Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation (37 page)

5

As the sun climbed toward noon and the day grew unbearably hot, the officers and men did not share General Pickett’s cheerful composure. While the soldiers were kept from seeing the field across which they were to attack, the brigade leaders strolled up to the crest for a good, sobering look, and it would be difficult to say whether the waiting bore harder on the officers who saw the field or the men kept from seeing it. The longer they waited, the more they began to think.

There was a close relationship in the personnel of the three brigades, composed of intimates and kinsmen from the old Tidewater and the beguiling Piedmont regions of Virginia. The division’s assistant inspector general was Major Charles Pickett, the general’s only brother, and, curiously, the major’s mustache drooped in precisely the same shape as his older brother’s, though without the curling ends. One regiment from Jefferson’s Albemarle County was known as the “Berkeley Regiment” because the colonel, lieutenant colonel, major, and senior captain were brothers, all from civilian life.

One of the brigadiers, James Lawson Kemper, had been for ten years a state legislator from the Piedmont plantation country and twice speaker of the House. Then thirty-nine, General Kemper was another of those civilian leaders who, accustomed to authority, translated their native gifts to command in the field. Although his only previous military experience had been as a young captain of volunteers in the Mexican War, thin-faced Kemper looked impressively military in his uniform.

His brigade had been successively commanded, and molded, by Longstreet, Ewell, and A. P. Hill, and his veterans included the 1st Virginia Regiment. Composed of a cross-section of Richmond militia and volunteer companies, the “Old First” was a descendant of the first command of George Washington, on whose staff Kemper’s grandfather had served as colonel. Not a particularly warm man, Kemper was very determined and was respected by brother officers for “solid qualities and sound judgment.” Before and after battles, the peacetime politician was given to high-flown oratory that was vastly appreciated by his troops, who took great pride in their brigadier.

The two old pro’s at brigade command, Garnett and Armistead, were no speechmakers. The only public speech ever made by Dick Garnett was a strong appeal for the Union and against secession. On the morning of the 3rd he was in no condition for speeches. Physically ill, he was wrapped in a blue overcoat on that hot day. Friends had urged him to remain in the ambulance, but General Garnett had personal reasons for joining in the division’s action.

Of a distinguished family in the Rappahannock River country, Garnett had cousins and brothers-in-law who had brought honor to the family by their Confederate service, while his war career had been overshadowed by a single event that he could not forget.

Garnett, of the West Point class of ’41, had resigned his regular-army commission after long frontier service in the West on the grounds that he “felt it an imperative duty to sacrifice everything in support of his native state in her time of trial.” Thoroughly competent and highly courageous, he advanced to command of the famous Stonewall Brigade when Jackson was promoted to major general.

At the Battle of Kernstown, prelude to Jackson’s Valley Campaign, he ran afoul of Stonewall’s displeasure. Feeling that the situation of his brigade was hopeless, and with ammunition running out, Garnett ordered a retreat without consulting his commanding general. Stonewall
might
have forgiven this in any other brigade, but not in the one that his own stern demands had transformed from the Valley bumpkins of their early days into the unshakable line that at First Manassas won Jackson his sobriquet. He placed Garnett under arrest for ordering a retreat without orders.

Garnett demanded a court-martial, and the case dragged on for months, made into something of a cause by Garnett’s friends, who felt that he had been treated unjustly. The case represented only an extreme example of Jackson’s customarily cold justice that took no heed of extenuating circumstances, but he was particularly implacable toward Garnett. After battles had broken up several attempts to hold a court-martial, Lee finally resolved the situation by transferring Garnett to Pickett’s division.

Richard Garnett, a kindly, courteous, and generous man, was no grudge-holder, but he was a sensitive man with a deep awareness of personal honor and family honor and a justifiable pride in his career. His friends said that after his arrest he unnecessarily exposed himself to danger in order to expunge the black mark from his record. Gettysburg offered Garnett his first real opportunity with Pickett’s division to clear his honor as a gentleman and a soldier.

