Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (61 page)

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Like Anderson,
Cadmus Marcellus Wilcox suffered from being a non-Virginian. Born in North Carolina, he had grown up in
Tennessee, and gone from the University of Nashville to West Point and the same graduating class in 1846 that produced George McClellan. He resigned from the army after the secession of Tennessee, but was put in command of the 9th
Alabama, where he caught the eye of
James Longstreet. He made brigade command,
but there he languished, despite being what one of his Alabamians described as “one the best … in our army.” As the lead brigade of Anderson’s division, Wilcox had been instructed to “advance when the troops on my right [Hood, then McLaws] should advance” and “report this to the division commander” so that Anderson could start the other brigades forward himself.

The firing over by
Little Round Top had died away by now, but Caldwell’s and Kershaw’s men were grappling for control of the wheat field and the Massachusetts artillery’s final stand at the
Trostle farm was reaching its crescendo. In order to avoid crowding in on Barksdale’s
Mississippi regiments, Wilcox formed his Alabamians in column and started forward toward the
Emmitsburg Road. Unlike Hood and McLaws, Anderson did not stack his brigades in pairs; he had a long front to cover and the sun was dipping toward South Mountain, and Anderson wanted every brigade except Mahone’s
Virginians at the front.
David Lang’s three
Florida regiments would move up alongside Wilcox, and Wright’s
Georgians would hitch their right flank to the Floridians—so that, for once, Virginians in the
Army of Northern Virginia would be compelled to take a backseat to other parts of the Confederacy.
²⁶

Unlike Hood and McLaws, they would be able to get over the ground quickly. From the oak groves on
Seminary Ridge, Wilcox had less than half a mile to cover to Emmitsburg Road, and moving in column would make that passage even faster. Humphreys’ skirmishers—nine companies of the 1st Massachusetts—saw “the enemy’s advancing columns,” and decided that the “tornado of whizzing missiles” made them “a little tremulous.” They scampered back to the road, forming up in front of the 26th Pennsylvania, in Joseph Carr’s brigade. The “lively popping” of the skirmishers reminded one of Humphreys’ staffers of the beginning of a rain squall, an odd association until it was connected with “the heavy sulphurous”
smoke clouds drifting in from farther down the road. Being hit in column by the Massachusetts skirmishers brought the 11th Alabama to an unplanned halt, so Wilcox moved them into line and picked the pace up again.

“The first line of the enemy in front gave way precipitately,” wrote a soldier in the 11th Alabama, and the 8th Alabama (Wilcox’s right-hand regiment) “swept like a hurricane over cannon and caissons.” The Floridians, likewise, “charged splendidly,” and made it a “grand sight to see.” Not quite all of it was grand, though.
Hilary Herbert, the colonel of the 8th Alabama, remembered years afterward “one little boy in blue, apparently not more than fifteen years old,” mounted “on the lead front horse” of a limber but unable to get his own horse to pull away because the two horses behind him were dead in their traces. “I was near enough to have touched him with my sword,” remembered Herbert, wincing with the thought. And then “the dust flew from his jacket just under his shoulder blade, and he fell forward dead.”
²⁷

Even as Joseph Carr’s brigade struggled to fend off Wilcox’s and Lang’s assault,
William Brewster’s
Excelsior Brigade, which Humphreys had drawn back at a right angle to Carr, gave way before the relentless pounding of Barksdale’s 13th, 17th, and 18th Mississippi. Capt. Henry Blake, drawn up with his 11th Massachusetts along the road, saw “the batteries and infantry which were posted on the extreme left” bend and break “before the yells and bullets of the enemy.” Carr tried to stem the tide and protect his own line by whipping back one of his regiments, the 11th New Jersey, to act as a breakwater. In later years, the survivors of Brewster’s and Carr’s brigades would announce that not “a single man” in any of their regiments had shown “the least cowardice under … the fierce charge which we met.” But the painful truth was that Brewster’s brigade—Sickles’ own favorites—simply disintegrated, and trying to get Carr’s regiments to change front while being hit from two sides was an impossibility which only “a veteran can possibly understand.” To a watcher in the
2nd Corps, “the Excelsior Brig. and the men were running back before the enemy as if they were but a line of skirmishers.” Andrew Humphreys “could not hold his men, for as soon as they found themselves assailed both in front and flank they broke and retreated.” Joseph Carr was blown off his horse by an exploding
shell, and the dead horse “fell on him and crushed his leg.”

Like so many others, Humphreys afterward claimed that the collapse was all calm and orderliness, thanks to him: “Twenty times did I [bring] my men to a halt & face about, myself & … others of my staff forcing the men to do it.” But at the moment, Humphreys, whose “indignation often flamed up” under stress, seems to have lost all self-control.
Francis Seeley, who was desperately trying to move his battery from the
Emmitsburg Road, glimpsed Humphreys, “bareheaded, and unattended” and “endeavoring to rally (with only partial success, I judge) the retreating infantry of the
3rd Corps.” Every time Humphreys looked to the rear, “no other guns or a solitary soldier could be seen … The Fed. Army” had been sliced “in twain.”
²⁸

Humphreys could not repair a disaster this serious singlehanded. Some of the 71st New York, on their own hook, “would fire at the enemy, walk to the rear, loading as they went, then turn, take deliberate aim and fire again.” But for the rest of Brewster’s Excelsiors, “there was no commanding officer to collect them and form a second line; nor use them to cover the long gap in the lines.” As one officer in the 73rd New York admitted, “the shattered line was retreating in separated streams … leaving their dead and dying under their feet.” A 2nd Corps regiment had to open up and allow “many of them, to the number of thousands,” pass “between our files” to the rear. Their officers “undertook to stop and put them in line, but found it impossible,” and several Confederates stopped to watch in horrified fascination as desperate Union officers, “standing in the rear of their line of battle,” were seen to “slash” their
fleeing men “across their faces, pull them by the collars, and kick them back to their positions.”
²⁹

