Chapter II

The War’s Greatest Artillery Bombardment

To ensure that as many troops as possible crossed the roughly three-quarters of a mile of open ground in relatively good shape in order to converge on the copse of trees sector, Lee relied heavily on his artillery arm to inflict maximum damage. Lee planned to utilize every available gun to unleash “a cannonade unparalleled in the annals of warfare” to inflict high casualties and cause widespread demoralization. Equally important, Lee also planned for the artillery to move forward to protect the attackers’ exposed flanks. As Colonel Porter Edward Alexander, Longstreet’s top artillery officer, explained his key mission: “I was to advance such artillery as [I] can … in aiding the attack.”1

Meanwhile, like the southern Pennsylvania heat, a haunting quiet hovered over the field, except for the occasional distant bark of a sniper’s rifle or skirmishers firing in the shallow valley of green and yellow before Seminary Ridge. Lasting from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., this strange quiet was confounding. Major Walter Harrison, the capable inspector general and acting adjutant of Pickett’s division, called it a most “inauspicious calm” that had settled over the sprawling fields that seemed without end.2

This strange stillness told Lee’s cynics and veterans to be wary of what was inevitably to come, the proverbial calm before the storm. More naive soldiers assumed that the two armies would disengage after two days of brutal fighting. During the soothing lull of another beautiful, early-summer day, young men thought about their families, farms, homes, and river valleys back home that they would never see again. This sweltering day was passing lazily under the bright midday sunshine that seemed as sultry as along the gulf coast.

In the 2nd Corps’s sector (right-center) along Cemetery Ridge, Captain Haskell “dozed in the heat [while] A great lull rests upon all the field…. It was five minutes before one o’clock [and] I thought possibly that I might go to sleep, and stretched myself upon the ground accordingly [and] My attitude and purpose were of the General and the rest of the staff.”3 Meanwhile, in Company G, Portsmouth Rifles from Portsmouth, 9th Virginia, Armistead’s brigade, Sergeant Levin Christopher Gayle scribbled in his diary, “[T]here is a great deal of Artillery here with us and it dose look Beautiful [and] all in an open Field and A clear day and sun shines Beautiful.”4 However, fearing the worst, Chaplain Granberry, 11th Virginia, Kemper’s brigade, described how the “quiet hours of just waiting were very trying.”5

Equally suspicious of the haunting silence, some Yankees sensed something ominous in the air. Lee had only recently eliminated the army’s general artillery reserve, unlike the Army of the Potomac. Since February 1863, Lee’s artillery reserve had farmed out its guns to each of the three corps to strengthen their firepower. Therefore, Confederate batteries were no longer assigned to brigades after having been formed into battalions (mostly containing four batteries) for each division, allowing experienced battalion commanders greater tactical flexibility. However this realignment took away a single head of artillery—a fundamental mistake, because the army now needed an expert like General Henry Jackson Hunt, artillery chief (Meade’s master artilleryman), to closely coordinate the army’s artillery arm. This significant long arm reorganization also had resulted from service amid Virginia’s rough terrain, mostly tangled woodlands with only an occasional field hacked out of dense forests. However, the open fields of the fertile farmlands south of Gettysburg far more resembled the open plains of central Europe, where Napoleon had reaped his great victories in part by replying upon the superior mobility over open terrain and massive firepower from a highly effective general artillery reserve. Seemingly forgetting the key role played by reserve artillery in smashing Union assaults on Fredericksburg’s open plain in contrast to Chancellorsville woodlands, Lee would have benefitted immensely from the time-tested Napoleonic formula of a general artillery reserve. The army’s lack of the Napoleonic reserve concept, especially when combined with the overall loose organization of the artillery arm, was about to come back to haunt Lee’s efforts.6

Lee also should have replaced his incompetent chief of artillery, General William Nelson Pendleton. Instead, the too-kindly Lee merely circumvented Pendleton by organizing the artillery battalions for each division, giving battalion commanders greater authority. Pendleton was a Virginian (more detrimental cronyism that Longstreet deplored) in the Old Dominion–dominated army who had been promoted far beyond his limited abilities. Pendleton possessed strong political connections, including with President Davis. He was a respected Episcopalian rector from Lexington, Virginia. Pendleton was the very antithesis of his counterpart, General Hunt, Meade’s brilliant chief of artillery, who was a master in the art of orchestrating his guns to the best advantage.7 Known as “Old Penn,” Pendleton was sufficiently religion-minded that he neglected his military duties. The dapper little holy warrior had bestowed his first guns of Virginia’s Rockbridge Artillery with biblical names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Pendleton’s too-thorough “mixing of the two professions [killing and saving men]” even brought disapproval from devout Confederate officers.8 He was also known for having declared: “Lord preserve the soul while I destroy the body” upon sighting his guns on Yankees.9

One astute Union soldier, Robert K. Beecham, emphasized how “Meade had the advantage in reserves with which to replace his crippled and exhausted batteries….”10 Nevertheless, Lee benefitted from Napoleon’s wisdom of massing artillery for a concentrated fire against a weak defensive position. At the Battle of Marengo, Napoleon emphasized that the key to his successful counterattack against the Austrian center to save the day was absolutely dependent upon what his artillery accomplished against infantry. As the Corsican informed one officer, “We must have a rapid artillery fire imposed on the enemy before we attempt a new charge; without which we shall fail [because] That General, is how one loses a battle.”11 To that general at Marengo, Napoleon had stressed the wisdom which was now embraced by Lee: “If there isn’t an artillery bombardment made which lasts [a] quarter of an hour, we will lose” the battle.12 Therefore, Lee believed that he could tip the scales in his favor by unleashing “the fiercest cannonading known to warfare,” in the words of Captain Jacob B. Turney, 1st Tennessee, Pettigrew’s division.13

Confederate Artillery Preparations

In the darkness long before daylight, on July 3, the army’s artillery had been eased into the best firing positions that stretched northeastward from the body-strewn Peach Orchard (at a commanding point on the Emmitsburg Road ridge) of farmer Joseph Sherfy. Some Rebel artillerymen accidently rolled their field pieces over wounded Yankees, who cried out in the eerie blackness. Each artillery battalion commander aligned his batteries in conjunction with advice from corps artillery commanders. Colonel Alexander orchestrated the alignment of Longstreet’s guns with his usual skill. He was a gifted West Pointer (Class of 1857) and former instructor at the military academy. At age 28, Alexander was now considered the army’s finest artillery officer. Part of Longstreet’s “inner circle,” Alexander headed the Reserve Artillery, Longstreet’s 1st Corps. Businesslike and highly efficient, he was not one to name artillery pieces after his favorite Bible chapters like the dour “Parson” Pendleton, who was well past his prime.

Alexander now commanded all of Longstreet’s guns and 75 field pieces from 17 batteries. In total, Lee possessed 22 batteries of five artillery battalions. Appropriately, because of Pickett’s upcoming spearhead role and advantageous high-ground, especially at the Peach Orchard, more guns were aligned on Pickett’s front than Pettigrew’s sector. Alexander had earned a lofty reputation for his splendid artillery performances at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Laboring half the night to make sure that his 75 guns were carefully positioned, Colonel Alexander performed the responsibilities of Longstreet’s appointed chief of artillery Major James B. Walton (older and less competent). By noon, Alexander had placed all 75 guns of Longstreet’s 1st Corps in good firing positions along a 4,000-foot front of open, high ground that stretched from the commanding elevation of the Sherfy Peach Orchard to the northeastern edge of the Spangler Woods. Ironically, the boys in blue paid relatively little attention to the massive artillery buildup across the low valley draped aglow in nature’s splendor. Born in Washington, Georgia, and riding a horse named Dixie, Alexander was a rising star. The heavy price (more than 50 percent casualties on July 2) paid by Barksdale’s Mississippi brigade in overrunning the Peach Orchard and the Emmitsburg Road ridge, which spanned northeast toward Gettysburg, now allowed Alexander to utilize this strategic high-ground perch once held by Sickles’s 3rd Corps.

Covered in the colorful patchwork of farmer’s rich fields and fruit orchards, this open northeast-running ridgetop (upon which the slightly sunken dirt road ran from the Peach Orchard to the high-ground at the Daniel Klingel House—southwest of the Codori House—on the Emmitsburg Road ridge and beyond toward Gettysburg) provided an excellent elevated firing platform. From these vantage points, Southern artillery could pound Cemetery Ridge’s defenders, especially on the right-center, perhaps into submission. Nearly 140 Confederate cannon, with 150–170 rounds in each wooden ammunition limber, were aligned in the open fields west of the road.

Representing Lee’s largest concentration of Confederate guns, these field pieces extended northeast from the Peach Orchard and all the way to Oak Hill. At opposite ends of this lengthy artillery line, the open ground of Oak Hill (the line’s northern anchor) and the Peach Orchard (the southern anchor) offered ideal elevated vantage points and wide-open fields of fire: a vast array of artillery pieces that spanned a two-mile arc. Stretching south from Lee’s command post on the field and to the Emmitsburg Road ridge and the Sherfy Orchard, the iron and bronze barrels of the field pieces extended as far as the eye could see. After having just sipped an invigorating cup of sweet-potato coffee (brewed from peeled sweet potatoes cut into thin pieces, dried slowly, and then ground like coffee beans), a confident Alexander was consumed by a can-do spirit.

