A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (88 page)

General Meade sensed that Lee was going to throw at him everything within his grasp. Conscious that he was the sixth general to lead the Army of the Potomac, he invited all the generals to a war council at the little white farmhouse that served as his headquarters. The dozen or so commanders discussed whether to retire or continue the battle and then took a vote: they would remain at Gettysburg for one more day and, since they held the higher ground, allow Lee to launch another attack.
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The Confederate reserve artillery was ordered into position, facing the center of Meade’s line. One of the English volunteers who had run the blockade in the spring, Captain Stephen Winthrop, was assigned a battery and told to take it to Captain Charles W. Squires of the Washington Artillery. Although he had been appointed to Longstreet’s staff in late April, Winthrop had arrived at his headquarters only a day or so before the battle, and the order flummoxed him. He tried to memorize the directions, but it proved impossible to navigate the country roads without a map. He became lost and did not arrive until midnight. Squires was so angry that he had Winthrop placed under arrest. The unlucky Englishman was held under arms until the morning, when Colonel Walton came to his rescue.
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Early in the morning the four observers joined Lee’s and Longstreet’s staff as they reconnoitered the battleground, the first time the Confederates had done so since the battle erupted. It was unnerving for Fremantle to walk past the bodies of fallen soldiers, some of whom turned out to be still alive, opening their eyes as they heard him approach. The conspicuous party attracted the attention of a sharpshooter, which led to an encounter with a hidden battery. A few shells whizzed over their heads. One landed on a Federal field hospital, trapping the wounded inside when the building went up in flames.

Although Lee had wanted simultaneous artillery and infantry attacks, Longstreet was inordinately slow in placing his men. As a result, all the fighting that morning took place in one location around Cemetery Hill. By noon, there were 3,500 casualties. Hundred of horses were dead or dying, including sixteen killed by a shell in the yard next to Meade’s farmhouse. Then the battlefield went silent for a while, which allowed the midday sun to clear the enveloping smoke, and the next stage of Lee’s mangled plan went into motion. Francis Dawson was recovering from dysentery, but even in his weakened state he worked feverishly to transport ordnance to the 164 artillery crews facing the Federal center line: “Every arrangement was made to shell the enemy’s position, on Cemetery Hill, and follow this up by an attack in force,” he wrote. “Three or four hundred pieces of artillery were being fired as rapidly as the cannoneers could load them. Being in the centre of the front line, I had an excellent view of the fight.”
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Leaving Lawley and Scheibert at their post by the oak tree, Fremantle and Ross went down into the town, thinking that the view from the cupola above Ewell’s headquarters would offer a spectacular panorama. The idea became less attractive as shells began bursting from all directions. They had managed to reach the tollgate when flying shrapnel sliced into their guide. A little boy who had latched on to them began screaming and laughing hysterically each time another shell burst. Fremantle realized they had to get away as quickly as possible. But at the next explosion the child darted off before they could stop him. “I never saw this boy again, or found out who he was,” wrote Fremantle sadly.
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The two observers were still dodging shells when Longstreet finally ordered his corps to prepare for the attack. The Federal guns had stopped firing, leading him to assume that his own barrage had successfully destroyed their defense. He did not know that his artillerists’ aim had been slightly off, or that the Federals were simply conserving their ammunition for the expected assault. The Confederates, on the other hand, had used up all their long-range shells. Longstreet’s artillery chief, Edward P. Alexander, begged him to call the charge before the Federal guns started up again.

