The Lost Gettysburg Address by David T. Dixon

Author:David T. Dixon [Dixon, David T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
Goodreads: 27310332
Publisher: B-List History
Published: 2015-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

The men of Willich’s brigade first heard skirmishing and then heavy firing on their left flank as Kirk’s brigade came under attack. Men from Ector’s Texas brigade overwhelmed Willich’s front line, driving the Yankees into their own camp, where some Union troops were killed while lying in their tents. Robert Stewart of the Fifteenth Ohio Infantry saw his pickets running back to camp, followed closely by a swarm of yelling and screaming Confederates. “Dropping our pots and pans, leaving our haversacks and blankets, we snatched up our cartridge boxes and rushed for our guns,” Stewart recalled, “only to find ourselves with our backs to the foe.” They too could do nothing but run. One dead Union soldier was found still clinging to his coffee pot.

Bragg’s strategy was working perfectly. Kirk and Willich’s frontline brigades were swept from the field. Confederate General J. P. McCown’s forces, including his crack cavalry troops, were turning the Union right in on itself and driving it back to the northeast. In the meantime, battle-hardened troops from the Arkansas and Tennessee brigades of Brigadier Generals St. John Liddell and Bushrod Johnson had run over McCook’s left flank and were advancing toward Baldwin’s reserves. Fewer than thirty minutes after the battle began, Charles Anderson ordered his regiment out of the cedar break to form a line of battle to the left of the Fifth Kentucky.

Baldwin immediately countermanded Anderson’s orders and the Ninety-Third Ohio moved back into the woods. The men watched in earnest as their comrades from the First Ohio and the Fifth Kentucky marched into the cornfield, settling behind a rail fence and scattered limestone boulders. It was now 7:30 in the morning. The First Ohio took the brunt of the assault and responded admirably, keeping the rebels from advancing for about twenty minutes. Bullets and artillery from both sides claimed many lives in one of the fiercest engagements some of the experienced soldiers had ever seen. When Confederate Brigadier General McNair’s Third Brigade finished mopping up the remnants of Kirk’s forces, he pivoted right to support Liddell.

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