Barksdale's Charge, page 29
But to Hancock’s left was still the yawning gap on Cemetery Ridge toward which Barksdale was advancing. He may have expected the retiring Third Corps to take position on the ridge, but for the moment they were too shattered to rally. Hancock now commanded what was left of the Third Corps after Sickles’ fall, and was horrified by the realization that “there was nothing left of [Humphreys’ Second] division.” He looked around and found one more unused brigade of his own corps, the Third Brigade of Alexander Hays’ Division, under Colonel George Lamb Willard. He immediately ordered it to the left to face Barksdale’s oncoming Mississippians.
Willard’s brigade had been the last Second Corps unit to reach the field, but the command was in overall good shape after a cozy stint in the capital’s defenses. Known derisively within the corps as the “Harpers Ferry Brigade,” for having surrendered there practically without a fight the previous September, it had something to prove to its Second Corps comrades. And now as the day’s light was fading away, Willard’s brigade was called upon to face its supreme challenge. It now advanced toward Barksdale’s three regiments, moving all the way from Cemetery Ridge’s northern end to meet their old antagonists from the Antietam Campaign. As if knowing of the slaughter to come, a New York chaplain had already said words of faith before the New Yorkers moved out to confront the Mississippians.
But even worse for the irrepressible Barksdale, fresh units of the Twelfth Corps were also arriving in the sector to help plug the gap at the last moment. They had been pulled from Culp’s Hill on the Federal far right, where Ewell’s Corps had remained silent, and dispatched to Meade’s left to help deal with the crisis. The Mississippians had already mauled some of the Army of the Potomac’s best regiments, but more were now arriving.471 That the situation of Meade’s collapsed left-center “had become exceedingly critical” was evident when Willard’s men found so many broken Third Corps troops, including General Birney, streaming rearward.472 Indeed, a badly-shaken Birney, whose troops had been mauled by the Confederates’ onslaught, had declared to Hancock how “the 3d Corps had gone to pieces and fallen to the rear.”473 However, Barksdale’s three regiments had taken quite a beating themselves in having achieved so much for so long. Private John Saunders Henley, 17th Mississippi, described how, “we had driven the Yankees about a mile from their first line; our ranks had grown so thin.”474
Hancock described the crucial situation and what he accomplished in the face of the day’s greatest challenge: “I established Willard’s brigade at the point through which General Birney’s division had retired, and fronting the approach of the enemy, who were pressing vigorously on. There were no other troops on its right or left.” Willard’s vital mission was now to plug the wide breach in Meade’s left-center that now lay before the onslaught of Barksdale’s three regiments. The brigade deployed with the 125th and 126th New York, left to right, in its front line, supported respectively by the 39th and 111th New York. Here Lieutenant Colonel Levin Crandell, leading the 125th New York, described in his diary the punishment inflicted by Colonel Alexander’s guns, which provided timely assistance to the Mississippians: “We deployed under a heavy fire of shot & shell.” A soldier in the regiment described how there were “shells screaming and cannon balls tearing in the air … now bursting above and around us.”475
Having heretofore escaped the initial carnage of Gettysburg, Willard’s brigade had already won a key advantage without so much as firing a shot, holding elevated terrain before Cemetery Ridge’s crest, while Barksdale’s three regiments surged up the slope east of Plum Run.
Colonel Willard was a promising officer well qualified to smash the most vivid dreams of Barksdale and his Mississippi Rebels. He was a dark-haired, no-nonsense martinet from New York City who had made a career in the regular army despite his family’s objections. A veteran of the Mexican War, he had been part of General Winfield Scott’s successful attack on Chapultepec Castle in September 1847. At age thirty-five and a West Pointer, Willard was one of the finest junior officers in the Second Corps, a rising star of promise. Fortunately, for the Army of the Potomac at this time, Willard represented a classic case of a commander and his troops united by a shared bond, lusting for validation, redemption, and vindication.
With the New York City colonel leading the way, the 125th and 126th New York, over 800 men, pushed down the slope with fixed bayonets, rolling like a blue tidal wave off the high ground of Cemetery Ridge. For the first time all day, Barksdale’s men were forced back. The New Yorkers advanced toward the brushy, elderberry thickets and rocks clogging the low ground of Plum Run. Known simply as “the swale,” the bottoms now contained hundreds of Mississippi Rebels still full of fight. After taking punishment from Colonel McGilvery’s artillery fire, including canister, pouring off the high ground, the Mississippians had prudently retired back to the cover along Plum Run to regroup, reload muskets, and take good defensive positions in preparation for meeting Willard’s attackers rolling down Cemetery Ridge’s western slope.
