldiers recalled the Confederate surge reaching almost 15 yards from their works. There, however, they were met with a “most galling and deadly fire,” according to a sergeant in the Seventh Ohio. “The line of battle halted, and being unable to advance, could not retreat, but sought shelter behind rocks and trees… this midway position was exceedingly disastrous…”102
Unable to crack the Union fortifications, the Stonewall Brigade’s line began to falter. First the left of the line began to give way, then the rest of the brigade. According to Walker, “the fire became so destructive that I suffered the brigade to fall back to a more secure position, as it was a useless sacrifice of life to keep them longer under so galling a fire”. He ordered the brigade to retreat about 300 yards down the slope before reforming his line.103
Col. William Creighton, Seventh Ohio
Much of the Fourth Virginia and portions of the other regiments, however, were pinned down too close to the Union lines to either advance or retreat. Someone in the Fourth Virginia raised a white flag to surrender. Private John McKee of Company I asked his commander, Captain Givens B. Strickler, if he could shoot the man, but Strickler suggested he throw rocks instead. A few well-aimed stones from McKee and the white rag was withdrawn.104
Surrender, however, soon became the only option. Seeing a white flag in front of his regiment, Colonel William R. Creighton ordered his men to cease fire and called out to the sheltering Confederates, “Come in!” Some 78 members of the Stonewall Brigade, mostly from the Fourth Virginia, rose up from behind the rocks and trees and began to make their way towards the Federal lines. Many of the men were wounded and had to be helped over the works by the Ohio soldiers. Private McKee, having only moments before threatened to shoot a comrade considering surrender, made his way with the other prisoners up to the breastworks. A Union soldier reached out for him, saying, “Gim-me-your hand, Johnny Reb; you’ve give’ us the bulliest fight of the war.”105
Maj. Benjamin Leigh, Staff of Johnson’s Division
As members of the Stonewall Brigade began to surrender, one of Johnson’s staff officers sought to intervene. Major Benjamin W. Leigh had been among those who carried Jackson from the field at Chancellorsville, shielding the general with his body when Jackson’s stretcher was placed on the ground. Now, he spurred his horse forward, seeking to prevent the surrender. “On his splendid mount he pushed up toward our line,” recounted an Ohio soldier, “with singular disregard for his personal safety, until well within reach of our Springfield rifles. As he advanced, the firing from the Confederates broke out with renewed vigor, and was promptly and cordially met by us from the brow of the hill. Down went horse and rider to rise no more.” The major was hit by a dozen bullets and died instantly.106
When Major Terry reformed his regiment at the base of Culp’s Hill, he could muster only one-fourth of the men he commanded at the beginning of the day’s fighting. Some 87 members of the Stonewall Brigade had been captured, 61 of whom were from the Fourth Virginia. The majority of the Virginians appear to have been captured by the Seventh Ohio, who recounted the capture of 78 Confederates, including three captains and four lieutenants. Although their names were not recorded, these officers were most likely from the Fourth Virginia and included Captain Givens B. Strickler of Company I, Captain George B. McCorkle and First Lieutenant Chifton C. Burks of Company H, Captain William P. F. Lee of Company B, First Lieutenant Robert C. Vaughan and Second Lieutenant William B. Carder of Company D, and Second Lieutenant Christian S. Kinzer of Company L.107
Pvt. Samuel Wilhelm, Fourth Virginia Company I, was among those who surrendered on the slope of Culp’s Hill.
Hit particularly hard was Captain Strickler and Private McKee’s Company I, the celebrated Liberty Hall Volunteers. The company was almost wiped out in the fighting, losing one killed, four wounded, and sixteen captured. Their comrades in Company H had 18 men captured, including both of the company’s senior officers. The regiment’s losses were made all the worse by the fact that many of the seriously wounded would fall into enemy hands in the coming days as the Confederate army made its way back to Virginia.108
The Fourth Virginia was not the only unit to have men surrender in front of Greene’s fortifications. The fire of the One Hundred and Forty-Ninth New York slackened when a white flag appeared at their front and several companies of Confederates came forward to surrender. After they threw down their muskets, they were permitted to come over the entrenchments into Union lines. Five men surrendered to the Twenty-Ninth Ohio and a contingent of 52 Confederates from the “Stonewall Division” surrendered to a captain in the One Hundred and Thirty-Seventh New York. The fluttering white flags, handkerchiefs, and even pieces of paper marked the beginning of the men’s journey to northern prison camps.109
All Had Been Done That It Was Possible to Do
To the left of the Stonewall Brigade, the assault by Steuart and Daniel’s Brigade had also failed. Steuart’s troops had advanced in column of regiments against Kane’s men, “who poured into them so continuous a fire that when within 70 paces their columns wavered and soon broke to the rear.” As the Confederates fell back, Geary’s troops surged forward with wild cheers of victory, driving the grey-clad lines back and forcing back Johnson’s left flank. After nearly six hours of continuous combat, the Federal ranks overran the Confederate positions on the lower crest of Culp’s Hill. The original line of XII Corps breastworks were once again in Union hands.110
Johnson ordered no further assaults. “The enemy,” he determined, “were too securely intrenched and in too great numbers to be dislodged by the force at my command… all had been done that it was possible to do.” At around noon, the Stonewall Brigade was ordered forward a final time, but this was only to prevent any further Union advances in the Culp’s Hill sector. Walker’s men kept up a desultory fire with Union skirmishers for the remainder of the day, while the battle reached its climatic conclusion a little to the west as the Army of the Virginia made a final, futile effort to crack the Union line in Pickett’s Charge.111
Lieutenant Edgar had survived the ordeal and now found himself overcome with exhaustion. He hadn’t eaten anything since the previous night. “We are so weak and broken down” he stated, “that we can scarcely stand up because of the intense excitement and danger.” Knowing his parents, sister, and brother would become concerned for his safety upon hearing of the battle, Edgar sat down to compose a letter informing them that he had escaped the clash unharmed.112
In the afternoon, two Maryland officers from Steuart’s Brigade came by the Stonewall Brigade’s position looking for food. General Walker gave them two stale biscuits and was chatting with the men when a Union prisoner from a Pennsylvania regiment was brought by under guard. The prisoner, a recent immigrant from Germany who spoke poor English, would only tell the general that he belonged to the “Oonan” army. Walker, still bristling from the mauling his men had faced that day, supposedly spat back “It is too bad to think that such men as we have around us should be butchered by the miserable mercenary devils of which this is a fair specimen. Sometimes I am half inclined to show the wretches no quarter.”113
The Second Virginia rejoined their comrades at about 8 p.m. At around midnight, the Stonewall Brigade and the rest of Johnson’s Division abandoned their positions along the base Culp’s Hill and marched west through the town of Gettysburg. Before bivouacking that night, rations were cooked and brought to the famished men. By dawn, they had formed line of battle on the heights northwest of Gettysburg, bracing for a Federal counterattack that would never come. Rain that began late in the day of July 4 turned into a downpour as darkness fell. By eleven p.m., the men of the Stonewall Brigade wearily formed their marching columns and set off through the night and rain southwest towards the town of Fairfield. Just over a week later, they would cross back into Virginia early in the day on July 13.114
Culp’s Hill after the battle, showing the effect of musket fire on the trees.
They left behind a shattered landscape, silent witness to the intensity of the fighting. A Union solider gazing down the slope of Culp’s Hill observed that “unexploded shells were half buried in oak trees, the branches of which were cut and bruised by others; and the trunks of nearly all were scarred so thickly with bullet marks fourteen or fifteen feet above the ground, that scarcely an inch between them of untouched bark remained.” A full five years after the battle the scars of battle remained plainly visible; “the moss on the rocks was discolored in hundreds of places where the bullets had struck… stumps and trees were perforated with holes where leaden balls had since been dug out.”115
The human toll was grimmer still. As Union skirmishers had advanced late in the day on July 3, they encountered the Confederate wounded left behind on the slopes of the hill. “The poor, haggard creatures, limp from loss of blood, seemed to be jammed in between the rocks,” described one Wisconsin soldier. “As the dusk stole on and the stillness of night, the moans, entreaties and piteous cries of the poor, mangled men and boys… filled the air with most dolorous sounds.”116
In the days following the battle, the men of the Stonewall Brigade wrote letters home grappling with their losses. Sergeant John Garibaldi of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia’s Company C informed his wife that, “Our loss is pretty heavy. There was thirteen out of our company killed and wounded. Henry Gilliland was killed dead on the field. William Lawson was killed, David and Lee Gilbert were badly wounded, John Hepler was slightly wounded and the Captain [Charles L. Haynes] and Lieutenant [William T.] Clark.”117
In the Thirty-Third Virginia, Private Thomas G. Read of Company I described to his wife the death of Read’s company commander, Captain George C. Eastham during the skirmishing of July 2. He bemoaned that a member of his company, Private Henry T. Brown, had been wounded and left on the field. “Whether he was killed, or taken prisoner afterwards we have not yet heard… there were some seven others in our Comp. wounded, but they are all said to be across the river, & I suppose on their way home, nine of our field officers were hurt, & I think only six were killed out of the Regt.”118
Gettysburg Marker for the Stonewall Brigade
The strength of the Union position and the protection of the breastworks had made the victory relatively cheap. The XII Corps suffered only 204 men killed, with another 878 wounded or captured. Geary’s Division, numbering just less than 4,000 had, during the fight, expended some 277,000 rounds of ammunition. Union details gathered Confederate arms abandoned on the field. Candy’s Brigade picked up some 1,500 small arms, mostly imported British Enfield rifled muskets. Two Enfields found after the battle made their way into the collection of the Gettysburg National Military Park. The broken stock of one is carved “Wm F Beatty/Staunton Rifles,” and was carried by Corporal William F. Beatty of Company G of the Fifth Virginia. The other is a complete musket and has “J.B.O./2nd VA Stonewall Brigade” carved on its stock.119
Confederate casualties were much higher than those suffered by their Union counterparts. Johnston reported 1,823 casualties, but this number omits the men of Daniel’s, Smith’s, or O’Neal’s Brigades who joined the fight on July 3 and for which we lack detailed casualty figures. The July 3 fighting at Culp’s Hill was the longest sustained fighting of the entire Battle of Gettysburg. For over seven hours, as one Ohio soldier recalled, “the musketry was one continued roll, interspersed at intervals by the crash of the artillery.” All that fire and bloodletting accomplished little, with the Union recovering all the ground lost on July 2. Worse still for the Confederates, the fighting on Culp’s Hill concluded some two hours before Lee was ready to launch Pickett’s Charge against the Union center.120
General Walker praised the conduct of his troops, reporting that “officers and men of the brigade behaved in a manner worthy their high reputation.” In maintaining that reputation, the Stonewall Brigade paid the price of 35 of its members killed, while another 208 men were wounded at Gettysburg. Many of the wounded, however, had to be abandoned and fell into enemy hands when the Army of Northern Virginia retreated south. After their recovery, they would be reunited in northern prison camps with the 87 of their comrades captured during the fighting. The Second Virginia, having been spared the brutal combat on the slopes of Culp’s Hill, had the lightest casualties, their unit’s sole fatality being Gettysburg native John Wesley Culp. The Fourth Virginia suffered the most, losing nearly as many captured as they did killed and wounded. Though the Twenty-Seventh Virginia suffered only 47 causalities, they had entered the battle with only 129 men in the ranks. Overall, the brigade’s losses were fully one fourth of the men who had marched into Gettysburg on the evening of July 1 spoiling for a fight.121
Having returned safely to Virginia, a former member of the Fourth Virginia took the opportunity to visit his old command. Shocked at the mauling the regiment had suffered at Gettysburg, he wrote to his wife that “the whole regt. is about 1/3 larger” than the company in which he had enlisted in 1861. “The contrast,” he wrote, “almost makes me sad.”122
A few weeks after the battle, Sergeant Daniel Sheetz of the Second Virginia provided perhaps the most telling analysis of battle of Gettysburg and the road that still lay ahead for the Stonewall Brigade. “I can not say that I am enjoying myself at all at this time,” he wrote. “I am too much worried down from the march that we had in the yankee states… it was the hardest times that we had since the war [began]. I was in good hopes that the war would soon be over, but it don’t look much like it at this time.”123
Note: The following is part two of a four-part series on the actions of the Stonewall Brigade at Gettysburg. The previous installment covered the initial skirmishing around Wolf’s Hill, the subsequent installment will address the July 3 attacks on Culp’s Hill, and a final epilogue will address the fate of the brigade’s flags during the battle.