The ambitious Georgian hoped to add to his Fredericksburg success in decimating the surging blue ranks. Awaiting the order to open fire, Colonel Alexander, simply known as “Porter” to his friends, continued to refresh himself on the popular drink (which had replaced coffee, now denied to the South by the Union naval blockade). Instead, he should have checked to make sure that a proper amount of ammunition was available for the bombardment (especially after the previous day’s vast expenditure of rounds), upon which so much depended.14

Alexander was especially confident because he had arrayed his guns without drawing significant Union counter-battery fire that usually impeded such massive artillery buildups.15 Targeting Meade’s right-center, Alexander’s vital mission was now to “cripple him–to tear him limbless, as it were, if possible,” in the Georgian’s words, paving the way for Lee’s massive assault.16 In a letter to his wife, Emily, General Lafayette McLaws, who was disgruntled by service (like Longstreet) in an army dominated by Virginians, wrote, “On the 3d inst, all our available arty was put in position along our lines” for a great undertaking.17

However, an increasingly anxious Alexander experienced increasing frustration, because of the delay—thanks to infantry belatedly moving into their assigned positions—while awaiting Longstreet’s directive to commence firing. Not long after noon, Longstreet dispatched a courier to Colonel James B. Walton, who officially commanded the 1st Corps’s artillery although Alexander, officially only second in command, possessed immediate charge of the guns. Walton carried the long-awaited order to “[l]et the batteries open [and take] great care and precision in firing.”18

Commanding the 1st North Carolina Artillery (known as Graham’s Battery) of Hill’s corps, Captain Joseph Graham, a University of North Carolina graduate (Class of 1859) who had his own faithful Irish orderly, now checked the time “by watch.” The artillery bombardment’s beginning was to be the prearranged signal of the firing of two Washington Artillery cannon under Major Benjamin Franklin Eshleman. Of Swiss heritage and from New Orleans, although he was born in nearby Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1830, Eshleman commanded the four companies of the Washington Artillery from New Orleans. Known to often sing a popular “little French song” called “Upi-De,” many Washington Artillery gunners were of French heritage (Creoles) and from the Crescent City’s leading families. Walton recorded how the two New Orleans guns in the line’s center unleashed their eagerly awaited signal at exactly “12 ½ P.M.”19 The actual time of the cannonade’s opening was seven minutes after 1:00 p.m.20

The Eruption That Shook Adams County

In a July 1863 letter to his father, Graham described the massive cannonade’s opening: “[W]e began shelling their position [in what was] the heaviest Artillery duel of the war….”21 In less dignified words not heard by his mother, one of Pettigrew’s soldiers described how “hell itself had broken loose.”22 In a letter to his wife, another Southerner wrote: “If the crash of worlds and all things combustible had been coming in collision with each other, it could not have surpassed it.”23

Confederate spirits rose upon hearing the thunder exploding from rows of Southern cannon. Although now dying, a spunky Rebel in the makeshift hospital at the Christ Lutheran Church, on east–west-running Chambersburg Street in Gettysburg, suddenly came to life and shouted, “Give ’em hell!”24 And in his July 7, 1863, letter to his wife, the full-bearded General McLaws described how what “commenced [was] the most tremendous artillery fire I ever heard on our continent.”25 Commanding the 7th Tennessee, Colonel John Amenas Fite, a Columbia University, New York City, graduate, wrote of “the grandest cannonading of the world.”26

In the 1st Virginia’s ranks, Lieutenant John Edward Dooley, Jr., described, “The earth seems unsteady beneath this furious cannonading” that was unprecedented.27 Beside his 56th Virginia comrades of Company K (Harrison’s Guards), pious Lieutenant George Williamson Finley described the bombardment in biblical terms, because Armageddon seemed to have arrived: “It was like the final day of judgment when the great scroll of life in the heavens is rolled shut with an overpowering clap of thunder!”28 In Company G (Portsmouth Rifles), 9th Virginia, Armistead’s brigade, Lieutenant John Henry Lewis, Jr., penned how the bombardment was like “a gigantic thunder-storm” that broke with a fury upon the land.29

And the correspondent of the Richmond Enquirer, of Richmond, Virginia, wrote with astonishment: “I have never yet heard such tremendous artillery firing [because] The very earth shook beneath my feet [and] made a picture terribly grand and sublime.”30 Perhaps reminded of the British bombardment of Fort McHenry fame (almost certainly in General Armistead’s case), Captain Robert A. Bright, one of Pickett’s staff officers, concluded, “Had this [bombardment] occurred at night, it would have delighted the eye more than any fire works ever seen.”31 With South Carolina roots, Rufus K. Felder, Hood’s division, scribbled in a letter how “the canonading was terrific in the extreme, surpassing anything perhaps in the annals of warfare.”32

A member of Gibbon’s staff, Captain Haskell described the shock of the thunderous bombardment, when “the report of gun after gun in rapid succession smote our ears….”33 The “enemy’s fire is chiefly concentrated upon the position of the 2nd Corps,” in the clump of trees sector, wrote an alarmed Haskell, who feared the worst.34

Shells fell around Meade’s headquarters from overshooting. In one of the battle’s ironies, Meade’s black servant was killed at the cannonade’s beginning, when a projectile exploded in the yard of the small, two-room Lydia Leister House. Hired by Meade, he was the only African American killed in the war’s largest battle. This one-story, wooden house served as a good central location for Meade to manage the battle. The Leister House was situated on level ground beside (just west of) the Taneytown Road and just northeast of the clump of trees. Symbolically, in a battle about to decide the fate of slavery, this free black man was very likely the first person killed in relation to Pickett’s Charge.35

Located just south of Captain William A. Arnold’s battery, Company A, 1st Rhode Island Light Artillery, which was positioned on the ridge’s crest just northeast of the copse of trees, England-born Sergeant Benjamin Hirst, Company D (the “Rockville boys”), 14th Connecticut Infantry, described in a letter: “About noon commenced the Fiercest Canonading I ever heard [and] it seemed as if all the Demons in Hell were let loose [and] Principally upon the old 2nd Corps whom they desired to attack [and] we did [h]ug the ground expecting every moment was to be our last.”36

Reliance on the Napoleonic Tradition

In unleashing this massive artillery storm, Lee relied on Napoleon’s successful formula of “blitzkrieg” warfare.37 After all, a large concentration of “big batteries was the true secret of victory” during the nineteenth century.38 Ironically, Napoleon’s axioms of employing massed artillery had been “entirely forgotten” at the Civil War’s beginning. But now like a phoenix rising, these invaluable lessons were resurrected in their purest form by Lee on July 3.39

Napoleon’s winning tactical formula for decisive victory was relying on an army “trained and organized for attack [preceded by] an intense artillery barrage [and] Bonaparte had good guns, plenty of them, and good gunners.”40 As Napoleon emphasized, the axiom held true on Gettysburg’s third day: “Great battles are won by artillery.”41 As Lee now demonstrated in regard to his greatest attack, Napoleon “could never have enough guns,” especially in preparing the way for a great infantry assault.42

Napoleon had long demonstrated how a massive artillery bombardment wrecked an opponent’s morale and capability to resist an infantry onslaught. Indeed, as Lee now envisioned, a great cannonade always served “as the precursor to the main attack against the selected weak point of the enemy’s line … in order to batter a breach into which the mass de decision could plunge” to achieve a decisive breakthrough.43

Clearly, in “a general rule [to reap decisive success], Napoleon placed heavy reliance on massed batteries of 100 or more guns to batter his foes into submission.”44 Napoleon explained a secret (well understood by Lee) of his remarkable successes: “The artillery, like the other arms, must be collected in mass if one wishes to attain decisive results.”45 The sage-like Jomini emphasized the wisdom of concentrating “a very strong artillery mass upon a point where we should wish to direct a decisive effort, to the end of making a breach in the hostile line, which would facilitate the grand attack upon which might depend the success of the battle.”46

Therefore, Lee had concentrated more than 130 guns for a converging concentration of fire, especially on Meade’s right-center. Like Lee, Napoleon knew “that big batteries are the true secret of victory….”47 After analyzing the opponent’s positions and topography with care, Lee also realized that Meade could “bring fewer guns to bear” compared to his own, more concentrated artillery arm.48 In the14th Tennessee, Fry’s brigade, Pettigrew’s division, to the left, or north, of Garnett’s brigade, Sergeant Junius Kimble (affectionately nicknamed “June,” without feminine connotations) described the cannonade: “the equal of which was never fought on this earth [and] The very earth shook as from a mighty quake.”49

But Alexander was wisely not concentrating all his fire on Meade’s right-center at the copse of trees so as not to betray the infantry’s ultimate target. However, Alexander and battery commanders made the fundamental error of assuming that Meade’s infantry was deployed on the ridge’s reverse (eastern) slope for protection against artillery fire, like Lee’s infantry on Seminary Ridge’s west side. No Confederate officer (not Lee, Longstreet, Pickett, or Alexander) ascertained the most critical piece of intelligence: that the two veteran divisions of 2nd Corps’s infantry defending the right-center, including the copse of trees area, were not positioned on the ridge’s reverse slope, but on the opposite, or forward, western slope. Here, behind the low stone wall, “built of Blue Limestone,” wrote one Rebel, “that will last for ages,” which ran mostly north–south (except at the east–west-running Angle toward the crest) along Cemetery Ridge just below the crest, hundreds of Yankees waited quietly on the ridge’s western slope. In consequence, these boys in blue were relatively unaffected by the greatest bombardment ever unleashed by Lee’s army. Thinking that they were driving Union infantrymen away from Cemetery Ridge by their intense fire, Southern artillerymen continued to pound the reverse slope, where no blue lines of infantry were aligned.50

Meanwhile, the Union guns along Cemetery Ridge responded belatedly (15–20 minutes later) with their own cannonade, after General Henry Jackson Hunt issued wise orders to conserve ammunition by firing more slowly. He had about 175 artillery pieces (more than Lee) available to him, and 132 of these guns, aligned between Little Round Top to the south and Cemetery Hill to the north, fired from high-ground positions that provided a wide, panoramic view to the west. Major Walter Harrison described how “the enemy replied with interest to our artillery salute [and] Such a tornado of projectiles [were seldom seen while] The sun in his noontide ray was obscured by clouds of sulfurous mist, eclipsing his light, and shadowing the earth as with a funeral pall.”51 This massive artillery bombardment made Lee believe that the relentless pounding was wreaking havoc and that the already-thin defensive sector around the copse of trees was steadily getting weaker by the minute.

