Gettysburg by Stephen W. Sears

Author:Stephen W. Sears [Sears, Stephen W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

SOLDIER-CORRESPONDENT Captain Samuel Fiske, from his vantage point in the Second Corps' line on Cemetery Ridge, recorded his impressions as the battle rushed toward him: "The tremendous uproar of hundreds of cannon, the screeches and hisses of shells tearing through the air and bursting over our heads, and burying themselves in the earth at our feet, the sharp crack of musketry and whirring of bullets, the sulphurous canopy of smoke that soon darkened the air and made all things dim around us, the rapid movements of troops flying hither and thither to take up new positions, constituted altogether such a scene of excitement and confusion and grandeur and horror, as nothing but the simile of hell broke loose is at all adequate to describe."41

George Meade was watching this maelstrom intently, anticipating the needs of his generals, then acting decisively to meet them. At the first report of Sickles's deformed line, and even before Longstreet attacked, Meade had ordered Sykes's Fifth Corps to brace the left. When it became clear that Sickles required rescuing, Meade called on Hancock for a division, and Caldwell's was sent. Then, with Caldwell in retreat, Meade asked Hancock for an additional brigade, and for good measure assigned him Sickles's corps as well as his own. When Sedgwick reached the field in advance of his Sixth Corps, Meade greeted him and directed him to support the threatened left. Finally, he would reach out to General Slocum on the right at Culp's Hill for whatever could be spared of the Twelfth Corps, and even to the battered First Corps on Cemetery Hill. Meade was in the saddle most of this long afternoon and evening, taking many of these decisions based on what he saw personally, at one point riding close enough to the fighting that his horse was wounded.

In striking contrast, the Confederate high command—with the notable exception of James Longstreet—was virtually static throughout the battle. General Lee, after returning from Longstreet's column where he altered the direction of the opening attack, remained quietly at his field headquarters on Seminary Ridge. Colonel Fremantle, still perched in his oak-tree observation post, remarked on the fact that the commanding general seemed to be a spectator at his own battle. He reported Lee watching the fighting through his field glasses and sometimes consulting with General Hill or with Colonel Armistead Long of his staff. "But generally he sat quite alone on the stump of a tree."

To be sure, this was General Lee's nature and practice. As he told the Prussian observer Justus Scheibert, he made his plans as perfect as possible and brought his troops to the battlefield; "the rest must be done by my generals and their troops, trusting to Providence for the victory." Nevertheless, what could hardly have escaped Lee's notice, since it was squarely in front of him, was the faulty disposition of Dick Anderson's five brigades.42

Anderson's division, of A. P. Hill's Third Corps, was intended to supply the finishing blow in Longstreet's offensive. As Anderson understood his

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.