With sweat pouring down their dust-caked brows and their horses panting with exertion, Brigadier General David M. Gregg’s division of Union cavalry limped along the Hanover Road towards Gettysburg on the morning of July 2. “We had become a sorry-looking body of men,” recalled one officer in the division, “having been in the saddle day and night almost continuously for over three weeks, without a change of clothing or an opportunity for a general wash; moreover we were much reduced by short rations and exhaustion, and mounted on horses whose bones were plainly visible to the naked eye.” Another veteran asked his readers to “think of three weeks marching, over hot, dusty roads without regular rest or rations, under constant mental and physical strain… and you can have some idea of the exhausted condition of men and horse.” In the unendurable July heat, troopers and mounts rapidly reached the point of collapse. One regiment had only 322 serviceable horses for its nearly 400 men, with the rest of the men marching on foot awkwardly carrying their heavy saddles.1
Cousin of the Pennsylvania governor and a career cavalry officer in the pre-war army, the thirty-year old Gregg had risen rapidly through the ranks. While a mere captain at the war’s onset, he had earned a general’s star and the command of a division by spring 1863. One of his biographers later described Gregg as “endowed with a rare combination of modesty, geniality, and ability… universally liked and respected.” With one of his brigades dispatched the previous day to help protect Union supply lines, Gregg rode towards Gettysburg at the head of two brigades. Even these units, however, were not as strong as they appeared on paper. Gregg had been ordered to dispatch three regiments, a full third of his remaining strength, to fulfill escort duties elsewhere on the battlefield.2
Colonel John I. Gregg, a distant relative of General Gregg, commanded a brigade of cavalrymen from Pennsylvania, New York, and Maine. Described as a “quiet, soldierly captain,” Colonel Gregg’s men called him “Long John” due to his considerable height. One of his regiments, the Tenth New York Cavalry, was very familiar with the Gettysburg area. For nearly three months in the winter of 1861, the regiment had learned the art of soldiering through hours of drill in the fields of the George Wolf Farm just beyond Brinkerhoff’s Ridge. Alongside the Tenth, Gregg’s remaining units were the Sixteenth Pennsylvania and the First Maine.3
Gregg’s other brigade also had ties to the Gettysburg area. Dr. Theodore T. Tate, assistant surgeon of the Third Pennsylvania Cavalry, had lived in Gettysburg before the war and had helped guide the division through the Pennsylvania countryside over the preceding days. The brigade’s commander, Colonel John B. McIntosh, was a “born fighter, strict disciplinarian, a dashing leader, and a polished gentlemen.” Born in Florida, the colonel’s older brother had joined the Confederate army and served with distinction as a cavalry commander in the western theater until his death in 1862. In addition to the Third Pennsylvania, McIntosh had behind him the First New Jersey and the First Maryland Cavalry.4
Left to right: Brig. Gen. David Gregg, Col. John Gregg, and Col. John McIntosh
Gregg’s column of “wearied men and jaded horses, both half-famished” reached the intersection of the Hanover Road and Low Dutch Road at around noon on July 2. On the high ground to their front, they could make out the Ninth Massachusetts Infantry, facing the Stonewall Brigade all alone near the Deardorff Farm. Although the Ninth’s commander, Colonel Patrick R. Guiney, was eager to be relieved, Gregg’s exhausted men were in no condition to replace them on the skirmish line. Guiney watched in frustration as he saw Gregg’s men dismount in the fields around the Spangler and Reaver Farms rather than advance to his aid.5
The cavalry was not as idle, however, as it appeared to the Colonel Guiney. Gregg ordered McIntosh’s men to begin tearing down the fences along the Hanover Road so that they would not obstruct the division’s movement should they need to advance. Gregg’s Brigade, meanwhile, was sent south along the Low Dutch Road towards the Baltimore Pike. There, they encountered the Union VI Corps, whose columns of infantry blocked their path. The tired cavalrymen wheeled their horses around and rode back to where McIntosh’s men were now resting near the intersection.6
Maj. Matthew Avery, commander of the Tenth New York Cavalry
At around 3 p.m., soon after the return of Gregg’s Brigade, Colonel Guiney finally received orders to rejoin his brigade. As the Ninth Massachusetts recalled its skirmishers and reformed the regiment, Gregg sought out Major Matthew H. Avery, commander of the Tenth New York, to deploy skirmishers to replace the departing infantry. The major, resting with his staff in the shade of a peach tree near the Reaver House, ordered Major John H. Kemper to take Company H and Company L to establish contact with the Stonewall Brigade’s skirmishers beyond Brinkerhoff’s Ridge.7
The handful of New Yorkers moved forward, splashing across the small stream near the Little Farm before making their way across Cress’s Run. Among the men was Sergeant B. W. Bonnell of Company H. He watched in amusement as the Cress Family fled their home just west of the creek, the women carrying the family’s bedding, the man lugging a bag of food, and the children laden with all the clothing they could carry. As Bonnell and his men passed through the abandoned farm, they helped themselves to some mackeral the Cress family had left in a tub of water near their well. Other than the fish, the New Yorkers left the Cress family’s possessions unmolested. “They did not,” wrote Bonnel, “feel like disturbing anything the poor people had left.”8
Kemper left a small mounted reserve behind at the Cress Farm and began to climb the slope of Brinkerhoff’s Ridge on foot. The ridge rose about 50 feet above Cress Run and was topped by a farm lane leading from the Howard Farm at the Hanover Road north towards the Storick Farm, today called Hoffman Road. A stone wall marked the eastern side of this road and on the other side of the crest lay a tall wheatfield ripe for cutting. A small cluster of woods interrupted the wheatfield about halfway between the Hanover Road and the Storick Farm, while larger pieces of timber lay south of the road and to the north past the Storick buildings. Kemper pushed his men into the wheat, establishing the left of Company H on the Hanover Road. At the right end of his line, Company L’s flank occupied the woods near the Storick Farm.9
Major John H. Kemper, Tenth New York Cavalry
The deployment of Union cavalry did not go unnoticed by Brigadier General James A. Walker and the Stonewall Brigade. From their positions west of Brinkerhoff’s Ridge and near the Deardorff Farm, Walker’s skirmishers began exchanging shots with Kemper’s force. After an hour of taking fire from small groups of Confederates in the woods near the Brinkerhoff Farm and pressuring his exposed flanks, Kemper decided to withdraw his men. As the New Yorkers pulled back, the Virginians advanced hot on their heels. On the left end of Kemper’s line, 25-year-old Private William Potter of Company H fell wounded. Sergeant Bonnell reported seeing a few of his men, who were sheltering behind a cluster of rocks, surrounded and captured by the advancing Virginians.10
Meanwhile, a member of the Tenth New York was having his own private brush with the Stonewall Brigade. Sergeant David Pletcher was among those men whose horse had given out on the hard ride to Gettysburg. While the regiment was resting near the Low Dutch Road intersection, Pletcher obtained permission from Major Avery to go in search of a new horse. He set off south of the Hanover Road, passing through the Tenth’s skirmish line and climbing the slope of Wolf’s Hill. Behind him and to his right he could hear the firing between Kemper’s men and the Virginians. Upon reaching the summit of Wolf’s Hill in the company of a local civilian, Pletcher was admiring the view of the battlefield to the west. Suddenly, a voice cried out “Halt, you damned Yank!” With some of the Stonewall Brigade’s skirmishers only a dozen yards away, Pletcher leapt to his feet and ran to the south, where he eventually encountered some of infantry skirmishers dispatched by the Union XII Corps. The wayward sergeant would eventually rejoin his regiment after nightfall, still without a horse.11
Drive Back those Sharpshooters Up There
Watching Kemper’s men stream back from the distant ridge, General Gregg sent an aide galloping over to Avery with orders to “sent a force to drive back those sharpshooters up there.” Avery directed Sergeant Nelson Mitchell to advance with his squadron, consisting of Company A and Company M, but Mitchell protested that there was no commissioned officer in the understrength squadron. Avery, therefore, turned to Captain Benjamin F. Lownsbury, who was sitting nearby calmly cleaning his revolver, and ordered him to clear the ridge of the Stonewall Brigade’s skirmishers. Lownsbury’s squadron of Company E, led by a freshly-promoted Lieutenant Horace Morey, and Company K led by Sergeant Norman W. Torry, was severely understrength and, once they had detailed every fourth man to hold his dismounted comrades’ horses, Lownsbury could only muster 27 men.12
Capt. Benjamin Lownsbury, Tenth New York Cavalry Company K, in a post-war image
Lownsbury’s dismounted men made their way across Cress Run and began to ascend Brinkerhoff’s Ridge. Aiming to clear the Confederate skirmishers sheltering in the small patch of woods north of the Hanover Road, Lownsbury ran to the right end of his line and ordered his men to begin obliquing to the right. The men on the left end of the line, however, did not hear the order and continued marching straight forward, keeping the flank of Lownsbury’s squadron anchored on the Hanover Road. This miscommunication stretched and thinned Lownsbury’s already paltry line.13
Lownsbury’s small detachment was soon joined by the remainder of the Tenth New York. An even smaller squadron, led by Lieutenant Truman C. White and comprised of Company B and Company D, moved up to cover Lownsbury’s right. They extended the Tenth’s line past the Storick Farm to the north. Twenty-six-year old Major Alvah D. Waters led two squadrons down the Hanover Pike and, just past Cress Run, turned off the road and formed in the fields near the Norris Farm. Waters dismounted his men and advanced Company G, establishing a skirmish line with its right resting on the Hanover Road. Company C established its line farther to the left, establishing contact with the handful of XII infantry skirmishers on Wolf’s Hill. Company A and M formed as a reserve south of the Hanover Road.14
Maj. Alvah D. Waters, Tenth New York Cavalry
With the advance of the Tenth New York near his right flank, General Walker now faced a quandary. At around the time Lownsbury and Waters’ men began their advance on Brinkerhoff’s Ridge, the sound of cannon began booming just to the west. Major J. W. Latimer had massed the artillery of Johnson’s Division on Benner’s Hill throughout the day. At around 4 p.m., his guns opened fire on the Union lines on Culp’s Hill in preparation for an assault by Johnson’s infantry that evening. Johnson sent orders for Walker to redeploy the Stonewall Brigade to join the attack, but the recent Union movement on Brinkerhoff’s Ridge gave Walker pause. The Stonewall Brigade skirmishers had pulled back in the face of Waters’ and Lownsbury’s advance. From their new position, the Union sharpshooters were now harassing Walker’s left flank and he did not know how large of a force lay behind them. He informed Johnson that withdrawing the Stonewall Brigade could leave the flank and rear of Johnson’s assault vulnerable to this unknown Union force. Johnson ordered Walker to repulse the Union troops facing him and then join in the attack as soon as possible.15
At somewhere around 5 p.m., Walker began shifting his men in response to Johnson’s directive. Colonel John H. S. Funk reported later that his Fifth Virginia advanced on Wolf’s Hill at around this time, driving back Union skirmishers who had taken refuge on the heights, although it is unclear to what command these skirmishers belonged. The Thirty-Third Virginia moved forward several hundred yards and then advanced by the left to adopt a new line at an oblique angle to their first position, most likely facing them to the east towards Gregg’s men. The men of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia advanced some 300 yards and the Fourth probably likewise shifted forward and faced towards the east as well. Walker directed the Second Virginia north of the Hanover Road and ordered Colonel John Q. A. Nadenbousch to clear Brinkerhoff’s Ridge of the Union skirmishers.16
At a Single Dash
Upon reaching the crest of Brinkerhoff’s Ridge, Lownsbury’s men clambered over the stone wall, crossed the road, and passed through the small patch of woods, the Confederate skirmishers at their front melting away as the troopers pushed forward. As they made their way through the wheatfield, the cavalrymen encountered a split rail fence about 100 yards east of the crest. Still on the right of the line, Lownsbury ordered the men to lie down. The bright summer sun was beginning to dip towards the western horizon, shining directly in Lownsbury’s eyes and making it difficult to make out anything in the lengthening shadows of the woods to their front. By pausing a few moments, he hoped the sun would set further behind the trees, improving visibility for his men.17
The left end of Lownsbury’s line, however, had reached the fence before the right and were already starting to climb over the fence. As they clambered up and over, their heads poked above the tall wheat, disclosing Lownsbury’s position. Without warning, the Second Virginia erupted from the shadowy woods to the front and charged rapidly at the small group of Union soldiers. Quickly firing as they advanced, the 333-man strong Confederate regiment swiftly overwhelmed the two dozen Union skirmishers and forced Lownsbury to order a hasty retreat. The Second Virginia advanced “at a single dash,” driving Lownsbury’s men back through the wheatfield and then the small stand of trees.18
The Virginians advanced with an audience. Soon before Nadenbousch’s line charged out of the woods at the New Yorkers, Confederate cavalry commander J.E.B. Stuart had ridden up with his staff. Stuart’s cavalry, whose absence thus far had necessitated the Stonewall Brigade being dispatched to guard the army’s left flank, would soon ride into Gettysburg. Stuart was scouting the Union flank to determine where he might best deploy his approaching cavalry brigades. He and a cluster of staff officers rode out just in advance of the Second Virginia’s left flank. After watching the Stonewall Brigade’s contest with the dismounted Union cavalry for a time, Stuart wheeled his horse and galloped away. He would return the following day and engage Gregg’s men in one of the most famous cavalry clashes of the war.19
The headlong retreat of Lownsbury and his men before the advancing Second Virginia slowed as they reached the crest of Brinkerhoff’s Ridge and began to climb the stone wall. Lownsbury saw a corporal in Company E crumble to the ground dead just before the captain himself was struck in the leg. As he stumbled from the slight wound, Lownsbury was suddenly surrounded by a group of Virginians and found himself captured along with Corporal Edmond G. Dow of Company K.
