The Suicide Charge of the First Minnesota, Gettysburg, Day 2, July 2nd, 1863

For historians, Gettysburg is one of the most fascinating of all battles. Though the participants did not know it at the time, it was a watershed event, three days that would echo throughout the rest of the war. Though it would go on for another two long years, the outcome of this battle laid the eventual groundwork for what some believe was its inevitable conclusion, the end of independence for the south.

It was Lee’s last viable opportunity to bring the North to its knees. He came within a hair's-breadth of succeeding at Gettysburg, but failed. This happened because he did not properly use cavalry in its traditional role as a reconnaissance tool, which initially caused him to make decisions based on the assumption he was facing two union corps, instead of the entire union army. He also had recently lost Stonewall Jackson, one of his best Generals, which caused a resultant reorganization of the Army, which forced him to promote numerous people into untested positions of command. Most importantly, though Longstreet’s first assault on Day 2 was pure genius, which came very near to breaking the union lines all together, Lee was plainly out-generaled by his opponent’s leadership. Generals John Reynolds, Buford, Howard, Winfield Scott Hancock, as well as a host of other union Generals throughout the battle, made crucial decisions on each of the three days, decisions that compelled the south to cede their won ground, and retreat back across the border after the battle.

Nevertheless, in every battle, there are moments of courage and self-sacrifice, where the future of the battle, the war, and the country, hangs in the balance. Gettysburg had many of these moments, from the sacrifices of the Irish Brigade in the wheat field to the 20th Maine on Little Round Top. However, none better exemplifies the nobility of sacrifice within that proverbial context of fear, blood, and death, than the suicide charge of the First Minnesota, 289 men that charged into two entire Confederate brigades, ten times their strength. The First Minnesota’s charge took the wind out of the sails of Longstreet’s assault, just when his attack was bearing fruit.

General Longstreet was the best General Lee had in the wake of General Stonewall Jackson’s death at Chancellorsville. Longstreet’s Day 2 assault at Gettysburg was an amazing act of generalship. If anyone came close to defeating the union, it was Longstreet on Day 2.

Longstreet was later pilloried by his peers after the war for this assault, as the cult of Lee subsequently took hold, making any criticism of Lee off limits. This was also helped by the control of Virginia officers over the southern historical societies, which didn’t take too kindly to non-Virginia-bred generals like Longstreet, who could claim South Carolina and Georgia as home. Coupled with his friendship with General and President Grant pre and post-war, and his decision to join the South’s very unpopular Republican Party after the war, Longstreet made a very easy scapegoat. The reader needs to keep these facts in mind when reading other source conclusions that are many times based on these tainted histories from Longstreet’s contemporaries.

Nevertheless, when studying this battle, it’s good to get a good lay of the land. After Day 1, the north had been pushed back up on a ridge, bordered by two primary hills, Little Round Top and Culp. Their lines were three miles long, forming a large fish hook, or lower-case letter (r). The straight line of that fishhook pointed north, which bordered the southern side of Gettysburg’s city limits. On the north-east side of that hook was Culp’s hill. At the southern end of the long line of that fishhook were the hills, Little Round Top and Big Round top, with Big Round Top the more southern of the two Round Top hills. Big Round Top was unmanned. Little Round Top and Culp’s hill formed the extreme positions held by the north. The southerners held the ridge opposite this fishhook, forming their own inverted fishhook, as well.

The genius of Longstreet’s attack is his use of attack, en echelon, which is when you send in one group of men at a time, instead of an entire army. The idea is to cause the enemy to send reinforcements from regiments and brigades neighbouring that point of attack, causing enough panic during reinforcement to make a part of the enemy line too week to hold eventually.

At 4:30 PM on Day 2, he sent in Hood’s division, his right most division, against the Big and Little Round Tops, while holding back the rest of his divisions. This act forced the overwhelmed union at that point of contact to pull in reinforcements from their right, bleeding strength from neighbouring regiments and brigades.

At 5:00 PM, he sent in McLaw’s division against Sickle’s corps in the Peach Orchard, with each of its two brigades to attack, en echelon. This also did the same at the point of impact, pulling in reinforcements from the union’s right flank, bleeding more and more strength from its centre.

What Longstreet did not know when formulating his plan was the fortuitous arrival of one of the largest union corps just when his attack was beginning to take shape. That union corps began to funnel in reinforcements, as did a union corps that had been held in reserve, along with reinforcements being fed in by General Hancock’s union division, which was in line to the right of the on-going battle.

But even with these reinforcements, the union position was tenuous at best, since a pre-battle manoeuvre by their General Sickles had made the union position perilous, due to his repositioning of his corps. Against orders, he had moved his corps one mile in front of the rest of the union line, disengaging it from any support to any other union unit. His reasoning was that he liked a rise in the ground, which he thought would be beneficial to his cannon. By the time Meade had discovered what Sickles had done, Longstreet’s attack struck, making it too late to pull Sickles back.

At 6:00 PM, Richard Anderson’s division of A.P. Hill’s Corps, which had been temporarily assigned to Longstreet for this assault, was sent into the attack, with five brigades. The southern brigades of Wilcox (Alabama) and Lang (Florida) made the last of Sickle’s line break, and run to the rear. There were no soldiers left to repel them, none that hadn’t already been sent to the union left to stem the attacks. This is when the First Minnesota entered the lore of the battle, and eventually lead President Calvin Coolidge to later claim that what they did “has few, if any equals and no superiors in the history of warfare,” entitling the Minnesotans “to rank as the saviours of their country.”