Yet to be issued their distinctive diamond emblems of the Second Corps to sew on their hats, the New Yorkers had much to prove, and the Mississippi Rebels were about receive the brunt of their pent-up emotions. In fact, Willard’s soldiers had been ordered by Hancock to “knock the Hell out of the Rebs” from Mississippi, their old foes from Harpers Ferry. For the first time all day, and recently fortified by the words of Chaplain Ezra Simons, only Willard’s troops took the initiative to strike back, because, wrote one Yankee, “there were no other troops on [our] right or left” at this time.476
General Alexander Hays, their division commander, wrote with pride how the “Harpers Ferry boys have turned out trumps, and when we do get a chance look out for blood.”477 Unfortunately, for the breathless Mississippians, now exhausted, low on ammunition, and with many leading regimental and company officers cut down, they could not have encountered more highly-motivated soldiers than these New Yorkers, who were determined to set the record straight once and for all.478 In the words of one of these revenge-seeking Union soldiers, the so-called Harpers Ferry brigade “panted to remove that stigma,” which called now for Mississippi blood and the thwarting of Barksdale’s soaring ambitions to win it all.479 And the youthful-looking Willard, who had suffered a severe setback to his ambitions because of the Harpers Ferry episode, was about to rise to the occasion when so much was at stake. All in all, Willard and his much-maligned New York boys were a “good match” for meeting Barksdale’s three now seriously-depleted regiments.480 Meanwhile, Hancock sent the 400 men of the 111th New York forward to extend Willard’s right, while keeping the 39th New York in reserve on the brigade’s left, facing southwest.481
Mounted before his lengthy formations of bluecoats eager to meet their old tormentors from September 15, 1862, Colonel Willard waved his saber and shouted, “Charge!” The New Yorkers poured down the open slopes like an avalanche, charging on the double with fixed bayonets in the fading sunlight. The sheer momentum of their downhill attack increased as they neared the Mississippians, now positioned in good cover amid the low, brush-clogged valley of Plum Run. Because of the heavy growth along the creek, Willard had no idea that three entire Mississippi regiments—albeit bloodied and the worse for wear—were in position amid the underbrush, rocks, and timber waiting his arrival. When the New Yorkers were near, Barksdale screamed for his line to unleash their first volley, which swept through the New York ranks. Willard now realized he had stirred up a hornet’s nest. One Union officer described how “the rebels fired on the brigade as it advanced, which fire was returned by a portion of the brigade as it advanced without halting. Many fell in the charge.”
Soon to take a New York bullet in the arm, Private Joseph Charles Lloyd of the 13th Mississippi never forgot the sight: “They had come out from the top of the hill and were fresh” unlike the exhausted, powdersmeared Mississippi soldiers, who had been fighting for over an hour. Nevertheless, Barksdale’s veterans unleashed sheets of rolling volleys upon this new threat in a desperate effort to protect the brigade’s flanks, which both hung in mid-air to the north and south. The explosion of fire burst out of the brushy bottoms, raking Willard’s bluecoats with a murderous musketry that left a good many widows and orphans across New York. Indeed, the Mississippians’ Enfield rifles continued to prove to be deadly widow-makers this afternoon. Bunches of Willard’s Yankees went down, screaming and crying out in pain, as a torrent of Mississippi bullets tore savagely through the brigade.
On the right flank, Private Abernathy, 17th Mississippi, long remembered the inspiring sight of Lieutenant Colonel “Fiser on his little Blaze face bay horse [when he] rode along the lines calling the troops to halt and form.” All the while, the Mississippians busily loaded and fired from behind good cover—compared to the open fields that they had been charging across—among the trees, rocks, and brush along Plum Run. Along with the clouds of thick battle-smoke, the clumps of bushes and dense new growth of willows on Plum Run’s bottoms hid the Mississippi Rebels, who found easy targets when Willard’s brigade halted to realign its ranks. An officer in the 111th New York described a solid “line of riflemen giving us minie balls with such rapidity that it seemed as if nothing could live an instant exposed to their fire.”
