First Day at Gettysburg, Late Fighting: Battlefield Live

[Music] all right everybody here we are back at Gettysburg 155 thanks so much for joining us make sure the first thing you do is share this with your friends this has already been in the news feeds it has reached a total of 160,000 people already more than 60,000 views of these videos this day and this is one way we can really perpetuate you know a passion for American history that I think kids can enjoy and whatnot these videos will be available later but share these with your friends now let's hear from you where you from we've already had people from Australia Mexico Ireland Scotland all over the place and I'd say at least half of the US states so far I'm Gary Edelman with the American battlefield trust Chris White behind the camera yeah I can't move on to you not a little bit we've got Dan Davis from the trust here as well as a bevy of guests and I'm gonna bring on the first one because we're on a part of the battlefield this whole walk is gonna be where a lot of people don't come we are on posture Avenue why is it called cut no not so much why is it called Castro but what's going on this what it looked like at the time what's going on Jared this is Jared Frederick's by the way professor at Penn State Altoona long time Gettysburg ranger until 2014 take it away sir alright thank you Gary so this is a fairly obscure in comparison to others and one reason why that is so does the landscape around it changed so greatly as in 1863 this is essentially the northern outskirts of town and unlike today it would have been very open in the year 1863 and as a lot of our speakers have you know stated so far today by the time we get into the late afternoon of July 1st 1863 the dominoes begin to fall a little bit for the Union Army and the Union soldiers who are sent out here who saw my colleagues are going to talk about here in a moment essentially act as a speed bump trying to slow down the Confederate onslaught that is good to be sweeping in from the north I'm a lot of the terrain that was right here ahead of me sloped upward at the time we've kind of lost that perspective once again because of modern development that has ultimately come in a little bit further to our south a lot of this area would have been taken up by the Kuhn family Brickyard and that is going to serve as another series of obstacles for Union troops who are trying to navigate through this terrain and ultimately is going to make for a fairly tedious retreat as they begin to fall back toward town eventually an item of note we are able to get a a slight visualization of what costs are as a cost your Avenue may have looked like at the time and that is through this mural here that we are going to see in the end for us here let's bring up some of the fighting though we've already heard from him Colonel Doug Downes US Marine Corps US Army War College licensed battlefield guy with the biggest badge over here Doug who's fighting here and why okay so as it was brought up let's get this in context remember we said west and north of town Union soldiers are starting to fall back particularly from the north now ruin the 11th Corps comes into town what they do is they put two brigades back on the high ground south of town back on Cemetery Hill as the line starts to collapse north of town the calls gonna be come to send reinforcements up now they don't send them all they do send one brigade they send Colonel Koster's Brigade now get it Colonel Koster in charge of a brigade he's a new brigade commander he's taken up this position because of Chancellorsville the brigade commander before him is killed so what he's gonna do is he's going to bring his three regiments out here the 27th Pennsylvania 154th New York 134th New York they're gonna be right in this position here and as described think about all this chaos falling back on us from northern end of town and here they're gonna set up their line of battle now to be honest it ends up being an impromptu line that's gonna gather some of those soldiers and also gonna be supported by Heckman's batteries so four pieces of 12 pound Napoleon's are gonna be off on the very left of their line they're gonna fire a hundred and thirteen rounds in just over 30 minutes most of it canister now for the Confederate says they are driving those soldiers from north of town what we would be talking about is mostly Hays Louisiana Brigade to our front and just off to our right would be Avery's North Carolina Brigade they're the ones that are going to attack this position and to be honest Costner has just over 1200 men he is going to be absolutely overwhelmed not only for all the Union soldiers that are falling back through their line is but also the pressure that comes from their front and moreover what comes from their flank and it will be their flank that will collapse and this line will start to break down from right to their left because as these north carolina's swing behind them this line will now become untenable and they will have to start falling back through the town with the rest of this chaos that is now broiling back to the high ground south of town really cool man we got Vermont we got Africa we got Staten Island earlier we Staten Island oh my god you'd kill me for that we've even had southern Taiwan earlier Taiwan earlier I was told that I'm not sure if that's really a thing or not we