A sloping black mustache and pointed beard and a proud expression gave the forty-four-year-old man the look of a warrior out of the heroic past. Yet, despite his personal resolve to lead his men in the charge, Garnett was awed by a survey of the field to be crossed. Turning to Brigadier General Armistead, he said: “This is a desperate thing to attempt.”

“It is,” Armistead agreed, “but the issue is with the Almighty, and we must leave it in His hands.”

Brother officers always referred to Lewis Armistead as “Old Lewis” or “Brave Old Lewis.” There was something indomitable in this warm-hearted man, a sort of “bravest of the brave,” which aroused affectionate respect in all who knew him. Then forty-six, Armistead wore a close-cropped graying beard, and his gray hair was balding in front. His gaze was steady, his manner casual and friendly. A widower he had one son, Keith Armistead, who served as his aide-de-camp. A sentimental turn in Armistead caused one of his colonels, John Bowie Magruder (not to be confused with “Prince John” Magruder), to call him “Lo” as an abbreviation of “Lothario”

Armistead was the only general officer with Lee who had been born in a regular-army family: his father, General Walker Armistead, a member of the second graduating class at West Point, had been second-in-command of the U.S. army. Despite this background, Lewis Armistead left West Point before graduation—some said it was because he had hit his classmate Jubal Early over the head with a mess plate. He received his commission from civilian life, and in the Mexican War was breveted captain and then major for gallantry in action.

At secession, he was a captain in the garrison at Los Angeles, and the decision to leave the old army was painful to a man who had grown up in its traditions. Although he came of a powerfully connected seventeenth-century Virginia family, most of Armistead’s friends were in the army. The closest was General Winfield Scott Hancock, the thirty-nine-year-old Pennsylvanian who was defending the Federal center at Gettysburg precisely where Armistead’s brigade would be pointed. On Armistead’s last night in Los Angeles, Hancock had given a dinner party for the Virginian and other Southerners who were going home to defend their land. They had not met since.

Reaching Richmond after First Manassas, Armistead did not make brigadier until April 1862, but he distinguished himself for “extreme gallantry” the first time he took his brigade into action, at Seven Pines, June 1, 1862. At the mismanaged and poorly fought Battle of Malvern Hill, where his brigade was part of the division of pompous and ineffectual Huger, Armistead was one of the few leaders who enjoyed an outstandingly good day. Despite the ineptness of Huger and the miserable liaison between the attacking units, Armistead showed initiative and brilliant judgment of the military situation. He fought to an advanced position on the bloody hill and, almost isolated, held the ground as a rallying-point that, because of failures in command, was never rallied on.

Armistead never performed so conspicuously again, though Lee mentioned his “devotion” and “courage” in reports, and his soldiers were devoted to him. His men came from the area around Suffolk in Tidewater Virginia, a town distinguished for the quality of its social life, and the troops, mostly planters and farmers, were sturdy, self reliant, and mannerly. The regiments, like those in the other brigades, were fortunate in the uniformity of proved competence and bravery in their field officers, In a division characterized by happy personal relations, Armistead and his men were particularly close.

While the brigade was waiting on the western slope of Seminary Ridge for orders to move up, Armistead, probably feeling the tension mount in the sweating men around him, strolled over to join George Pickett and his staff.

After losing his own wife, Armistead had apparently felt sentimentally toward the young girl to whom George Pickett was betrothed. On reaching his friend, Armistead removed a ring from his little finger.

“Give this little token, George, please, to her of the sunset eyes, and tell her ‘the old man’ says since he could not be the lucky dog, he’s mighty glad you are.” Pickett was still writing Sallie his piecemeal letter in snatches, and he added:

“I’ll keep the ring for you, and some day I’ll take it to John Tyler’s in Richmond and have it made into a breastpin, and set around with rubies and diamonds and emeralds. You will be the pearl.”

Sometime before noon the orders came for the division to move up into the positions from which the attack would be made.

