CHAPTER THIRTEEN

We Have an Awful Night of It

General Lee began planning for the army’s retreat to Virginia soon after the failure of Pickett’s Charge on July 3. One of his primary concerns was providing adequate protection for the extensive wagon trains.

Lee summoned cavalry commander Brig. Gen. John D. Imboden to his headquarters about one o’clock in the morning on July 4 and ordered him to use his brigade and an artillery detachment to escort a wagon train of wounded. Organizing the huge endeavor took more time than expected, and the train did not begin rolling out of the Gettysburg area until about four o’clock that afternoon. All told, the line of wagons stretched some 17 miles and held 12,000 wounded men. Imboden’s wagon train traveled west down the Chambersburg Pike through Cashtown Gap. After clearing the mountains, it turned southwest through Greencastle, proceeded south to Hagerstown, and moved on toward the Potomac River. Most of the injured who filled the wagons were from James Longstreet’s and A. P. Hill’s corps.

Two hours before Imboden’s wagons began moving out of the area, the survivors from Iverson’s Brigade were detached from the division and assigned to escort Richard Ewell’s wagons on the long retreat across the mountains. In his diary, Surgeon William Marston recalled the men received orders “to change our position to follow our wagon train which is moving on the Hagerstown road.” Sergeant Edward G. Butler from the brigade ordnance department explained that “our sadly depleted brigade was serving as van guard to the army, going in front of a wagon train several miles long the army at large acting as rear guard.”¹

Ewell’s main column of wagons was ordered to take a more direct route southwest from Gettysburg through the town of Fairfield. The train would continue over the mountain gap along Maria Furnace Road before finally linking up with the Emmitsburg Turnpike just north of the Maryland border near Monterey Pass. From there, the wagons would follow the macadamized turnpike west to nearby Waynesboro before again turning south in the direction of Hagerstown and on to the major river crossing at Williamsport.²

Besides huge quantities of supplies, the vehicles assigned to the evacuation carried about 2,000 wounded men from Ewell’s Second Corps, including a large number of injured from Rodes’ Division. The most severely wounded were not well enough to make the difficult journey, and there was no choice but to leave them behind in the field hospitals. “During the night of the 4th, all the wounded who could walk or be transported in wagons and ambulances were sent to the rear… but nearly one-half of them, say about 760, were left in the hands of the enemy,” reported Rodes. “This painful result was, of course, unavoidable.”³

In Iverson’s Brigade alone, five officers and about 240 sick and severely wounded men were left in the field hospital. One regimental surgeon, two assistant surgeons, two hospital stewards, and 17 others agreed to remain with their suffering comrades. Leaving friends behind proved especially difficult for some men to accept. “You doo not have any idea how bad that I hated to leave Lon,” Pvt. W. J. O’Daniel of the 23rd North Carolina lamented to Sarah Torrence. “I asked the Doctor to let me stay with him but he would not.” Of those who stayed, 47 officers and men, including Private Torrence, eventually died from their injuries while in Federal hands.⁴