Good afternoon and welcome to Gettysburg National
Military Park my name is Jim Flook and I'm one of the season rangers here at the battlefield
and I get the privilege of presenting these programs over the summer months and this afternoon
we're going to be talking about the fighting that takes place here on Culp's Hill. So a
couple things just to make you aware of we will be moving down one of the trails here
it's a short jaunt, about a hundred yards or so, but just watch your step you're gonna
have loose stones and some things. It will be about fifty minutes in length we'll start
out here and after we move down the trail we're gonna make three more stops. We're gonna
talk about the breastworks that are built, talking about the seventy eight and hundred
and second New York, then we're gonna move to the hundred and thirty seventh New York,
talk about the ride into the line on the night of July second and then we'll extend onto
what we call Little Culp's Hill, the spot of the second Maryland Battalion and talk
about the fighting that is on July third. We've got a small group, there is about four
of you so please, feel free to ask questions. Somebody asked earlier, our friend Matt here
is going to be filming the program and he's doing that for two reasons; one of the things
the park is trying to do is to get more of a social media presence, so if you use Facebook
I am going to encourage you to like us on Facebook, you have to type in Gettysburg national
military park, all four words, in order to get us. When we put these online we usually
throw up a link on Facebook, they go up onto the park blog. So the park blog gives us the
opportunity to do in depth writing and some video format that helps bring the battlefield
to people wherever you're at. It doesn't replace being on the site, you know film is limited,
but it helps give us that picture. So we'll have the camera alongside us today, but if
you have questions please don't hesitate to ask. I want to start out with giving you a
little bit of a picture of what this place looks like. One of the challenges of being
on a battlefield s hundred and fifty one years after the fact is figuring out what the terrain
would look like. And so what I'm going to do is I'm just gonna pass this around for
you. Now this shot was taken pointing North, so as you're looking at this photograph, again,
this undergrowth foliage is not here. Culp's Hill is still a fully wooded hill, it is going
to become important to the battle on the evening of July first. The fighting here at Gettysburg
begins to the Northwest of town, by late in the day, twenty seven thousand Confederate
soldiers have forced the seventeen thousand Union soldiers that are here to retreat. Those
Union soldiers are falling back to Cemetery hill. Cemetery hill is just behind you and
slightly to the Northwest. Cemetery hill is the exact opposite of what we see here, and
by that I mean that it is completely open. Soldiers said that Cemetery hill stuck out
like a sore thumb. Anybody ever hit their thumb with a hammer? It puffs up. That's the
description the soldiers used to talk about Cemetery hill, and they're describing it as
this bald platform. So we're gonna pull out a map here, Cemetery hill, the key point in
the Union position, up here at the Northern point, we've come slightly back to the Southeast,
and we're over here on Culp's Hill. We'll be talking about the fighting on July second
and also July third. So this point on the battlefield is identified that night of July
first as Union soldiers are gathering from their retreat onto Cemetery Hill. Confederate
soldiers are going to identify this hill as well ,it's a fully wooded hill next to what
becomes the key point on the battlefield. Some of the retreating first core soldiers
will recognize this spot, and their commander, a division commander by the name of Wadsworth,
brings his men. They occupy a part of these slopes as a way of extending the line that
is over on Cemetery Hill, so they've added another hill on their right flank. Confederate
soldiers late at night are gonna send a small party of men, a reconnaissance party, moving
up through the woods. Again, if we think about this foliage that surrounds us, look at the
tallest trees. That gives us an idea of the density that the soldiers are dealing with.
Most of this undergrowth is gone, that undergrowth would be gone because there are animals nearby
and these animals are eating up all of this low growth foliage so that they have food.
The Confederate party that makes its way up here, a portion of them will be captured,
and a portion will survive, and so they are going to report back to the Confederate line
that this hill is occupied. As we open July second, both commanders decide that they will
stay here on the battlefield and keep fighting. The union army early in the day is going to
place its twelfth corps here on Culp's Hill and lower Culp's Hill. Culp's Hill and lower
Culp's hill will have a total of ten thousand Union soldiers as the day begins, but that
will also change over the course of the day. The Union plans for July second are to extend
the line, so again, they are putting more soldiers here on Culp's Hill to protect that
key point of Cemetery Hill, and they put more soldiers on the left, Cemetery ridge and stretching
down to the south, again protecting the left flank. Confederate officers, as they make
their plans in the morning, are going to decide to make a two pronged attack, they are going
to take fourteen thousand soldiers and they're going to attack from the Southern end of the
battlefield, from South to North. There are going to be about a total of six to seven
thousand soldiers who will attack here on the Northern end of the battlefield, moving
from North to South, they will strike both Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill. The basic plan
of the Confederate army is to pinch Cemetery Hill from two different sides, what in military
terms you would call a "pincer". So we have the basic outline of what is taking place
on July second. Now those orders are going out in the morning; it takes several hours
before they are actually executed. In these hours that are being taken up as Confederate
officers plan and coordinate their movements before the attack, these Union soliders are
not simply standing still. Their commander is going to make a very important decision.