Cpl. Edmond G. Dow, Tenth New York Cavalry Company K, in a post-war image
Lownsbury and Dow were marched under guard to the rear where Walker had his headquarters, likely at the Brinkerhoff Farm. They found Walker seated on a rail fence. The general’s bearing and language, recalled Dow, was “dignified and gentlemanly.” He asked Lownsbury what force lay over the ridge, to which Lownsbury politely replied that he hadn’t the remotest idea. Walker expressed his belief that the Confederate army would triumph at Gettysburg, citing the exhaustion of Union soldiers from forced marches and their demoralization from repeated defeats. The two prisoners were then marched farther to the rear. In the confusion of the Confederate retreat several days later, Dow managed to break free and escape back to Union lines. He would remain with the Tenth New York through the end of the war, rising to the rank of Sergeant in 1865. Lownsbury remained in Confederate detention until he was exchanged in March 1864. Several months later, he resigned his commission and left military service.20
Back on Brinkerhoff’s Ridge, the Union right was also coming under attack. With Company D on the left linking up with Lownsbury’s flank and Company B on the far right, Lieutenant White had deployed his squadron in an open field. They soon came under attack by members of the Stonewall Brigade, some of whom fired from the protection of an old building. The troopers could find little cover and Corporal John A. Edson of Company D recalled how “every shot from the enemy had the effect of making us flatten ourselves, in imagination at least, a little more.”21
One member of Company D, Private Hiram Hadden, was wearing a particularly large white civilian hat that day, making him stand out on the skirmish line. Angry at how much enemy fire he was drawing, he suddenly jumped up, threw the hat to the ground, and began firing every cartridge he had at the Virginians. Private James “Jimmy” Van Allen, 44 years of age, was one of the older members of Company D. During the fight, his carbine misfired and he began snapping percussion caps in an effort to clear the weapon. Seeing the private growing impatient, Corporal Edson suggested he try a new cartridge. When Van Allen opened the chamber, he found that he had actually fired on his first shot but hadn’t realized it in the din of battle. Looking at the weapon with disgust he exclaimed “What a damned fool I am; spoiled six caps and haven’t hurt a cussed Reb!”22
Elsewhere in Company D, one man with a cowardly reputation panicked when the firing started and fired his carbine straight up in the air. “Hold on there!” shouted Private Robert “Bob” Evans. “There ain’t any Rebs up there; you’ll kill an angel!” The levity, however, was short-lived, as moments later the man next to Evans, Private Joseph McKeagan, fell badly wounded. As the volume of Confederate fire grew, Private Phillip Bentzell collapsed, his blood staining the ground as he took his final breaths.23
Lt. James Matthews, Tenth New York Cavalry Company F
Under ferocious assault by Nadenbousch’s men, the Tenth New York’s line north of the Hanover Road was collapsing. The cavalrymen, armed with Sharps breechloading carbines, were outmatched by the Confederates and their longer-range rifled muskets. Seeking to turn the tide, Avery hurled his final reserves, Company F under Lieutenant James Matthews, forward in a mounted charge in support of Lownsbury’s now-leaderless squadron. As the horsemen reached the crest of the ridge, they came under heavy fire, bullets flying thick around them. Matthews ordered then back behind the cover of the brow of the hill. An enraged Avery rode up and angerly demanded to know who had ordered the company to retreat. Matthews stated he had given the order. Before the major could rebuke his junior officer, a volley crashed out from the Confederate line, sending bullets whizzing over Avery’s head and causing him to duck. A chastised Avery, realizing the wisdom of Matthew’s retreat, turned to him and said, “You ought to have done it before!”24
It Fairly Rained Lead
South of the Hanover Road, the remainder of the Tenth New York was also fiercely engaged. Once Major Waters had drawn up his squadrons in the fields near the Norris Farm, he requested five volunteers. Sergeant John A. Freer and four men of his Company M stepped forward and were dispatched to probe for the enemy’s position while Waters deployed Company C and Company G along the skirmish line. Freer’s squad advanced through the stand of woods south of the Hanover Road until they reached a seven-rail fence marking the edge of an open field beyond. They had been there for only five minutes when they caught sight of Confederate troops advancing into the field and forming a battle line. Significantly overestimating the enemy’s strength, the sergeant reported back to Major Waters that there was a least a division of rebels advancing on them. Waters ordered Freer and his men to remain in the woods and observe the enemy only.
Sgt. John A. Freer, Tenth New York Cavalry Company M
The force facing Freer was not a division, but rather just two companies of the Second Virginia. One company began advancing towards Freer’s position to tear down the fence behind which Freer’s squad hid. To the left, another company of Confederates advanced to dismantle a second fence. His men spoiling for a fight, Freer ordered his men to “Give ‘em hell!” as the enemy company drew near. The sudden eruption of fire caused the Confederates in front of Freer to fall back in alarm, but the company to the left had already torn down their fence and charged at Freer’s squad. With the charging Virginians screaming their celebrated “Ki-yi” yell, the New Yorkers emptied their carbines and pulled out their revolvers. Freer ordered them to fall back through the woods. Freer recalled that, as they ran through the trees, it “fairly rained lead. I was never in such a shower of bullets before nor since.” They didn’t stop running until they had reached Cress Run and collapsed in it. The cavalrymen found their clothes riddled with bullets. One round had grazed Freer’s right leg and lodged in his boot. Another had struck the inside of his left arm and was bleeding profusely. He busied himself binding the wound while the battle’s intensity grew behind him.25
With the Virginians advancing into the woods, they quickly clashed with the main Union skirmish line. Hearing the growing gunfire, Captain John G. Pierce advanced some 90 men from the left wing’s reserve squadron of Company A and Company M. They moved at the left oblique, entering the narrow piece of woods from which Freer had recently fled. Pierce ordered his men to lie down and remain quiet while he left to find Major Waters. Without their captain and with bullets beginning to smack into the trees above them, the men began to grow impatient. Without orders, they moved forward to support the skirmish line. They found the line under the command of Lieutenant John McKevitt, who eagerly accepted the additional men. Just has he ordered his reenforced skirmish line forward, the Confederate charge came crashing at them. In the fighting, Private Jacob Vosser of Company C fell dead. Gustice Bourgevis, a 22-year-old private with Company C, was wounded by a Confederate bullet and, following a lengthy hospital stay, was discharged as medically disabled the following year.26
The Tenth New York’s hospital steward, Walter Kempster, had ridden up the Hanover Road to assist with any wounded along the skirmish line. To his left, he watched the men of Water’s two squadrons skirmishing at the edge of the narrow woods, where they “were drawing fine beads on the Confederates in front.” As he was occupied watching the fighting, part of the Second Virginia’s battle line emerged from the small patch of woods north of the road. Seeing the mounted man and thinking him possible an important officer, the Virginians fired a volley at Kempster and started towards him.