The worst of these offenders was Humphreys. Fumbling through the confused mob of retreating soldiers, he washed up against the 19th Maine, another
2nd Corps regiment Winfield Hancock had sent to cover, as best they could, the gap between the 2nd Corps at the rear of
Cemetery Hill and the
3rd Corps out at the
Emmitsburg Road. Humphreys “rode back to the Nineteenth” and, in manic rage, ordered the colonel of the 19th Maine,
Francis Heath, to fix
bayonets “and stop with the bayonet the soldiers of his command.” Francis Heath was a fair-haired twenty-five-year-old who had left his father’s law office in 1861 to become a lieutenant in the 19th. He was aghast at Humphreys’ order, and refused to obey, offering instead that if Humphreys would get out of the way, Heath’s Maine regiment would stop the avalanche to the rear by example. But Humphreys was past reasoning with. He hysterically ordered Heath “to the rear,” and “rode down the line of the Nineteenth, giving the order himself.” Heath indignantly took after Humphreys, “closely countermanding his orders” and telling the men to ignore the general. Heath had not come to make war on his own people, and he was certainly not taking orders from some madman from another corps. Soon enough, Humphreys and his broken-down division disappeared “in the smoke and confusion.”
³⁰

What was despair for Humphreys was joy to Wilcox’s Alabama brigade. “Never perhaps in all its history did the men of the 8th Alabama feel the thrill of victory so vividly,” wrote
Hilary Herbert. Like Porter Alexander, Herbert “felt that the supreme moment of the war had come—that victory was with our army and we ourselves were the victors.”
³¹
All that remained was for Ambrose Wright and
Carnot Posey to trample down the last Federal regiments behind Cemetery Hill, and they could snap the
Army of the Potomac’s spinal cord at the nape of its neck. It would be the end of the battle, and of the war.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN  

A
NDREW
H
UMPHREYS
once swore that he would never, under any circumstances, serve under David Birney, and George Meade was fully determined, after he had been informed of Dan Sickles’ disablement, that Humphreys would not have to. Rather than allow Birney to succeed Sickles, Meade ordered
Winfield Scott Hancock (in a reprise of his designation of Hancock as his authority on
Cemetery Hill the night before) to take charge of whatever was left of the
3rd Corps and somehow stave off a complete collapse until the coming of darkness could bring the fighting to a standstill.

How, exactly, Hancock was to accomplish this was anyone’s guess. He was having more than enough problems in the
2nd Corps without adding Sickles’ mess to his responsibilities. Of the three divisions the 2nd Corps began the day with, one (Caldwell’s) was already gone past recall. That left
John Gibbon’s division, and then Alex Hays’ wobbly-legged division, which was butting up against the left flank of what remained of the
11th Corps on Cemetery Hill. As it was, Hancock had already begun handing out regiments from other 2nd Corps brigades to hold up the forlorn ends of Humphreys’ division—first the 15th Maine and 82nd New York, then the 19th Maine—and in fairly short order Hancock realized that he had sent away an entire brigade from Gibbon’s division. Barksdale had wheeled and was driving up the
Emmitsburg Road; Wofford was roaring down the wheat field lane in pursuit of Ayres’ Regulars. And now, coming against what was left of Humphreys’ division along the Emmitsburg Road, were Wilcox’s
Alabama and Lang’s
Florida brigades, bent on delivering the coup de grâce to Humphreys. And it was while that last gray cloud was rolling toward Humphreys that “General
Meade informed me that General Sickles had been wounded, and directed me to assume command of the Third Corps in addition to that of my own.”
¹

John Gibbon heard Hancock growl “some expressions of discontent.” But discontent or not, Hancock wasted no time in taking charge. He wanted artillery, and sent an aide off to the artillery reserve to get some; he wanted infantry, and more aides were sent off to find Otis Howard and Henry Slocum and beg troops from their corps; he rode into Humphreys’ “depleted command” (and the distracted Humphreys, unable to get
Francis Heath’s Maine men to obey him, had no more than what was “scarcely equal to an ordinary battalion” standing with him) and told him “that I was commanding that front, including the
3rd Corps.” Hancock even managed to find David Birney. “General, you are nearly surrounded by the enemy,” Hancock announced, as though this was news to Birney. “I know it,” Birney irritably shot back; wasn’t Hancock aware that “we have been contending against a superior force all the afternoon”? No matter, replied Hancock, “I have seen this,” and he was there to save the day.
²

The first priority was to string together some sort of fallback line between the loose end of the
2nd Corps and the artillery line
Freeman McGilvery was struggling to amass east of the
Trostle farm. In addition to the three regiments he had already posted in that gap, Hancock got a small dribbling of help from the depleted artillery reserve. The help consisted of only two batteries, the six Napoleons of
Evan Thomas’ Battery C, 4th U.S., and another half-dozen Napoleons in the form of
Gulian Weir’s Battery C, 5th U.S. Artillery, but they would have to do. Hancock personally situated them to anchor the three regiments, Weir in the middle and Thomas on the left flank of the 19th Maine—and then, for good measure, he pulled in yet another regiment, the 1st Minnesota, to cover Thomas’ battery.