The Battle of Gettysburg, July 4th, 1863

The New York TimesVol. XII-No.3676 , New York Monday, July 6, 1863

Price Three Cents.

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The Great Battles

Splendid Triumph of the Army of the Potomac

Chambersburgh in our Possession

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Details From our Special Correspondent

Headquarters Army of Potomac,

Saturday Night, July 4

Who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are immovable fastened upon a central figure of transcendently absorbing interest, the dead body of an oldest born, crushed by a shell in a position where a battery should never have been sent, and abandoned to death in a building where surgeons dared not to stay?

The battle of Gettysburg! I am told that it commenced on the 1st of July, a mile of the town, between two weak brigades of infantry and some doomed artillery and the whole force of the rebel army. Among other cost of this error was the death of Reynolds. Its value was priceless, however, though priceless was the young and the old blood with which it was bought. The error put us on the defensive, and gave us the choice of position. From the moment that our artillery and infantry rolled back through the main street of Gettysburg and rolled out of the town to the circle of eminencies south of it. We were not to attack but to be attacked. The risks, the difficulties and the disadvantages of the coming battle were the enemies. Our were the heights for artillery, ours the short, inside lines for maneuvering and reinforcing, ours the cover of stonewalls, fences and crest of hills. Upon which we were driven in accept battle was wonderfully favorable to us. Popular description of it would be to say that it was in form an elated and somewhat sharpened horseshoe, with the toe to Gettysburg and the heel to the south.

Lee's plan of battle was simple. He messed his troops upon the east side of this shoe of position, and thundered on it obstinately to break it. The shelling of our batteries from the nearest overlooking hill and the unflinching courage and complete discipline of the army of the Potomac repelled the attack. It was renewed at the point of the shoe, renewed desperately at the southwest heel, renewed on the western side with an effort consecrated to success by Ewell's earnest oaths and on which the fate of the invasion of Pennsylvania was fully put at stake. Only a perfect infantry and artillery educated in the midst of charges of hostile brigades could possibly have sustained this assault. Hancock's Corps did sustain it, and has covered itself with immortal honors by its constancy and courage. The total wreck of Cusuing's battery, the list of the killed and wounded, the losses of officers, men and horses Cowen sustained, and the marvelous outspread upon the board of death of dead soldiers and dead animals, of dead soldiers in blue, and dead soldiers in gray, more marvelous to me than any thing I have ever seen in war, are ghastly and shocking testimony to the terrible fight of the Second Corps that none will gain say. That Corps will ever have the distinction of breaking the pride and power of the rebel invasion.

For such details as I have the heart for. The battle commenced at daylight, on the side of the horseshoe position, exactly opposite to that which Ewell had sworn to crush through. Musketry preceded the rising of the sun. A thick wood veiled this fight but out of its leafy darkness arose the smoke and the surging and swelling of the fire, form intermittent to continuous and crushing, told of the wise tactics of the rebels of attacking in force and changing their troops. Seemingly the attack of the day was to be made through that wood. The demonstration was protracted, it was absently preparative, but there was no artillery fire accompanying the musketry and shrewd officers in our western front mentioned, with the gravity due to our fact that the rebels had fueled trees at intervals upon the edge of the wood they occupied in face of our position. These were breastworks for the protection of artillery men.

Suddenly, and about 10 in the forenoon, the firing on the east side, and everywhere about our lines, ceased. A silence as of deep sleep fell upon the field of battle. Our army cooked, ate and slumbered. The rebel army moved 120 guns to the west, and messed there Longstreet's corps and Hill's Corps, to hurl upon the realty weakest point of our entire position.