Hospital Steward Walter Kempster, Tenth New York Cavalry
Confederate bullets flying over his head, Kempster spurred his horse down the Hanover Road, throwing his left arm and leg over the side of the animal to seek some measure of shelter on its right. As he approached Cress Run, he saw on Cress Ridge ahead a section of artillery preparing to fire. They signaled Kempster to keep to the right to avoid being hit by the blast, but Kempster’s horse became excited and refused to leave the road. The gunners had no choice but to fire. As Kempster later recalled, “In a moment a shrieking shell startled the animal, who jumped to one side and possibly saved me from damage.” When he rode up to the gun, the officer in command congratulated Kempster on his dual escape from the Confederate’s bullets and his own battery’s shell.27
The guns that nearly struck Kempster were not supposed to be at Gettysburg on July 2. The two three-inch guns belonged to a section of Battery H of the Third Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery, under the command of Captain William D. Rank. Recruited in September 1862, a misunderstanding led to the men of the battery being defrauded out of their enlistment bounties. The outraged men mutinied, and the entire unit was sent to Fort Delaware under arrest. After the mutiny charges were dropped, the battery was assigned to the Baltimore defenses. In early summer 1863, with Confederate forces threatening invasion, one section was sent out from Baltimore along with Company A of the Purnell Troop of Maryland cavalry to guard the railroad bridge over the Monocacy River. Forced to fall back by the rapid Confederate advance, they were nearly cut off and captured by Stuart’s cavalry near Cooksville, Maryland on June 28. The units lost their baggage and camp equipment but escaped and soon linked up with Gregg’s Division as it rode north. Unable to return to Baltimore, Rank’s section of guns and the single company of the Purnell Troop under Captain Robert E. Duvall participated in the remainder of the campaign as temporary members of McIntosh’s Brigade.28
As soon as Gregg had dispatched the first squadron of the Tenth New York forward to relieve the infantry at around 3 p.m., Rank’s two guns had unlimbered in the middle of the Hanover Road near the Reever House. There they loaded their guns and waited. With the Tenth New York routed from their positions and the Confederates emerging from the trees atop Brinkerhoff’s Ridge, General Gregg ordered Rank to open fire. After attempting to wave Kempster and his horse off to safety, the gunners rapidly fired two shells. The rounds burst in the midst of the Confederate line and scattered the Virginians. “More beautiful shots were never seen,” wrote one of McIntosh’s troopers watching the artillery in action, “though they were the first hostile ones the gunners had ever fired.”29
The first two shots of Rank’s section play a prominent role in nearly all Union accounts of the action at Brinkerhoff’s Ridge, so much so that the exact details are challenging to pin down. While there is agreement that a mounted man galloping back from the skirmish line was almost hit by the guns, Kempster’s place is taken in one account by Assistant Surgeon Tate of the Third Pennsylvania, with a nearly identical story. Kempster’s account claimed the shots were directed at the woods north of the road, while Freer claimed the shells hit just as he and his squad were fleeing from the woods south of the road. There are claims that the Confederates targeted by Rank’s guns were mounted, but no Confederate cavalry was present, and it would have been unusual for mounted officers to ride alongside the advancing skirmish line. Though Union accounts claim the shells exploded in the midst of the Confederate attackers, there does not appear to have been corresponding Confederate casualties.30
What is not in doubt, however, is the impact the shots had. On the hill’s crest, the sudden artillery fire caused Colonel Nadenbousch to halt his pursuit of the retreating Tenth New York and pull his men back behind the cover of the woods. Perhaps having glimpsed Gregg’s Division arrayed in the fields behind the Reaver House, Nadenbousch reported back to Walker that he faced two brigades of cavalry, two infantry regiments, and an artillery battery, slightly overestimating the weakened force behind Brinkerhoff’s Ridge. However, at around this time, the sound of Confederate guns booming away from Benner’s Hill to the east finally died away after a two hour long cannonade. Johnson’s infantry assault on Culp’s Hill would soon move forward and, unless they could quickly drive back Gregg’s cavalry, the Stonewall Brigade would be unavailable to support the attack. Nadenbousch reformed his men and renewed the advance.31
A Withering Reception
With Avery’s right flank crumpling north of the Hanover Road and his left south of the road now also in retreat, General Gregg ordered McIntosh’s Brigade into action. Buglers in the Third Pennsylvania sounded “To Horse” as troopers lept atop their mounts. The regiment advanced at a trot along the Hanover Road and formed a close column just behind Cress Run in the shelter of some woods. Lieutenant Colonel Edward S. Jones ordered two squadrons, under Captains William E. Miller and Frank W. Hess, to dismount and advance as skirmishers. Soon the dispersed line of troopers, carbines at the ready, made their way across Cress Run and up the eastern slope of Brinkerhoff’s Ridge. Hess’s men rested their left flank on the Hanover Road, with Miller’s men extending the formation to the right.32
Left to right: Capt. Frank Hess, Members of Company C of the Third Pennsylvania, and Capt. William Miller.
Just behind the Third Pennsylvania, the few dozen men of Captain Duvall’s orphaned company of the Purnell Troop also spurred their horses forward. They dismounted just south of the road and advanced alongside Hess’s left flank. Still farther to the left, two battalions of the First New Jersey Cavalry under the command of Major Hugh H. Janeway and Captain Robert N. Boyd, further bolstered the line of dismounts. The final battalion of the First New Jersey remained behind as a reserve south of the road, while the remainder of the Third Pennsylvania stood ready north of the road. After factoring in their reserves and men to hold horses, just over 200 troopers advanced steadily up towards the crest of the ridge.33
As the blue-clad line crested the rise, they saw before them the stone wall along the farm lane and, just beyond, the Second Virginia renewing their advance. In an instant, both sides realized the stone wall was the key to control of the contested ridge. Orders rang out for the troopers to make for the fence at the double quick and the race was on. A member of the Third Pennsylvania recalled that “by the time our men reached [the wall] a line of Confederate infantry was seen running for it at full speed… The infantrymen were not more than twenty feet off from the wall when we reached it and we gave them a withering reception from our breechloading carbines.” Those two earlier well-aimed shots from Rank’s guns, though they likely produced no casualties, had delayed the Confederate advance just long enough for McIntosh’s troopers to win this critical foot race for the wall.34
South of the road, the First New Jersey had been in position only a few moments when a body of Confederates advanced behind a vigorous fire from their skirmishers. The dismounted New Jersey cavalrymen opened fire with their carbines, checking and then driving back the Virginian’s advance. A regimental history of the First New Jersey trumpeted with a touch of dramatic exaggeration that the unit “by their undaunted bearing and their steady fire, staggered the troops that by a single charge could have ridden over them.” Major Janeway, refusing to dismount despite the Stonewall Brigade’s bullets flying through the air, rode from end to end of his skirmish line, urging his men to keep up their fire.35
His attempt to break the line of cavalrymen thwarted, Nadenbousch pulled his men back some two hundred yards to the protection of the trees. From there, they continued to trade shots with Gregg’s men. Whenever a group of Confederates pushed forward into the tall wheat along the top of the ridge, Rank’s guns would lob another shell in their direction. Each probe the Confederates made was answered by the blazing fire of McIntosh’s men behind the stone wall. With their carbine ammunition beginning to run low, the First New Jersey began emptying their revolvers at the enemy in the dying light of the day.36
At one point in the fighting, a carbine bullet hit the elbow of Private Daniel M. Entler of the Second Virginia’s Company B. The round entered his left arm and smashed the humerus bone of his upper arm. Entler was captured two days later, his second time falling into enemy hands. He was exchanged only a few months later but spent the rest of the year in the hospital before being medically discharged, as the wound at his elbow joint remained open and unhealed. A private in Company A, Wilson H. Magaha, was hit in the right thigh. Confederate surgeons could do little to save his leg and amputated that evening just above the knee. Unable to retreat with the defeated Confederate army, he was captured days later and would spend the remainder of the war in first Union and then Confederate hospitals after he was exchanged the following spring. In Company C, John Fry and Philip Shearer also received wounds. Shearer’s wound kept him out of the ranks through April 1864, only to be captured at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. Fry would take well over a year to recover, only to then be captured at the Battle of Fisher’s Hill in September 1864.37
The summer sun finally set around 8:30 p.m., bringing darkness to the battlefield. It did not, however, bring an immediate end to the fighting east of Gettysburg. Nadenbousch made a final attack just after dark, sending his men charging at the Third Pennsylvania’s right flank. The assault was momentarily successful, driving in the Pennsylvanians until the troopers rallied and made a countercharge. They soon regained their position along the stone wall “after considerable trouble” and the Second Virginia fell back into the growing darkness. Up and down the skirmish line, the fire slowly dwindled away. Silence fell over the battlefield with Gregg’s men still in possession of Brinkerhoff’s Ridge.38
Any Moment May Commence the Work of Death
Walker pulled his men back soon after dark. He left behind elements of the Second Virginia, including Company I under Captain James H. O’Bannon, Company K under Lieutenant Berkeley W. Moore, and part of Company A, to maintain a line of pickets along the Hanover Road. They faced the Union cavalry alone for only a short time that night, as Gregg pulled back his skirmishers at around ten in evening and reformed his tired division. They rode south along the Low Dutch Road and bivouacked along the Baltimore Pike for the night. They would return to the vicinity of Brinkerhoff’s Ridge the following day, but rather than Walker’s infantry, they would face Stuart’s newly-arrived cavalry. The Stonewall Brigade, meanwhile, moved several times during the night before finally taking up positions at the base of Culp’s Hill, just behind Steuart’s Brigade, at around 2 or 3 a.m.39
The day’s fighting on Brinkerhoff’s Ridge had produced much noise, but few casualties. In what Nadenboush called a “sharp skirmish,” he reported only three men wounded, although a review of his men’s service records shows at least four wounded and one captured. The Tenth New York reported two men killed and four wounded, while Lownsbury, Dow, and another enlisted man were captured. The Third Pennsylvania reported only a single man wounded from their fight at dusk behind the stone wall. There were no reported casualties for the First New Jersey or the Purnell Legion. Interestingly, although neither unit appears in accounts of the fight at Brinkerhoff’s Ridge, the First Maine reported three men wounded and the Sixteenth Pennsylvania reported two men killed and four men wounded.40
Tactically, the clash may be considered a draw. In a letter to his brother written a few days after the battle, Captain Miller, whose men had checked the Second Virginia at the stone wall, wrote that the engagement ended with “both parties getting the best of it.” Although little blood was spilt and the action warrants hardly a mention is most traditional accounts of the battle of Gettysburg, the combat along the Hanover Pike significantly impacted the battle’s outcome. Their fight with Gregg’s cavalry kept the Stonewall Brigade from joining in Johnson’s evening assault on Culp’s Hill. Eager to reinforce their threatened left near Little Round Top, Union generals had stripped Culp’s Hill of all but a single brigade. The Confederate attack managed to capture part of the Union breastworks but failed to dislodge the defenders before reinforcements and darkness ended the fighting. One additional Confederate brigade might have tipped the scales and allowed Johnson to turn the Union flank and seize high ground that commanded the Army of the Potomac’s vulnerable rear and primary line of retreat.41
At some point in the evening of July 2, Sergeant David Hunter of the Second Virginia found a few quiet moments to pen a letter to his mother. “We are in all probability on [the] eve of a terrible battle,” wrote Hunter. “The two contending armies lie close together and at any moment may commence the work of death. Great results hang upon the issue of the battle. If we are victorious peace may follow if not we may look for a long and fierce war…. Although we may be victorious many must fall, and I may be among that number. If it is the Lord’s will I am, I trust, prepared to go.”The Stonewall Brigade would face that terrible battle, with great results indeed hanging in the balance, the following morning on the rocky slopes of Culp’s Hill.42
Note: The following is part one of a four-part series on the actions of the Stonewall Brigade at Gettysburg. Subsequent installments will cover the fight for Brinkerhoff’s Ridge and the July 3 attacks on Culp’s Hill, while a final epilogue will address the fate of the brigade’s flags during the battle.