Dawson watched as 14,000 Confederate soldiers assembled in the woods. One division, led by the ringleted George Pickett, was almost exclusively Virginian. Prayers were read to the brigades, almost as though the men were receiving the last rites. “This is a desperate thing to attempt,” Dawson heard one of the brigadier generals remark. “Just then,” Dawson continued, “a hare which had been lying in the bushes, sprang up and leaped rapidly to the rear. A gaunt Virginian, with an earnestness that struck a sympathetic chord in many a breast, yelled out: ‘Run old heah; if I were an old heah I would run too.’ ”
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The Federals could not see the Confederates massing in the woods across from them. “From our position the eye ranged over a wide expanse of uneven country, fields broken by woods, showing nowhere any signs of an army movement, much less of conflict,” Charles Francis Adams, Jr., wrote in his memoirs. Even at the height of the battle, Gettysburg seemed pleasingly pastoral: “a quiet, midsummer, and champagne country. Neither our lines nor those of the enemy were visible to us; and the sounds of battle were hushed.” When the Confederate artillery fire began, Charles Francis Jr. and the survivors of the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry had been lying on the grass, near their horses, while they waited for orders. The thick heat and soft buzzing of insects acted as a kind of soporific. “Lulled by the incessant roar of the cannon,” he recorded, “while the fate of the army and the nation trembled in the balance, at the very crisis of the great conflict, I dropped quietly asleep. It was not heroic; but it was … war.”
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Forty-seven Confederate regiments spaced over the distance of a mile began advancing across the 1,400-yard field that lay in front of Cemetery Ridge. Francis Lawley—too ill to climb the tree himself—shouted up to Justus Scheibert to describe the charge to him. The Prussian started a running commentary full of technical descriptions, prompting Lawley to bellow at him in frustration to use layman’s terms, but Scheibert was at a loss for further words, having never witnessed such butchery. The closer the Confederates stumbled toward the concave Federal line, the easier targets they presented. Fremantle entered the wood where Pickett’s division had gathered only a few minutes before. Federal shells were bringing down huge tree limbs, and yet the wood was full of gray-clad soldiers, “in numbers as great as the crowd in Oxford Street in the middle of the day.” Then he saw that every single one was wounded.
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The woodland scene confused Fremantle. When he found Longstreet, who was sitting on a rail at the edge of the wood, he made an exceptionally thoughtless comment. “Thinking I was just in time to see the attack,” he wrote contritely, “I remarked to the General that ‘I wouldn’t have missed this for any thing.’ ” Longstreet gave a hollow laugh. “The Devil you wouldn’t! I would like to have missed it very much; we’ve attacked and been repulsed; look there!”
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Longstreet asked wearily for a drink, and Fremantle offered him a sip of rum from his flask. Scattered in heaps and fragments below were nearly seven thousand Confederate soldiers. George Pickett had lost two-thirds of his division, including all thirteen colonels. “I suppose that I was the first man to whom Pickett spoke when he reached the line,” wrote Francis Dawson. “With tears in his eyes, he said to me: ‘Why did you not halt my men here? Great God, where, oh! where is my division?’ I told him that he saw around him what there was left of it.”
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Fremantle was surprised by Longstreet’s calm demeanor. A Federal charge at this moment would have smashed the Confederate army into pieces. When one general protested that he could not gather his men, Longstreet sarcastically told him not to worry, the enemy would do it for him. Lee came riding up the hill to help rally the soldiers. “His face, which is always placid and cheerful, did not show signs of the slightest disappointment,” wrote Fremantle. His only concern was to ready a line of defense. Lee asked Colonel Edward Alexander whether they had enough ammunition to repel a Federal attack. The artillerist gave a bleak answer. Lee bravely acknowledged his part in the failed charge. “It was all my fault this time,” Lee told the dazed fugitives from Pickett’s charge; “form your ranks again when you get back to cover.”
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At 7:30
P.M.,
when he was certain that there would be no more fighting that day, Fremantle returned to camp to describe the recent events to Lawley.