Eleven o'clock, Twelve o'clock, One o'clock. In the shadow cast by the tiny farm house 16 by 20, which Gen. Meade had made his Headquarters, lay wearied Staff officers and tired reporters. There was not wanting to the peacefulness of the scene the singing of a bird, which had a nest in a peach tree within the tiny yard of the whitewashed cottage. In the midst of its warbling, a shell screamed over the house, instantly followed by another and another, and in a moment the air was full of the most complete artillery prelude to an infantry battle that was ever exhibited. Every size and form of shell known to British, and to Americans gunnery shrieked, whirled, moaned, whistled and wrathfully fluttered above our ground. As many as six in a second, constantly two in a second, burning and screaming over and around the headquarters, made a very hell of fire that amazed the oldest officers. They burst in the yard, burst next to the fence on both sides, furnished as usual with the hitched horses of aids and orderlies. The fastened animals reared and plunged with terror. Then one fell, then another, sixteen laid dead and mangled before the fire ceased. Still fastened by their halters, which gave the expression of being wickedly tied up to die painfully. These brute victims of a cruel war touched all hearts. Through the midst of the storm of screaming and exploding shells, and ambulance, driven by its frenzied conductor at full speed, presented to all of us the marvelous spectacle of a horse going rapidly on three legs. A hinder one had been shot off at the hock. A shell tore up the little step of Headquarters Cottage. Another ripped through the low garret. The remaining pillar went almost immediately to the howl of a fixed shot that Whittworth must have made. During this fire the houses at twenty and thirty feet distant, were receiving their death, and soldiers in federal blue were torn to pieces in the road and died with the peculiar yell that blend the extorted cry of pain with horror and despair. Not an orderly, not and ambulance, not a straggler was to be seen upon the plain swept by the tempest of orchestral death thirty minutes after it commenced. Were not one hundred and twenty pieces of artillery, trying to out from the field every battery were had in position to resist their purposed infantry attack, and to sweep away the slight defenses behind which our Infantry were waiting. Forty minutes, fifty minutes counted on watches that ran! Oh so languidly. Shells through the two lower rooms. A shell into the chimney that daringly did not explode. Shells in the yard. The air thicker and fuller and more deafening with the howling and whirring of these infernal missiles. The chief of staff struck, Seth Williams, loved and respected through the army, separated from instant death by two inches of space vertically.   An Aide bored with a fragment of iron through the bone of the arm. Another, cut with an exploded piece. And the time measured on the sluggish watches was one hour and forty minutes.

Then there was a lull and we knew that the rebel infantry was charging. And splendidly they did this work, the highest and severest test of the staff that soldiers are made of. Hall's division, in line of battle, came first on the double quick. Their muskets at the "right shoulder shift". Longstreet came as the support, at the usual distance, with war cries and a savage insolence as yet unuttered by defeat. they rushed in perfect order across the open field up to the muzzles of guns, which tore lanes through hem as they came. But they met men who were their equals in spirit, and their superiors in tenacity. There never was better fighting since Thermopyalse then was done yesterday by our defenses. They had cleaned cannoniers and horses from one of the guns, and were whirling it around to use upon us. The bayonet drove them back. But so hard pressed was this brave infantry that at one time from the exhaustion of their ammunition, every battery upon the principal crest of attack was allent, except Crowen's. His service of grape and canister was awful. It enabled our line, outnumbered two to one, forced to beat back Longstreet, and then to charge upon him and take a great number of his men and himself prisoners. Strange sight, so terrible was our musketry and artillery fire, that when Armstead's brigade was checked in it charge and stood reeling, all of its men dropped their muskets and crawled on their hands and knees underneath the stream of shot till close to our troops, where they made signs of surrendering. They passed through our ranks scarcely noticed and slowly went down the slope to the road in the rear.

Before they got there the grand charge of Ewell, solemnity sword to and carefully prepared, had failed.

The rebels had retreated to their lines, and opened anew the storm of shell and shot from their 120 guns. Those who remained at the headquarters will never the crouching, and dodging, and running, of the Butternut colored captives when they got under this, their friends fire. It was appalling to as good soldiers even as they were.

What remains to say of the fight? It staggled surly on the middle of the horse shoe on the west grew big and angry on the heel at the southwest, lasted there till 8 o'clock in the evening, when the fighting Sixth corps went joyously by as a reinforcement through the wood, bright with coffee pots on the fire.

INCIDENTS OF THE BATTLE

Capt. Cushing, Company A, Fourth Regular artillery, was killed, and his battery suffered severely. The gallantry of this officer is beyond praise. Severely wounded early in the afternoon, he refused to leave his post beside his guns, but continued to pour grape and canister into the advancing columns of the rebels unit they had reached the very muzzles of his pieces and sure of their capture, were attempting to turn them upon our forces when they were driven off by our infantry. At this moment Capt. Cushing received his death wound, and fell lifeless to the earth. Heaps of corpses and wounded in front of his battery this morning, told a terrible tale of the effectiveness of its fire.

None of the company were taken prisoners by the rebels. After the battle but one gun of this battery remained uninjured, the rest having been dismounted or destroyed by the terrible fire of the enemy which for the time was concentrated upon the batteries on this part of the field. In front of this position fell dead the rebel Gen. Dick Garnett, who was courageously leading is men in this charge upon our batteries on Crow Hill. The rebel Gen. Armstead was also wounded here while advancing at the head of his brigade.

About fifty yards in front of our batteries was a stone wall, in a southwesterly direction, behind which laid several of our regiments, picking off the enemy as they advanced up the slope of the hill. Notwithstanding the terrible fire poured into their ranks from our guns so impetuous was the charge of the rebels that they drove our men from their positions, and were advancing upon our batteries, several of which they captured, but the capture was only temporary. Gen. Gibbon's division, composed of Gen. Webb's, Harrell's and Hall's brigades at the point of the bayonet drove them back over the stone wall into the plain below.