With cannon fire rumbling like distant thunder to the east, Colonel Arthur J. L. Fremantle of Her Majesty’s Coldstream Guards paused his horse atop South Mountain, some fifteen miles from the town of Gettysburg. A British military advisor attached to the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, Fremantle took a short break from the oppressive heat of July 1, 1863 to watch the dust-covered columns of Confederate troops hastening towards the growing battle. “Among them I saw, for the first time,” Fremantle would write, “the celebrated ‘Stonewall’ Brigade, formerly commanded by Jackson. In appearance the men differ little from other Confederate soldiers, except, perhaps, that the brigade contains more elderly men and fewer boys.”1
The sweaty, thirsty men of the Stonewall Brigade who fell under Fremantle’s gaze that day had begun their march hours before in Fayetteville, Pennsylvania. With the scattered elements of the Army of Northern Virginia converging on Gettysburg, the Stonewall Brigade would cover some 24 miles under the brutal summer sun on July 1 to reach the Pennsylvania crossroads. The men, already suffering from the extreme heat, also spent the day choking on the dust kicked up by the First Corps’ wagon train preceding them in the line of march. As the men passed Fremantle and crested South Mountain, the sound of distant fire elicited comments that someone in the army had evidently found some Yanks.2
Clear the Yankees Out
Brig. Gen. James A. Walker
The men marching east towards Gettysburg did so with a new commander riding at the head of their column. Brigadier General Elisha F. Paxton had been mortally wounded leading the Stonewall Brigade in a charge at Chancellorsville roughly two months before and, in his place, Lee had appointed Brigadier General James A. Walker on 19 May to lead the storied brigade. Although he had begun the war as the captain of Company C in the Fourth Virginia, Walker had been reassigned outside the brigade after only a few short months. Insulted that a perceived outsider had received the command rather than one of their own, all five of the brigade’s regimental commanders promptly resigned in protest.Walker, however, was an experienced and able leader, having previously led brigades at Antietam and Fredericksburg. Lee stood by his choice and, after quelling the wounded pride of the passed-over officers, convinced them to withdraw their resignations. The recently fallen Jackson, however, may have been appalled to learn that his former brigade was now led by the former headstrong young cadet who had been expelled from the Virginia Military Institute after challenging Professor Jackson to a duel following a classroom dispute.3
Although initially opposed to his appointment, Walker’s new subordinates would provide him a strong cadre of veteran leadership upon which to lean in the coming fight. Colonel John Q. A. Nadenbousch of the Second Virginia and Colonel John H. S. Funk of the Fifth Virginia were the senior regimental commanders. Major William Terry rode at the head of the Fourth Virginia, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel M. Shriver commanded the Twenty-Seventh Virginia, and Captain Jacob B. Golladay was the ranking officer within the Thirty-Third Virginia. These five officers, all of whom had commanded their units through multiple engagements, led between 1,400 and 1,450 men on the eve of battle. They marched with a new name as well as a new commander, as on May 30, the War Department had granted the brigade’s request to be officially designated the Stonewall Brigade. The men resolved to “render ourselves more worthy of it by emulating [Jackson’s] virtues, and, like him, devote all our energies to the great work before us of securing to our beloved country the blessings of peace and independence.”4
Left to right, Col. John Q. A. Nadenbousch, Maj. William Terry, Col. John H. S. Funk, and Lt. Col. Daniel M. Shriver. No photograph of Capt. Jacob B. Golladay is available.
Confidence in the imminent arrival of peace and independence filled the men of the brigade as they and the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia invaded Pennsylvania. During the march north, a member of the Thirty-Third Virginia paused to write a letter to his sister boasting, “I think we will clear the Yankees out this summer and whip them.” The brigade, and the rest of the army’s Second Corps, had routed a Federal contingent at the Second Battle of Winchester in mid-June and then marched largely unopposed across Maryland and into Pennsylvania over the subsequent weeks.5
The fighting of July 1 was drawing to a close as the Stonewall Brigade arrived on the outskirts of Gettysburg. As they approached the town along the Chambersburg Pike, a cascading number of wounded men streamed past the brigade headed for the rear. Periodically, sullen groups of captured Union soldiers marched by under guard. Passing through the carnage of the day’s battle along McPherson’s Ridge, the brigade turned off the pike and made their way towards Gettysburg along the bed of the unfinished western extension of the Gettysburg and York Railroad.6
A former member of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia, now attached to the staff of Major General Jubal Early, recalled the arrival in Gettysburg between 5 and 6 p.m. of the Stonewall Brigade and the rest of their division. The men were “covered with the stains of a rapid march… with faces eager for the fray.” At their head rode their “rough-and-ready” divisional commander, Major General Edward “Allegheny” Johnson. Having been wounded in the ankle earlier in the war during his service in the mountains of western Virginia, Johnson now walked using a substantial hickory stick as a crutch. Surrounded by his men and riding with this heavy club, Johnson rode into town looking “as if he could thrash out an army himself with the ponderous weapon.” A former sergeant in the Twenty-Seventh Virginia recalled that the Stonewall Brigade initially had a low option of the “irascible” Johnson. Private Ted Barclay of the Fourth Virginia viewed Johnson as a good general and brave man but one of the “wickedest men I ever heard of.” Johnson, Barclay wrote, “had none of the qualities of a general at all but expects to do everything by fighting.”7
More Forceful than Elegant
The first clash the combative Johnson would experience at Gettysburg was not with the Federal army, but with his fellow generals. Upon arrival in town, he joined a conference between Second Corps commander Major General Richard Ewell and several subordinate commanders. In what would later become one of the most controversial moments in the climactic battle, Johnson’s fellow division commander Jubal Early urged Ewell to attack the regrouping Union forces on Cemetery Hill and seize the unoccupied heights of Culp’s Hill just to the east. Early used language which even he admitted was “more forceful than elegant” as he advocated for Johnson’s newly arrived troops to occupy Culp’s Hill. Ewell, not fully convinced by his brash subordinate, directed Johnson to advance on Culp’s Hill and take possession of it only if he found it to be unoccupied.8
While their commanders were debating tactics, the Stonewall Brigade had halted near the Carlisle Street rail station and dispatched men to refill canteens and forage for supplies among the abandoned buildings of the town. A few members of the brigade discovered a barrel of whiskey in a cellar and eagerly filled their canteens. As news of the find spread to their comrades, a torrent of men began visiting the cellar and returning with full canteens. The foraging quickly came to an end when an inquisitive lieutenant investigated the cause of the excitement and put a stop to it.9
Having received Ewell’s orders, Johnson directed his division to resume their march, following the railroad east until they reached Rock Creek. Early’s troops passing through the previous week had burned the rail bridge, forcing Johnson’s men to ford the creek. Roughly two miles from town, where the track met the Hunterstown Road, the column turned off the rail bed and briefly continued east along the York Pike. After only a short distance, they made their way along a farm lane to the farm of George Wolf. Passing the farm’s outbuildings, Johnson arrayed his men in line of battle in a shallow ravine that cut across the high ground just past the farm and continued southeast to the small stream of Benner’s Run. The Stonewall Brigade was stationed on the far left of the division, parallel to and roughly 500 yards north of the Hanover Road. The Fifth Virginia occupied the center of the brigade, although the deployment of the remaining regiments was not recorded.10
Meanwhile, Johnson dispatched a reconnaissance party to determine whether Federal troops were present on Culp’s Hill. As his scouts splashed their way across Rock Creek and picked their way up the darkened slopes, shots rang out from the inky blackness. Falling back, they reported to Johnson the presence of Union troops on the heights. The Federal they had encountered were pickets from Company B of the Seventh Indiana, part of Cutler’s Brigade, Wadsworth’s Division of the I Corps. Union commanders had dispatched them to occupy the previously vacant Culp’s Hill only shortly before the approach of Johnson’s scouting party. But, in receipt of reports that Federals held the hill in unknown numbers, Johnson exercised the discretion contained in Ewell’s orders and called off the attack. The Stonewall Brigade and the other units of his command deployed pickets in front of their position east of Wolf’s Farm and the remainder of the command sought some much-needed rest.11
Sketch showing Confederate pickets at the base of Culp’s Hill
A member of the Second Virginia writing five decades after the battle claimed, “Jackson would have kept us going until we reached the heights.” The failure to seize Culp’s Hill on the evening of July 1 loamed large in post-war Lost Cause attempts to assign blame for the Confederate loss at Gettysburg. Early, in particular, blamed Johnson and Ewell for the failure and claimed that, had they followed his advice, the Army of Northern Virginia would have triumphed at Gettysburg. Realistically, however, Early’s proposed attack was impractical. Johnson’s final brigade only reached Gettysburg at 6 p.m. Darkness had fallen by the time the division reached its position near the Hanover Road and final deployments on the Wolf Farm were conducted by moonlight. The heights were no longer unoccupied by the time Johnson had arrayed his men and thus the hill would have had to have been seized in a nighttime assault over rough and unfamiliar terrain. While intriguing to consider how a Confederate-held Culp’s Hill would have shaped the remainder of the battle, taking the heights with the Stonewall Brigade and the rest of Johnson’s Division on the evening of July 1 was never a realistic possibility.12
Absent, Truant Cavalry
The dim light of early dawn on July 2 brought the crackling of musket fire as Federal skirmishers began engaging the Stonewall Brigade’s pickets at long range. Rousting his men, Walker ordered the Twenty-Seventh Virginia, and likely the rest of the brigade, forward from their bivouac near the Wolf Farm and to the left about a quarter of a mile, likely establishing his battle line in the trees surrounding the Hanover Pike to the east of Benner’s Run. The command “As skirmishers – Forward!” rang out from the captains of companies up and down the line as the Stonewall Brigade deployed a screen of skirmishers to their front and left flank.13
Unlike the traditional tightly-packed line formations which dominated Civil War tactics, skirmishing was a looser, more dispersed form of fighting which took advantage of available terrain. To deploy as skirmishers, a platoon, company, or even a full regiment would separate into groups of four men and then disperse these small groups over a broad front. Each man worked with his partner, leapfrogging in the advance or retreat and ensuring that one of the two men’s muskets was always loaded and ready. Troops utilized available cover and, in the open, could kneel or lie down as they deemed best.14
While skirmishing would ultimately prove the forbearer of modern military tactics, its use during the Civil War faced limitations. Its dispersion combined with the rifle musket’s limited rate of fire meant that firepower could not be massed at critical points. Officers faced difficulties in controlling their scattered men, relying on bugles or voice commands to pass orders to men spread out over hundreds of yards. Combined with the massed firepower of traditional line formations, however, skirmishers played important roles on the Civil War battlefield. A period tactical manual advised commanders to deploy well-supported skirmishers in the attack to “press the enemy with vigor and without relaxation” in advance of the main assault. On the defensive, skirmishers were to be used to hold the enemy in check and, by disputing their advance, force the enemy to reveal his plan of attack.15
Due to their position as the leftmost brigade in Johnson’s Division, which itself was posted on the left of the Second Corps, the Stonewall Brigade found itself on July 2 tasked with maintaining a defensive screen of skirmishers to cover the far-left flank of the Army of Northern Virginia. Sergeant Charles Rollins of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia would later grumble that the task of screening the army’s flank should have more properly fallen to the “absent, truant cavalry.” With most of the Army of Northern Virginia’s cavalry still roughly a day’s ride away, for now the Stonewall Brigade’s skirmishers were all the army could rely on to monitor for any Federal attempt to turn its flank east of Gettysburg.16
The region assigned to the Stonewall Brigade was bisected by the Hanover Pike running roughly east to west. South of the road, the wooded terrain rose to the imposing mass of Wolf’s Hill. Between Wolf’s Hill and Culp’s Hill to the west ran Rock Creek, while the Baltimore Pike lay to the south just behind the heights. Wolf’s Hill was dotted with a handful of small farms, includes those belonging to the Deardorff, Tawey, Lee, and Noel families. East of Wolf’s Hill, the woods gave way to open farmland cut by a series of ridgelines running north and south across the Hanover Pike. The first of these was Brinkerhoff’s Ridge, behind which lay the stream of Cress Run, before the ground rose to Cress’ Ridge. Just behind Cress’ Ridge, the Low Dutch Road linked the Hanover Road to the Baltimore Pike two miles to the south.
Reconstructing even a general outline of the Stonewall Brigade’s actions on the skirmish line throughout the day on July 2 is challenging, as the historical record provides few details for much of the day. It is particularly difficult to determine the positions held by the brigade, as descriptions by both the brigade and by their Federal opponents throughout July 2 are short on defined landmarks and are often presented in relational terms. For instance, the report of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia describes the regiment’s movements late on July 2 with the statement, “We moved by the right flank, and took position parallel with our former one, and about 300 yards in advance of it.” As the report does not define the regiment’s initial position or provide terrain descriptions, it is exceedingly difficult to use these descriptions to place the brigade’s units on a map. Most of the regimental reports for the brigade lack even the minimal descriptions included in the Twenty-Seventh’s report.17
As the Stonewall Brigade’s skirmishes on July 2 were peripheral to the day’s primary fighting, the brigade is often omitted from maps of the battle or their actions are off the eastern edge of maps. The few maps which do include them are of minimal assistance or contradict each other. The 1876 War Department map compiled by John B. Bachelder shows the Stonewall Brigade positioned north of and perpendicular to the Hanover Road, parallel with Benner’s Run. The Second Virginia is shown detached from the rest of the brigade along the Hanover Road. This clearly conflicts with what few locational references we do have for the movements of the Stonewall Brigade on July 2. It also clashes with Bachelder’s own 1863 sketched map, which is less precise, but shows the command south of the Hanover Pike on the north slope of Wolf’s Hill. This matches more closely with other historical datapoints, but as the brigade is near the edge of Bachelder’s map, the bird’s-eye perspective he used distorts the position of the brigade such that it is difficult to further refine the brigade’s location. The following account, therefore, will reflect the often-ambiguous position of the Stonewall Brigade and its Federal opponents.