got Ohio we got Pennsylvania Ohio probably wins for the states today as we go along now I want to bring on Theresa or Theresa or has been a battlefield guide here for a couple of years and is one of seventeen female battlefield guides it's not just men there's about 160 or so battlefield guides and this is an important time as you can see from her hat fifty years in women of guiding what is that sort of mean to you Theresa well I spent time in the military a nice long tradition of military for me and to now be part of a guide force that you know is well-known for for what we do here and to be one of only a few women who have ever been lucky enough I would say to be able to wear the badge begins with Barbara shut who who broke the mold here the glass ceiling if you will a admit secretary for an administrator at the Gettysburg School District she wants to be a guide she has to allow them to let her take the test because at that point women couldn't take the test and she broke the mold she became a guide on June 12th 1968 and this year we have celebrated our 50th anniversary there are 51 women who have become guides here and I'm proud to say that I'm one of those women that's great Thank You Teresa awesome and we'll be talking about this more as we go and we have Teresa for more than just this one live today as far as I recall um but let's talk a little bit about where we are too you know we mentioned a little bit earlier about unlucky 11th Corps or Ohio or the Flying Dutchmen but there's a lot more to these guys what do you think about them especially as concerns you know where they're from and who they are right well you know our nation is a nation of immigrants and certainly lots of immigrants are coming into America during the time of the Civil War and any of them are joining the Union Army and a lot of the men of the Union Army 11th Corps are foreigners and that creates some issues because English is not their primary language for many of them they probably don't speak English at all and yet many of their commanders are going to be English speaking men and we know that Frances Barlow one of the division commanders here looked with disdain upon the men that he leads and here with this brigade four regiments of Union soldiers two regiments are from New York two are from Pennsylvania and those Pennsylvanians are Germans so what creates what what could possibly create some problems and getting orders off during a very hectic time of battle and one of those Pennsylvania regiments stays back and during at the railroad tracks the other one is out here on the very left end of this line here on July 1st as part of this suicidal mission really to try to save the 11th Corps we have lots of instances here at Gettysburg where regiments or brigades are sent out to protect the retreat of others or to go forward and try to do some good service here and that certainly is what happens with coster's men I think this is a suicidal mission and yet they gladly come forward and perform it here very cool and Theresa already getting some good press hashtag Theresa NPS one of 17 and I like how the military folks wear their uniforms clean and pressed I don't know what they're saying about the other guides that are here today or about the one who's not in the military but separate story as we go let's walk a little bit further into the Sun as we go because here we are one of three grassy avenues or as Tim Smith would say Gracia news here on the battlefield think about you which other battlefields avenues are actually grassy this is Koster Avenue one rhymes with it with the exception of just one letter it's spelled the exact same thing and then there's another one will be visiting all three of them on these lives as we go along but this is coaster Avenue we're walking along and let me just be clear for those people who don't know this because this is not a common action you have the Confederates coming down the old Harrisburg Road which is off to my right on both sides there's going to be an action along this road the law reason there's an action along this Avenue it wasn't an avenue at the time it's actually known as the Brickyard fight is because Howard had left two brigades and a bunch of batteries back on Cemetery Hill he one forward right here this is coster's Brigade and they end up fighting here Tim's gonna talk a little bit more about who's in this brigade what they're doing Tim the three regiments that fall down at this area at the 130 fourth New York for 27th Pennsylvania and in the middle the hundred and fifty fourth New York and these three regiments are thrown into this area that's referred to as the Brickyard and they're not here long by all accounts they just get into position and all the sudden Confederate soldiers appear in front of them the Louisiana Tigers off to the right front and to the left front and to their left flank is Isaac Avery's brigade of course hoaxes North Carolinians and these two brigades come up and over a riser ground and on them in a matter of seconds it appears from the casualties they don't suffer many men wounded that they get off a volley or two and then the southerners upon them and quickly the men realize are untenable situation and they retreat through the town with the bulk of the 11th army corps that is coming down from the streets north of the town and it's just chaos and confusion somewhere at this spot or in the fields leading to the edge of the town behind us at the time of the Civil War the hundred and thirty fourth New York lose about 70 men captured the 27th Pennsylvania lose about 50 men captured and the 150 fourth New York whose monument is directly in front of us loses a hundred and seventy eight men captured as a matter of fact with their killed and wounded one hundred and fifty fourth New York suffer the highest percentage loss of any northern regiment in the entire battle and I think one of my pet peeves is the fact that over the years people have sort of discounted the units that have a lot of men captured oh well you know they're captured they're not really casualties and I think one of the interesting things is that 150 fourth New York must have also felt this sting or this criticism by people because rate on the side of their monument as you look at it it says died while Prez a nurse 42 so it's obvious that you know they wanted to make you aware of the fact that being captured in battle and being sent to prison camp and happening having to survive you know a prison camp is not the easiest service that you can encounter I think that's a really good point Tim you know I mean and some people say oh here's a unit here that only suffered five or ten percent casualties that's not noble service they didn't fight well maybe they fought really well and maybe they had coverage of a stone wall I mean ask the entire 12th Corps who was involved in the largest you know series of fighting here and the COPE so fighting just didn't produce the casualties as that that fought out in the open fields so for these guys this was their Gettysburg service and valiant service how much more of the 11th Corps would have been eaten up were it not for this sacrifice as Theresa called it here on caster Avenue yes yeah so a man we're getting a lot of good comments in people are wondering how many battlefield guides are military I know there's a lot of teachers that do this in the summer I know there's a lot of military what do you guys think okay so at least a dozen ex-military I know there are dozens of teachers in here and then there's just freaks from all walks of life restaurant people you know construction people all sorts of other people that come in to form this particular guide service now who wants to talk about is this Tim as if somebody else wants to introduce this beautiful work of art behind us is this Jared all right hit it Jared who did this thing and why is it here this mural was unveiled in fact 30 years ago today for the 125th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg so it's a pretty cool that we're here to reflect upon it this day you know when we think of commemoration in National battlefields National Military parks we often solely think of just monuments but when you think about it this falls within a long line of artistic commemoration that comes in many forms in many different battlefields it was done by artist Mark Dunkleman and I think it just does a really stellar job of capturing what this landscape looked like and there's mark dumped them in there you know you make your own painting you could is that right Tim right that's him um you could put yourself in it he is like a one-man preservation machine preserving the memory of 154 New York as well as um you know helping to preserve the kata ragas county new york GA our hall or something of that effect can't get into that so we can only see so much of the mural here at this point it's really tough to see but come here in person this thing is really impressive there is a person on there we want to try to point out and he's right behind the American flag we only want to tease this for now who can tell the story of the fight without talking about what happened later Doug or Tim I'm talking to one of you I know all right so what we have is a good sergeant doing with good sergeants do you can see a Miss Humiston here it's part of the hundred and fifty fourth New York as he comes out here and this fight starts to degrade and they are flanked off to their right and now men start to fall back good sergeants out here pulling men off the line one at a time and so in this fight you could argue he's one of the last people to leave and so we're almost gonna follow the route at which he retreats back towards Cemetery Hill and so we'll keep track of him as we follow that route okay this is just an imp really impressive a work of art and there's a new book out this is the redo of the mural came out thirty years ago rededicated a couple years ago and there's a new book out by Mark Dunkleman and it is a heck of a story just transferring the thing how they could make it how they could put it here it took a long time it's called gettysburg's custer avenue mural you should be able to remember it here we are castor Avenue I haven't seen anybody that's come up with the other two grassy avenues that are here along the way but we did get an interesting thing Tim your tie is making me hot I'm not sure exactly what that means I assume that what is meant is that Tim looks hot meat you hold on that he looks like he's exceedingly warm because of the tie he's wearing but maybe you could clarify that one as you go now this is the official guy time yes that is true you know in fact so take that military people here he is wearing the official guide tied let's see I want to introduce real quick at Andrew Dalton um he's the achill Collections assistant or assistant Collections Manager at the Adams County Historical say they often bring cool stuff and he's not going to show us anything now but I thought would be good if he could introduce a little bit real quick about the town of Gettysburg were walking down Stratton Street what kind of a place was this well we're actually walking on an extension of what was Stevens Street at the time and we actually wasn't put it until after the Civil War but it was named for Thaddeus Steven the prominent abolitionist and Congressman and at one time he practiced law here in Gettysburg but the end of this street is the campus of Gettysburg College which was then Pennsylvania College it was founded in 1832 the first structures were put up in the late 1830s and at the time of the Civil War there were four main buildings two academic and the president's house and also the janitors house a free black man named Jack Hopkins all these structures with the exception of the the president's house and the main academic building are no longer standing and the college has grown a lot over time but at the time of the battle obviously the Union retreat crosses over the campus the students are dismissed and that all of the buildings on campus become hospitals following the battle especially Pennsylvania Hall the main academic building which becomes really a one of the one of the largest hospitals in the vicinity of Gettysburg okay good I also see hashtag professional Tim and that two people have gotten one of the grassy Avenue that's Neill Avenue or lost Avenue unconfirmed reports suggest we may or may not be going there at some point this during this particular anniversary so you still got one more grassy Avenue to go as you go you're with the American Battlefield trust we are at Gettysburg 155 live we're on Facebook most of the time we might be on YouTube some of the time and if not we'll put them up there later as best we can walking down Stratton Street toward the town of Gettysburg and most people don't come this way at all on who's taking over next is it Tim okay so Stratton Street was developed in the 1850s with the railroad being laid out the northern edge of the town is sort of developed and actually this street ended at one time a few blocks closer to the center of town but they extended it out to connect it with the old Harrisburg Road just before the Civil War and buildings started to be constructed along this street and in our general vicinity there were four buildings here at the time of the battle and directly across the street the red building was here at the time of the battle 229 Stratton Street and then of course here we have the beige building is the John Kuhn house and that's pay uhm kayuu H N and he was the guy who owned the Brickyard at the time of the civil we walk down just a little bit on this side of the street of we usually called the crass Barbie hen house and it's Gorge crass and a guy named Henry Barbra hen who kind of build the house and maybe both of their families live there and what's interesting about the Barbie henhouse and the John house being in the northern suburbs of the town at the time of the battle obviously they saw heavy fighting directly in front of them at the Brickyard and both of these houses have artillery shells sticking out of them if you look down the side of the Barbarian House between the top middle windows you can see an artillery shell sticking out of the wall if it's where it hit the building during the battle and if it in fact it hasn't been replaced or moved or put in a different angle it most likely came from Jones's Avenue where Hilary Jones had an artillery battalion and then across the street if we walk down just a little bit and we can look across the street on the side of the John house we can see what appears to be a hotchkiss shell sticking out of the south wall of the house it undoubtedly came from the area of Cemetery Hill probably at some point on the second or third day in the battle so altogether there are nine buildings in the town of Gettysburg that have artillery shells sticking out of them if you'd like you can make it like a scavenger hunt and you can look for the other seven buildings in the town they have artillery they're not supposed to take the shells is that correct you're just supposed to find them you find you don't take them with you and don't go knocking on people's doors please and they are no longer live is that correct him well you know we're not sure exactly how many of the artillery shells are from the battle or how many have been cemented into the building by the people who live there later why would they do something like that why would they do that maybe your house will be worth more but from what we can tell a lot of these accounts go pretty far back as to the artillery shell and I'm gonna seize the moment here for a second to do something I had threatened to do before and we're gonna pick right up with it so let's stop for a quick sec we got to keep walking but I think we have enough time to stop for a second for a little another middle name trivia you know and and let's focus toward the middle here where Andrew and Teresa are he wants to play but he'll he's gonna have to hop back on line I say the general at gettysburger the officer a person to get his review just yell it out we'll give them the