However, what was essentially “a fluke” was insidiously sabotaging chances for Confederate success.52 A key tactical change had subtly occurred in the role of artillery since the Mexican–American War. General Zachary Taylor’s early successes, especially on the wide, arid coastal plain of Palo Alto just north of the Rio Grande River, had been won by the aggressive use of flying artillery. These highly mobile guns had been aggressively employed by young artillery commanders from West Point. Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, when he had been motivated to distinguish himself, as he penned in a letter, had skillfully employed his guns as flying artillery at Chapultepec, when he launched his own “audacious charge” with his field pieces. Such tactical lessons of flying artillery were an enduring legacy of the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon was an old artilleryman who first won recognition for his aggressive use of the long arm. He had thoroughly mastered the art of flying artillery: the employment of highly mobile light guns quickly and with swiftness (thanks to fast, well-trained horses) to unleash hard-hitting firepower, especially with grape and canister, to smash enemy formations at close range. Because opposing ranks were tightly massed in linear formations to maximize musketry firepower, the flying artillery fired at triple the usual rate of fire. Then, these light guns were quickly taken out of harm’s way if the enemy counterattacked, even with cavalry. But now a “fluke in technological development” minimized flying artillery capabilities.53

The rifled musket (which was more deadly at long range compared to the smoothbore musket because of the barrel’s rifling, which enhanced velocity and hence accuracy) reduced the effectiveness of the traditional role of flying artillery. Now the longer range and greater accuracy of common soldiers’ weaponry meant that deadly grape and canister could not be utilized so easily at close range against infantry as during the Napoleonic Wars and the Mexican–American War, because advanced artillery now had to stay further rearward in supporting infantry assaults.54

However, the urgent requirements of July 3 now superseded theory, recent tactical evolutions, and conventional wisdom. Lee understood that he needed to rely upon every possible trick in the book, especially with regard to incorporating the most applicable Napoleonic and Mexican–American War lessons. Therefore, Lee planned to utilize his guns as flying artillery, because the vulnerable flanks of the assault formations in a linear formation needed protection. This was now especially the case because wide stretches of open ground lay on either side (north and south) of the assault. However, folds and swales (on both sides of the Emmitsburg Road) in the rolling terrain and battle smoke would allow Southern guns to fulfill a traditional flying artillery role, negating the rifled musket’s lethality in such protective depressions from which field pieces could fire at relatively close range. Likewise, the marked tendency of Union infantrymen on higher ground to overshoot targets on lower ground also promised to make the flying artillery effective that afternoon. Also many defenders on the right-center (at the clump of trees and both north and south of the Angle) possessed smoothbores (only effective at short range) and not rifled muskets.

During his final assault on the British center at Waterloo, Napoleon had hurled the Imperial Guard forward with two batteries of horse, or flying, artillery to play its customary role. Jomini emphasized the supreme importance of utilizing artillery in a tactical offensive role. Mahan stressed that guns should be advanced with infantry to protect the ever-vulnerable flanks. Therefore, once the cannonade ended, Lee’s artillery was ordered to advance and closely support the infantry to prevent the Union from launching spoiling attacks that might be launched on the assault’s vulnerable northern and southern flanks. However, young Colonel Alexander lacked the necessary experience to fulfill Lee’s vision of flying artillery on such an unprecedented scale.

General Pendleton’s only sound decision to bolster Alexander’s extensive efforts was to create a “mobile battery” (a special reserve) for supporting the attack as flying artillery, taken from Hill’s 3rd Corps because their short range negated their effectiveness in the general cannonade. Gathered from various units, these nine howitzers (highly maneuverable and effective at close range) were to advance with the infantry to protect the attack’s flanks that would be vulnerable on the open fields, especially on the south. These flying artillery guns were placed by Alexander in a concealed position, a shallow hollow behind the Henry Sprangler Woods, in preparation for advancing and providing close support to the attackers. Thanks to Pendleton’s meddling, Alexander’s plan for the employment of the nine howitzers, so vital in the highly anticipated flying artillery role, was shortly sabotaged by an order without the Georgian’s knowledge, however. These nine howitzers were under the command of Major Charles Richardson of Lieutenant Colonel John J. Garnett’s 3rd Corps Artillery Battalion.

Kept in what he thought was a safe reserve position—near the Emanuel Pitzer House—by Alexander and sufficiently close to support the assault when the time came, the nine howitzers, ineffective at long range, were not engaged in the bombardment. As planned by Alexander, consequently, these guns, with fresh ammunition reserves, men, and horses, would be in an ideal position to play a key role to protect the assault’s flank. With Major William Thomas Poague’s Virginia Artillery Battalion, Pender’s division, directed to cover the northern, or left, flank and Major James Dearing’s Artillery Battalion, four Virginia batteries (18 guns) that were part of Pickett’s division, Longstreet’s corps, covering the southern, or right, flank by advancing as flying artillery, Lee believed that the assault’s flanks would be sufficiently safeguarded.55

As Lee envisioned, Alexander planned for all of his guns to advance “to follow any success, as promptly as possible.” But young Poague’s understanding of his mission revealed two central flaws: First and foremost—and seemingly forgotten by Confederate artillery commanders—the cannonade could not last too long so that insufficient ammunition remained to support the infantry assault. Additionally, the timing of the advancing artillery had to be exact to provide maximum fire support and timely flank protection. This vital requirement meant moving the guns forward long before the attackers actually struck the right-center. However, oral communications had broken down with regard to this key mission. Therefore, positioned before Pettigrew’s division and like other guns, Major Poague’s guns rapidly expended 657 rounds far too quickly. He explained his mission: “that as soon as our infantry … reached the crest [he was only then] to proceed as rapidly as possible to the summit with all my guns [but] [n]ot a word was said about following the infantry as they advanced to the attack.”56

Faulty Confederate Artillery Fuses

As if this situation (especially the shortage of artillery ammunition) was not enough to diminish chances for success, other mishaps and general confusion also began to sabotage Lee’s well-laid artillery plans. A serious problem with artillery-shell fuses now came back to haunt the gunners’ best efforts. Alexander had been early concerned about the overall quality of the Bormann fuses, because of their “very high” rate of failure, resulting in an ineffective fire. Captain Haskell described the situation: “We went along the lines of the infantry [along Cemetery Ridge] as they lay there flat upon the earth, a little to the front of the batteries [on the crest and] [t]hey were suffering very little …. How glad we were that the enemy were no better gunners, and that they cut the shell fuses too long.”57

But this disastrous situation for Southern fortunes was not completely the gunners’ fault. As veterans who were experts at setting time fuses (the most commonly used fuses) to explode in a predetermined number of seconds, they knew better than to cut fuses too short. The true source of the problem lay in the recent explosion in the main Richmond factory—perhaps sabotaged by slave workers or the secret Unionists of an active spy network in Richmond. This mishap meant that a new fuse supplier in Charleston, South Carolina, now provided fuses.58

So many Rebel shells had prematurely exploded during the battle of Chancellorsville in early May 1863 that the Confederate Ordnance Department had launched an official investigation about what was responsible for negating the artillery’s effectiveness. Rebel artillerists cut the length of fuses so that shells exploded at the estimated measured distance to hit a target, but there no longer existed the previous uniformity in fuse quality, which affected the time that the fuse burned and the shell exploded. The fuses long made in the Confederacy’s principal war munitions manufacturing Richmond had been of the highest quality. Therefore, veteran gunners unwittingly continued to base their timing and targeting calculations on fuses produced at the nation’s capital on the James, although they weren’t.

However, the new supplies of new fuses manufactured in Charleston, in Atlanta, Georgia, and in Augusta, Georgia, were of inferior quality: more inconsistent and slower burning than the more dependable Richmond fuses. Artillerymen made time estimations with Richmond fuses in mind: a guarantee that shells were passing their targets on Cemetery Ridge, because these fuses burned too long and slower than Richmond fuses.59

Compounding the problem in believing that the target was much farther than was actually the case, some Confederate artillerymen cut fuses for the wrong distance. General Pettigrew’s top staff officer, Captain Louis Gourdin Young, wrote in a letter how “the fuses for the shell used by the artillery, stationed immediately in our front, were cut for 1 1/4 miles,” when Cemetery Ridge was three-quarters of a mile away.60 Therefore, cutting fuses for a distance of a mile and a quarter was, in fact, more than a quarter mile too much.61 The problem also lay with the absence of expert artillerymen (thanks partly to attrition), who lacked proper practice because of black powder shortages. Therefore, “[f]ortunately for most Federals on Cemetery Ridge, their aim was terrible.”62 As mentioned, it was not exclusively a question of problems with aim and fuses, because the Rebel gunners also believed that Cemetery Ridge’s defending infantry had aligned along the reverse slope for protection.

Captain Haskell correctly reasoned how Lee “probably supposed our infantry was massed behind the crest [on the reverse slope] and the batteries; and hence his fire was so high, and his fuses to the shells were cut so long, too long.”63 With smoke covering the field, Rebel gunners were unable to ascertain exactly where their shells fell, eliminating much-needed adjustments in aim. Consequently, iron and brass cannon barrels were not sufficiently lowered with elevation screws to make necessary adjustments. Some shells even exploded on Taneytown Road’s east side. Other Confederate shells failed to explode, revealing the usual manufacturing defects, because of the South’s pre-industrial limitations. In consequence, the Yankee infantry defenders, except on the ridge’s crest at the targeted right-center, were relatively safe from this ineffective cannonade.64

Other Weaknesses of the Southern Cannonade

Some basic Napoleonic lessons, especially when Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, had wisely protected his infantry at Waterloo by positioning his redcoats on a ridge’s reverse slope before a wide plain, began to early backfire on Lee. Yankee infantrymen along Cemetery Ridge were far safer on the western slope rather than on the reverse slope: an atypical battlefield situation.65 However, numbers of Union infantrymen were hit in the cannonade. North of the copse of trees and just below the Abraham Brien barn, the low stone wall could not save some 111th New York boys. About to be wounded from an exploding shell, Corporal Manley Stacey, who was fated to die the day after Christmas 1863, wrote in a letter: “Three men were killed and thrown across me [by one shell explosion], covering men with blood.”66