Smartly Engaged
Elements of Brigadier General Alpheus S. Williams’ division of the XII Corps were the first Union units to make contact with the Stonewall Brigade’s skirmishers on the morning of July 2. The division had approached Gettysburg the previous day along the Baltimore Pike. With the day’s fighting still focused west and north of the town, Williams directed his troops off the Pike while still about two miles from town and moved them via farm lanes a mile and a half north in the direction of the Hanover Pike. This movement would bring his troops up on the right flank of the beleaguered Federal XI Corps engaged north of Gettysburg. As the skirmishers in advance of Williams’ main line cleared the woods north of Wolf’s Hill, they spotted mounted Confederates on Benner’s Hill. Williams ordered an assault to clear the hill, which would have placed his men in a position to threaten the flank of the Confederates attacking the XI Corps. The Federal skirmishers, men of Company G of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana, had just reached the crest of Benner’s Hill and Williams’ main line was splashing its way through the shallow waters of Benner’s Run, when Williams received word that the corps he was moving to support was in headlong retreat back through Gettysburg. Realizing that his division would soon be alone and exposed on Benner’s Hill, Williams ordered his men to halt and reverse course. They marched back about a mile towards the Baltimore Pike and bivouacked for the night in the shadow of Wolf’s Hill.18
Col. Silas Colgrove, Commander of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana
Rising from their bedrolls in the early hours of July 2, the men of Williams’ Division retraced their steps once again and advanced from their position behind Wolf’s Hill towards the Hanover Pike. The brigade commanded by Brigadier General Thomas H. Ruger led the division’s advance. Ruger in turn ordered the Twenty-Seventh Indiana to act as the division’s advance guard, just as they had the previous evening. Colonel Silas Colgrove, the experienced commander of the Twenty-Seventh, deployed his Company F as skirmishers and began to move warily northward.19
The thin line of Hoosiers had only moved approximately a half mile in the early morning light when they suddenly encountered enemy infantry, almost certainly elements of the Stonewall Brigade. Shots rang out from the Virginian’s positions in a wooded tree line, catching the Twenty-Seventh’s skirmishers unprotected in open ground. Additional Confederate sharpshooters occupied the stone house and large barn of a farm to the right, threatening the Union contingent’s flank.20
Company F threw themselves to the ground to seek what cover they could and commenced firing. Colgrove, who had moved forward to oversee the skirmishers personally, soon spotted a unit of Confederates advancing towards another group of farm buildings immediately to Colgrove’s left and front. Dodging Confederates fire from the tree line, a squad of Hoosiers began sprinting towards the buildings. They reached the buildings just before their Confederate opponents and, from the cover of the buildings, opened fire. The advancing Virginians beat a hasty retreat back to the cover of the tree line. With the rest of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana remaining behind as a reserve, Company F made no further attempt to advance. Instead, with a handful of men holding the farm on their left and the remainder of the company likely lying prone in the open ground, the Hoosiers settled down to maintain a sharp fire on the Virginians.21
Capt. David Van Buskirk, commander of Company F of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana
As noted above, it is difficult to locate this small clash between a company of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana and unidentified soldiers of the Stonewall Brigade. Prominent Gettysburg historian Harry Pfanz, who authored the most detailed account of this portion of the fight, suggests that the stone house with large barn described by Colgrove was the Deardorff Farm or Heck Farm buildings, while the farm occupied by the Twenty-Seventh Indiana was the Rosensteil Farm. While this theory accounts for some of the elements described by the Twenty-Seventh Indiana, it provides too little space to the right of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana for subsequent events. Additionally, when the lieutenant colonel of the Twenty-Seventh Indiana assumed command of the regiment later in the morning, he noted that it was occupying a position on a hill, while the Deardorff Farm lies on lower ground between Wolf’s Hill and Brinkerhoff Ridge. The regimental history of another regiment in Ruger’s Brigade claimed that XII Corps commander Major General Henry W. Slocum ordered Williams to seize Wolf’s Hill on the morning of July 2 and the map which accompanied Slocum’s report showed the flank of Williams’ Division relatively close to Rock Creek and south of Wolf’s Hill. Perhaps a more plausible location for this skirmish is the Francis Lee Farm on the south face of Wolf’s Hill, which included a stone building, has a tree line behind it, and open ground to its front. The Bishop Farm to the west may then have been the farm seized by the squad of Union skirmishers.22
While the Hoosiers’ encounter with the Stonewall Brigade is the best documented of these early clashes, they did not advance against the Stonewall Brigade alone. Williams reported that, “our skirmishers were smartly engaged with the enemy toward the Bonaughtown Road [Hanover Pike].” Ruger ordered two of his other regiments, the Second Massachusetts and the Third Wisconsin, to deploy companies to join the growing skirmish. Lieutenant John F. George, a former enlisted color bearer promoted for gallantry the previous year, led his Company B of the Second Massachusetts forward until they also engaged elements of the Stonewall Brigade. An unidentified company of the Third Wisconsin also joined the skirmish line, where they kept up a “desultory fire” on the Virginians.23
With one of his three brigades absent on detached duty, Williams had only one other brigade in his division to throw into the fray alongside Ruger. This brigade, led by Colonel Archibald McDougall, had advanced behind Ruger’s Brigade on the evening of July 1 during the abortive attempt to seize Benner’s Hill. When Williams ordered them forward the following morning, McDougall advanced his command to the front by the right and formed his line of battle “on the hill near Rock Creek,” a clear reference to Wolf’s Hill. He sent the Twentieth Connecticut forward to relieve the Fifth Connecticut, which had spent a quiet night on picket duty in front of the brigade’s bivouac. Lieutenant Colonel William Wooster of the Twentieth in turn dispatched his Company B to join the expanding skirmish line in front of Williams’ Division in the vicinity of Wolf’s Hill. Because McDougall’s subordinate commanders did not leave as detailed of accounts as the Twenty-Seventh Indiana did in Ruger’s Brigade, it is impossible to determine their precise location.24
The Forgotten Flank
In later histories of the Battle of Gettysburg, most descriptions of July 2 focus on the Union left flank at Little Round Top, Devil’s Den, the Wheatfield, and the Peach Orchard. Only late in the day does the Union right flank at Culp’s Hill enter the common narrative. However, early on July 2 the attention of Union commander Major General George G. Meade was drawn much more to his right than to his left. Compared to the Taneytown Road behind Little Round Top, the Baltimore Pike behind Culp’s and Wolf’s Hills was a higher quality road. As dawn broke, Meade’s last major reinforcements, Major General John Sedgwick’s VI Corps, were still marching to join the army along the Baltimore Pike. Should Meade’s army meet with disaster at Gettysburg, the Baltimore Pike was his most viable route of retreat. Fearing a Confederate flank attack to cut this vital artery, Meade directed the newly arrived V Corps, under Major General George Sykes, to take up positions to the left of Williams’ Division and extend the Union army’s flank east of Wolf’s Hill.25
The first two divisions of Sykes’ corps tramped onto the battlefield at around 7 a.m., having halted the previous night about two miles away along the Hanover Road. As they approached Gettysburg in the early hours of July 2, they turned off the Hanover Road along one of the farm lanes and formed lines of battle to the right of Williams’ men. Although Pfanz suggests they turned off the Hanover Road at the Deardorff Farm, this is unlikely as it would put their deployment too close to the Stonewall Brigade’s position and the terrain around the farm does not match that described in the reports of the units of the V Corps. More likely, the corps took the turn at the Reever Farm, just east of Cress Run. Additionally, it is the arrival of these two divisions to the right of Williams’ Division that makes it highly unlikely that the Twenty-Seventh Indiana clashed with the Stonewall Brigade at the Deardorff Farm as Pfanz suggests, as there simply would not be adequate space for the skirmishers of three divisions to operate in such a small area south of the Hanover Road.26
Sykes deployed the division commanded by Brigadier General Romeyn B. Ayres on his left, establishing contact with Williams’ men. The corps’ other available division, led by Brigadier General James Barnes, took position on Ayres’ right, making Barnes’ command the far-right flank of the entire Union army. As Sykes’ subordinate commanders began to disperse skirmishers in front of their units, the number of troops facing the Stonewall Brigade suddenly tripled. Within just a few short hours of beginning their skirmishing duties on their army’s flank, the solitary Stonewall Brigade now faced down three entire Union divisions.
