Gettysburg, Day Three - Softcover

Wert, Jeffry D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684859157 ISBN 13: 9780684859156

Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Jeffry D. Wert re-creates the last day of the bloody Battle of Gettysburg in astonishing detail, taking readers from Meade's council of war to the seven-hour struggle for Culp's Hill -- the most sustained combat of the entire engagement. Drawing on hundreds of sources, including more than 400 manuscript collections, he offers brief excerpts from the letters and diaries of soldiers. He also introduces heroes on both sides of the conflict -- among them General George Greene, the oldest general on the battlefield, who led the Union troops at Culp's Hill.
A gripping narrative written in a fresh and lively style, Gettysburg, Day Three is an unforgettable rendering of an immortal day in our country's history.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jeffry D. Wert is the author of eight previous books on Civil War topics, most recently Cavalryman of the Lost Cause and The Sword of Lincoln. His articles and essays on the Civil War have appeared in many publications, including Civil War Times Illustrated, American History Illustrated, and Blue and Gray. A former history teacher at Penns Valley High School, he lives in Centre Hall, Pennsylvania, slightly more than one hour from the battlefield at Gettysburg.

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Chapter 1: Night on the Battlefield

Lieutenant George G. Benedict had never heard the sound before in his life. Like his comrades in the Second Vermont Brigade, the staff officer had been a soldier less than a year, most of that time spent on garrison duty at Washington, D.C. Attached to the Army of the Potomac as it marched north toward Pennsylvania, the Vermonters faced the terribleness of combat for the first time on July 2. Now, with night's darkness across the battlefield, Benedict heard the sound that rolled over the crest of Cemetery Ridge, where he rested with his fellow soldiers, and likened it to "a low, steady, indescribable moan."

It came from hundreds of voices, pleading cries for help or for "water, give me water." These were the voices of war's wreckage, of dying and wounded men who lay amid the blackness. Everywhere death and maiming had walked on July 2, leaving furrows of victims in the Peach Orchard and the Wheatfield, on Little Round Top, and along Emmitsburg Road. To Benedict and the others who had been spared, the wounded men's "mingled imprecations, prayers & groans...were literally heart rending."

Only the living received attention during the night of July 2-3. Aided by a moon just past full, ambulance crews, assisted by soldiers searching for friends, roamed the fields and woodlots, gathering up the wounded. Hour after hour, the ambulances passed to the rear and returned for more cargo. Their movement was marked, according to a New Yorker, by "the line of red lights" from their lanterns. Men on picket duty from both armies allowed stretcher-bearers from either side to pass through their lines. "It was the saddest night on picket duty," wrote an officer, "that I ever passed."

A Union staff officer found among the fallen Confederate Brigadier General William Barksdale. A former congressman and a fiery advocate of states' rights, Barksdale had led his brigade of Mississippians in an attack that swept across the fields north of the Peach Orchard. He fell wounded, and when his men were driven back, he was left behind. He had been shot in the back, and two bullets had broken his left leg.

A stretcher crew carried the general to the Jacob Hummelbaugh house, where surgeons from the Second Corps had established a hospital. Dr. A. T. Hamilton of the 148th Pennsylvania attended to Barksdale, whom the surgeon described as "large, corpulent, refined in appearance, bald." Several times Barksdale asked if his wounds were mortal, and Hamilton told him that he would not survive them. Later on July 3, Barksdale died for the cause he had so vigorously espoused.

The suffering men ended the night's journey as Barksdale had, at either a house or a barn converted into a makeshift hospital. The stream of ambulances was endless. The chief ambulance officer for the Union Fifth Corps reported that, from 4:00 P.M. on the 2nd to 4:00 A.M. on July 3, eighty-one ambulances brought in thirteen hundred wounded men to his corps's hospitals. The army commander had issued an order forbidding baggage wagons and ambulances to accompany the army to the battlefield. But doctors and generals ignored the directive, which George Meade admitted later had not included hospital wagons. "I do not know," confessed a member of the medical corps, "what could have been done with the wounded" if the order had been obeyed.