That commander is right over here; George Sears Greene. Greene has one of six brigades
that is placed here on Culp's Hill, he has about sixteen hundred soldiers. He is a professional
soldier, having graduated from West Point, born in 1801 he is the oldest general in either
army who is here present to the battle of Gettysburg. This important decision that he
is going to make is in preparing the hill. He is going to build breastworks. We're gonna
move on to our next stop, as we move down this trail here, we're gonna move down to
the sixtieth Ohio and take a right. We're gonna be tracing out the line of the Union
soldiers, so we're walking next to the position where they would have built their breastworks
a hundred and fifty one years ago. I'm going to give you a story of what is they're building,
and tell you about the confrontation that takes place between Greene and his superior
officer. Greene I said has one of six brigades, he's not actually in command of the whole
position, and he's gonna have a bit of an argument that is told to us by one of the
staff officers about what should be done here to prepare these soldiers to fight. If you
join me, we're gonna move down the trail, we'll take up that story. We're not stopping
here, I apologize. But I do want to point it out to you, since you're from Ohio, oh,
sixty sixth, I goofed there. Alright. We've got everybody, right? So this one is the sixtieth,
I goofed, we went down to the path by the sixty sixth, and then the sixtieth. And as
we keep moving, as we're coming down here this trail basically traces out where these
Union defenses were being built. So if you're thinking about how this battle is being fought,
you're gonna have Confederate soldiers coming from your left, you're gonna have these Union
soldiers sort of to your right, or immediately to your left, and that's where they built
their defenses. What's the elevation? Elevation on this hill, we are somewhere between five
and six hundred feet, the highest point of the battlefield on Big Round Top is just under
seven hundred feet. You do not have a whole lot of elevation if you're thinking in terms
of hills and mountains, but what you do have is a lot of quick change. You have a lot of
places where the ground is undulating, and you ask people, if you wanna find out how
much elevation is important, start with your height; how tall are you? A little over six
foot. Six foot, okay. The most important distance to you vertically is six foot one. A six foot
one change in the land is enough to cover you if you were a soldier, and give you concealment.
Six foot one change in the land is enough to expose you where you're silhouetted against
the sky and become the perfect target. So when you think about elevation on the battlefield
it's more about those small changes. Overall terrain we're just a few hundred above sea
level. That's a good question, any others? Alright. So we've stopped here, at the monument
to the seventy eight and the hundred and second New York infantry, because this monument helps
give us a visual description of what these soldiers are going to build. Now I mentioned
earlier that there is a bit of a confrontation and this confrontation is going to take place
between General Greene, who was a West Point trained officer, and General Geary, who was
a politician. Geary is the division commander. A staff officer recounts the conversation
between the two of them this way; "On arriving, General Geary expressed himself as adverse
to the practice", that is, of building breastworks, "on the ground that it unfitted men for fighting
without them." General Greene replying that "The saving of a life was of far more consequence
to him than any theories about breastworks, and so far as his men were concerned, they
would have them, if they had time to build them". So they're going to construct defenses.
Breastworks are constructed typically by digging down in the soil a foot or two, so as we see
where this treeline is at today, imagine that we were right along these Union breastworks.
We're gonna dig down a foot or two, we're gonna pile up logs and rocks to a covering
height about shoulder high, we're gonna put another set of rocks on top, and a big log
or "headboard". What that does is it gives the soldier protection. His entire body is
blocked, it is only his neck area that is exposed, it's exposed because there is space
between that headboard and the rest of the defenses to place the rifle through. General
Greene in his official report described it this way; "Our position and front were covered
with a heavy growth of timber, free from undergrowth" so none of this smaller green stuff would
exist, "with large ledges of rock projecting above the surface. These rocks and trees offered
very good cover from the marksmen, the surface was very steep on our left, diminishing to
a gentle slope on our right. As soon as we were in position we began to entrench ourselves
and throw up breastworks of the covering height, of logs, cordwood, stones, and earth." So
again, take a look with me at the monument here to the seventy eighth and hundred second
New York infantry. These soldiers, when they come back to the battlefield, place in their
monument a little bit of what these breastworks would look like. We can see stones, and logs
coming up to about shoulder height of the soldier, the one piece that is missing would
be that head log which would protect the head. On the Union side many of these wounds were
upper chest and neck area. So Union soldiers are using the delays that are taking place
on the Confederate side in order to prepare. On the Confederate side, soldiers are waiting
for the attack to take place on the other end of the battlefield, the attack on the
Northern side is secondary. So they're waiting, once that artillery fires, confederate artillery
to the North will begin firing as well. When Confederate artillery on the North end of
the battlefield begins firing, they find that their position has a great disadvantage. This
is the controlling ground, so you asked a minute ago about elevation, the other place
where elevation matters is for the artillery. Civil war artillery does not shoot uphill,
it has these long, flattened parabolic curves so they have a very wide open U shape as opposed
to something that goes up and down. That means of course that you want the higher hill for
your artillery. The higher hills are Culp's Hill, which has a battery at the top, and
Cemetery Hill, which has up to forty guns there. Those artillery pieces on the Union
side will dominate the Confederate artillery, Confederate soldiers decide that they cannot
move forward under daylight, the Union artillery has these field marked too well and they will
simply become killing fields. So they are going to have to wait until cover of darkness.
