Sickles Sets the Stage

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The unsophisticated America of 1861 raised its armies and to some extent officered them in a manner which, a century later, it would be difficult for Americans to comprehend. If a young country lawyer in the Wildcat District of Pennsylvania decided that he would like to have a try at becoming an officer, his position of leadership in the community was of considerable help toward this end. It was just a matter of persuading a hundred or so eager young lumbermen and farm boys that he would make a good captain and that they should join the company he was organizing. In 1861 this was not difficult for any popular young fellow to do.

Army commissions had an appeal not only to backwoods lawyers and other small fry. They were something to be desired by the higher-ups. Captaincies were all right for those in the lower brackets of influence, but if one had already moved a few rungs up the ladder of political preferment, a star on the shoulder straps was not beyond one's grasp. After the experience of two world wars it all sounds somewhat haphazard and rather inefficient, but that was the way it could be done when Lincoln was trying to raise his first armies. More than one political personage talked himself into a general's commission. Of course the talk had to be backed up with recruits, votes, or some other good political

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commodity. In some cases the newly created civilian generals obtained their commissions from motives of pure patriotism. Others probably wanted to join the brass and come by a military record for purposes of the next political campaign. A mixture of the two motives could have been the case here and there. Thus the country was introduced to what came to be called political generals.

None of the political generals was more colorful and perhaps more militarily controversial than Daniel E. Sickles. A New York Tammany man, Sickles had made rapid strides politically. Then he killed his wife's paramour. Although he was acquitted of murder on the plea of the unwritten law, the whole business put Sickles' career into temporary eclipse. The war gave him another chance. Sickles raised a whole brigade of New York volunteers and even financed them for a time. He finally got his men into the Federal Army and a general's commission for himself.

Sickles always thought that he contributed much toward the winning of the Battle of Gettysburg. There are some today who may agree. There have always been many who think that he almost caused the North to lose the battle.[1] Since the small, but rather important part which the Bucktails and the other Reserves played in that three-day dreadful drama was brought about by what Dan Sickles did in his role, he has been introduced as the first character of the piece.

On that second day at Gettysburg Major General Daniel E. Sickles, in command of the Third Corps, had been ordered to hold the southern end of the Federal line. This was the spot where the ridge seemed to run out and the ground was low. Dan Sickles did not like the position. A half mile ahead along the Emmitsburg Road which swung southwest was a peach orchard. Sickles conceived the idea of advancing

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his corps to this higher ground. He would then extend his line back to the southeast down a slight slope through a field of wheat. From there the line would continue still southeast through a rugged, wooded hill, a maze of huge boulders, called Devil's Den. The Third Corps commander, after what he had seen take place at Chancellorsville, was afraid of a Confederate flanking movement. He was certain if this came that the Rebels would use the peach orchard and Devil's Den as points from which to drive the attack home. Sickles asked Meade for permission to advance his corps. Meade peremptorily refused. After a reconnaissance disclosed that the woods on the western side of the Emmitsburg Road were full of Southern soldiers, Sickles started his corps ahead anyway. As it turned out there were not enough men in the Third Corps to fill the long line from the Emmitsburg Road back to Devil's Den. Sickles' left was hanging in the air. Even the cavalry, for some reason, had been withdrawn. Then, too, there was a wide gap on the right between the Third and the Second Corps of Winfield Scott Hancock on the Cemetery Ridge line.[2]

At last about 4 P.m., Meade, leaving a conference of corps commanders, rode out to see if what he had heard about Sickles was true. About the time Meade reached the advance position Confederate James Longstreet's guns started a barrage into the left of the Third Corps line. Meade decided it was too late to move back. Sickles must stay there and fight. Meade dashed back and told Sykes to get his Fifth Corps in position to help the Third. It was going to need it.

Devil's Den was about due west of Little Round Top. Between the Round Tops and the Den was a little boulderstrewn valley. A small stream known as Plum Run meandered .around the rocks and scrubby trees of the marshy valley bottom. While the Confederate artillery was pound-

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ing the southern prong of Sickles' V-shaped line, soldiers of General John B. Hood were approaching the thinly held Devil's Den and the valley of Plum Run. They were on their way to Little Round Top. Strangely enough on Little Round Top there were only a few Northern signal men, and they were getting ready to leave. Right then Meade's chief engineer, General G. K. Warren, carved his niche in American military history. Warren recognized that Little Round Top was the key to the whole Union line. If the Rebels got that hill it might be a sad day indeed for Northern arms. Sykes had a part of his corps now moving up in accordance with Meade's order to succor Sickles. At Warren's request, he sent Colonel Strong Vincent's Brigade clambering up through the rocks and stubby trees of Little Round Top. They reached the crest just in time.