As Ayres formed his battle lines, the brigade under Colonel Sidney Burbank deployed a line of skirmishers in front of the division. Burbank’s command consisted of five regiments of U.S. Regulars, but the unit was a shadow of its former self. The entire brigade numbered only 900 men and Burbank noted that “although the regiments named as composing the brigade preserve their organization, and are called regiments, yet they are greatly reduced in number.” The Second United States Infantry was only six companies strong, but Major Arthur T. Lee directed twenty men from his tiny command forward as skirmishers. Men from the Tenth United States Infantry soon joined them on the skirmish line, but as the entire regiment was only ten officers and 83 enlisted men, their contribution could not have been more than a handful of rifles.27
Col. Sydney Burbank, brigade commander
Burbank formed his brigade behind a stand of woods, behind which and to the right lay the Stonewall Brigade’s position. At his command, the skirmishers slowly began pushing forward through the thick timber, the main battle line following behind. Although available accounts do not provide further locational details, the largest stand of trees interrupting the farm fields east of Wolf’s Hill lie between the Wolf and Diehl Farms. As the farm lane from which Sykes’ men probably deployed cuts through these woods, this is the most likely position for Ayres’ Division. Once the far edge of the woods had been reached, Burbank halted his command as his skirmishers continued to advance and feel for the enemy. The Regulars on the skirmish line soon opened a brisk fire on the portions of the Stonewall Brigade before them, probably around the Rosenteel Farm and the eastern slope of Wolf’s Hill. With superior numbers behind them, Burbank’s men were soon pushing back the Virginian’s thin line, while suffering a small number of casualties themselves.28
To the right of the Regulars, Colonel Jacob B. Sweitzer, commanding one of Barnes’ brigades, drew his men up near a farmhouse and ordered the colonel of the Thirty-Second Massachusetts to deploy his men as the division’s skirmish line. The colonel, however, asked that his regiment be excused from the duty, as they had received only minimal instruction in skirmishing and lacked experience in the style of fighting. Sweitzer turned then to his adjutant and said, “then send the Ninth.” The Ninth Massachusetts, largely comprised of Irish immigrants from the Boston area and commanded by Colonel Patrick R. Guiney, marched forward from the main line and deployed a screen of skirmishers, most likely in the vicinity of the Deardorff Farm.29
About 60 yards behind the Irishmen’s thin line, Battery L of the First Ohio Volunteer Light Artillery, commanded by Captain Frank C. Gibbs, rolled six 12-pounder smoothbore guns into a wheatfield to add firepower to the growing Union force facing the Stonewall Brigade. The artillery unlimbered unusually close to the skirmish line and its infantry support, the Eighteenth Massachusetts from Tilton’s Brigade of Barnes’ Division, was a full 100 yards behind the battery. From their exposed position, the gunners quickly came under fire from Walker’s men. “In this field,” wrote Lieutenant James Gildea of the battery, “you could not raise your head above the wheat without hearing a dozen sharp shooter’s bullets whistle by, they being in the top of the trees across the creek.” The creek mentioned by Gildea may be the small branch of Benner’s Run that ran just behind the Deardorff and Heck Farms. Though the gunners escaped unscathed, some of the Confederates’ shots flew past the guns and fell among the Eighteenth Massachusetts, causing a handful of casualties.30
Unconnected and Exposed
With his fears of a potential Confederate attack cutting the Baltimore Pike diminished by the establishment of Sykes’ battle line, Meade now began to mull the offensive possibilities presented by the troops he had concentrated beyond the Confederate right. Meade considered a flank attack of his own, utilizing the XII, V, and soon-to-arrive VI Corps to strike the Confederate flank east of Gettysburg. Around mid-morning he ordered Slocum, as the senior commander in the sector, to examine the terrain to his front and report back on the feasibility of an assault.31
Slocum asked the Tenth Maine Battalion, which served as his headquarters guard, to provide six volunteers to scout the Confederate flank. Using the guise of a foraging party, the three small groups left unarmed with only canteens and haversacks. As they moved through the woods of Wolf’s Hill, the group led by First Sergeant James F. Tarr spotted some Confederates, likely from the Stonewall Brigade, gathered in a clearing near some unidentified farm buildings. Tarr’s group pretended they hadn’t seen the Confederates until they were within sprinting distance of a tree line. They dashed to safety, with Confederate bullets nipping at their heels. Elsewhere, a local man and his daughter guided Privates Henry F. Cole and Sidney W. Fletcher to a group of Confederate pickets gathered near a barn on the other side of Wolf’s Hill. Cole and Fletcher joined the Confederates drinking from a nearby spring before returning to Union lines. A final group, consisting of First Sergeant Henry Kallock and Sergeant Charles R. Anderson, fled from a squad of Confederates they encountered at a farmyard near the Hanover Road, possibly the Deardorff Farm. The pair worked their way farther east and confirmed that the enemy’s skirmish line was stationary and not advancing.32
The last of these scouts did not report back to General Slocum until late in the afternoon, so the information they collected likely had little impact on Slocum’s response to Meade. Slocum wasted little time in informing his chief that the terrain around Wolf’s Hill was not suitable for a major offensive movement. If Williams and Sykes’ men were not to be used for an attack or to block a Confederate attempt to cut the Baltimore Pike, their extended position so far to the right made little tactical sense and the troops could be better employed elsewhere. At around 10 a.m. Meade ordered the withdrawal of the infantry east of Wolf’s Hill.33
Up and down the Union skirmish line, orders rang out for the blue-clad soldiers to fall back and rejoin their regiments. The notes of buglers sounding the retreat echoed through the woods and farms around Wolf’s Hill as the sound of firing slowly died away. The Twenty-Seventh Indiana faced to the rear and marched back in line with Company F covering the regimental’s withdrawal. In their contest with the Stonewall Brigade over the two farms on the slopes of Wolf’s Hill, the company had lost one man killed and four wounded. The rest of Ruger’s skirmishers, from the Second Massachusetts and the Third Wisconsin, and McDougall’s Twentieth Connecticut similarly pulled back their skirmishers after about two hours of firing. Williams’ Division retraced its steps one final time, returning to the Baltimore Pike and marching west to a new position at the eastern base of Culp’s Hill. Sykes’ two divisions similarly faced to the left and made their way south along farm lanes to the pike. After crossing Rock Creek, they massed in reserve behind Culp’s Hill until they were called to join the fighting around Little Round Top late in the day.34
Monument to the Ninth Massachusetts on Big Round Top
Left behind in this withdrawal was Colonel Guiney and his Ninth Massachusetts. Needing to still maintain a screen on the Union army’s flank, much as the Stonewall Brigade was doing for the Confederate army, the solitary Federal regiment remained in place as their comrades marched away. They would spend much of the rest of the day skirmishing with the Stonewall Brigade around Deardorff’s Farm and Brinkerhoff’s Ridge. As a frustrated Colonel Guiney later put it, “both flanks [of the regiment] were thus unconnected and exposed.” From their day of skirmishing, the Ninth reported the death of one enlisted man and six men wounded. It is unclear whether the reported death was Private John Quinn of Company B, who was listed as missing and possibly killed along Brinkerhoff’s Ridge, or First Sergeant Joseph Ford, who, having been straggling on the march to Gettysburg, had fallen in with one of the other regiments of the brigade and was killed in the fighting around Little Round Top.35
While the Ninth spent a mostly quiet day on picket, their sister regiments charged into the maelstrom of the famous Wheatfield. Perhaps embarrassed to have missed the fighting and glory, the Ninth’s Gettysburg monument lies not where they fought the Stonewall Brigade on July 2, but on the slope of Big Round Top, where they spent an uneventful July 3. The monument makes no mention of their role around Wolf’s Hill, instead implying that the Ninth held Big Round Top during the fighting of July 2. Their regimental history makes this false claim more boldly, claiming that they had been detached from their brigade to act as skirmishers on July 2, not near Wolf’s Hill, but rather on Big Round Top, giving themselves a star role in the day’s pivotal fighting instead of the sideshow part they actually fulfilled.36
Assuredly Brave Enough
With the mid-morning departure of Williams’ Division and Sykes’ corps, the pressure on the Stonewall Brigade’s skirmish line quickly dissipated. For much of the rest of the day, they continued low-level skirmishing with the Ninth Massachusetts. Sergeant Charles Rollins of the Twenty-Seventh Virginia described the day’s skirmishing from his position
Sketch of Union Skirmishers
at the edge of some woods, likely the tree line along the Hanover Pike behind the Heck and Deardorff Farms. The Confederate skirmishers to his front were out in the open and, as they were in sight of the enemy, they “resorted to the ‘lie down’ process” in which they loaded while lying on their backs and then rolled to their stomachs to fire. Occasionally a group of Confederates would advance with a rebel yell to drive the Union skirmishers back from one position or another.37
While Walker’s right flank sparred with Colonel Guiney’s Irishmen, the left end of his skirmish line faced a few minor afternoon probes from the Union XII Corps around Culp’s Hill. The rest of Johnson’s Division had deployed a skirmish line in the fields of the Benner Farm in front of the division’s main line. These men, elements of the Twenty-Fifth Virginia of Jones’ Brigade and most of the First North Carolina of Steuart’s Brigade, established a screen for the Confederate artillery positions on Benner’s Hill and likely linked up with the Stonewall Brigade to their left. They traded jabs with a portion of the Sixtieth New York and Twenty-Eight Pennsylvania, both part of the XII Corps division led by Brigadier General John W. Geary, whose skirmishers occupied the wooded banks of Rock Creek.38
After withdrawing from Wolf’s Hill that morning, Williams’ Division reestablished its battle line on the southeast flank of Culp’s Hill, just west of Rock Creek. While most of the command began throwing up breastworks, a handful of men were deployed as skirmishers to cover the division’s new front. The One-Hundred and Forty-Fifth New York, part of McDougall’s Brigade, sent Company K under the command of Captain George W. Reid to the east side of Rock Creek, where they probably skirmished with the First North Carolina and the leftmost elements of Walker’s command. In Ruger’s Brigade, Captain Daniel Oakey led two companies of the Second Massachusetts to “watch the enemy lest he should come upon us unawares.” Rock Creek was six to eight feet deep and over 60 feet wide near where Ruger’s command was stationed, so Oakey marched his detachment south to cross at a footbridge near McAllister’s Mill. Turning north and picking their way along the rough western slope of Wolf’s Hill, Oakey’s detail soon emerged into the open fields around Zephaniah Taney’s stone farmhouse. They spent the afternoon here, in sight of Benner’s Hill and possibly occasionally harassed by elements of the Stonewall Brigade. Late in the day they observed a party of mounted men atop Benner’s Hill – possibly General Johnson and his staff examining the ground in preparation for a potential assault on Culp’s Hill.39
Capt. Daniel Oakey (upper right) and other officers of the Second Massachusetts
Having faced down three divisions of infantry in the morning, the Stonewall Brigade enjoyed a relatively easy few hours facing only the Ninth Massachusetts near the Deardorff Farm and the small groups of XII Corps skirmishers along Rock Creek. Captain Golladay, commanding the Thirty-Third Virginia, reported that his skirmishers “gained ground upon those of the enemy confronting them, inflicting loss and receiving none whatever.” The day was not, however, entirely without loss. In the Thirty-Third Virginia, Captain George C. Eastham had directed his Company I to lie down in line of battle, some distance behind the skirmish line. Without warning, an overshot Minié ball from a Union skirmisher crashed into the side of the captain’s skull, striking him just above the ear and leaving a large exit wound at the top of his head. The captain crumbled to the ground, killed instantly.40
The men not actively engaged on the skirmish line rested, cooked rations, and foraged in the Pennsylvania countryside. Some of the men detailed as divisional engineers, including John O. Casler of the Thirty-Third Virginia, found a large vacant farmhouse during their search for food to supplement their rations. Casler does not provide details to be able to identify this house, but based on the general location it may have been the Shriver Farm, the D. H. Benner Farm, the Daniel Lady Farm, or the Daniel Benner Farm. The engineers began using the farm’s stoves and ovens to cook their food and were soon joined by other members of the Thirty-Third Virginia. Late the following day, an overheated stovepipe caused fire to break out in the second story. Some of the repentant soldiers rushed into the burning building and grabbed everything they could save from the lower stories and piled it respectfully in the garden next to the barn.41
While some men rested or cooked, a cloud of dust to the east of the Stonewall Brigade’s line of skirmishers marked the approach of a new threat to the Confederate flank. Tired and dusty from weeks in the saddle, at around noon two brigades of Union cavalry trotted up to the intersection of the Hanover Road and the Low Dutch Road. Much to the frustration of Colonel Guiney, however, they did not advance to relieve his Ninth Massachusetts. “I found myself,” he would later write, “protecting an inactive cavalry force large enough, and assuredly brave enough, to take care of its own front.” While Gregg’s cavalrymen rested in the shade of an orchard, Guiney’s Irishmen continued exchanging fire with the Stonewall Brigade alone for the next few hours.42
Finally, late in the afternoon, a member of General Barnes’ divisional staff rode up with orders for the Ninth to rejoin their comrades. The Bay State soldiers recalled their skirmishers and reformed their regiment before filing off to the left, marching down farm lanes towards the south. Carbines at their sides, dismounted Union cavalrymen began appearing at the Stonewall Brigade’s right flank. The fight for Brinkerhoff’s Ridge had begun.43
History, including that of the Civil War, has a tendency to focus on the extremes of human behavior. Battle histories are filled with accounts of heroes leading the charge and cowards shirking in the rear. Often lost, however, are the stories of those who just wanted to get by, survive the war, and return to their life as it once was.