Because of the rapid and excessive expenditure of ammunition (the nearest reserve supplies of artillery ammunition was located about 150 miles away in the Shenandoah Valley) during an increasingly lengthy duel, flying artillery capabilities were steadily eroded.67 The combined effect of dysfunctional Confederate artillery leadership, casualties among gunners and battery horses, low ammunition, and a too-lengthy bombardment ensured that flying artillery would be unable to adequately support the assault.68

Lee’s artillery arm (unlike Hunt’s guns) possessed relatively few rifled cannon for accurate long-range firing. Confederate “smoothbore artillery [not effective at long range], when firing cannon balls, had relatively little effect on infantry in defensive positions.”69 Southern artillery fire now left Union officers contemptuous: “The Rebels had about as much artillery as we did [and] They have courage enough, but not the skill to handle it well. They generally fire far too high, and the ammunition is usually of a very inferior quality.”70

Emphasizing the importance of flying artillery this afternoon, Rebel smoothbore artillery possessed greater potential at close range compared to rifled field pieces, thanks to the devastating effect of grape and canister on infantry.71 Dismayed by the confusing variety of long arm weaponry that created a logistical and supply nightmare, Colonel Arthur J. L. Fremantle, official British observer attached to Lee’s army, explained how the Southern “artillery is of all kinds—Parrots, Napoleons [named after Napoleon III, not Napoleon I], smoothbores, all shapes and sizes.”72

Punishing Return Fire

Meanwhile, Union artillery from Cemetery Hill, Cemetery Ridge, and Little Round Top (from north to south) continued to respond with spirit. As mentioned, General Hunt, the long-arm genius, had ordered his guns to slow their fire to conserve ammunition for the expected infantry assault. However, Hancock, now leading the 2nd Corps with his usual skill, thought otherwise. He believed that roaring Union guns bolstered the infantry’s morale.73 In one of the battle’s ironies, some Southern artillery officers had been trained by Hunt in artillery tactics at West Point. Because of ineffectiveness of Confederate long-arm fire, Hunt’s sense of humor rose to the fore. He wondered with amusement, “Was I that bad of an instructor” at West Point?74

Despite the fact that Lee possessed capable artillerists who had been educated at not only the Virginia Military Institute (the majority) but also at West Point, the overall Confederate bombardment was entirely ineffective against the concealed infantrymen for a variety of reasons. Yankees crouched low and unseen behind the lengthy stone wall that ran just below the open spine of the ridge. However, Confederate shell-fire caused destruction on the right-center, knocking out field pieces, cannoneers, and artillery caissons around the clump of oak trees. Lee’s chances for success gradually increased “because of the decimation of the Federal guns” on the battered right-center.75

Conversely, the heavy Union cannonade inflicted a good deal of physical and psychological damage among the Confederate infantry. From the guns of Lieutenant George A. Woodruff’s battery I, 1st United States Artillery before Ziegler’s Grove on the north to Little Round Top to the south, nearly 90 cannon roared. Garnett’s and Kemper’s brigades, positioned on Seminary Ridge’s reverse slope before Armistead’s brigade, whose left (the 38th and 57th Virginia, from left to right, or north to south) lay in the northeastern half of the Spangler Woods, were unmercifully swept by shell-fire. Virginia soldiers were aligned close together in grassy swales that provided no protection from the rain of projectiles. Consequently, these grassy swales were soon transformed into bloody bowling alleys from the rifled artillery firing from Little Round Top’s summit, enfilading the swales from the southeast. Ironically, the Virginians now suffered heavy casualties quite by accident because Union gunners had only targeted Confederate artillery aligned before the infantry.

Therefore, like Pickett’s other brigade commanders, Kemper ordered his hard-hit troops to the ground in the hope of saving lives, but this measure was not enough. Located closer to Seminary Ridge’s crest than its sister brigade to the north, and with the Washington Artillery positioned before it drawing shell-fire, Kemper’s brigade took a severe beating in the open fields southeast of the Spangler House: an attrition usually suffered only during offensive operations. Unlike Armistead’s brigade farther in the rear, and whose left on the north was partly protected by the Spangler Woods, Kemper’s brigade suffered heavier than any of Pickett’s brigades. Positioned on the far south of Pickett’s division, Kemper’s troops were swept by Lieutenant Benjamin F. Rittenhouse’s rifled Parrotts of Battery D, 5th United States Artillery, blasting away from Little Round Top’s crest. Rittenhouse’s enfilade fire from half a dozen long-range guns was so effective that some Confederate field pieces were shifted to fire on “the battery on the mountain.” This new focus took some pressure off the battered 2nd Corps batteries on the targeted right-center.76

Meanwhile, Pickett’s losses continued to spiral. In a letter to his brother, Captain John A. Herndon, who commanded Company D (Whitmell Guards) of the 38th Virginia and on the far right of Armistead’s brigade, lamented, “Under this Shelling, I had one man killed (Tap Eanes) and two (Privates James F. Gregory and John S. Robertson) severely wounded.”77 Company D was lucky, with Private William T. Eanes (Tap) the company’s lone fatality.78

With Dearing’s four Virginia batteries, located west of and roughly parallel to the Emmitsburg Road on the crest of Seminary Ridge, positioned primarily before Garnett’s brigade (but also Kemper’s brigade to a lesser degree), the overshooting by Union cannon in attempting to knock out these Old Dominion guns was fatal to an escalating number of Virginia infantrymen.79

In the broad fields on the south below Garnett’s brigade, General Kemper was horrified by his mounting losses. He watched as “the enemy’s hail of shot pelted them and ploughed through them, and sometimes the fragments of a dozen mangled men were thrown in and about” the horrified survivors.80 One of Garnett’s officers, Lieutenant George Williamson Finley, described the “incoming storm of shot and shell killed and wounded many a man lying face down in the tall grass” on the reverse slope.81 One 7th Virginia soldier, from Kemper’s brigade, described the living nightmare: “In any direction might be seen guns, swords, haversacks, heads, limbs, flesh and bones in confusion or dangling in the air or bounding on the earth.”82

Lieutenant John Edward Dooley, Jr., was sickened by the sad plight of Kemper’s brigade: “We were immediately in rear of Genl. [Major James] Dearing’s [Virginia] batteries and receive nearly all the missiles intended for his gallant troops. In one of our Regts. alone the killed and wounded, even before going into the charge, amounted to 88 men; and men lay bleeding and gasping in the agonies of death all around, and we were unable to help them in the least. Ever and anon some companion would raise his head disfigured and unrecognizable, streaming with blood, or would stretch his full length, his limbs quivering in the pangs of death. Orders were to lie as closely as possible to the ground, and I like a good soldier never got closer to the earth than” before.83

Commanding the 3rd Virginia on Kemper’s right flank, Colonel Robert Mayo watched in stunned silence as his Company F (Nansemond Rangers) took a severe beating. Two brothers were killed: Second Lieutenant Patrick H. Arthur, a 21-year-old farmer, and Lieutenant John C. Arthur, an agriculturalist of age 23, mortally wounded in one shell’s fiery explosion.84 A former mechanic in his midtwenties from Portsmouth, color-bearer Joshua Murden was killed in one fiery explosion. Because of his firm death grip in still fulfilling his promise to protect the 3rd Virginia’s flag, Murden’s bloody right hand was pried from the wooden staff of the new battle flag.85 Kemper was incensed at taking high losses for no gain. Confronting Longstreet, Kemper angrily denounced such “a terrible place,” hoping to gain permission to move his brigade. But Longstreet only responded for Kemper to remain “a while longer [since] we are hurting the enemy badly” with the cannonade. One of Kemper’s disgusted soldiers concluded how it was “as if we were placed where we were for target practice for the Union batteries.”86

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander D. Callcote, of French heritage, born in the Isle of Wright County, Virginia, and a VMI graduate (Class of 1851) who would not survive the upcoming assault, and Colonel Joseph Mayo, Jr., 3rd Virginia and another VMI graduate (Class of 1852), watched the cruel culling of the ranks. With bitter resignation, Mayo described how “Company F suffered terribly, First Lieutenant A[zra] P. Gomer [a former clerk in his mid twenties], legs [the left leg was amputated] shattered below the knee; of the Arthur brothers, second and third lieutenants, one killed [and] the other badly hit.”87 A former attorney in his late twenties, Colonel Mayo wondered if he would ever again see his home and loving wife, Mary Armistead Tyler-Mayo.88

Heavy damage was inflicted upon hapless Company G (Lynchburg Home Guards), 11th Virginia, on Kemper’s right-center. Here, in the open fields, 22-year-old Captain John Holmes Smith watched as a full third of his men were killed or wounded. Nineteen-year-old Sergeant DeWitt C. Guy, a former merchant, fell wounded.89 And in the 8th Virginia on the far right of Garnett’s brigade, the head of Private Albert J. Morris, Company D (Champe Rifles), was torn off by a screaming shell. Morris’s brains were splattered over his comrades, including over Major Edmund Berkeley’s hat. Thankful for having survived another close call, the major was also relieved that his brothers, Lieutenant Colonel Norborne Berkeley, Captain William Noland Berkeley, and Lieutenant Charles Fenton Berkeley, were spared in this artillery hell.90

Mayo described the “fearful havoc was made in our lines, the 3d and 7th Regts suffering with particular severity.”91 Amid the bombardment, mounted officers, including Longstreet, who ignored the danger, rode along the front to steady the troops to withstand the punishment.92 Meanwhile, Chaplain John C. Granberry, 11th Virginia of Kemper’s brigade, provided spiritual comfort amid the whizzing shell fragments. In the words of Lieutenant Colonel James Risque Hutter, commanding the 11th Virginia on the brigade’s right-center: “Our chaplain the Reverend John C. Granberry … whenever he saw a man badly wounded would go and kneel by him and pray for and with him.”93

Suffering on the opposite flank (north) even more than Kemper’s brigade, Colonel John Mercer Brockenbrough’s brigade was enfiladed by the massive array of guns atop Cemetery Hill to the northeast. These northernmost Virginians were positioned to the extreme left of Pettigrew’s division. Along with the brigade’s other units, the undersized 22nd Virginia Infantry Battalion—including six companies of soldiers originally organized as members of the 2nd Virginia Light Artillery and now consisting of only 237 men (the smallest unit in the assault)—showed signs early of uneasiness under the severe pounding.94 The awful “roar of artillery drowned all [and was worse than] I have seen in all the heavy battles in Virginia and Maryland [and] I never heard such artillery firing before,” wrote one incredulous Tar Heel cannoneer in a letter.95 Knowing that Lee had a tactical trick up his sleeve, one veteran Union officer expected the worst, because the Southern artillery had never before expended “so lavish [an amount] of ammunition.”96

In just his early twenties and commanding his battalion’s 18 guns of Pickett’s division, Major James Dearing should have ensured that his gunners possessed plenty of ammunition for the crucial flying artillery role to follow on the infantrymen’s heels once the advance began. A ladies’ man who would be married in January 1864, Dearing was the son of an old, aristocratic family, whose plantation was known as “Otterburne” in Campbell County, Virginia. Dearing had received a fine education at the Hanover Academy, Virginia, and also at West Point, where he racked up many demerits for his high-spirited antics. Dearing hailed from Lynchburg, Virginia, and began the war with the famed Washington Artillery. Dearing was fated to be mortally wounded in hand to hand combat only three days before Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House: the last Confederate general to die of combat wounds.97

Meanwhile, under the rain of shells, large numbers of Pickett’s soldiers were now “being slaughtered like cattle in a pen.”98 The most exposed of Pickett’s brigades, Kemper’s brigade, aligned on the open ground on the south and without the protective cover of the Spangler Woods (like Armistead’s left), continued to suffer the worst punishment. On the left flank of Kemper’s brigade, 3rd Virginia soldiers witnessed the sickening sight of the death of Color Sergeant Joshua Murden, a 25-year-old former mechanic from Portsmouth, Virginia.99 But the 11th Virginia, on the brigade’s right-center, took even greater losses. Captain John Holmes Smith, a 22-year-old former merchant, watched as his company (G, the Lynchburg Home Guard) lost 20 out of 29 men, while the adjacent company lost even more members. Company G’s most tragic loss was two brothers: Privates Thomas and William Jennings, who were killed by one shell explosion. Another pair of brothers, Privates Edward W., a teenager, and Joseph A. Valentine, an ex-merchant of age 27, were relatively more fortunate, with only the youngest of the two siblings fatally hit.100

Perhaps as high as 20 percent of Kemper’s brigade were killed or wounded by the shell-fire. Kemper’s high losses were excessive because the brigade had been assigned to anchor the assault’s right flank (a hard-hit counterpart to Brockenbrough’s Virginia brigade on the opposite flank).101 Likewise, Armistead’s right, especially the 14th Virginia on the far right (or south), was swept by the enfilade fire of Little Round Top’s long-range cannon. Armistead’s units on the right were vulnerable in the open below the Spangler Woods that protected at least two regiments on Armistead’s left, the 57th Virginia and the 38th Virginia (on the extreme left flank), from south to north. In total, more than 500 men of Pickett’s division were hit during the bombardment at a time when every soldier was needed for the assault.102 A shocked Kemper saw one of his boys lifted several feet high from a shell explosion, which killed him.103

Significantly, Pickett lost valuable officers either killed or wounded, including some of the highest-ranking officers. The popular commander of the 53rd Virginia, positioned in the center of Armistead’s brigade (which suffered relatively few losses compared to Kemper’s regiments, and thanks to partial concealment in the Spangler Woods), was hit. Promoted to regimental command on March 1863, Colonel William Roane Aylett was seriously wounded. The grandson of Virginia lawyer–patriot Patrick Henry of “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” fame and University of Virginia graduate (Class of 1853) was carried rearward by stretcher bearers. Splattered in blood, dark-haired Colonel Aylett, only age 32, hailed from King William County (the Richmond area). In 1830, he had been born at the family mansion of “Montville.” Meanwhile, wife Alice Brockenbrough Aylett prayed for her husband’s safe return. Assuming regimental command, Lieutenant Colonel Rawley White Martin was a former physician who was now dedicated to taking lives instead of saving them.104

Also named after America’s revolutionary hero and Virginia governor from 1776 to 1779, Patrick Henry Fontaine, who was later appointed regimental chaplain, was not now available to provide spiritual comfort when needed. Lieutenant Colonel Rawley White Martin had been educated at the University of Virginia (like Colonel Aylett) and the University of New York, from which he obtained a medical degree in 1858. He realized his men “felt the gravity of the situation [and] they were serious and resolute, but not disheartened. None of the usual jokes, common on the eve of battle, were indulged in” to lighten the mood.105

General Armistead had a close call under the relentless bombardment. Pickett’s division nearly lost one of its finest brigade commanders when a shell smashed into a small hickory near where General Armistead stood before his troops. The shell explosion wounded a few unlucky men, while “almost cutting the tree off” and nearly abruptly ending Armistead’s career.106

Virginia Military Institute’s Distinguished Legacy

One of the best leaders of Garnett’s brigade suffered a tragic fate. Lieutenant Colonel John Thomas Ellis, 19th Virginia, Garnett’s brigade, found himself under the vicious enfilade fire from Little Round Top that punished Kemper’s and Garnett’s brigades. On Little Round Top’s crest, a half-dozen 10-pounder Parrotts of Lieutenant Charles E. Hazelett’s Battery D, 5th United States Artillery, roared incessantly. Born in Amherst County, among the Piedmont’s rolling hills in west-central Virginia, Ellis first learned about the axioms of nineteenth-century warfare at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) at Lexington, Virginia, in the picturesque Upper Shenandoah Valley. On the manicured parade ground, smartly uniformed cadets had long drilled before George Washington’s statue, before marching off to war when none had imagined that defeat was possible.

From the southeast, Little Round Top’s guns continued to hurl an enfilading fire down the ranks. One projectile ricocheted along the ground and toward the 19th Virginia’s right flank, where the troops lay amid the grassy “hollow.” A private raised the cry, “Look out!” Ellis raised his head up from a “small wash.” Lieutenant William N. Wood described the lieutenant colonel as a “good man as well as a polished gentleman” cited for valor. The round shot bounded up, striking Ellis square in the face. The blood-stained regimental commander was carried by his grieving men to Pickett’s divisional field hospital at the John F. Currins farm. Ellis died shortly after and was buried under the shade of a little apple tree.107 Colonel Alexander declared in horror, “I never saw so much blood fly.”108

However, the much-lamented Lieutenant Colonel Ellis was only one of many fine VMI–educated officers cut down in Pickett’s division. Dark-haired and bearded Colonel Lewis B. Williams, Jr., now commanding the “Old First” Virginia (Pickett’s smallest regiment, with about 220 men in the ranks) was another VMI graduate in danger. Colonel Williams relied upon high-quality VMI–trained officers, such as Adjutant John Stockton. A total of 11 of Pickett’s 15 regiments were commanded by VMI men of considerable ability. All of these seasoned leaders were fated to be killed or wounded on that bloody afternoon. On the left (or northern) flank of Armistead’s brigade was Colonel Edward Claxton Edmonds (VMI Class of 1858), who was born in Paris, located near the Appalachians at Virginia’s northern tip in January 1835. He was about to be killed in the upcoming attack, while leading the 38th Virginia of around 480 soldiers. One of Pickett’s brigade commanders possessed extensive VMI connections. Now commanding his brigade of around 1,800 men, General James Lawson Kemper had served as the president of the Board of Visitors of VMI, which had been modeled after West Point.

The promising VMI Class of 1855 was especially ill-fated. All Class of 1855 graduates serving as regimental commanders of Pickett’s division—Colonels Lewis Burwell Williams, Jr. (a bachelor); Waller Tazewell Patton (an ancestor of General George Patton of Second World War fame and who was affectionately known as “Taz” to his fellow officers), commanding the 7th Virginia, on Kemper’s left-center; and Robert C. Allen, who led the 28th Virginia—were destined for death in Pickett’s Charge. All three leaders—Williams, Allen, and Patton—had been gray-uniformed roommates in Room No. 13 (today’s Room 201) in VMI’s three-story brick barracks. They had been lawyers before the war.

Additionally, Colonel John Bowie Magruder, in his midtwenties and a former teacher from the Piedmont town of Culpeper, Virginia, located just more than 200 miles northeast of VMI, led the 57th Virginia. Magruder was ably assisted by staff members Adjutant John Davis Watson, age 22, and Captain William S. Smith, VMI Class of 1861. Colonel Magruder was about to fall mortally wounded “within 20 steps” of the artillery on Meade’s right-center.109

While the contributions of America’s military academy at West Point in the molding of Civil War leaders have been widely recognized in a war that was “pre-eminently a West Pointers’ fight,” the role of small Southern military academies in creating an equally capable, if not superior, leadership corps—a sturdy foundation for Lee’s army—has been relatively forgotten.110 Ironically, VMI has been overlooked by historians, although it was one of the Confederacy’s leading military colleges. Based “closely” upon the West Point model, VMI was a prestigious state-supported military college founded in 1839.