I'm going to pass a map around again here that details the attack on the night of July
second. The lighter color here is going to be Greene's brigade, out of the twelfth corps.
We start at the top and we've walked down, about halfway down the line, here we have
the hundred and second seventy eighth New York, we'll continue making our way down until
lower Culp's Hill. The darker lines are going to be the Confederate attack, if you want
to orient it, turn it sideways, pointing the Confederate line into the woods. I'll hand
that to you to hand it around. General Edward Allegheny Johnson will be the division commander
on the Confederate side, he is going to say "I then advanced my infantry to the assault
of the enemy's strong position. A rugged and rocky mountain, heavily timbered, and difficult
of ascent, a natural fortification rendered more formidable by the deep entrenchments
and thick abbatie. The opposing force was larger, and the time consumed longer, than
anticipated." Well his estimation on the size of the Union forces was incorrect. Although
the Union army begins the day with ten thousand soldiers here, in the afternoon all the disasters
and emergencies of the battlefield are taking place on the opposite end. Orders come from
the twelfth corps to abandon this position and move towards the other side of the line.
So the units are called out of their trenches, they are formed up, suddenly a staff officer
comes riding up and halts, one brigade is to be left behind, this will be Greene's brigade.
So there are approximately fourteen to sixteen hundred Union soldiers that are here. Typically
they fight shoulder by shoulder, two ranks deep. But now they have a lot more distance
of trenches to cover, so they're gonna spread out. One line, and they're gonna spread out
to about arms length apart. They have just given up their firepower, that is one of the
purposes of standing in these compact lines, and now it's gone. Their numerical advantage
is gone as well. Confederate attacker division commander Johnson, even though he actually
has that advantage, the terrain itself causes him to judge that his enemy is much larger
than it actually is. Johnson will have fifty one hundred soldiers, Greene's brigade is
right about fourteen hundred soldiers. This is going to be a description of the opening
of the Confederate attacks. "Driving the skirmishers, they formed column brigades, and advanced
directly to the attack. In the gathering gloom of the evening, the line of works held by
Greene's brigade could scarecely be distinguished until they were within pistol shot range.
The colors were dropped behind the works, the men closely concealed, the rebels advanced
to within ten yards and were received by a volley which staggered, though it did not
stop, the advance." So he tells us that the Confederate attack is coming forward, that
they are massed together, they're focusing on moving quickly. He's telling us that they
wait until the Confederate soldiers are within ten yards, well they're waiting until they're
within ten yards because it is nighttime. So, ten yards, darkness, your sources of light
during this battle; you're gonna have the flashes coming out of the muzzles, if it is
not blocked by dense smoke from the powder rising through the air you might every now
and again have a little bit of light from the moon. It was almost fighting in pitch
darkness, something Civil War soldiers almost never do, and it's happening right here on
this spot. Another Union account of the fighting; "Soon after the action commenced the smoke
became so dense that men were unable to distinguish the enemy and were governed more by hearing
than sight in directing fire. The discharge of musketry was continued with great rapidity
until some time after dark when it slackened, and finally ended altogether about ten O'clock,
the work was hellish, and the men were glad when it ended that night for they were sick
in both body and mind." I'm gonna repeat that last phrase "They felt sick in both body,
and mind." This fighting here is going to be very intense for these soldiers. The Union
men as I mentioned, it's spread out, they have one sixth of their firepower, Confederate
soldiers we mentioned, are coming uphill, against prepared defenses. This portion of
the line, the Union line, holds and is not seriously challenged, remember the Union commander
said that it was steepest on his left, diminishing to a gentle slope on his right. The end of
the line, his right flank, is the area that is in danger. So we're gonna move down to
that right flank, the hundred and thirty seventh New York, I'm gonna give you the story of
colonel David Ireland, and the hundred and thirty seventh New York, the right end of
the entire Union army. You've been to a battlefield before, you know that the basic Civil War
tactic is to strike the end of the line. So how would Ireland deal with this, knowing
that he has a force at least three times his size coming at him? Follow me, we'll move
down to the one thirty seventh. Once again, we said that the Union defenses are placed
roughly where we see the tree line today, breastworks, which we've been describing here,
this is a photograph of the breastworks here on Culp's hill, it was taken about July seventh
of eighteen sixty three, so a few days after the battle. We've got a large view here on
this side, and on the reverse side I've got an image that's a little bit sharper. And
so it is taken probably slightly further to the North, but pretty close to this part of
the line. As we come to this part of the line we're coming to the union right flank, and
we want to pay attention to some changes in the terrain that are taking place. So we'll
start first of all, as we look at this foliage moving to our right, it kind of comes to an
end. We see two trees that are sitting in this lower ground, in that lower ground, the
terrain wraps backwards, that is it turns ninety degrees and so we have a little bit
of a V shape in the terrain. When you build defenses you want them to try to follow that
terrain and so that is what the Union commanders do, but they have this point in the line that
is very weak because Confederate soldiers get in too close they might be firing upon
each other as much as firing at their enemy. So in order to deal with this, Greene who
is an engineer is going to create what is called a traverse; a traverse is basically
a trench. So I want you to imagine a trench that runs roughly from the vicinity if we
can see where those two trees are on this side of the road on the low ground, the rock
between them, I want you to draw an imaginary line from that rock back toward the tree on
the other side of the road. So you want to imagine that we have this line coming down
along the foliage, and then we have this traverse, or trench, that runs roughly at a right angle.
It's a relief point, in case it would be needed. This again shows us the foresight of George
Sears Green as an engineer, he is thinking about the terrain, and what might happen if
an attack is launched. The unit on the end of the line here is the Hundred and thirty
seventh New York, under the command of Colonel David Ireland. The monument to the One thirty
seventh is just behind this here, you see the two rifles and the cartridge box there
on the monument. Hundred and thirty seventh New York is a large regiment, it has four
hundred and twenty three men, the attacking unit is going to be Stuart, this is George
Stuart, also called Maryland Stuart. Stuart's brigade numbers twenty one hundred and twenty
one men. Alright, who's got their math skills thinking cap on? What's that? Almost exactly.
It is almost exactly a five to one ratio. Now generally you would prefer to have more
soldiers rather than less soldiers, but that's not always an option. Ireland is the end of
the line. What happens if he gives up? The flank can just be rolled up. This is a classic
battlefield nightmare, this idea that your flank can be rolled up one unit at a time,
so whoever is on the end of the line has a very desperate position, because on one side
of them there's no support, and they've been given that reminder, by their commanding officer,
that they are the end of the line and they cannot give up their position. So colonel
Ireland is going to be in this tenuous position on the night of July second. Turn again to
your right a little bit more for me, take a look at the auto-touring road, you're gonna
see that it starts to turn and it goes uphill. That area where it goes uphill again, that
is called Little Culp's Hill. The trenches extend onto that hill as well, so Ireland's
men, a little bit of them are on lower Culp's Hill, they are arms length apart, single line,
as this fighting starts. One of the attacking soldiers on the Confederate side will write
his description of this fight, again on the night of July second. "We continue to the
front, driving the enemy skirmishers before us without trouble, and with very little loss.
Until, we met his line of battle, at his first line of breastworks. He was, however, driven
from those and soon thereafter we received a front and oblique fire from behind his second
line of works, to which he had fallen back." So the Confederate soldier is explaining the
attack and he tells us that hundred and thirty seventh New York is going to have to use that
traverse. The Confederate attack, that five to one man power advantage, overpowers Union
soldiers on lower Culp's Hill, Colonel David Ireland calls upon the right flank to refuse
the line, so imagine these soldiers are in a straight line, the right flank is gonna
drop back, ninety degrees. Okay, what has Colonel Ireland just created? Anybody know
what this shape is called? A right angle? Soldiers would have called it a: salient.
A salient is a right angle; it can be hit by fire at a range of two hundred and seventy
degrees. It's a dangerous position to have, but Ireland feels that that is the necessary
position so that he can protect his flank, because when you refuse the flank the enemy
has to go further around in order to get to your side or rear. So Ireland orders the right
flank to refuse to take up a position in the traverse, at right angles to the main part
of the line. He's given up a part of the defenses. Lower Culp's Hill has been captured by Confederate
forces. Soldier out of the Second Maryland battalion writes; "The few remaining men in
the regiment were formed on the right of the brigade, and very soon thereafter we were
ordered forward, the line advancing beautifully under the heaviest fire until we found our
regiment alone, moving to the front, unsupported. Then the officers and men were ordered to
withdraw, which was done slowly, and without confusion, the regiment being great reduced."
Now Cohen describes the movement when they fall back as "without confusion" but up to
that point I think it is confusion that rules the day. First of all, this attack is moving
forward in darkness. So they can't see, you just simply follow and if you're being fired
at, what is going to be your conclusion; who would fire at you? Your enemy. So here you
are being fired at, that must be who you fire back at. What's the problem when you have
this sort of up and down terrain? You don't know exactly if it's your enemy directly in
front of you, we're going to have an incident of friendly fire over here on Culp's Hill
where Confederate soldiers take fire from their front. They're certain it is the Union
army directly in front of them, so they fire forward, and they actually fire into the backs
of their own men on mistake. What has happened is the lay of the land somehow when the Union
unit fired, they must have aimed too high, so the bullets fly over and as they drop they
hit a second line. So there's a great deal of confusion that is taking place, trying
to organize this assault at night. Still, the Confederate attack presses forward and
is going to press against this traverse position very heavily. The right flank of the Union
line is in perilous danger. Yet as soon as this fight had begun, notices were sent to
the other parts of the army, and the idea was hopefully to call back the twelfth corps.
That doesn't happen, but some reinforcements do come. The Sixth Wisconsin and the Eighty
forth New York, otherwise known as the Fourteenth Brooklyn. We'll move from the top of Culp's
Hill, they will rush down through this area as we've walked, they will add themselves
right in the position of the traverse, to firm up Ireland's right flank. It's about
three hundred soldiers worth of reinforcements, and he's able to hold that position. The Confederate
soldiers stall their attack at about ten PM. So the fighting ends on the night of July
second. Union army has held their position here, along upper Culp's Hill, thanks to the
reinforcements and the refusing of the flank. Confederates attack with a five to one advantage
against the end of the line, and manage to take lower Culp's Hill. So Confederate soldiers
have a portion of the Union high ground, those defenses from where they can launch their
July third attack. If you follow me, we're going to move over to lower Culp's Hill and
talk about this fighting on July third, when Confederate soldiers renew their assault and
try to take advantage of the one piece of Union high ground that they hold at the end
of July second. Do you want to ask a question about how they actually hit the second line
instead of the first line? Okay, so let's take a look at the terrain here. The large
boulder right in front of me here to my left marks the Fourteenth Brooklyn, the Fourth
New York rushing to this spot on the battlefield to assist. So this traverse is probably just
on the other side of that boulder and runs from in front of us, across these two trees,
runs in front toward the direction of the Union monument over there on the right, the
opposite side of the woods. So again we'll pull up our map here just briefly, what I
just pointed out, that traverse, is this black mark here. It runs at a right angle to the
line. So again; let's turn back, look at the terrain. From our vantage point the terrain
goes down, and it comes back up again. There's this little gulley that basically separates
upper and lower Culp's Hill. If you're a Union soldier, and you're here or you've been fired
at, and you fire from this position forward, you might hit soldiers on that other hill
who are higher up, or it may be that your bullets, if you're doing an oblique fire to
the left, go sort of through that gulley. So there are a number of possible explanations
as to how that second line gets hit; it comes back to the fact that there is a quick change
in the terrain over a short amount of distance, and in pitch black. The only lights are the
flashes of the muzzle, there's so much confusion you don't know exactly who it is that you're
aiming at, or who has fired at you. So there's a great sense of confusion. I like to say
that if it feels confusing to be in this part of the battlefield, that's very accurate,
that had to be what the soldiers and what the commanders witnessed as well. Any questions
about that? No? Great. So what we'll do is we'll continue down, and back up onto lower
Culp's Hill. We've come to the position that it called lower Culp's Hill, this is the only
part of the Union high ground that Confederate soldiers captured on July second, and hold
moving into July third. So we think about those objectives on July second, the Confederate
army is in packers, this is the only spot that they have managed to get. Now "get" of
course means, if we turn around, we are mere yards from the Union position. Union and Confederate
soldiers overnight on July second into July third are in very close quarters. Thinking
about our map here, we are now at the end of where Greene's July second line was at,
here on lower Culp's Hill, the end of the attacks. The breastworks had extended past
us, further on your right, but these men were not able to hold that entire distance. So
I'll pass this map around again, thinking about what the physical terrain looks like,
this is a picture of the Second Maryland infantry monument, just here on your right, when it
was placed. So this is a picture of what the ground looks like in the 1880s. We can see
that it is wooded, but it doesn't have that undergrowth. On the reverse, the physical
effects of fighting. All of those black marks in the trees, those are areas where bullets
hit the physical landscape. A tremendous amount of change will take place as a result of this
fighting. Both sides are going to add more soldiers onto this part of the battlefield,
at about midnight, the Twelfth corps that had moved off to fight in a different part
of the battlefield returns, as they return, their trenches are occupied, not by their
fellow Union soldiers but by Confederate soldiers, so the Union army has to stop about a hundred
or so yards behind you. They lost part of their trenches, because they had been drawn
out to another part of the battlefield. So the Twelfth corps returns, they get a little
but of reinforcements from the Union Sixth corps. We have about ten thousand or so Union
soldiers fighting here on July third. On the Confederate side, they're going to get four
additional brigades; O'Neil, Daniels, Walker, and Smith. So they get reinforcements as well,
their attacking number is about ten thousand. So almost equal soldiers on each side, now
we'll talk about July third. The plans for this day for each army differ. Confederate
soldiers want to continue what has happened on July second, so Lee's plan originally called
for the assaults to begin here, he wants to see if he can take advantage of taking this
very spot little Culp's Hill and move into taking upper Culp's Hill, then actually moving
toward Cemetery Hill. Then he's going to strike an assault beginning from the other side of
the line as well, and move his cavalry around the army. This is Lee's three pronged plan,
early in the morning, it's gonna change, in part of because that happens here. On the
Union side, the Union army is going to remain on the defense, except for one spot. The commander
of the Twelfth corps is going to obtain permission to launch assaults to retake lower Culp's
Hill. So both sides want this piece of ground on July third. The fighting is going to begin
at about four thirty AM, basically at sunrise. There will be six hours of sustained fighting
here on Culp's Hill from four thirty in the morning until ten thirty AM. The Confederate
soldiers renew their assaults against the part of the line where Union soldiers are
in the trenches, but they've received reinforcements, they are no longer one line arm to arm, they
are now shoulder to shoulder and two lines deep. They are able to provide a very effective
defensive force. Union artillery would begin to fire at about dawn, shells coming this
way, some of those shells are actually going to fall upon Union soldiers. A Pennsylvania
colonel becomes very upset with the amount of confusion that is taking place in this
part of the battlefield. He will draw his pistol, he will walk back to the gun, and
he will threaten the gunners that the next time one of their shells land amongst his
men, he'll make use of that pistol. Cooler heads will prevail, and step in and provide
the communication that is necessary so that there are not men shooting themselves on purpose.
Instead, the Union soldiers are going to take a defensive position, with Confederate soldiers
attacking. Confederate soldiers will move off of this position here, trying to dislodge
those Union reinforcements. Private Thomas, Second Maryland; "We fixed bayonets and advanced,
soon we were in full view of the enemy", but also, some disorder and confusion "there seemed
no commander or his orders did not go forward, the left and center of the brigade halted
in the disorder and opened fire. The enemy pouring in death volleys, our only safety
lie in charge, but no, steady, steady, was the oft repeated order while the men were
being mowed down. Still we advanced to within forty feet of the enemy, then someone ordered
us to retire. All broke for cover, but I fear few found it. I fired, and was about to turn
when I was stricken by a ball at my hip, coming out in the front of my stomach." So Confederate
soldiers renewing their assaults, hoping to push off these Union reinforcements, to take
those entrenchments that they could not take the previous night, finding it is very desperate
fighting. Multiple times they move forward, they cannot dislodge the Union soldiers. The
Union army counterattacks and it will retake this position on lower Culp's Hill. Further
to your right, Confederate soldiers will have a rock wall for defense, there when the Union
soldiers move forward. They find out how desperate it is to attack against a defended position,
one of the Union colonels getting the order, supposedly replies "It is murder, but it is
an order." Confederate soldiers behind the stone wall, Union soldiers move across that
open field near Spangler's Spring and try to take that Confederate position, and the
Confederate defenders fire from protection as had happened to them earlier in the day.
It becomes a very difficult place to fight. The Confederate soldiers hold that wall, but
they cannot hold this hill. Lower Culp's Hill has been given up, on upper Culp's Hill the
Confederate soldiers make no headway. These Union soldiers have these breastworks, they
are well designed, well engineered, as the guns of the Union soldiers foul up from being
fired, one unit leaves, and another walks in. The traverse becomes this protective tunnel,
moving back and forth, so that units can reload and clean their guns behind the lines, and
swap in and out through these six hours of the morning on July third. Nowhere along that
line, that is heavily engaged, are Confederate soldiers successful. Culp's Hill will remain
in the hands of the Union soldiers. About ten thousands soldiers from each side will
fight here on July third. The numbers seem even, but the terrain is not. The prepared
defenses, the challenges for Confederate soldiers for attacking uphill, will make it a decided
Union advantage. It is still some of the roughest fighting on the battlefield. One soldier says
this about his experience fighting in the blue line along these breastworks; "The appearance
of the men as they worked in the trenches, with their clothes ragged and dirty, their
faces black from smoke, sweat, and burnt powder, their lips cracked and bleeding from saltpeter
in the cartridges bitten by them, and while loading and firing for dear life resembled
more the inhabitants of the bottomless pit, than the quiet, peaceful citizens of the United
States of America. The people at home would not have recognized their friends, and a father
would have been perplexed to know his own son." Imagine the inability to identify your
friend or family member, because fighting in this terrain, dealing with that saltpeter
cracking the lips, has changed the physical appearance of a soldier. It is indeed a heavy
toll on both mind and body. That toll extends to the physical landscape as well. "The trees
were stripped of their leaves, and in some instances of their bark. The trunks of the
trees looked like target boards, and many had not a space upon them from the roots to
high up in the branches were a man could not put his head and not cover a bullet hole.
The ground was covered with flat bullets, and the rocks were pitted with lead marks.
The devastation in front of the works was a sight which will be long remembered by those
who saw it on the fourth of July morning. Yes, it is a horrid sight, which no pen can
accurately describe." The Union army will lose about eleven hundred casualties here,
the Confederate army about twenty seven hundred casualties. The Confederate army either had
a four to one manpower advantage on July second, or even numbers on July third, yet they had
casualties two and a half times as many. There can be but one conclusion; these breastworks
are very valuable to the saving of a life, as George Sears Greene asserted. Indeed, understanding
the fighting here and why one side wins or loses, you must look at this leadership. The
Union army will make mistakes, but they manage to overcome their mistakes and they have better
leadership providing for them to take advantage of the terrain, and so they win. On the Confederate
side, they have a lot of challenges, trying to coordinate these assaults, attacking uphill,
attacking at night, not being sure of there the units are at, unit soldiers writing that
they have gone forward without commanders. It is very difficult to stay in these lines
in a battlefield, and we find that illustrated here on Culp's Hill, July second and July
third. That fighting, as I mentioned, is sustained six hours long, and it disrupts Lee's plan,
it takes away one of his elements for July third. He will later adjust his other attacks
in the field slightly northward, and that will become what we know of as Pickett's charge.
So the fighting that happens here on July second and July third shapes how this battlefield
is fought. Greene's decision to place breastworks here is absolutely critical to the outcome
of the battle. Thank you very much for joining me this afternoon. Anybody have any questions?
I think it's a little bit of both. So perhaps the luck is that if any other brigade is chosen
there's a gap between them and the rest of the army, so Greene's is that brigade that
has contact with soldiers further to the left on Cemetery Hill. So if his brigade is moved
out another brigade has to be switched into position. So I think that's why his brigade
is left, and they're the one brigade that's closest that can be left behind, then they
spread out basically arms length apart to try to move down and cover the space that
has been left. So the Confederate side, around ten O'clock at night, it finishes with fourteen
hundred men across from it, and by four thirty in the morning they've got ten thousand, with
that closeness, that certainly can hear what's going on, can't they? They absolutely can
hear what's going on, both sides know that the other side is reinforcing. Years after
the battle, a myth is going to develop about this spring down here to your right called
Spangler's spring. This myth develops that the soldiers overnight share water with each
other. Well, there's not a document that says that. One of the historians here, when he
did his research for a book project, found three accounts. The accounts don't tell us
that they shared water, the accounts tell us that when Union soldiers moved forwards
to get water, they heard Confederates and backed off because they didn't want to have
a confrontation. They don't want to be fighting each other in the middle of the night. So
you're right, these lines are in very close quarters as they deal with each other, so
you've got to have a constant level of awareness. How much sleep are you gonna get if you have
that constant awareness that you could be attacked? Not very much. So where that union
soldier on the night of July second says "We were sick in both body and mind", that physical
and emotional toll continues overnight, into the next day. So why didn't the Confederates
try to take a flanking position even further down, were they concerned about being split
from the rest of the Confederate army then? You've got it. What you're alluding to, the
challenge of the attacker, you want to do two things; you want to move so that you hit
the enemy's flank, but somewhere there's a limit to how much you can sweep around so
that you still have contact with your own army. And that's the inexact science of being
a commanding general; you've got to use your discernment and your experience to kind of
make that decision "I can go this far to flank, but I can't go that one hundred or that two
hundred or that quarter mile further". So that's a tough decision for a commanding general
to balance between, I want to make that move around, and how far is too far. And so looking
at it as historians, what we can kind of say is, well, they made the decision that night
that this far was as far as possible. Hypothetically, could they have tried to go farther to sort
of sweep around? It's a possibility; we don't want to think about it, we don't want to make
a quick judgment and think that these commanders were foolish for not continuing to go around,
because there's another part of that calculus that's tough, it is a decision that has to
be made. So yeah, it's a great question to bring up. Why does this attack not happen
until the night of July second? Like if Longstreet's attacking the Southern portion of the field,
why would this attack not happen at the same time? The original idea is to have the attack
happen at the same time, and the challenge here is that Union artillery that is on Culp's
Hill and Cemetery Hill. So when the Confederate attack, Longstreet's attack, begins at about
four PM, the Confederate artillery to the North is going to begin firing. The Union
artillery on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill is able to drive off that attacking Confederate
artillery; the Confederate infantry commanders witnessing this, figure out that it is such
a commanding position that they cannot send their soldiers forward through that space
between the two sets of guns without losing all of them. This turns out to be a very wise
decision; Confederate soldiers probably did not know this but might have suspected it,
what Union artillerists on Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill do is they pull out a device called
the French ordinance glass, also they'll use a pendulum hausse, and these are two devices
that help you figure out the elevation and the range. So imagine that you have a sort
of scientific experiment with a gun; you're trying to figure out how far your gun fires;
what these soldiers so is they take a bunch of test shots in this area between the two
armies, so Union canoneers over this afternoon of July second, while these Twelfth corps
soldiers are building breastworks, what they're doing is they're checking points in the field,
and they have marked this field so that if Confederate soldiers come through it, they'll
know exactly what type of shell and how long of a fuse to use to be able to hit them; so
it would have been a very deadly field of fire, and Yule and Johnson, the Confederate
commanders, will decide that they will have to wait until cover of night to move forward.
Yeah, that's a great question to ask. Any others? So the Confederate artillery you were
taking about, that was Benner's Hill, is that the name of it? Yes, very good, it is Benner's
Hill, right. So Benner's Hill is the one spot further to the East, where Confederate artillery
commanders can find what they think is semi- good ground, but they're driven off very quickly.
Their challenge is that they're lower, so there are shots falling upon them, and their
guns don't have the ability to push a projectile back uphill. Field artillery has that very
long parabolic curve. What you would need is called siege artillery, and the armies
rarely carry any siege artillery with them. Siege artillery, the Coehorns, are these little
guns that are pointed up at forty five degrees, and those have the high, arching shots, but
there are none of those with either army here at the battle of Gettysburg. So where was
the rock wall that the Confederate's built, was it over that way or something? So it was
not built, it is actually here in the field, and the rock wall actually extends to this
wooded area over here, and then it continues running to the left. We have enough grass
growth that we can't see it from our spot, but if you walk about fifty yards you can
find that rock wall and follow it off to the left. Down here at the bottom, is what we
call stop number thirteen, or Spangler's Spring, and there's an open field and in the middle
of that field is the state monument for Indiana. Indiana unit twenty seventh is one of those
two units that makes that charge across, so they have sort of the opposite effect of what
the Union soldiers have here, and a little bit more of the experience that most of the
Confederate soldiers have had this day. So the rock walls were just natural, that people
had put up for their property? Yeah, rock walls in the battlefield, with a couple exceptions,
are property and boundary markers that farm owners would have built. The exceptions are
over on Little Round Top, those rock walls were built by soldiers after the fighting.
They're built that night, from July second to July third. But elsewhere on the battlefield,
generally when you see rock walls and fence lines, you're looking at something that we
think was in that area in 1863. That's been one of the historic preservation management
goals of the park; to rehabilitate the physical landscape, so that when you come here, you're
looking at rock walls the way that soldiers looked at rock walls, and commanders looked
at rock walls. We're not perfect, right? We don't manage a cattle operation, so we've
got some of this underbrush, but you know as we look at the tops of the trees, we can
get an idea of the density of the woods here and know something about what these soldiers
and what these commanders saw, as they were fighting on the battlefield. So any of the
remnants of bullets that went into the trees, they've probably grown out at this point,
or do you have any? After a hundred and fifty one years, that's probably grown out, yeah.
In our archival collection, we do have many bullets that are picked up off the battlefield,
relic hunting is illegal on a battlefield, it can't be done; this is honestly one of
the worst places to do it, because so many things have been picked up here previously.
Occasionally, rain weather will shift soil, so if you ever do encounter something while
you're on the battlefield, we ask you to just let a ranger know. We like to leave it in
the original context, that way we can see how it came to the surface. It has now been
almost twenty years, but there was a set of remains of a soldier found at the railroad
cut on the first day's field. About five to ten years ago a soldier's remains were discovered
down at the battle of Antietam. So any time you are on a Civil War battlefield, there
can be remnants of the battle, including those who sacrificed their lives here.