Entry for Lt. Markell on the Muster Roll of 5th Virginia, Co. A
When war came to Virginia in early 1861, nineteen-year-old Arthur Senseny Markell left behind his studies at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia and returned to his home in Winchester. There, on April 18, he enlisted in a local militia unit, the Marion Rifles. Within days Markell and his company marched to Harper’s Ferry, where they were enrolled for active service and soon became Company A of the Fifth Virginia Infantry. Markell, finding himself elected a First Lieutenant, moved east in July with his regiment to Manassas, where they won immortal fame standing like a stone wall.1
Markell’s military career, however, was to be short-lived. He was placed under arrest near the end of 1861 and cashiered by a court martial on January 29, 1862, although his service record does not detail the charges against him. He had been granted a sick furlough and was absent from the regiment as of late October, so it is possible he overstayed his furlough.2
Expelled from military service, Markell spent the next month in Winchester in disgrace while his former comrades camped nearby. On March 5, 1862, he fled north to Charlestown where he presented himself as a deserter to the Union forces under General Banks. Markell was sent to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington, DC, where he freely provided all the information he had on the state of Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley. On or around March 21, he swore an oath of allegiance to the United States and was released from custody.3
Markell made his way further north, stopping for a time in Baltimore before making his way to Pennsylvania. There, he enrolled at a small college, seeking to complete his education. The school was a Lutheran institution like his former Roanoke College, making it a natural choice for Markell to complete his interrupted studies. Markell settled down once again to the quiet life of a student, confident that he could pass the rest of the war in safety in the sleepy college town of Gettysburg.4
Markell’s academic pursuits were again interrupted in June 1863 as Confederate forces marched north into Maryland. Classes at Gettysburg College were cancelled on June 17 and all but nineteen of the students left to join militia groups or return to their homes. With nowhere else to go, Markell remained at the school, likely hoping that the Confederate army would pass him by. On June 26, as General Jubal Early’s gray-clad column approached Gettysburg, several Gettysburg citizens acquitted with Markell urged him to flee lest he be seized by the Confederates as a deserter and executed.5
Markell’s Letter to General Schenck
He fled south towards Emmitsburg but as soon overtaken by a Union lieutenant. Suspicious of this Virginian’s dubious story claiming to be a local student who just happened to be in the path of the rebel invasion, the lieutenant arrested Markell and marched him to the rear under guard. The hapless Markell soon found himself back in Baltimore, where he was imprisoned at Fort McHenry. Once there, he tried desperately to explain his situation to military authorities, protesting that he had remained within Union lines since his desertion and had done nothing to break his oath of loyalty to the United States.6
The luckless former lieutenant, however, had a problem. His interrogators asked him to produce a copy of his signed oath of allegiance from the previous year. Unfortunately for Markell, however, he had never received a copy of his oath and was unable to prove his questionable story. In desperation he wrote a letter to General Robert Schenck, the Union Commander of the Middle Military District, to explain his situation and to request his release. Having learned of Markell’s plight, several prominent Gettysburg citizens drafted their own letter to General Schenck, vouching for the former student’s loyalty and calling for his release from prison. The letters ultimately proved effective, as Markell was permitted to sign another oath of allegiance and was released in early August.7
Markell never returned to Gettysburg College. He died on July 11, 1912, at Parish Farm in Frederick County, Maryland.8
The following muster roll of the the Fourth Virginia Infantry, Company D “The Smyth Blues”, was written by a former member of the company, John Samuel Apperson, for the ‘Times-Dispatch’ on June 4, 1905. It was published in the Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 34, pages 359-362. It is presented here with minimal edits.
“SMYTH BLUES.” Muster Roll Company D, Fourth Virginia Infantry.
Editor of the Times-Dispatch:
Sir,—No part of your excellent paper is more interesting to the remnant of old Confederate soldiers now living than that portion you have so kindly dedicated to them and the stories they tell; for after all, it is the man behind the guns who knew best the fierceness of the conflict while it raged around him, and the story he tells brings us nearer the scene of action and impresses it in detail upon our minds more effectually than general history will ever do. Since arranging and sending to Major Robert W. Hunter a duplicate of the enclosed list of members of Company “D,” Fourth Virginia Infantry (Stonewall Brigade), it has occurred to me to send it to you and ask you to, some time or another, give it a place in the Confederate column of your paper. Its publication is desired not alone because it gives the names enrolled on Orderly Sergeant’s book, but because it embraces information of some who are dead and others living, which will be intensely interesting to many widely scattered since the parting at Appomattox in 1865.
Most respectfully,
Marion, Va., 1902.
Jno. S. Apperson.
A. G. Pendleton, captain; major 1862; resigned; died in Roanoke, Va., 1902.
James W. Kennedy, first lieutenant; retired 1862; died in Tennessee after the war.
A. E. Gibson, second lieutenant; captain 1862; killed near Groveton, Second Manassas.
J. J. Bishop, first sergeant; died from wounds Second Manassas.
J. M. Fuller, second sergeant; wounded Gettysburg.
F. W. Rider, third sergeant; died after war.
J. M. Thomas, fourth sergeant; promoted captain.
D. B. Kootz, first corporal; wounded Kernstown.
I. M. Lampie, second corporal; wounded Spotsylvania Courthouse; died since war.
H. T. Killinger, third corporal.
T. A. Oury, fourth corporal; wounded First Manassas; dead.
Adam Allen, killed Chancellorsville.
Benjamin Allen, wounded Winchester; lost an eye; dead.
David Allison.
I. G. Anderson, lost leg, Sharpsburg; dead.
John S. Apperson, commissioned hospital steward 1862; assigned duty with Field Infirmary, Second Corps, A. N. V. (Surgeon Black).
B. F. Bates.
William Barbour; dead.
Alex Bear, promoted lieutenant 1862.
W. P. Bell, died from wounds, Second Manassas.
Randolph Bradley, killed below Richmond.
Isaac Brown, killed Sharpsburg.
W. H. Bolton.
Cleophas ——, wounded.
John A. Buchanan, Judge Court of Appeals, Virginia.
George C. Bridgeman.
Samuel A. Byars, wounded Chancellorsville; lame for life.
J. S. Campbell.
Thomas P. Campbell, promoted lieutenant; wounded Wilderness, 1864.
W. B. Carder, promoted lieutenant; died since war.
W. H. Cleaver, killed Cedar Creek, 1864.
John Cox.
George W. Cullop, lost leg at Chancellorsville; died since war.
J. R. Cullop.
John J. Dix, died from wounds received, Chancellorsville.
Adam Dutton, died after war.
James A. Dutton.
G. M. Dudley.
C. O. Davis.
James W. Duncan.
W. P. Francis.
G. H. Fudge, lieutenant; wounded, Fredericksburg; Judge of County Court, Smyth.
John W. Fudge.
Robert Fulwiler.
Edward Falkie, wounded.
Robert Green, wounded First Manassas.
Henry Goodman, killed, May 12th, Spotsylvania.
Ambrose Griffith, color-bearer; wounded at Chancellorsville and before Petersburg.
Moses Gibson.
James J. Gill, lost leg at Gettysburg.
Harris.
J. F. Harris, died since war.
William Henegar, killed, Cedar Creek, 1864.
W. R. Henegar.
Henry Henderlite; died since war.
Ephriam, died from wounds received at Chancellorsville.
John Hogsdon.
John N. Hull.
Abram Hutton, died after war.
John Hutton, died from wounds at Chancellorsville.
A. J. Isenhower, killed, Sharpsburg.
M. T. James, died in prison.
S. E. James, killed in battle.
E. M. James.
B. F. Jones, died from wounds, Second Manassas.
H. B. Jones, died in hospital.
T. L. Jones, died in hospital.
B. F. Leonard, wounded First Manassas; died after war.
Joseph H. Lampie, killed battle Kernstown.
Albert Lambert, dead.
W. A. Mays, wounded on picket duty.
W. H. Magruder.
F. B. Magruder, wounded at Chancellorsville.
B. F. Maiden.
Edward McCready, killed First Manassas.
H. H. McCready, lieutenant; wounded at Chancellorsville; killed Payne’s farm.
Robert McCready; died from wounds Wilderness, 1864.
W. F. Moore, killed Spotsylvania, 1864.
J. M. Morris; dead;
Samuel Neff, killed Kernstown.
T. C. Oaks.
Bedford Overbay.
John Parrish, killed at Payne’s farm.
J. T. Palmer; dead.
Matthew Prater; dead.
Martin Roane, lost two fingers at Chancellorsville; dead.
James Roark; dead.
J. H. Romans, killed First Manassas.
Samuel Reedy.
A. O. Sanders, wounded below Richmond.
A. T. Sanders; died since the war.
William Sanders, died during the war.
Jesse Seay.
Benjamin Sexton, died from wounds, Second Manassas.
F. H. Sexton, died in prison.
M. Sexton, killed Gettysburg.
Sexton, wounded.
C. C. Snider, died from wounds.
T. C. Sexton.
A. J. Staley.
R. S. Stephens, died since war.
J. H. Sayers.
T. E. Schwartz.
W. B. Skeffey, died at Elmira prison.
Willoughby Savage.
Henry Tibbs, died during the war.
B. Umbarger, lost arm at Gettysburg.
N. Umbarger.
William Umbarger, wounded Chancellorsville; died since the war.
Ephriam Umbarger, died since the war.
D. W. Venable.
R. C. Vaughan, promoted captain; died after war.
W. D. Willmore, wounded in front of Richmond, 1864.
Thomas J. Wolf, died from wounds received at Chancellorsville.
Sampson H. Wolf, killed First Manassas.
Joseph Wolf; dead.
Lafayette Wolf.
A. I. Wygal.
T. J. Wygal; dead.
S. J. Wolf, died after war.
Theodore Wallace, died after war.
Henry Webb, died from wounds received at Chancellorsville.
John M. Williams, promoted captain; wounded at Sharpsburg.
John Williams.
B. P. Walker, wounded Kernstown.
J. M. Wilburn, killed in skirmish near Shepherdstown.
Edward Harrison, died from wounds received at Chancellorsville.
The following is excerpted from Fredrick Todd’s classic reference work, American Military Equipage, 1851-1872, Volume II – State Forces, Chapter 56 – Virginia. Todd does not detail the specific sources behind each datapoint he presents, but his work draws heavily on the annual reports of the Adjutant General of Virginia, as well as the expertise of the Virginia Historical Society and Museum of the Confederacy (now the Museum of the American Civil War). The portions of Chapter 56 dealing with units of the Stonewall Brigade are presented below with minimal edits.
Lt. Edward C. Shepherd, 4th Virginia
2nd Regt Vols (Jefferson County) 1860-1861; Become 2nd Vol Inf Regt (1st Regt, Stonewall Brig; Allen’s) 1861-1865 (Included Jefferson Guards and Cadets, Hamtramck Guard, Botts Grays, etc.)
1861: Companies largely clothed in gray uniforms; some companies wore blue or red shirts; most had knapsacks; percussion musket. Regiment carried state flag until late November 1861, when given Army of Northern Virginia [ANV] battle flag [Editor’s Note: The flag presented to the 2nd Virginia, as well as all other Virginia regiments, in November 1861 was actually a Virginia state flag rather than the ANV battle flag, which did not enter wide production until summer 1862].
4th Regt (Preston’s) 1861-1865 Liberty Hall Volunteers: gray shirt and pants, trimmed presumably with blue. Grayson Dare Devils: “flaming red shirt and carried Harper’s Ferry rifles with sword bayonet. Regiment carried ANV battle flag, 1861-1865.
James W. Bare, West Augusta Guards (5th Virginia Co. L)
Augusta County Regt Vols (Baylor’s) 1861; Became 5th Vol Inf Regt (3rd Regt, Stonewall Brig) 1861-1865 (Included West Augusta Guard, Southern Guard, Augusta Rifles, Staunton Artillery, etc.)
Regimental band 1861 included members of Staunton Mountain Sax Horn Band organized in 1855; officially designated Stonewall Brigade Band 1863; reorganized 1865 as Stonewall Brigade Band and still exists. 1861: West Augusta Guard wore state regimental blue dress; Rifles adopted “French Zouave drill.”
27th Regt (Gordon’s; also called 6th Vol Regt in state service) 1861-1865 [Editor’s Note: Todd includes no further information on the 27th Virginia]
33rd Regt (Cummings’) 1861: armed largely with converted and flintlock smoothbore muskets.
