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Posted on 08/21/2003 12:00:13 AM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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Gettysburg, PA July 3, 1863 Longstreet was reluctant about the attack that Lee had ordered. It called for nearly 12,000 men (nine brigades) to march over 1,000 yards across open ground. The Confederate line would stretch for over a mile. Pettigrew's Division (of A.P. Hill's Corps) would comprise of the northern portion of the attack while Pickett's Division (Longstreet's Corps) would be the southern wing.  The attack began with over one hundred Confederate guns opening fire along the Union lines. The Confederate shells tended to land over the Union lines and land amidst the rear (near the wagons and hospitals). In fact, Meade was forced to relocate his headquarters to Power's Hill. Colonel Alexander, commander of the Confederate I Corps, noticed that the Union batteries were momentarily withdrawing from their positions (only to be replenished and supported with replacement batteries) . If any time had come, this was the time. In effect, Colonel Alexander gave his opinion that the charge should proceed.  General George Pickett, CSA The attack started from Seminary Ridge with Pickett's and Trimble's Divisions and slowly marched eastward. Union batteries from Cemetery Hill to Little Round Top immediately opened fire on the advancing line, opening temporary gaps in the units. The Confederates kept coming and after 15 minutes, reformed their lines after crossing Emmitsburg Road. When the Confederates were within 400 yards, the Union artillery began firing canister and were also within Union rifle distance. The two wings of the Confederate advance converged as Pettigrew moved to the right and Pickett to the left. The line now compacted to about 1/2 mile long.  BG James L. Kemper's Brigade formed Pickett's lead right-front brigade. To his left was BG Richard B. Garnett's Brigade followed by BG Lewis A. Armistead's Brigade. Pickett ordered his men to turn to the northeast in order to link with Pettigrew's Division. This exposed his right flank to the artillery on Little Round Top and the southern portion of Cemetery Ridge. This allowed the Union artillery to fire along the Confederate line with little chance of missing a target.  Col. Robert Mayo's Brigade, Pettigrew's left brigade, was attacked by artillery of the XI Corps on Cemetery Hill. The 8th Ohio Regiment (of Carroll's Brigade), under the command of LtC. Franklin Sawyer, had been sent out earlier to form a skirmishing line. Instead of withdrawing (as skirmishers are usually required), Sawyer faced his men southwest to fire on Mayo's Brigade which was passing in front. Though Sawyer's Regiment was largely outnumbered, Mayo's men had sustained enormous losses from the artillery barrage on Cemetery Hill. Sawyer's attack was enough to send Mayo's men running to the rear. This now exposed the remaining Pettigrew Brigades to flanking fire.  General Windfield Hancock, USA Pettigrew now linked with Pickett and both continued steadily eastward up the slope. Hays' Division (Union) formed behind a stone wall and waited until Col. Birkett D. Fry's Brigade was within 200 yards. Now that Mayo's Brigade had fled the field, Hays was able to overlap Pettigrew's left. Hays ordered his right to overlap Pettigrew's left and face southwest. On the right flank of the Confederate advance (Kemper's Brigade), the exact same maneuver was being initiated by BG George J. Stannard's Brigade (13 VT, 14 VT, and 16 VT). Stannard was able to fire upon Kemper and inflict huge casualties with impunity. This caused Kemper's men to crowd to the north away from Stannard's fire.  View from Confederate lines, Pickett's Charge The Confederates began to bunch near the center and became "a mingled mass, from fifteen to thirty deep." Opposite the main assault was the "Angle" - a point in the Union line where it formed a 90-degree angle. Positioned in the Angle, behind a stone wall, was the 71st PA Regiment (250 men). To their left, was the 69th PA, supported by five guns of Cowan's 1st NY Battery. As the Confederates pushed forward, the men and artillery in the Angle poured devastating fire into the approaching units. Still, the Confederates came, this time reaching the stone wall of the Angle. General Armistead led the Confederate attack with a group of about 200 men and overran most of the 69th and 71st PA before reaching Cowan's Battery. General Webb, who watched the attack, ordered the 72nd PA into battle.  View from Union lines, Pickett's Charge The 72nd PA halted the Confederate advance and forced many of the enemy to seek cover behind the western side of the stone wall. Hand-to-hand fighting raged in the Angle and Webb ordered a charge by the 72nd. The Regiment refused the order and Webb gave up the attempt. By this time, Col. Devereux's 19th MA Regiment and the 42nd NY Regiment rushed into the Angle to drive the Confederates out. The Confederates were now outnumbered and cutoff from any reinforcements. Soon, anyone left in the Angle was either captured or killed. The remaining Confederate units near the Angle slowly retreated and made their way back towards Seminary Ridge after realizing no reinforcements were to come.  The Federal position located behind a stone fence was breeched in only one place, a nook in the fence later called the "angle". As General Armistead and the remnant of his command crossed over the stone fence they took the 3-inch Ordnance Rifle of Lt. Alonzo Cushing's Battery A, 4th U.S. artillery. Immediately a volley from Federal infantry tore into the left flank of the General and his men. Armistead was hit twice, once below the right knee and in the upper left arm. Neither wound broke any bone and should not have been fatal, but poor medical care and loss of blood would cause Armistead death on July the 5th. Pickett lost nearly 3,000 men (over half) of his Division. He lost all 15 regimental commanders, including two BG's and six Col's. When Pickett returned to Lee, he was ordered to prepare against a possible Union counterattack. Pickett then replied, "General Lee, I have no division now." Despite the Confederate retreat, the Southerners were still a formidable force. Meade, having assumed command only 6 days earlier, was in no mood to face the Confederate guns lining Seminary Ridge. In addition, nightfall was soon approaching. The following day, July 4th, erupted in rainfall and saw the retreat of Lee's army.
