Between the Lines at Gettysburg

The photo shows the site of the large-scale fight between the pickets of the two armies that took place largely on the William Bliss farmstead between the lines on July 2d and 3d. Elwood Christ wrote the book on the fighting and estimated that about 4,500 men were involved (about equally divided between the two sides), and casualties were 830. In the photo, the site of the farm is indicated by the bushes in the middle ground, below the lone tree in the center. The photo was taken looking east from the North Carolina monument toward the Union center on Cemetery Ridge. The Angle and Copse of Trees (purported objective of the Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble Charge on July 3d) can be seen to the right of center.

Gettysburg Railway Cut (2)

 Above: View South Southeast toward the Lutheran Theological Seminary on Seminary Ridge.

Above: View Southeast toward the town of Gettysburg (hidden by trees).

These views were taken from the same position under the bridge abutment as the previous view posted on Nov. 16, but the camera is now pointed southerly as opposed to northerly. In the upper view, the monuments of the 95th N.Y. Inf. and the 6th Wisc. Inf. may be seen on the right. The cut was shallower as it tailed off toward Gettysburg, and the Confederates were able to better utilize it as a protected firing position to rake the 6th Wisc. Inf. in its advance from the Chambersburg Pike (middle ground).

Straggling (and General Early’s Humor)

Gen. Jubal Anderson Early ("Old Jube")

Straggling was a major problem in Civil War armies, and was particularly irksome to stern disciplinarians who drove their men to make some prodigious marches. Exchanges between such officers and their subordinates with respect to the “evil” were sometimes testy but humorous. One such instance was noted in a communication between General Early and Stonewall Jackson: “[General Early] who, when he received a note with Gen. Jackson’s compliments, & desiring to know why he saw so many stragglers in rear of Early’s division that day, answered with his own compliments that it was probably because Gen. Jackson rode in the rear of the division.”

Valley of Death

Another shot from our visit to Gettysburg last weekend. This is the view west across the Plum Run Valley (“Valley of Death”) from Little Round Top toward Houck’s Ridge (middle ground) and Devil’s Den. The wood line in the distance is Seminary Ridge, from which Longstreet’s Corps launched its attacks on July 2, 1863.

Gettysburg Railway Cut

View northwest showing the famous railway cut (well, one of them) west of Gettysburg, which was the scene of heavy fighting between elements of Cutler's Union brigade and Davis' Confederate brigade on July 1, 1863. On the ground shown, the 2d and 42d Miss. of Davis opposed the 95th N.Y. and 14th Brooklyn of Cutler in an epic struggle that resulted in heavy casualties on both sides and the surrender of over 200 Confederates trapped in the cut.

I was at the park last weekend with friends. To get this photo, I climbed down the embankment of the cut underneath the park bridge for the roadway over it and onto its abutment. The cut here is through McPherson's Ridge and is relatively deep for about 200 yards of its length. The view is toward the mountains at the Cashtown Gap.

Military Greats: Great Generals (4)

Above: Count Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke depicted on the cover of Daniel J. Hughes (ed.), Moltke on the Art of War

Picking up this thread, here is the fourth set of ten.

Napoleon (1769-1821)

Wellington (1769-1852)

San Martin (1778-1850)

Scott, Winfield (1786-1866)

Lee (1807-1870)

Jackson (1824-1863)

Grant (1822-1885)

Sherman (1820-1891)

Moltke the Elder (1800-1891)

Hindenburg (1847-1934)

Fallen Stars

Above: Federal Gen. Elon J. Farnsworth was killed in action at Gettysburg, July 3, 1863.

I’ve been putting together a spreadsheet showing details of fatal battle casualties among general officers in the cavalry arm during the U.S. Civil War. According to data assembled by Russell K. Brown, there were 158 general officer combat-related fatalities in the war (78 Federal and 80 Confederate), the battlefields of which he aptly characterized as “the great killing grounds of American generals.”¹

“Whoever saw a dead cavalryman?” was a popular calumny at the time of the war, and I was curious to examine the overall data on general officer combat deaths to discover the representation of cavalrymen among them. (I am doing this as well for field grade officers, but that is another, more ambitious, matter altogether.) Basically, I identify each general, their rank and unit, and the place, date, and circumstances of their death or fatal wounding.

I’ve only just begun this project, but it’s proving much more interesting (and challenging) than I imagined.

¹Brown, Maj. Russell K., Jr. "Fallen Stars." Military Affairs, 45:1 (Feb. 1981), 9-12.