The surgeons and their assistants worked all night on the flood of patients. A Georgia doctor scribbled in his diary, "I did not sleep a moment last night." But the hospitals were wretched places, "miserable death Holes" to a Confederate officer. A New York soldier exclaimed that words could not describe "the frightful picture of a field hospital." An ambulance-corps sergeant confided to his diary that "the suffering is awful," for the wounds "are mostly severe." A Pennsylvanian who visited a Union Third Corps hospital in a barn at dawn on the 3rd, said that it reminded him of a Philadelphia slaughterhouse.

During the night, George Benedict was sent to the rear to obtain ammunition for the Vermonters. Since no one knew the location of the ordnance train, Benedict stopped at a dozen or more barns -- "the great Pennsylvania barns, looking more like large factory buildings than our New England barns," as he described them. At the door of one of them, Benedict found a common sight, "a ghastly pile of amputated arms and legs."

Sometime, perhaps even before midnight, the army's bands were instructed to place themselves between the troops on the line and the hospitals. "They played by detachments all night," recalled a New York captain, "to drown out the cries of the wounded and those who were being operated upon." At one point, a number of bands joined together and played "When This Cruel War Is Over." "While we sympathized with the sentiment," the captain added, "we execrated the doleful and monotonous music."

* * *

For the survivors of the combat on July 2, lying in the Union line from Cemetery Hill to Big Round Top, little else mattered than food and sleep. With cooking fires prohibited, the troops chewed on hardtack, a square, quarter-inch-thick cracker made of unleavened flour. In a number of regiments and batteries, the rations had been exhausted, and the officers and men had nothing to eat. An officer in Battery I, 1st United States Artillery, recalled that the unit's quartermaster sergeant disobeyed orders, went to the rear, and returned with forage for the horses and three days' rations for the gun crews.

Sleep came easily, exhaustion overtaking the men despite the pleas of the wounded and the music from the bands. Many of them used their knapsacks as pillows, and all bedded down with their weapons beside them. Captain Silas Adams of the 19th Maine looked at the starlit night, brightened by the moonlight, and wondered if the one he loved at home was gazing at the same stars. When "I saw what I thought was a roguish twinkle in one of them," he wrote later, "I was satisfied that I was right, and I was happy and went to sleep."

In the fields along Emmitsburg Road, west of Cemetery Ridge, detachments from several regiments manned picket posts. It was a long night for these soldiers as they lay amid the dead and the wounded. Required to stay awake, many of the Yankees passed the hours conversing with their Rebel counterparts, who in some places were less than seventy yards away. When relief parties moved forward to occupy the picket lines, a brief exchange of gunfire ensued. Many of the opponents had piled fence rails for protection, and few casualties resulted from the outbursts. It was a warm night, even an uncomfortable one, with the temperature in the seventies.

Farther south, on Little Round Top, members of the Fifth Corps were directed to occupy Big Round Top. The first regiment to be assigned the task was the 20th Maine, under the command of Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. During the fighting for possession of Little Round Top, Chamberlain and the Mainers had held the end of the Federal line and repulsed the assaults of two Alabama regiments. Their valiant defense would subsequently earn Chamberlain the Medal of Honor.

The 20th Maine began the ascent of the steep, wooded height sometime after 9:00 P.M. The 83rd Pennsylvania, a companion regiment in the brigade, followed three or four hours later. By dawn, the 5th and 12th Pennsylvania Reserves had joined the pair of regiments on the hill, and secured at last the Federal left flank on Big Round Top. The movement of the units had not gone unnoticed and drew the fire of Texas skirmishers at the base of the hill.

The rattle of musketry from the foot of Big Round Top indicated that elements of the Confederate army, like Federal units, were active in the hours before dawn. The 1st Texas of Brigadier General Jerome B. Robertson's brigade had been ordered to move from the Devil's...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Simon & Schuster
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2002
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0684859157
• ISBN 13: 9780684859156
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 468
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande