"War Is a Passionate Drama"

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As darkness settled down over the battlefield, the Bucktails prepared to anchor the left of the brigade line through?; out the coming night. All along the stone wall the Reserves were dug in, from the First Rifles, so close to Devil's Den, to the Sixth, over near the cross-road. A thirsty Bucktail, picking his way down the slope back to Plum Run to fill his canteen, could see stretcher parties moving here and there in the hollow. Stars blinked in the heavens as though in amazement at the awful scene of carnage on the earth below. A yellow moon came out, and the huge boulders of the Den cast eerie shadows. Crawford spent the uneasy night with his men along the stone wall. This is the message the grim-faced division commander had sent topside: "I respectfully ask instructions as to what to do with the brigade of my division now in front. Its flanks are not protected and its position is exposed." No one got much sleep that hot summer night, but a Reserves officer years later remembered: "For a little while, perhaps an hour, not a sound, could be heard, even the wounded forgetting their pain in slumber."[1]

It must have been a particularly worrisome night for young Ross Hartshorne. They had carried Taylor back dead. Lieutenant Colonel Niles had picked up a Rebel bullet as the regiment had crossed Plum Run. Casualties had made Hartshorne commander of the Bucktails. Tomorrow there

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would be more fighting. Major W. Ross Hartshorne, who had come to the war with the Wildcats from Clearfield County in the early spring of 1861, had a lot of war behind him. At Antietam, while McGee was in nominal command, it had been Hartshorne who had called the shots. It was different now. This time the responsibility would be his. Hartshorne had much war ahead of him, too. He was destined to lead the Bucktails until they were mustered out. Like so many of his men, he would then join up for the duration. Before the war ended Hartshorne would be brevetted brigadier general. Ending the war with a star, he would not even get an eagle while he skippered the Bucktails.[2]

As the unwelcome dawn broke, the restless Rebels in Devil's Den resumed their firing. Hartshorne ordered two companies of Bucktails out through the thicket to find out something about the number of the enemy hidden among the boulders. It did not take long to learn that there were just as many gray soldiers in the rocks that morning as there had been when their fire had finally faded out the night before. So the two Bucktail companies, with plenty of good cover for themselves, settled down to the job of picking off the Confederates, one by one, as they exposed themselves to shoot. Once again the First Rifles thanked the Almighty for their Sharps. Hidden in their own rocks and bushes, the Bucktails could fire and reload always keeping covered. The poor "Rebs," with their muzzle-loaders, just had to present a target now and then. Each time this happened there was always one or more Pennsylvania soldiers ready to draw a careful bead. The Confederates finally tired of the uneven fight. Taking advantage of their superiority in numbers, they spilled out of their rocky retreat and shoved the two little Bucktail companies back.

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Somewhat later Lieutenant Kratzer, with about thirty Volunteers, had a go at the Rebels in the Den. Using the Skirmish tactics devised by Kane, Kratzer's men got very close to the Southern soldiers before they were fired upon. Suddenly, from within the rocks came a terrific blast of musketry that wrought havoc among the Union skirmishers. 'The Bucktails returned the fire. Kratzer and a gray-clad officer engaged in a pistol duel at close range. The K Company lieutenant felled his man, but caught a bullet in his arm in the process. Soon the little struggle died down with the rifle company volunteers falling back to their main line.[3]
It was late morning, and the fighting on the right of the long Union line had finally stopped. While the Bucktails and the Rebels in Devil's Den had been mixing it up in a very small way, there had been some serious fighting around Culp's Hill. The night before the Confederates had seized a goodly part of this hill. As the day began, so began an earnest

effort on the part of Ewell's soldiers to take the important Union bastion. There had been some gallant charges on the part of the Southerners. The Twelfth Corps of General Henry W. Slocum was solidly dug in. Hunt had his Federal artillery well placed. Every Confederate attack was beaten off. So the big fighting on the Union right stopped just about the same time that the little fighting quit on the Union left.

An ominous calm enveloped the whole vast field.[4] On a very hot July noon long rows of Confederate guns on Seminary Ridge silently pointed east toward another ridge scarcely a mile away where Union soldiers sat around with

arms neatly stacked. Other rows of Northern guns pointed west across a highway which, all the soldiers knew by that time, led to a little Maryland village called Emmitsburg. Beyond that road were open fields, and beyond the fields was a wooded ridge. On this wooded ridge stood a seminary, where

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young men could study for God's ministry. On the opposite ridge was a cemetery, where God's ministers buried the dead. On both those ridges, that hot July noontime, there were thousands of God's men who had come to fight each other over issues which many of them only vaguely understood.

At last the somber silence was broken by a single signal gun along the western ridge. Soon the long lines of cannon on both ridges were barking flame and fury. As the greatest cannonading on the American continent reached its peak, it was just one solid sound that reverberated across the little valley between the seminary and the cemetery. After a long while and after much havoc had been wrought the guns quieted down. It was time for the second act of the stark drama. Out of the woods on the western ridge came lines of gray soldiers. Ranks neatly dressed, they started toward a little clump of trees on the eastern ridge, and marched into history.

All of the other deadly fighting at Gettysburg seems to pale before the dramatic pageantry of that grand but futile charge of the Southern soldiers of Generals George E. Pickett and James J. Pettigrew against the Northern soldiers of Winfield Scott Hancock at the center of the Union line. With the repulse of the famous charge, the battle was as good as over. Lee had gambled and had lost. In retrospect it all seems quite simple. Since Lee could do no more, and Meade did not believe that he should chance any great counter-action, why fight any more that day? Battles are not always stopped when hindsight says that they should have been. So it was at Gettysburg. Even after the battle had been won and lost, the fighting sprang out again over on the sector held by the Pennsylvania Reserves.

One might say that the Reserves viewed the drama of Pickett's great charge as though from the wings. Some of

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the regiments were so placed that they could watch the gray lines move across the farmland. In spite of all their officers could do, some of the men slipped off to the right and formed a little line on the flank of the advancing Confederate columns. From there they were able to get in a little fire at Pickett's soldiers, until their officers pulled them back where they belonged .[5]

Just as a calm had settled down over the field before the fines of guns had started belching their destruction, a breathless lull pervaded the scene after the last of Pickett's men, "`beaten, baffled, and discomfited," had struggled back across the valley. The lull was not for long on the Reserves' front. The rather unnecessary afterpiece of the dramatic battle came about because of the harassing fire of a revengeful battery.[6] The night before the Rebels had placed some guns near the cross-road which ran near the Reserves' right and on toward the peach orchard. All day long this battery had sporadically sent a few shells into the Union line. About five o'clock the gray cannoneers really opened up. After the enemy guns had been at it for a while, Crawford rode up to McCandless at his stone wall line, and told the brigade commander to try to take the battery and to clean out the Confederates in the woods beyond the wheatfield. This order came from Sykes. The Reserves always thought that it was Meade's idea that they should advance. The story that the Reserves got was that the general commanding and a group of lesser brass on Little Round Top had been watching the work of the Rebel guns and the little white puffs of smoke being sent up by the Confederate sharpshooters in the woods. Meade had decided that the Southerners must be driven out.[7]
Anyway, the First Brigade, with the Eleventh Regiment F still attached, prepared to start the little action. The Sixth

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Regiment was to move up through some woods north of the cross-road toward the bothersome battery. The Bucktails would advance on the brigade left through another wood. Between these two outfits, the other regiments were to go in across the wheatfield. A wounded soldier of the One Hundred Fortieth Pennsylvania who had lain for a long time at the edge of the woods on the far side of the wheatfield saw the Reserves moving forward. He was still grateful years later when he wrote: "I recall it now as one of the most sublime sights I ever witnessed."

The Confederate artillerists saw the Sixth coming through the woodland. After a few more defiant shots, they limbered up and withdrew. It did not take the men of the Sixth long to disperse the battery's infantry support. With the battery out of the way, the regiments pushing through the wheatfield now had only musketry to face. They reached the woods beyond the field where the fighting became very sharp for a time. Just as the enemy resistance was breaking up, McCandless learned that the Bucktails on the left had run into the Fifteenth Georgia Infantry.[8]

The report was true enough. The Confederate divisions of McLaws and Hood (Hood had been wounded and his division was commanded by E. M. Law) were withdrawn after Pickett's charge was beaten off. General Henry L. Benning's Brigade of Georgians very tardily received the word of the retirement. This brigade was just withdrawing when the advancing Bucktails bumped into their Fifteenth Regiment. Taking advantage of the surprise, the Bucktails let out a yell and charged into the Rebel regiment. The Georgians tried to take cover behind a stone wall. They put up a stout fight for a few minutes, but the First Rifles were too much for them. Many of the Georgians were captured and a proud Bucktail non-com took their colors. By this time McCandless

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had his other regiments headed south through the woods in support of the Bucktails. The regiments in the rear pushed up, and the whole Northern brigade line hurried the rest of Benning's retiring Georgians back until the appearance of other gray outfits ahead made it quite advisable to call off the chase [9]

The attack of the Pennsylvanians against the Georgians, which the Bucktails initiated, had come as a complete surprise to Benning's isolated men. McCandless' Brigade in addition to a large number of prisoners, took a Napoleon gun, three caissons, and over three thousand small arms. One party of Southerners was engaged in butchering beeves when the shouting Northerners charged in. One Reserves regiment caught a Rebel burial detail at its grim business. Before the day was over this Yankee outfit had to complete the job which the Georgians left unfinished when they beat their hasty retreat.

The Reserves spent the night in the woods south of the wheatfield. No one knew just where the enemy was or in what strength. No fires were allowed. Many dead from two days’ fighting lay about unburied. The shadows of that cheerless night playing through the corpse-strewn woodland treated a grotesque imagery which the men never forgot.[10] One does not expect that the common soldiers were very conversant with the utterances of the great military theorists of the day. Certainly the Bucktails were not. However, as the men tried to settle down in the woods that night, it is certain that they would agree with one statement of Jomini. After all they had witnessed during those two terrible days, they were convinced that "war is a passionate drama."

In a battle where there was so much of the spectacular, it is to be expected that the plain ordinary fighting will go unnoticed. At Gettysburg, it fell to the lot of the Pennsylvania

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Reserves to play a relatively minor role. The men of McCandless' Brigade always felt that they were entitled to more credit than they received for stopping the Southern soldiers at Plum Run July 2. Perhaps their work there has not received the recognition it should have.[11]

In the two days fighting the Bucktails had more casualties than any other regiment in the First Brigade. In fact the killed and wounded of the First Rifles were in about the same numbers as in the other big battles in which they had fought, except, of course, Fredericksburg. At Gettysburg the Reserves' list of officers killed and wounded was especially long. One Bucktail explained the heavy officer toll very simply. He said the Reserves' ranks had become so thin that there were almost as many officers as men. [12]