The Institute’s first president had been a lucky survivor of Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia: Colonel Claude Crozet. A graduate of the Ecole Politechnique in Paris, France (like many of Napoleon’s top officers), Crozet and VMI produced some of America’s finest soldiers. With its high academic standards, VMI allowed the entry of Jewish students (such as Moses Jacob Ezekiel), mostly from Richmond, where a large Hebrew community thrived at the Confederacy’s capital. Jewish Rebels were sprinkled throughout Pickett’s division, especially the 1st Virginia, whose members hailed primarily from Richmond. On this day, these forgotten Jewish Confederates continued the ancient traditions of fiery Hebrew warriors of the Old Testament and the Torah. The exacting standards of VMI’s three-year program were exceptionally high for the teenagers, whose neat gray uniforms were lined with three vertical rows of brass buttons. The bulk of the nearly 2,000 VMI alumni formed a sturdy foundation to the officer corps of not only Pickett’s division, but also of the Army of Northern Virginia. VMI was “the West Point of the Confederacy.”111

“What little drill and discipline the Southern armies had, they owed largely to VMI men,” especially in the war’s beginning.112 With some undisguised malice, President Lincoln himself theorized that he had been unable to early crush the Southern rebellion primarily because of “a certain military school in Virginia which made it impossible.”113

But no single chapter of the war was more disproportionately influenced and shaped by VMI than Pickett’s Charge.114 Indeed, “nearly every field officer who participated in Pickett’s charge was [a product of] the Virginia Military Institute.”115 On VMI’s parade ground, the afternoon parade of lines of cadets had been long led by two free black musicians, Michael Lyle and Reuben Howard, with fife and drum. The army’s large number of VMI graduates, including Lee’s handsome Adjutant Colonel Walter Herron Taylor (Class of 1857) and especially men in Pickett’s division, were motivated to now uphold the institute’s high standards that afternoon.116

VMI’s influence even reached down to the lower grade officers, lieutenants and captains, and even noncommissioned officers of Pickett’s division. In the 11th Virginia, Kemper’s brigade, VMI–educated company commanders included Captain John C. Ward (Class of 1853), a former teacher, age 29, who led Company E (Lynchburg Rifles) and Captain James Risque Hutter, age 19 and graduate of VMI Class of 1860. Hutter was a rising star. Only hours before, he had been relieved of regimental command by Major Kirkwood Otey (VMI Class of 1849), who had been just released from arrest to lead the 11th Virginia in the attack. Likewise, Captain William W. Bentley, who led Company E (organized at Newbern, Pulaski County, Virginia), 24th Virginia, was a VMI graduate (Class of 1860), while VMI’s Lieutenant Benjamin P. Grigsby fulfilled the same role in Company G (organized in today’s West Virginia), 24th Virginia. And in Company B (Danville Greys), 18th Virginia, Garnett’s brigade, Captain Robert McCulloch, a Scotch-Irishman known for his Celtic fighting spirit, was part of VMI’s Class of 1864. Lieutenant John Wesley Hill, age 27 and VMI Class of 1859, served in Company A (Monticello Guard), 19th Virginia. Leading Company H (Southern Rights Guard), 19th Virginia, Captain Benjamin Brown, Jr., a 19-year-old ex-farmer, was a member of VMI’s Class of 1864.

Besides its VMI commander Colonel Lewis Burwell Williams, Jr., other VMI leaders of the 1st Virginia included Captain George F. Stockton (Class of 1860), who led Company D (Old Dominion Guards). The top 3rd Virginia leadership were educated at VMI: Colonel Joseph Mayo (Class of1852) and a former attorney; Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Daniel Callcote (Class of 1851); and Major William Hamlin Pryor (Class of 1848). And VMI’s Colonel Waller Tazewell Patton, born in Fredericksburg and former attorney who led the 7th Virginia, was ably assisted by 20-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Charles Conway Flowerree, born in Fauquier County, Virginia, who was also a VMI man. In Kemper’s brigade, the 24th Virginia was likewise dominated by outstanding VMI–trained leadership of superior quality: Colonel William Richard Terry (Class of 1850), a former merchant who eventually earned a brigadier general’s rank, and his top lieutenants, 30-year-old Major Joseph Adam Hambrick (Class of 1857) and Adjutant William T. Taliaferro (Class of 1845). Hambrick, a former lawyer, and Taliaferro, of Italian (name meant “ironcutter”) heritage and with a lieutenant’s rank, were about to be cut down in the upcoming assault.

Likewise in Garnett’s brigade, VMI was well represented by the top leadership of the 8th Virginia: Colonel Eppa Hunton, Lieutenant Colonel Norborne Berkeley, and Major Edmund Berkeley. Garnett’s brigade’s combat capabilities were also enhanced by 32-year-old Colonel William Dabney Stuart (VMI Class of 1850). Stuart reminded one of his lampooning lieutenants of his mother, because of his sheer willpower and determination to achieve an objective. A stern disciplinarian who maintained lofty VMI standards and who was taller than most of his men, Stuart commanded the 56th Virginia. He made an exceptional leadership team with Adjutant Richard Wharton (VMI Class of 1862). Also in the 56th Virginia, Captain John W. Jones, who could be counted upon in a crisis situation, was a distinguished a VMI graduate (Class of 1842).

In the same brigade and now leading the 18th Virginia, 30-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Henry Alexander Carrington, married since 1856 to Charlotte E. Cullen, was also VMI graduate (Class of 1851). Also in the 18th Virginia, Garnett’s brigade, Lieutenant James C. Walthall, an ex-agriculturalist of age 22 who now led Company D (Prospect Rifle Grays), was part of VMI’s Class of 1864. And the 19th Virginia, Garnett’s brigade, was led by Colonel Henry Gantt (VMI Class of 1851), a farmer from Scottsville, Virginia, and his top lieutenant, John Thomas Ellis (VMI Class of 1848). In the same veteran brigade, the 28th Virginia was commanded by Colonel Robert Clotworthy Allen (VMI Class of 1855), a former lawyer from Salem, Virginia. He had been born in the idyllic Shenandoah County, Virginia on June 22, 1834. Allen was now assisted by his top lieutenant, Major Nathaniel Claiborne Wilson, who was trained in the art of war at VMI.

General Armistead was well served not only by his aide-de-camp, Alabama-born Lieutenant Walker Keith Armistead (his teenage son just assigned to the general’s staff on April 30), but also by his acting Adjutant General Captain James D. Darden, in his midthirties and planning to eventually graduate from VMI’s hallowed halls. VMI’s Lieutenant Thomas Flournoy Barksdale and young Captain William Harvie Bray, VMI graduate (Class of 1861), who led Company B (Barhamsville Grays), served in the 53rd Virginia, Armistead’s brigade. Sergeant Thomas Booker Tredway, who was fated to fall mortally wounded in the upcoming attack, also attended VMI. Even a lowly private, Thomas Jefferson Green, who was early detailed as a clerk in the Confederate commissary department, was a VMI graduate (Class of 1848).

Also of Armistead’s brigade, Lieutenant Thomas A. Hatcher, a 23-year-old planter of Company A (Paineville Rifles), 14th Virginia, was a graduate of VMI Class of 1858, along with 31-year-old Captain Richard Logan, Jr., who led Company H (Meadville Greys) of the same regiment. Colonel Edward Claxton Edmonds (VMI Class of 1858) headed the 38th Virginia, Armistead’s brigade. And Captain George K. Griggs, who commanded Company K (Cascade Rifles), 38th Virginia, Armistead’s brigade, was part of VMI Class of 1862. Leading Company E (Pamunkey Rifles), 53rd Virginia, Captain Benjamin L. Farinholt counted on his top lieutenant, William Harvie Bray (VMI Class of 1861).

These tactically astute VMI graduates of the 53rd Virginia were only some of the most notable representative examples of the VMI’s significant influence in Pickett’s other regiments. Such reliable VMI men, including Captain Bray, who was destined to charge beyond the stone wall and lose his life, at the lower officer ranks in Pickett’s division were a long-overlooked secret that explained the near success of Pickett’s Charge.117

The young Tidewater men and boys, including boatmen, sailors, and fishermen, of the 9th Virginia, Armistead’s brigade, had been molded by lofty VMI standards, based on West Point’s rigid guidelines. Consequently, this veteran Tidewater regiment could “boast of the finest officers in the South.”118 John Thomas Lewis Preston, the regiment’s first lieutenant colonel, was one of VMI’s respected founders. The regiment’s first commander, Colonel Francis Henney Smith, born in 1812 and a West Point graduate (Class of 1833), was also VMI’s first superintendent, beginning in 1839. Making significant contributions in creating a splendid regiment, the first major of the 9th Virginia, Stapleton Crutchfield, graduated from VMI with honors. And other leading regimental officers likewise possessed VMI training.119

Major Walter Harrison, the inspector general of Pickett’s division, was also a product of VMI, which he entered at age 16. Harrison racked up many demerits, including one following a wild ride through the VMI barracks on horseback (evidently fueled by liquor consumption)—an outrageous escapade that ensured he never graduated. Harrison had prospered in New York City before the war. But with the call to arms, he immediately returned to his home state, and then volunteered to serve without an officer’s commission on Pickett’s staff.120

A close look at only a single regiment of Pickett’s division has revealed VMI’s supreme importance, which has been long overlooked, partly because on an overemphasis on the importance of West Point. In the 11th Virginia’s ranks, VMI was represented at every level. Lynchburg, Virginia–born Major Otey Kirkwood (known as “Kirk”), in his midthirties, graduated from VMI (Class of 1849). Destined to lead Company D (Fincastle Rifles), 11th Virginia, in the upcoming assault, Lieutenant John Thomas James, who had seen his teenage brother, Private Edward W. James, killed by his side during combat in 1862, had first learned the ways of war as an 18-year-old cadet at VMI in 1859. Meanwhile, Captain John C. Ward led Company E (Lynchburg Rifles), 11th Virginia, represented VMI Class of 1853. Captain Ward was about to fall wounded, along with so many other fine leaders from the prestigious Lexington, Virginia, institution. Commanding Company H, the Jeff Davis Guard (also known as the Jefferson Davis Riflemen), 19-year-old Captain James Risque Hutter (VMI Class of 1860) shortly led his 11th Virginia (as the acting lieutenant colonel) all the way to the stone wall.121

Most importantly, VMI graduates had instilled an esprit de corps and fighting spirit among Pickett’s men at every level. Although this detail had been forgotten, Pickett’s Charge became famous because of its parade-ground-like precision born on VMI’s parade ground that lay before the Gothic-style brick barracks. Eleven of 15 regimental commanders of Pickett’s division (among the South’s best and brightest) played key roles that July afternoon.122

However, West Point’s less significant influences were also fully represented in Pickett’s division (and Pettigrew’s division), not only with regard to General Armistead, but also to junior officers in the ranks. In the 53rd Virginia, Armistead’s brigade, Major John Corbett Timberlake was a West Pointer, who now served beside “our [former] drill master at West Point,” Lieutenant William Harvie Bray, of Company E (Pamunkey Rifles).123

