An 1863 view looking southeast from Seminary Ridge toward Gettysburg. Middle Street runs left to right (west to east) through the center of the image. In the left distance is Culp’s Hill, with Cemetery Hill in the center and West Cemetery Hill in the distant right. Iverson’s men spent the night of July 1 along West Middle Street before moving into place on Long Lane for a planned night attack against West Cemetery Hill. National Archives

Lieutenant Calder from the same brigade insisted in a letter to his mother that Ewell’s failure to take Cemetery Hill was “the great mistake” that lost all the advantage the Confederates had gained during the hard fighting on the first day at Gettysburg. “Our generals should have advanced immediately on that hill,” he argued. “It could have been taken then with comparatively little loss, and would have deprived the enemy of that immense advantage of position that was afterwards the cause of all his success.” Major Blackford from O’Neal’s shattered brigade likewise declared in a letter to his father soon after returning to the safety of Virginia that “if old Jack was but here we would have been in Baltimore this day.” He admitted that it was “sad to hear the men longing for him.” All of these men wrote with the clarity that hindsight provides. In the event, the decision to attack or not was much more difficult to determine.⁶⁰

When it finally became obvious that no further offensive action would take place that day, Rodes ordered Daniel back to the area of the unfinished railroad cut, where his men went into camp “under cover of an embankment.” O’Neal led the troops from his brigade west of town beyond the railroad bed in the area of the Lutheran seminary. Iverson’s survivors, meanwhile, joined Ramseur’s and Doles’ troops along West Middle Street in the center of the town, facing directly “the heights beyond Gettysburg occupied by the enemy.”⁶¹