Gen. Gibbon's division captured fourteen stand of colors and a large number of prisoners. Twenty eight stands of colors in all were captured by the Second Corps.

Gen. Armstead, when taken prisoner, asked immediately for Gen. Meade, who was his classmate at West Point.

Col. Ward, of the Fifteenth Massachusetts, was killed.

Corp. Hayden, of the First Minnesota, was captured, escaped, seized a musket and seized a rare opportunity and actually made ten rebels surrender. While marching them to Gen. Gibbon's quarters, a rebel behind a tree of the way drew a bead on him with his rifle. Hayden saw him in time to bring his piece to a level and cry out "Surrender." The fellow actually threw down his gun and joined the cavalcade, and Hayden came in with eleven captives.

Wounded prisoners taken in Gettysburg this morning report that Gen. Bradley L. Johnson, of Maryland, was killed in Thursdays attack on our right. He was struck by a shell while charging our lines at the head of his division. Gen. Hood is also reported to have had his leg shot off, and from the effects of which he was since died.

Rebel officers with whom I have conversed frankly admit that the result of the last two days has been most disastrous to their cause, which depended, they say upon the success of Lee's attempt to transfer the seat of war from Virginia to the Northern Border States. A wounded rebel Colonel told me that in the first and second days fight, the rebel losses were between ten and eleven thousand. Yesterday they were greater still. In one part of the field in a space not more then twenty feet in circumference, in front of Gen. Gibbon's division, I counted seven dead rebels, three of whom were piled on top of each other. And close by in a spot not more than fifteen feet square lay fifteen "graybacks" stretched in death. These were the adventurous sprits who in the face of the horrible stream of canister shell and musketry, scaled the fence wall in their attempt upon our batteries. Very large numbers of wounded were also strewn around, not to mention more who had crawled away or been taken away. The field is front of the stonewall was literally covered with dead and wounded, a large proportion of whom were rebels. Where our musketry and artillery took effect they lay in swaths, as if mown down by a scythe. This field presented a horrible sight, such as has never yet been witnessed during the war. Not less than one thousand dead and wounded laid in a space less then four acres in extent and that too, after numbers had crawled away to places of shelter.

{Please stay with me, some of the print on this part is very hard to read!}

Partial List of Killed and Wounded

Lieut. Dayton L. Curd, Commanding Co. E, 166th New York, was killed instantly by a shell. His body presented a ghastly sight. He was struck in the middle of the breast by a missle which exploded and tore him lilerally in two. Half of his face was also torn away by a fragment of shell.

Charles Lecisur, Co E, 108th N.Y Killed, J. Wickham, Co E. 108th N.Y Wounded, Sergeant A. B Hadley, Wounded, Sergt. M. C Bryant, Co E. 100th NY Wounded, J.D. Ansink Co. E. 108th New York, Wounded, ,

Cowan's New York Battery -

Killed

Privates James Gray, Otis C. Billings, Jacob Y. McLlory, Edmond Peto.

Wounded

Lieut. Wm. P. Wright - right breast,

Sergt. A.C. Kimburk, Head

Corp. Alex Mckensie, foot

Private Henry {?} thigh, mortal

Private Gates, both legs, severe

Private Henry W. Clark, leg

Private Thadmuis Sherman, hand, slight

Lieut. Cyrus Wicken, Co E. 108th New York, killed

J. Brounell Co. E 198th New York Wounded

Corp W. Misgate, Co e. 108th Ny wounded

Wm. Leach, Co E 108th Ny, wounded

D. Lappens, Co E, 108th NY wounded

Col. Atloph Can Hartung, 74th Pen, Killed

Capt. Heily, 74th Pen, missing

Maj. Mitzet, 74th Pen, wounded

Capt. Myer 74th Pen, wounded

Lieut. Roth, 74th Pen missing

Lieut. Knoble, 74th Pen, missing

Lieut. Newmeyer, 74th Pen missing

Col. Francise, 7th New Jersey, badly wounded thigh

Lieut. Col. Price, 7th New Jersey wounded leg

Capt Henley 6th New Jersey, seriously

Lieut. Leach, 1st Michigan, killed

Eight New Jersey

Capt. Edwis C. Nichols Co G, severly thigh

Capt. Andrew H. davis, Co H. thigh

Lieut. Henry Hariford, Co G shoulder

Lieut. Srewne Co. B leg shattered

Lieut. Andrew Mandeville, Co D {?}

Col. {?} Ramsay slight

Capt. Pettits battery killed

Lieut. Walker 5th NY Killed

Capt. Caldwell, Gen Caldwel's Staff, wounded in leg

Col. O. Kane 69th Pen, Killed

Lieut. Col Steel, 7th Michigan killed

All the field officers of the 1st Minnesota were wounded, Lieut. Col. Adams mortally.

{Note, there is more listed, but very hard to read their names}

S. Wilkeson