Meanwhile, under the cannonade, young Lieutenant John Thomas James, the former VMI cadet, watched as two mounted officers carefully surveyed Cemetery Ridge before Kemper’s brigade. As the officers drew closer, Lieutenant James recognized Lee and Longstreet. Proud of his solid VMI training, the Fincastle, Botelourt County, Virginia, native knew exactly what this field conference meant. As he penned in a letter, “As soon as we saw this we knew a fight and a big fight at that was brewing, and it was hardly necessary for General Kemper to come around, as he did, and tell us that our division was assigned the task of storming the heights.”124

Despite VMI’s pervasive influence at every level of Pickett’s division, success today also depended upon the young, but experienced, officers who may have lacked the best military educations available in America. After the terrible culling of the ranks, Company B (the Albemarle Rifles), 19th Virginia, Garnett’s brigade, was now led by teenage officers, like Lieutenants Pulaski P. Porter, Richard B. Wood (soon to be killed), and William P. Hamner (shortly would be wounded); and noncommissioned officers, such as Sergeants Rufus W. Robinson, Eugene G. Taylor (about to fall wounded), and Leonidas R. Bowyer (fated to be shortly killed). Lee now relied upon such determined young men, from Albemarle County in the Virginia Piedmont, to achieve decisive victory.125

Furious Cannonade Continues

Unable to ascertain the elimination of opposing batteries on the right-center, Colonel Alexander originally believed that the assault should begin 20–30 minutes after the cannonade’s beginning, but that time had long passed while Pickett’s losses steadily spiraled higher. One of Kemper’s brigade officers educated at Georgetown College, Lieutenant John Edward Dooley, Jr., described how “the air is shaking from earth to sky with every missile of death fire from the cannon’s mouth [while] we are obliged to lie quietly tho’ frightened out of our wits and unable to do anything in our own defence or any injury to our enemies.”126 Two Company H (Potomac Greys), 8th Virginia, soldiers were “literally [cut] in two” by a shell.127

However, with the cannonade lasting far longer than planned by Alexander, Dearing’s guns had already expended far too much ammunition. In consequence and like other Southern cannon, Dearing’s four Virginia batteries fired too fast, expending so much ammunition that an adequate supply to fulfill Lee’s flying artillery support mission was rapidly slipping away.128 In Dearing’s words describing this disturbing situation, which threatened Lee’s plan of providing close artillery support: “About this time my ammunition became completely exhausted, excepting a few rounds in my rifled guns [and] I had sent back my caissons an hour and a half before for a fresh supply, but they could not get it.”129

Knowing that artillery officers needed to be all business, and especially when Major Dearing was drawing artillery fire that was cutting down even more of Pickett’s men to the rear, Lee became irritated by Dearing’s showboating. Lee correctly sensed that the battalion commander’s display indicated an inattention to details. Therefore, when the “handsomely equipped” Dearing galloped near, Lee unleashed a stinging rebuke as if he were still West Point’s superintendent: “Ah! Major, excuse me; I thought you might be some countryman who had missed his way. Let me say to you and to these young officers, that I am an old reconnoitering officer [the United States Army’s most capable topographical engineer in Scott’s Army on the march to Mexico City] and have always found it best to go afoot, and not expose oneself needlessly.”130 Dearing’s bravado abruptly ended, when the embarrassed artillery battalion commander quietly retired.131

Meanwhile, the army’s greatest artillery bombardment continued to boom far longer than planned by either Lee or Alexander. In a letter to his wife, one Confederate described the inferno swirling around him as “the crash of worlds….”132 Lee and Alexander had no way of knowing that more than 170 guns, blasting away from a distance of 1,000–1,400 yards, had failed to drive the Union infantrymen from the right-center. Along Cemetery Ridge, the bluecoat infantrymen were still protected, while hidden behind the stone wall just below the crest.

As Napoleon had emphasized and Lee now hoped, “A good infantry is without doubt the backbone of the army, but if it had to fight long against superior artillery it would be discouraged and disorganized.” Like Lee, Pickett believed that the massive cannonade was certain to “demoralize” the 2nd Corps defenders around the clump of trees. Colonel David Wyatt Aiken, commander of the 7th South Carolina, was emboldened by the spirited artillery performance. The South Carolina colonel wrote to his wife: “175 cannons [all fired] at one time, and the enemy replied with perhaps half as many [and] I know [our cannonade] killed and wounded hundreds, if not thousands, of the enemy.”133

Major Benjamin Franklin Eshleman, a West Pointer born in nearby Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and a New Orleans resident at the war’s beginning, also believed that the lengthy row of Confederate guns had “caused immense slaughter to the enemy.”134 Such lofty estimates of the Southern artillery’s effectiveness were a gross exaggeration, but only with regard to the Union infantry.

Meanwhile, additional Federal cannon aligned along the dominate perch of the distant crest grew silent. Southern cannon either knocked out or disabled an increasing number of field pieces in the targeted 2nd Corps sector around the clump of trees. Captain Graham was elated by the direct hits inflicted by his 1st North Carolina Artillery, which had been organized in April 1861 in Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, during “the heaviest Artillery duel of the war….”135 The captain, who left behind a lucrative medical practice to join the Charlotte Artillery (the nucleus of the 1st North Carolina Artillery), marveled how “we whipped them fairly in the Artillery.”136 Paradoxically, the cost of “winning” the artillery duel came at a high cost, because Confederate guns all along the line had fired too fast and too long, leaving an insufficient amount of long-range ammunition to support the assault by firing over the advancing infantrymen’s heads.137

Lee had achieved his goals of mauling the frontline Union batteries of the 2nd Corps, disabling a good many guns around the clump of chestnut oak trees. Lieutenant Alonzo Hersford Cushing’s battery A, 4th United States Artillery, was especially hard hit (leaving only two guns operational). But Lieutenant T. Fred Brown’s Company B, 1st Rhode Island Light Battery, just south of the clump of trees, suffered an even greater pounding. Besides having one of his guns disabled, Captain James McKay Rorty, the dashing Irish commander of Company B, 1st New York Artillery, which was positioned below, or south, of the clump of trees and east of the north–south stone wall, was mortally wounded when an ammunition limber exploded from a direct hit. Two of Rorty’s four guns were disabled by exploding shells.

Therefore, Union leadership now worried about the ultimate fate of the thin defensive line along Cemetery Ridge. However, the damage inflicted on Cushing’s and Brown’s hard-hit batteries indicated to more defenders that Lee had deliberately targeted the 2nd Corps and the Angle, the right-angle section of the stone wall about 250 feet north of the clump of trees, and the area around the clump of trees.138 Haskell was astounded by the bombardment’s fury: “[A] shell exploded over an open limber in Cushing’s battery, and at that same instant, another shell over a neighboring box [and] the ammunition blew up with an explosion that shook the ground, throwing fire and splinters and shells far into the air and all around, and destroying several men.”139 Meanwhile, the 2nd Corps’s infantrymen, crouched low behind the stone wall on the western slope, continued to suffer relatively little damage, with the vast majority of shells continuing to roar overhead.140

The Confederate cannonade continued to roar far longer than the anticipated 20–30 minutes originally envisioned by Alexander. Haskell was astonished: “Half-past two o’clock, an hour and a half since the commencement, and still the cannonade did not in the least abate.”141 Most importantly, Lee’s ambition was fulfilled by the growing silence among the Federal guns, because a total of 34 Union artillery pieces were withdrawn, disabled, or knocked out. Federal guns along the 2nd Corps’s battered front had also used up most long-range ammunition during the lengthy artillery duel, which partly explained the increasing silence. Indeed “most of the 2nd Corps batteries had exhausted their long-range ammunition … and had to wait until the Confederates came into canister range—roughly, 250 yards—before they could effectively get into action.”142 Captain Graham was delighted by what his North Carolina guns had helped to accomplish, writing in his letter with triumph of how “we silenced all their guns.”143

However, Hunt’s artillery on either side of the mauled batteries of the 2nd Corps remained securely in positions to provide support with enfilade fire when the assault began. In total, 132 guns were arrayed between Cemetery Hill and Little Round Top.144 But much damage was inflicted on Union artillery. In a letter, Sergeant Hirst, 14th Connecticut (just northeast of the copse of trees) described: “I saw one of Caissons [of Arnold’s battery] blown up…. But all this could not last much longer, our fire began to lose its vigour for want of Ammunition, and as the Smoke lifted from the Crest we saw our Guns leaving one after the other….”145

Peering anxiously through his field glasses and unfairly burdened with inappropriate orders from Longstreet (a clever deflection of responsibility) to inform Pickett of the best time to attack based upon his cannonade’s effectiveness, Alexander saw Union artillery pieces leaving from the Angle sector: the long-awaited sight that suddenly appeared through the drifting clouds of smoke. Therefore, he dispatched his “fateful summons” to Pickett at 1:40 p.m.: “The eighteen guns [an overestimation] have been drawn off. For God’s sake come on quick or we cannot support you” in the assault.146 As planned, the cannonade had succeeded in its central mission of knocking out or forcing the withdrawal of guns from the targeted right-center.147

Unknown to Alexander, the sudden lack of fire from the Union guns also stemmed from the day’s wisest artillery order from the savvy Hunt and also Major Thomas Ward Osborn on Cemetery Hill. Knowing that an attack was about to be launched, Hunt had made sure that his batteries conserved their ammunition (unlike Southern artillery officers). Of course, Alexander failed to realize that this silencing was also a deliberate ambush to provoke the Southern infantry into advancing out into the open: prematurely forcing Lee’s hand before all assault preparations were ready. Never before had so many Union gunners disengaged from a raging artillery duel for the express purpose of preserving rounds to greet the attackers.148

The Finest Day for Union Artillery Commanders

Hunt had created a clever “blue ruse.” As explained Colonel James C. Biddle, who served on Meade’s staff, although he got the order’s original author (Hunt) wrong, “General Meade [had early and] well understood that the object of the enemy in [the cannonade] was to demoralize our men, preparatory to making a grand assault. He, therefore, directed our artillery to slacken their fire, and, finally, to cease altogether, with the view of making the enemy believe that they had silenced our guns, and thus bring on their assault the sooner.”149