Vincent's men fought magnificently, charging down the hill right into the oncoming Confederates. Vincent was killed, and it became apparent that there were just too many yelling Rebels for the little brigade to hold back. In some way Warren had got a battery to the top of the hill. Now he looked around for more infantry. Ignoring the niceties of military protocol he ordered another brigade of Sykes' Corps (Stephen H. Weed's Brigade, Ayres' Division) onto Little Round Top. Once again it was just in time.

From the peach orchard through the wheatfield and on to Devil's Den the Federal line was going to pieces. Longstreet, after a slow start, was throwing men in all along the line. The attacks were disjointed, but they worked. Of the Fifth Corps, Sykes had had a brigade from each of Barnes' and Ayres' Divisions diverted to Little Round Top for the very necessary work there. The Fifth Corps commander sent Barnes' two remaining brigades along a little cross-road running west, north of Little Round Top. This road skirted the

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north side of the wheatfield and went on to the peach orchard. Barnes put his men in along the sagging Union line between those two never-to-be-forgotten landmarks.

Ayres had two brigades left, and good ones they were, composed of ten regiments of regulars. Shortly these regiments and a division from Hancock's Second Corps were thrown into the wheatfield sector. Things seemed better for a time. Union artillery placed along the little cross-road slugged it out with Southern batteries beyond the wheatfield.

Then in from the west across the Emmitsburg Road came the Mississippi division of General William Barksdale. The peach orchard salient, now hit from all sides, was gone. Both sides of Sickles' V had to fall back. As the infantry started a dogged rearward movement, the guns along the cross-road, which had been belching flame for so long, were limbered up and hustled back down the road across Plum Run. On the east side of the creek they were again put into action to try to buy a little time until reinforcements could be brought up. As the boys in butternut pushed the blue-clad soldiers back through the heat of the early evening, Dan Sickles was carried back with a bad leg wound.

Near where the Baltimore Pike crossed Rock Creek, well behind the front, the Pennsylvania Reserves spent the sultry afternoon. They heard Longstreet's guns finally announce the beginning of the battle. Soon the Reserves saw Barnes' First Division move out. Shortly after, the Second Division of Ayres' started forward. At last General Crawford gave the word, and the two brigades filed out through a little woods into a country lane toward the sound of battle billowing back toward them from over the ridges ahead. It started out as a nice, neat country road, one that any Bucktail would enjoy walking under more pleasant circumstances. The

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scene soon changed. The men began to meet walking wounded, plodding their weary way to the rear. A little farther on a train of ambulances clogged the narrow road, and Crawford's soldiers had to take to the fields on either side to let them jolt by. At last the column came out on the Taneytown Road. Ahead was Little Round Top. With the Third Brigade in the lead, the Reserves started up the rocky, brushy ridge on the northern side. More wounded were all but falling down the slope as the fresh soldiers clambered up.[3]

The Third Brigade finally reached the crest of the ridge. The men looked out across the little Plum Run Valley toward Devil's Den and the slope north of it. The sun, starting to lower toward the blue mountains in the west, was like a dull red ball of fire. The valley was filled with sullen retreating soldiers and disabled batteries falling back. Shot and shell were screaming over from unseen cannon in the woods beyond. On the crest of Little Round Top that gallant little Union battery, its captain killed, was still putting up a fight. Northern guns along the near side of the marshy stream and others off to the right were also returning the Rebel fire. The artillery seemed to be all that was holding the enemy back at that particular moment. All, except Ayres' regulars, the very best of soldiers, who had been pushed out of the wheatfield, were now firing and falling back, firing and falling back, back across the valley and up the ridge to the right of the Reserves. The air was thick and heavy with the smoke of battle. The enemy on the opposite ridge was barely visible, but one knew he was there from the little white puffs of smoke and the whining bullets.

It had been a busy afternoon for the hard working Sykes. Two of his divisions, both split up, had already been thrown into the fight to bolster Sickles' sagging sections. Now, his

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last division was to be committed to the battle. The Reserves had just reached the top of the ridge, when a staff officer galloped up to Colonel Joseph W. Fisher, of the Third Brigade, with urgent orders. The remnants of Vincent's and Weed's brigades, who had saved Little Round Top earlier that afternoon, were in trouble over between the two hilltops. Fisher was directed to hurry his brigade over there. So Sykes had his last division divided as the other two had been .[4]

Just a few days before Colonel Martin D. Hardin, the skipper of the Twelfth Reserves, had been chatting with his old friend, Lieutenant Charles E. "Cog" Hazlett, who commanded Battery D, Fifth U.S. Artillery. The artillery officer was wearing a small white hat in the late June heat. As the Twelfth's colonel left his friend he jokingly quipped: "Cog, a fight is shaping up; don't wear that white hat into battle." Now Hardin had ridden up nearer the summit of Little Round Top for a better view across Plum Run. He met a stretcher party coming down bearing the dead body of the commander of that valiant battery atop the little hill. It was "Cog" Hazlett. He had been shot through the head by a gray sharpshooter. "Cog" Hazlett had forgotten to remove his little white hat.