Low on ammunition, the Mississippians gathered rounds from the cartridge-boxes of the dead and wounded. Known as “Old Barks” to the boys who would follow him to hell and back if necessary, Barksdale rode back and forth and waved his saber, urging his troops to fire faster at the New York troops. Holding the low, brushy ground along Plum Run yet promised potential future gains, if Barksdale’s offensive effort could be resumed. Realizing that no infantry support was forthcoming, the Mississippi Brigade’s soldiers were fully prepared to self-sacrifice themselves for the chance to yet win the day.
All the while, the opposing lines continued to frantically exchange fire while the New Yorkers applied heavy pressure to Barksdale’s exposed left flank on the north. In this sector, Colonel Clinton MacDougall’s 111th New York, on the brigade’s right, struck the 18th Mississippi, which anchored Barksdale’s left. Demonstrating their worth, the Empire State troops, surged down the slope with fixed bayonets while screaming, “Remember Harpers Ferry.”482
Nevertheless, while the 18th Mississippi was hard-hit, the 13th Mississippi and the 17th Mississippi remained firm in firing positions amid the body-strewn, underbrush-choked, and smoke-drenched swale. Here, they stood up against Willard’s surging blue tide. Loading and firing as rapidly as possible, Barksdale’s veterans shot down New York officers and color bearers, raking the lengthy Federal lines with a murderous fire. However, by this time the Mississippi Brigade had been decimated also, and “all the field officers of the brigade were either killed or wounded,” save Colonel Humphreys. And the determination of large numbers of fresh troops, with cartridge-boxes full of forty rounds, to redeem themselves against “Barksdale their nemesis at Harpers Ferry” could not be overcome by an ever-dwindling band of worn soldiers low on ammunition, isolated, and without support. A cruel fate had seemingly intervened at the last moment to cheat Barksdale out of decisive victory.
Indeed, Lieutenant Haskell revealed the key tactical advantage now enjoyed by Meade’s army to turn the tide: “On account of the convexity of our line, every part of the line could be reinforced by troops having to move a shorter distance than if the line were straight; further, for the same reason, the line of the enemy must be concave, and consequently longer, and with an equal force, thinner and so weaker than ours.” Indeed, “any fool could see that Gettysburg had become Fredericksburg in reverse!” Longstreet’s views now proved correct, especially in regard to Barksdale’s offensive effort: “Even if we carried the heights in front of us and drove Meade out, we should be so badly crippled that we could not reap the fruits of victory.”483
Nevertheless, the vicious, close-range fighting continued unabated along Plum Run for about half an hour, with the Mississippi Rebels standing firm, exchanging punishment with 1,200 fresh New York soldiers. At close range, the exchanges of musketry grew even more intense, rolling back and forth, with gunfire raging along the length of Plum Run. Clouds of choking smoke blanketed the bottoms and combined with the dropping sun to cast an eerie atmosphere and distorted reddish light, obscuring vision to create more confusion. Hiding the carnage and horrors from the eye of survivors, drifting layers of smoke shrouded the ever-increasing number of bodies of dead and wounded Mississippi boys, who began to stack up like cordwood before a hard winter.
In the riddled ranks of the Mississippi Rangers, Captain Andrew Jackson Pulliam’s Company B, 17th Mississippi, two British-born Rebels were cut down. Hit for the third time along Plum Run, Private Abernathy explained how “Billie Gast, another native of England, stepped up to a little bush, knelt, and placing his gun between the branches of a bush, took deliberate aim, and fired kneeling. Just as he did so, a bullet struck him square in the forehead and with a gasp he settled back dead on his knees.”
Death in the Gloaming
BY THIS TIME and in part because no support had been sent his way, Barksdale was “almost frantic with rage,” while attempting to prepare his hard-hit troops for yet another offensive effort to smash through yet another Yankee line. Above all, he knew that he had to get the attack beyond Plum Run rolling once again. One 126th New York captain never forgot the sight of Barksdale during the general’s last moments of life: “Gen. Barksdale was trying to hold his men, cheering them and swearing, directly in front of the left of the 126th near the right of the 125th who both saw and heard him as they emerged from the bushes.”484 Private Joseph Charles Lloyd, 13th Mississippi, recalled the sight of the mounted Barksdale encouraging the boys onward, yelling “Forward through the bushes.”485
Incredibly, Barksdale surged forward in yet another attack with only a portion of his troops beyond Plum Run, “leading his command in a desperate charge on our left centre,” in the words of Yankee Robert A. Cassidy. Large numbers of Mississippi Rebels charged up the ascending slope of Cemetery Ridge with cheers.486 The resurgent Mississippians lashed back at their New York attackers, threatening to turn the right flank of Willard’s brigade and pushing on toward McGilvery’s Reserve Artillery and Cemetery Ridge.