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Of all of the events that occurred during the three days of the Battle of Gettysburg, few have been more studied, debated, celebrated, and romanticized than Longstreet's Assault, more popularly known as "Pickett's Charge". Coordinated by Lt. General James Longstreet, the attack has been referred to as Longstreet's Grand Assault by many historians. Yet it is General George Pickett's name that has come to mark the "High Water Mark" of the battle, for his troops- "the flower of Virginia manhood"- were the ones more glorified by southern and northern writers in the years following the battle.
The names of the places associated with the charge are deeply indented on the American conscience. Every summer, "The Angle" and "The High Water Mark" are crowded with visitors who come to commemorate the event and ponder those terrible minutes when American killed American in a desperate contest of wills and ideals. So much carnage in such a small place- it is difficult for us today to realize the horror those Americans faced, and how quickly the hopes of the North and South were determined.
Pickett's Division was one of the largest in the Army of Northern Virginia. Having been assigned to defenses in the Richmond area in 1863, Pickett's troops were veterans of several campaigns and joined the army as it made it's way toward Maryland and Pennsylvania. Pickett was anxious that he would not get to see any of the fighting during the campaign and was "filled with excitement" when he was ordered to move his three brigades to the front lines on the morning of July 3rd. With all preparations completed, Pickett's soldiers marched across the shell-swept field, temporarily broke the Union line, and returned to Seminary Ridge broken and shattered. The charge had lasted barely 50 minutes, but Pickett's Virginians had achieved a remarkable high point of honor and glory in southern heritage and the story of Gettysburg. Pickett lost over one half of his division in killed, wounded, and captured including all three of his brigadier generals in the charge. It was ironic to some that with so much destruction in the ranks and among the high-ranking officers, General Pickett escaped the battle without a scratch. (The general's location during the charge would later become a heated debate among some of the participants.) The fate of his three generals was each very different from the other:
Richard Brooke Garnett. Disregarding the advice of fellow officers, Garnett rode into the attack and led his troops across the Emmitsburg Road into the storm of canister from Union guns. Garnett was seen cheering his soldiers forward in the thick smoke, urging them on toward the stone wall. No one ever saw the general alive again. His riderless horse returned to Seminary Ridge, the saddle speckled with the general's blood. Garnett's body was never recovered and mystery has surrounded his fate ever since, though his body was most likely interred on the field with the dead from his brigade. General Garnett's sword was later found in a Baltimore pawn shop by former Confederate general George H. Steuart, who returned the treasured relic to the Garnett family. Another mystery surfaced soon after when a photograph identified as General Garnett was published. Though it was generally thought to be the general, skeptics doubted it was the same officer killed at Gettysburg.
James Lawson Kemper. Despite what appeared to be a mortal wound, General Kemper beat the odds and survived. Captured by Federal troops after the retreat from Gettysburg, Kemper was paroled and exchanged. Promoted to major general in 1864, Kemper commanded the reserve forces of Virginia until the close of the war, after which he returned to his law practice. He received the Democratic nomination for the governorship of Virginia and served as that state's governor from 1874 to 1877. He then returned to his law practice, but kept his hand in state politics and often spoke on legislative politics and state government. Kemper died in 1895 and is buried in Orange County, Virginia.
Lewis Armistea The only brigade commander in Pickett's Division to breach the Union line, General Armistead was wounded in the arm by Union rifle fire after placing a hand on one of Lt. Cushing's cannon in the center of the Angle. He was subsequently captured by Federal forces and taken to a Union field hospital. Despite the efforts of Union surgeons, the general died on July 5 and was buried near the field hospital. His remains were later recovered by friends who had the general interred at St. Paul's Church in Baltimore.