General Hancock who had been charged with plugging the holes in the union left had sent all he had to that sector of the battle. He needed time to bring in reinforcements from other quiet areas of the line. If the two southern brigades breached the northern line, as it appeared they were about to, all they had to do was to roll up the union right. The battle, and war, would end that night, as Washington would have then been wide open to Lee.

“As he (Hancock) turned to look backward, he saw a large body of troops with flags coming out of the battle fog….he twisted around to look for troops to throw into the path of the Alabamians, he saw absolutely no one---except for one regiment…..’My God! Are these all the men we have here?’ The Alabamians, supported on their left by David Lang’s three Florida regiments, were looming up clearly now, in what looked like ‘three long lines.’ Hancock ‘spurred to where’ the regiment lay, calling out, ‘What regiment is this.’ First Minnesota, replied the regiment’s colonel, William Colvill. Hancock, pointing toward the Alabamians, wasted no time in instructing Colvill, ‘Charge those lines!’

Every man realized in an instant what that order meant, ‘but Colvill, without the slightest protest, called the First Minnesota to its feet, rifles at right-shoulder-shift, and down into the swale they went, toward the meagre margins of Plum Run, Where Wilcox and Lang had paused for a moment to reorder their lines……Of all the moments of self-immolation that the Army of the Potomac performed that afternoon….nothing quite hit the bell of the sublime as deeply as the charge of the First Minnesota. With ‘no hesitation, no stopping to fire,‘ Colvill led them in a fast trot, breaking into a full-scale run as he shouted, ‘Charge!’

They were briefly concealed by a thick bank of smoke which ‘had settled into the ravine’ formed by Plum Run, so that the Alabamians had no warning of their approach until the Minnesotans burst on top of them….The front rank of the Alabamians took one look at the ‘levelled bayonets coming with such momentum and evident desperation’ and promptly broke, stumbling and tripping over their rear rank. Colvill pulled the Minnesotans up at the line….and ‘we then poured in our first fire.’ It was as though ‘the ferocity of our onset seemed to paralyze them.’ Worse than paralyze, it convinced David Lang that ‘a heavy force had advanced upon General Wilcox’s brigade, and was forcing it back.’ Lang at once concluded that they had walked into a massive Federal trap, and Lang ‘immediately ordered my men back to the road, some 300 yards to the rear.’”

The attack lasted fifteen to twenty minutes, which was exactly what Hancock needed to fill the empty union line with soldiers. Guelzo states that only 47 of the First Minnesota’s 289 men made it back to roll call. But they bought, with their lives and limbs, the time Hancock needed. As a result, when the next southern brigade of Wright was sent in en echelon, momentarily breaking through to the right of the First Minnesota’s battle a few moments later, they did so without the support of the two strong brigades turned back by the First Minnesota. Moreover, they did so without the two brigades to Wright’s left, one of which spent too much time clearing a few farm buildings of annoying union skirmishers, and another brigade led by a commander that refused to get involved in the battle at all.

The what-ifs of this world can fill up volumes of books. But had the First Minnesota not caused those two brigades to retreat, Wright would have arrived exploiting the inevitable breakthrough of those two brigades. The south might have won that night, causing America to split into two different countries.

Hood burned Atlanta before Sherman occupied it.

Lee’s men robbed and terrorized cities on their way to Gettysburg. Lee’s men torched and burned Richmond as they withdrew before they withdrew, and slashed the fire hoses.

Yet you assert that they would have respected Washington, in a way that they did not respect Richmond.

I call that delusional to the extent it is not false.

Both sides had understrength units. New units were raised by various states, and made available to the central governments. When soldiers were wounded, the regiment got along without them. When they died, the regiment got along without them. New regiments were raised. Occasionally an old regiment would be disbanded, or upon death of the commander could be combined with another regiment from the same state. New commanders would come with new men from the state, being politically appointed by the Governor. Many of the younger officers would be elected by the men in their company.

Sherman wrote that new units were not as useful as the old units, and that a replacement system would be better to put new men under experienced officers and sergeants. He wrote, after the war that nearly all methods of raising men had been tried, conscription, bought substitutes (mercenaries), and volunteers. Of those, the volunteers were the best.

I read a story about some Texas men from Hood’s brigade that went to Jeff Davis to protest the planned merging of their unit with men from other states. Don’t blame them, just that all units at that time were, after their first battle, understrength, and there was no systematic means to push reinforcements to depleted units. Wounded men sent home to get well in Georgia in particular were redrafted by their state, and sent off in new units, rather than being permitted to return to their old unit. A soldier could be considered AWOL from his old unit while serving in their new unit, and if caught in that situation could have some ‘splaining to do.

The individual replacement system used by the US during WWII was also a problem. New men were often pushed forward to depleted units with little time to train with and integrate into their receiving units. Some died before anyone even knew their name.

German practice tried to pull units off the line so replacements could train with experienced cadre, but as they were pressed very hard at the end of the war, the cadres were increasingly small, and the time available for training decreased.

I am not sure that anyone has the right answer on personnel management in war, even today.

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