In the 17th Mississippi’s ranks on Barksdale’s right, Private Abernathy described the counterattack of his Mississippi Rangers, how “Jim Crump sprang over him, called for a ‘forward charge with bayonet’ and the line went forward leaving a ghastly row” of dead and wounded, while “Arch Lee had run up with the flag of the old 17th. On it had been embroidered the names of the battles in which it had fought. Manassas, Leesburg, Yorktown, Williamsburg, Seven Pines, Gaines Mill, Savage Station, Fraser’s Farm, Malvern Hill, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, and then the cry for another forward movement.” All the while, the savage, close-range fighting swirled to new furies among the brush-covered and second-growth timber amid the bloody swale of Plum Run. Like the open fields over which the Mississippi Brigade had charged all afternoon, the swale, once a pristine and picturesque creation of nature, had been transformed into a gory, killing ground, where large numbers of Mississippi boys fell.
By this time, scores of Barksdale’s men had fallen during this lethal duel of musketry. Outflanked on the left by attackers of the 111th and 126th New York, the first hard-hit 18th Mississippi soldiers, without ammunition or luck, sullenly began to retire to the west.487 However, in the smoky confusion, most surviving Mississippians remained in place in defensive positions, reloading and firing as long as rounds in cartridge boxes remained, while Barksdale continued to urge his troops—at least those who followed him, mostly 13th Mississippi soldiers—up the open slope on Plum Run’s east side in a last-ditch effort to gain Cemetery Ridge. After having fought all afternoon and being depleted of ammunition, however, additional Mississippi Rebels on the left were forced to withdraw. This was even as more counterattacking 126th New York soldiers who continued to attempt to turn Barksdale’s left flank were killed by the Mississippians’ accurate fire.
While additional Mississippi soldiers retired to consolidate new defensive positions on Plum Run’s west side, the New York brigade surged ahead upon seeing many of Barksdale’s hard-hit Rebels redeploying. As Lt. Colonel Crandell, 125th New York, recorded in his diary, when the New York brigade charged and “entered the bushes we went firing as we advanced [and] with a yell we sprang forward [and] we drove them at the point of the bayonet with an impetuousty that drives irresistibly onward. The ground we charged over was covered with killed & wounded but we had done what all the regiments had failed to do at the point of the bayonet.” Believing that victory had been won, the New Yorkers charged across the creek to exploit what they believed was their greatest battlefield success to date; in fact, by halting Barksdale’s Brigade, something no other Union formation had been able to do that day.
Instead they ran into a wall of fire. The Mississippi Rebels had quickly reformed on the west side of Plum Run, and they now delivered a punishing volley with what little ammunition remained in their cartridge- boxes. Falling wounded, Colonel MacDougall, commanding the 111th New York, paid a high price for turning Barksdale’s left flank, writing how “so severe was the fire to which we were subject that my loss in that charge was 185 men killed and wounded in less than 20 minutes, out of 390 taken into the fight.” And Lt. Colonel Levin Crandell lamented in his diary how his 125th New York “lost 135 men out of a little less than 400.”488
The high losses resulted from the swirl of confused fighting at close-range amid the underbrush and thickets along Plum Run’s bottoms, where the dense summer foliage and layers of smoke, stagnant in the breezeless July heat and humidity, hovered low on the ground. In the confusion of the close-range, back-and-forth combat, some prone Mississippians, lying in the underbrush, turned to fire into the backs and flanks of the New Yorkers, who charged over the creek. Fighting beside his comrades of The Kemper Legion, 13th Mississippi, Private Joseph Charles Lloyd was shocked to look around and “see the enemy bursting through the bushes.” While some Mississippians, especially on the left, had been either outflanked or surrounded and then forced to surrender, most of Plum Run’s defenders remained fighting. However, the shooting down of New Yorkers while they were taking prisoners incensed Willard’s men, who incorrectly believed that Barksdale’s men were giving in. But most Mississippi Rebels had no thought of surrender, especially with Cemetery Ridge so near and yet within reach.489