6

According to Major Walter Harrison, A.A.G. and inspector general, 4,481 men plus officers were present to fall in at “assembly.” From the unseen side of Seminary Ridge, the men heard only the light scattered fire of sharpshooters as the three brigades started climbing through the hot woods of the hillside toward the crest.

At the top, where an old trace ran from north to south, the men on the left of Garnett’s brigade came alongside the right of Heth’s division of Hill’s corps. Archer’s brigade of Alabama and Tennessee troops, that day commanded by Colonel Fry, were already formed in line. Garnett’s brigade formed to the right of them, their double lines stretching several hundred yards southward through the woods.

Kemper’s brigade came up on Garnett’s right, below the woods in an open field. Seminary Ridge sloped off to the south there (where, technically, it became Warfield Ridge), and the men took shelter in a swale, or “hollow,” according to Captain Dooley of the 1st Virginia. Kemper’s men felt exposed under the full glare of the noon sun. The woods had been hot enough, but the soldiers glanced back a little wistfully at the shadowed places where Garnett’s men stretched out under branches and behind tree trunks.

Armistead’s men came up last, and found no room between Garnett’s left and Fry’s right. Armistead was ordered to deploy his men in the rear of Garnett’s brigade, in close support.

Old Lewis did not like the position at all. As soon as his men had made themselves as comfortable as possible in the smothering woods, he sought Major Harrison.

With a little hemming and hawing, Armistead asked the inspector general to ask Pickett if maybe he would not prefer Armistead’s brigade to push out in
front
of Heth’s right. Walter Harrison accepted this request with amused tolerance. As he said, “Brave old Armistead was very tenacious of place to the front.”

Major Harrison passed among Hill’s artillery pieces posted on the crest and approached the groups of officers gathered in the clearing around General Lee, but did not find Pickett. Eager to get a personal look at the field, he made “a little trespass on military etiquette” and accosted General Long-street. He asked Old Pete about Armistead’s position.

Longstreet revealed to Harrison “anything but a pleasant humor at the prospect ‘over the hill.’ He snorted out, rather sharply,” the staff major reported, and said: “General Pickett will attend to that, sir.”

Harrison turned away. Longstreet, recovering what the major regarded as “his usual kind-heartedness,” called after him in a different tone: “Never mind, colonel, you can tell General Armistead to remain where he is for the present. He can make up the distance when the advance is made.”

Major Harrison, knowing nothing of the lieutenant general’s agitation, dismissed the episode. In exchange for the passing rebuke, the A.A.G. got his look at the sloping land between their crest and the enemy’s ridge. On the enemy’s side of the Emmitsburg road, his eyes followed the ascent from the post-and-rail fences at the bottom, over a line of skirmishers, “almost as heavy as a single line of battle,” up the steeper climb to the loose stone fence or wall, back of which were two lines of blue infantry and two tiers of artillery. On the plateau beyond were dark masses of reserves.

To the solitary major, standing outside the groups with stars on their collars, the approach to the Federal position looked like “a passage to the valley of death.”

Subdued, he walked back to the temporary safety of the woods and found the men getting restless in their “ardor-cooling inactivity.” No one knew why they were waiting again.

The only action on their front was a local affair over a barn between Hill’s sharpshooters and some Connecticut troops of Hancock’s corps. The Bliss house and barn were about midway between Seminary Ridge and the Emmitsburg road, where the road bore close to Cemetery Ridge, and provided a fine “nest” for the sharpshooters. A Federal brigade came up to root them out, Hill’s guns became engaged, the Federal cannoneers answered, and Colonel Lindsay Walker let the Third Corps artillery waste a lot of ammunition. Finally, some of Hancock’s people burned both house and barn, and an uneasy silence settled over the field.

Among Hill’s guns, Poague’s artillery battalion was the most advanced, posted to the north of Cabell’s batteries at the end of the arc of Longstreet’s guns, and directly below Lee’s command post. At intervals General Lee moved close to young Poague’s guns, as if to study the field from a different vantage point. Lee showed none of the nervousness of the day before. As on his early morning trip to Longstreet, the Old Man seemed anxiously intent on instigating every detail.