However, the devastation of 2nd Corps’s batteries was also the price paid for Hancock’s insistence—against Hunt’s orders—that his corps’s guns should continue firing to fortify the infantrymens’ morale. The key advantage of Meade’s sizeable artillery reserve now paid immense dividends, verifying the axiom that the “grandest results are obtained by the reserve artillery in great and decisive battles.” Withdrawing Union batteries were in the process of being replaced by fresh batteries from McGilvery’s reserve artillery, including Captain Andrew Cowan’s 1st New York Battery. But this substitution across a broad front would take time. Therefore, Lee now possessed an excellent, but narrowing, window of opportunity to strike a devastating blow on the right-center before the replacement guns arrived.150

Most importantly, the lack of return artillery fire testified to the effectiveness of Confederate artillery that scored a good many direct hits in 2nd Corps’s battered sector. Not long after two o’clock, Captain Haskell felt greater unease over a true crisis situation when one mauled battery departed “from the line, too feeble for further battle [as] Its commander was wounded, and many of its men were so, or worse; some of its guns had been disabled, many of its horses killed; its ammunition was nearly suspended [and] Other batteries in similar case, had been withdrawn” after taking a beating.151 Bestowing Lee with his best tactical opportunity as planned, 34 artillery pieces, around the Angle and clump of trees, were either disabled or withdrawn. Inside the Angle, Cushing’s battery had four guns knocked out.152

Captain Haskell surveyed the increasingly desperate situation on the right-center: “The batteries had been handled much more severely [than the infantry.] A great number of horses had been killed, in some batteries more than half of all. Guns had been dismounted. A great many caissons, limbers, and carriages had been destroyed, and usually from ten to twenty-five men to each battery had been struck, at least along our part of the crest” of Cemetery Ridge.153 On Meade’s hard-hit right-center, “the fire of the enemy had injured us [the artillery arm] much [and] exhausting our ammunition and fouling our guns, so as to render our batteries unfit for further immediate use.”154

Lee’s massive bombardment succeeded in mauling the frontline Union artillery on the right-center. However, McGilvery’s reserve batteries and the guns of Little Round Top and Cemetery Hill remained in good shape.155 Then, with Union artillery having gone silent, the Confederate bombardment finally ceased to roar after its mightiest effort. The planned Southern bombardment of 20–30 minutes had continued for more than two hours, expending most long-range ammunition. Near the clump of oak trees, Captain Haskell concluded how “the cannonade was over [and it was clear that] [t]he purpose of General Lee in all this fire of his guns … was to disable our artillery and break up our infantry upon the position of the 2nd Corps” around the clump of trees.156

However, although knocking out or forcing the withdrawal of more than 30 Yankee cannon, the intensity of the bombardment was wasted on the veteran Union infantrymen. Napoleon’s axiom that such a heavy cannonade was guaranteed to break the defender’s morale was unrealized on Cemetery Ridge.157 One Confederate sullenly concluded: “There was sure noise enough, from the roar of the guns and bursting of shells, to have moved the Yanks … but they [now] had a good thing [defending home soil] and knew it,” remaining firmly in place.158

To inspire his defenders, Meade had already ordered his officers to inform their troops that the “whole country now looks anxiously to this army to deliver it from the presence of the foe.”159 One of Lee’s confident men bragged in a recent letter: “We are the boys to make Yanks get up and dust, cowardly pups.”160 In striking contrast to such optimism, one Confederate officer offered General Pickett, who did not ride down the lines to encourage his men under the bombardment, a flask of whiskey and remarked, “Take a drink with me; in an hour you’ll be in hell or glory.”161

Meade’s Businesslike Efficiency

A good stiff drink (more stimulating than Alexander’s sweet-potato coffee) was indeed appropriate, because the 2nd Corps’s infantry remained in position. Pickett took a drink, which was becoming increasingly his custom. Even his own Virginia comrades later criticized Pickett for nipping too much at the bottle on July 3. But in fact, perhaps Pickett would have needed more to drink had he known that Meade’s solid performance in thwarting Lee’s hardest hitting blows on July 2 had infused new confidence among his troops. This commonsense Pennsylvanian was no prima donna like General George B. McClellan or the bombastic Joe Hooker. The businesslike Meade was now vindicating Lincoln’s faith in the “tall, spare” Pennsylvanian. This West Pointer (Class of 1835) was proving to be as solid as a rock, while displaying an “impregnable imperturbability” that inspired his men. Maintaining his trademark “careless appearance,” Meade had recently implored his troops to eliminate the “disgrace of a hostile invasion” on northern soil.162 Tipped off by the artillery bombardment and not taking any chances, Meade prudently ordered up some reserve units (including a division from Cemetery Hill’s rear to the north, to reinforce the weak right flank of General Alexander Hays’s 3rd Division, 2nd Corps before Pettigrew’s division). And from the south, two 6th Corps brigades were hurried into a reserve position behind the 2nd Corps, including near Meade’s headquarters, for judicious deployment. Other troops were also shifted by Meade into supporting positions. However, these reinforcements were still far too insufficient and not enough to thwart Lee’s plan, if everything worked as envisioned.163

Colonel James C. Biddle, age 32, from the Holmesburg section of Philadelphia, and one of Meade’s aide-de-camps, explained, “Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville had demonstrated how little the valor of the troops could accomplish when incompetently led; [but now] at Gettysburg” this equation was now reversed.164

The extremely capable Hancock now had his veteran 2nd Corps ready for its greatest challenge. General John Gibbon had temporarily commanded the corps during the first two days of combat, when Hancock led the “left wing” units to Gettysburg, after General John Fulton Reynolds was killed on July 1. Gibbon, a hard-fighting Mexican–American War veteran and now a division commander of the 2nd Corps, had been convinced that the Confederate bombardment was nothing more than a clever screen. Revealing the wisdom of Lee’s hiding of his assault troops along Seminary Ridge’s reverse slope, Captain Haskell described how Gibbon believed “that the enemy was falling back, and that the cannonade was only one of his noisy modes of covering the movement.”165

Other nervous Federals expected a stealthy Rebel flank attack to the south like at Chancellorsville. As mentioned, Longstreet had been imploring Lee in a “constant refrain” not to attack Meade’s center, but to allow him to conduct flank movement around Meade’s left, anchored on Little and Big Round Tops. Although “Longstreet’s plan sounds like a good idea at first hearing [the] very real logistical problems made Longstreet’s proposal impossible [and perhaps only leading] disaster” at Gettysburg.166 However, despite what historians, thanks to hindsight, have long maintained, Lee now possessed a far more masterful battle plan that promised decisive results.167

Already on July 3, Lee had demonstrated considerable tactical flexibility by so quickly adapting to exploit a newly developed tactical opportunity—a central feature of Napoleon’s winning formula. Meanwhile, Ewell’s threatening presence on the north continued to work in Lee’s overall tactical advantage, because he had “prevented Meade from shifting [additional] troops to meet” the upcoming assault.168

However, severe shortages of artillery ammunition were in the process of negating Lee’s advantages. In the words of Georgia’s General Ambrose R. Wright, a 36-year-old former attorney known affectionately as “Rans” (short for Ransom), from a July 7, 1863, letter to his wife, Mary Savage-Wright: “Our artillery now ceased firing, and upon inquiry, I learned they had exhausted their ammunition! And at such a time!”169 And a shocked North Carolina artilleryman of Longstreet’s corps described how “our Ordnance trains were pretty well exhausted—nearly all the Artillery ammunition was expended [and] every shot was out of the trains.”170 Worst of all, what little remained of the artillery ammunition was beyond immediate reach, because the 1st Corps’s ordnance train had been removed farther rearward to escape the cannonade.171

Ironically, while young Rebel soldiers believed that God was on their side, they should have been praying for more competent Confederate leadership, especially in the artillery arm. Major Nathaniel Claiborne Wilson, who was acting lieutenant colonel of the 28th Virginia positioned on Garnett’s left-center, realized that orders to advance were drawing near. The twenty-three-year-old, a University of Virginia graduate who had also attended VMI, placed his faith in God. The former attorney hastily penned his last diary entry: “In line of battle, expecting to move forward every minute. With our trust in God, we fear not an earthly enemy. God be with us!” Major Wilson was about to find a final resting place in a lush meadow on Pennsylvania soil under the shade of a walnut tree.172

Meanwhile, the veteran troopers of Stuart’s cavalry made their final preparations to strike in conjunction with Pickett’s Charge. In one historian’s words: “For two hours that fateful afternoon [the cavalrymen in gray] all heard the thunder of artillery as Porter Alexander’s guns, some four miles to the west, prepared the way for [Pickett’s] charge [and therefore] Stuart attempted to move his troopers, shielded by woods, into a position where they might hit the enemy’s rear.”173

Lee’s chances of pushing the Yankees off the targeted position greatly increased because of the extensive damage inflicted upon the batteries of Captain William A. Arnold, Lieutenant Alonzo Hersford Cushing, Lieutenant T. Fred Brown, and Captain James Rorty, before the arrival of replacement batteries. Quite a few guns defending the right-center were eliminated, and “the great prize [of vanquishing the Army of the Potomac was] well within [Lee’s] grasp.”174 Lee had done everything possible to insure that he would not again be denied a decisive victory, because of a strange “perversity of Fate” as on July 2.175

Meanwhile, an equally strange fate had seemingly placed Pickett’s command in a leading role. Back in May 1863, when Lee first learned that the Davis government had planned to send Pickett’s division west to assist in Vicksburg’s defense, he embarked on the diplomatic offensive. Upset at the possibility of losing a full division, he emphasized to the Secretary of War how he felt great “doubt [about] the policy of sending” Pickett’s division far from the army. Because he had emphasized how the division’s “removal from this army will be sensibly felt,” Lee now relied heavily on Pickett’s three brigades, after having successfully checkmated the highest-ranking officials in the Confederate government.176 Lee hoped to deliver the decisive blow to fulfill the prayers of people across the South, including William Ross Stilwell, who had written in a recent letter: “I hope that the war will close before another winter.”177