On the following day, July 4, the battlefield was soaked by a long, steady downpour. “Many dear friends had yielded up their young lives during the hours which had elapsed,” wrote Charles Francis Jr., “but, though twenty thousand fellow creatures were wounded or dead around us, though the flood-gates of heaven seemed open and the torrents fell upon the quick and the dead, yet the elements seemed electrified with a certain magnetic influence of victory, and, as the great army sank down over-wearied in its tracks, it felt that the crisis and danger was passed—that Gettysburg was immortal.”
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Lee now had just one aim—to retreat with the remnants of his army before Meade attacked. In all, 70,000 Confederates had fought at Gettysburg; only 48,000 were leaving. The Federal army had one field hospital for every 12,000 soldiers; the Confederates simply gathered as many of the injured as they could and loaded them onto wagons. Thousands were left behind, and countless men died from their wounds or starved to death waiting for someone to rescue them. Two weeks after the battle, a civilian stumbled upon one of the abandoned camps. A party was sent to collect the survivors. A shocked witness wrote:

One boy without beard was stretched out dead, quite naked, a piece of blanket thrown over his emaciated form, a rag over his face, and his small, thin hands laid over his breast. Of the dead none knew their names, and it breaks my heart to think of the mothers waiting and watching for the sons laid in the lonely grave on that fearful battlefield. All of those men in the woods were nearly naked, and when ladies approached they tried to cover themselves with the filthy rags they had cast aside. The wounds themselves, unwashed and untouched, were full of worms. God only knows what they suffered.
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Lincoln would never forgive Meade for not driving after Lee. But the Union commander had lost a quarter of his army; 23,000 men were dead, wounded, or captured. His generals supported his decision to wait until they were sure of Lee’s movements. A temporary halt while the injured were removed and the supply trains arrived did not seem like an intolerable delay. The Federal cavalry caught up with the Confederates two days later. “As we approached Hagerstown, we heard some fighting ahead, between our cavalry and a cavalry force of the enemy. I rode ahead to see if any artillery was needed,” wrote Colonel Alexander.

During the day I had an accession to my staff. Capt. Stephen Winthrop … on the march from Gettysburg [had] negotiated with Gen. Sorrel, Longstreet’s adjutant, to be transferred to me. Sorrel asked me if I would consent—which I did very willingly, and he joined me about noon on the 6th. He was well built, stout & very muscular, good grey-blue eyes, a full, oval face, with a British mouth and nose, good natured, jolly, & brave. He was an excellent and admirable representation of his country.… That very afternoon he got a chance to show the stuff he was made of.
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Winthrop was returning with a fresh horse from Alexander’s reserve when he rode into one of Jeb Stuart’s regiments as it prepared to attack a Federal battery. He introduced himself and asked to carry their colors. The Confederates were too surprised to decline his request. He positioned himself at the front of the charge and leaped forward. “Winthrop’s horse was killed by a canister quite close to the guns, but the charge was repulsed. He got another horse, and went in a second charge,” recalled Alexander. Though armed with only his saber, he rode into the body of the Federal cavalry and plunged his sword into one of them, “coming out with his sabre bent & bloody all over.” Winthrop went off to look for Alexander, satisfied that his honor had been redeemed after his humiliating arrest at Gettysburg.

“The March back to the Potomac was dreary and miserable indeed,” wrote Dawson. “The rain fell in torrents. The clothing of the men was worn and tattered, and too many of them were without shoes. It was a heart-breaking business, and gloom settled down upon the army.” A trail eighteen miles long slowly ground through the mud toward Hagerstown in Maryland. During the journey, Longstreet talked to Fremantle and Lawley about the reasons for the Confederate defeat, placing the failure on numbers rather than tactics.
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“He said the mistake they had made was in not concentrating the army more, and making the attack yesterday with 30,000 men instead of 15,000,” reported Fremantle. “The advance had been in three lines, and the troops of Hill’s corps who gave way were young soldiers, who had never been under fire before.” Longstreet would retract this opinion after the war, however, writing in his own memoirs that forty thousand men “could not have carried the position at Gettysburg.”
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Lawley, Fremantle, Ross, and Scheibert arrived at Hagerstown on the seventh and took rooms together at the Washington Hotel.
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Lawley had a hard task ahead of him and was left alone by the others so he could write in peace. He could not disguise the grief in his heart: “For the first time during my residence in Secessia,” he began, “it is my province to record, as having happened under my own eyes, a failure of the Confederate arms.”
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