Colonel Samuel M. Jackson, of the Eleventh Reserves, had been peering dimly across to the high ground opposite. So had General Crawford. Both officers had found out that the figures emerging from across that smoke-filled valley were no longer retreating Federals. The Southern soldiers were now moving in for the kill. As Fisher led his men off toward the left, Crawford sent word to Jackson to keep his regiment where it was. So the Eleventh remained with the First Brigade, making five regiments to try to fight off the steadily advancing enemy who had begun to clamber up the

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ridge. As Fisher moved away, and McCandless tried to get the First Brigade formed to take the place of the Third, there was a general mix-up of formations. None of the survivors who wrote about the battle later could ever quite clearly explain just what happened in the early twilight of that day. As the Rebels came laboring up the rocky ridge, they poured a withering fire into the confused lines of the First Brigade. Somehow McCandless got his lines straightened out. It was the Sixth Regiment on the right, north of the little road which had brought them to the battle. The Eleventh was in the center, with the First on its left. The second line was massed on the first, the Second on the right, and the Bucktails on the left.[5]

The Confederates reached the Eleventh first. This regiment was armed with smoothbores. At point blank range they sprayed the Southerners with buckshot. Then all along the line it was bayonet against bayonet and gun butt against gun butt for a few mad moments. The tired, battle-grimed soldiers of the South had been fighting a long time. They were no match just then for the Pennsylvanians who had just come into the battle. Some Reserves officer called for a charge. Colonel Jackson said it was he. Crawford reported that it was his idea. Yelling and firing, the Union line surged forward. Pushing the Rebels back down the slope, the Reserves encountered a stiff fire from their left. Down on the marshy valley floor, with Colonel Taylor up front, the Bucktails and the Second inclined toward this heavy fire. So it was the full brigade front with the First Rifles on the extreme left which shoved the enemy across Plum Run and back up the opposite slope amid the trees and rocks. Lieutenant Colonel Niles, of the Bucktails, fell wounded near the stream, as he was observing the telling effect of breech-

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loaders in the hands of some of the mountain men he had brought to war two years before. One of the many stone fences which interlaced the Gettysburg countryside was at the top of the opposite ridge. It extended from near Devil's Den to the cross-road along which the Reserves had marched to get to the fighting. On the west side of the stone wall was the wheatfield. At the fence the Confederates tried to stage a little rally, but it was of no use. So the Rebels who had not been killed, captured, or wounded kept on going, some toward the Den, others across the wheatfield. McCandless gave orders to let them go. It was beginning to get dark. The stone wall was a good place to stop.[6]
"I won't die, I won't die." Those were the words of a Perry County Dutchman of the Bucktail Company B, who lost an arm when a Union shell exploded near the south end of the stone wall. Some Northern cannoneers were trying to hit the Rebels in Devil's Den. The Reserves' advance had brought the Bucktails close to the Den, and the enemy was keeping up a mean fire from the rocky rampart. Captain Neri Kinsey, Company C, and Lieutenant John Kratzer, K Company, were in a huddle to decide what to do about the persistent shooting of the unflagging Southern soldiers hidden among the rocks. The shell which took the arm of the Company B soldier, broke up the Kinsey-Kratzer conference, wounding Kinsey, and killed a Wildcat of Company I. One miscreant Union shell had caused casualties to four Bucktail companies. That was how confused the fighting had become.

Kratzer had his men and a few soldiers from several other companies near the end of the stone fence. The K Company captain and Captain Samuel Mack, E Company, with three or four of the men, crawled out through the brush in the

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growing darkness toward Devil's Den to try to get a better idea of the enemy strength. They soon found out that the rocks were full of Rebels. While the two captains were talking it over behind a boulder, almost from out of nowhere appeared the old man himself, Colonel Charles F. Taylor, with Fenton Ward, first lieutenant in Company I. As the officers from the Wildcat counties filled in the regimental commander with the details of the strong enemy force on their left, a Southern sharpshooter found his mark. Kratzer caught his colonel as he fell. The men carried Taylor back. It was getting too dark to worry about Devil's Den. The Bucktails had lost another good skipper, an adopted Wildcat from downstate Chester County.[7]