As for General Pickett, he did not enjoy great success as a field commander after Gettysburg. Distraught over the losses in his command, Pickett led his troops back to Virginia where the weariness of the harsh campaign eventually wore off and his spirits were rejuvenated with the return of Corse's Brigade to his division. That fall Pickett was assigned to command the Department of Virginia and North Carolina during which time he took a short leave of absence to marry his third and most adoring wife, LaSalle Corbell. The couple eventually had two children. General Pickett's duties placed him in command of numerous defensive lines around Richmond, Petersburg, and southeast Virginia, a post he held until 1864 when he returned to the field in command of his old division.
In a journalistic sense, the charge at Gettysburg was to be General Pickett's most important contribution to the southern cause. Southern writers heralded his Virginians who made the attack against impossible odds, one writer placing the general in the role of a tragic hero who did what he could despite the mistakes and miscalculations of others. Controversies surrounding his actions during the Appomattox Campaign did not directly affect the general who was held in high regard by the officers and men who served under him. Apparently embittered by the destruction of his division at Gettysburg and uneasy with the awkward relationship with his former army commander, Pickett chose not to openly discuss his career as a Confederate officer or what happened on that fateful July afternoon in Pennsylvania. Yet the general never reconciled the losses his command suffered at Gettysburg, and never forgave Lee for ordering so many of his young Virginians into the last great charge that today bears his name.
The charge was not without controversy even before it began, and the debate as to the assault's merits have been argued over and over again ever since. Questions quickly arose soon after the battle as to who was responsible for the failure. A few unnamed sources who favored the Virginians blamed the disaster on the lack of support from Pettigrew's and Trimble's columns, criticisms that first appeared in newspapers in the fall of 1863. The accusations caused hard feelings between commands and served no purpose other than to confuse facts surrounding the charge. After the war, the conflict took a more personal side when a number of writers accused the North Carolinians of Pettigrew's division of cowardice and not going into the charge as they were "untried and green troops", a complete falsehood. The debate grew more bitter as time passed as more and more writers looked to Gettysburg as the turning point of the war in southern fortunes. The arguments had cooled some by the turn of the century. But in 1903, Samuel A. Ashe, a North Carolina writer, wrote a scathing article published in a Richmond newspaper in which he demanded to know why North Carolina troops were continually slandered by Virginia veterans. He also broached the subject of Pickett's whereabouts during the attack, blaming the failure of the charge on the general for his lack of command. The flame became an inferno as former staff officers rushed to Pickett's defense. Cruel innuendo followed including a condemning statement attributed to Pickett, that had no factual base. Yet the hard feelings did not easily pass away and the bitter debate resurfaced again and again until the last veteran of the charge passed away. Interestingly enough, only one or two southern writers ever gave the Union defenders of Cemetery Ridge any credit for breaking up the attack. The southern spirit of invincibility did not die during the Civil War after all.
The culmination of Lee's last hopes for victory in Pennsylvania, "Pickett's Charge" was thwarted by a number of factors including poor staff work, superior organization and control of Union artillery, massed infantry lines against rifled weapons, and a Pennsylvania brigade standing on their native soil in the Angle that fought for every inch of ground. The Philadelphia Brigade was composed of regiments raised in the city and counties surrounding Philadelphia. The celebrated brigade was first led by Colonel Edward Baker and fought under several different commanders through the terrible campaigns of 1862 and 1863. New York-born Brigadier General Alexander Webb led the brigade at Gettysburg. Assigned to command the Philadelphians barely a week before Gettysburg, Webb distinguished himself during the battle and was wounded on July 3 at the height of Pickett's attack. General Webb received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his courage under fire, though he was not a favorite among the officers and men of his brigade who viewed the officer as a military appointment over a former commander who was discharged without just cause.
NPS, Gettysburg Battlefield Park
No question.
The story of Gettysburg is so moving on so many different levels. Pickett's Charge brought out the best in so many men doing their duty under incredibly difficult, if not impossible, circumstances - and brought out the worst in the later recriminations over who "lost" the battle. The Battle of Gettysburg illustrates so much of what makes the history of war so interesting: heroism, duty, luck, great commanders making mistakes, not so great commanders making bad and some good decisions, all with the very future of the nation in the balance. And what stories! The confederates originally going to Gettysburg looking for shoes, Buford's cavalry stand, JEB Stuart going missing, Ewell's failure to take the federal right, Sickle's move into the deadly Peach Orchard, the charge of the 20th Maine, Pickett's Charge, the federal failure to pursue. It's fitting that hallowed ground was blessed by one of the most eloquent Presidential speeches of all time.
Hey Jen, wanna share?
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