first bids John hood no all right Jerome Robertson Bonaparte well done man John Robinson Cleveland Cleveland all right yellow mout here guys John Reynolds oh good all right three on that one Steven Ramsey all right look at you guys Robert Rhoades and Emmett good goober to warm em both good Richard you'll Stoddard all right Ambrose he'll pal Samuel Carroll break Briggs oh good it's a nerd fest hashtag Civil War losers as we go check it out we might be talking about the Gettysburg movie before long but unless we have anything else let's keep walking well have a musical interlude here for a moment he was singing along to check it out and I believe that was a beastie boys it was well done Tim okay so we're walking on South Stratton what would this have been like during the retreat guys this could not you know you read about the confused retreat through town this took a pretty open Street here people often accuse me of over generalizing but I don't I think that you got to put in some perspective the northern army has like 20,000 Union soldiers which reading through the town there's something like 30,000 southerners chasing them 2,000 people are hiding in her cellars and all the roads basically lead to one spot in the center of the town it was chaos it's like Gary Adelman twirled all roads lead to get us that's true in a perfect world they do now we just passed on the right Gettysburg College on it's now at least 60 or 70 buildings during the battle it wasn't quite so many and I think we already referred to it Andrew anything else to add about Gettysburg cholera there were three buildings of the main academic academic building Pennsylvania Hall also Linnaean Hall was a science building in the Confederate ransacked the building and really messed up all the specimen cabinets and they stole artifacts and all kinds of stuff and there were damage claims filed later and newspaper articles referencing that there was also a like I mentioned earlier the the family of Jack Hopkins or John Hopkins the college janitor he was a free black man also owned a house on South Washington Street he and his family left before the battle and when they returned they saw their house had been destroyed it was used as a hospital the beds and bedding had been ripped up basically everything they had was was lost and destroyed and that was kind of a common experience for all the people in Gettysburg but especially the african-american citizens the town who of many of whom left ahead up to the battle for fear of being captured and taken south into slavery all right where are we now we're on a major Ridge and watercourses Stevens Run is this the tiber okay so the tiber Stevens Run was guys was this here during the battle yes and our bridges that go across this and that's one of the reasons are such chaos leading into the town out where the Carlisle Road is we had an intersection of three roads the Carlisle Road coming straight in you can look at the map the Harrisburg Road and the old Black's Turnpike and there were three bridges across this Creek and most of the soldiers run across these bridges and it does get deeper than this sometimes it's pretty dry right now though um I would like you know as a guide I would like it if you know Theresa or Doug came up here both just to try to paint this picture of the retreat I've never given a tour walking on Stratton Street in this direction so so what how do you guys picture it so this is a great point I've turned over in a moment but so when we talk about the chaos imagine this at least if you're from the 11th Corps you would come through the town when you came on the battlefield remember earlier in the day we talked about the first Corps as they come into this battlefield they will leave the roads south of town they will go cross lot to enter into the battlefield they fight all day and then as they were treat off of seminary Ridge they will now retreat back through the town and when they do this is the first time they've been in town so this is all new ground and of course as they come back through town they run into the lab with Corps who's retreating back through town with Confederates hot on their heels so when we talk about chaos it's not just the chaos of a loss of treat of uncertainty but there's also this whole group of people who have never been here before and now they're in these little streets and narrow cross waits in these little yards in these back alleys and they're all basically trying to go in the same direction so that only adds to the confusion that's out here on the horse Teresa right you know you think about all these soldiers who don't know where they're going then you some who do and yet they meet basically in the square and I was reading an account of one of the soldiers who said that because it backs up when they hit the square they're the men at the back of the line we'll be the first ones captured so it's like a traffic jam I talked about that you know Lee having a traffic jam getting his men to Gettysburg on the Chambersburg pike but it's a traffic jam as these soldiers are trying to retreat and I like to talk to the kids that I have on my tour imagine what it would be like to be here if this was your neighborhood and you've got all these soldiers rushing by firing off their weapons where would you go to your basement unless you're in California which I frequently make that mistake as Californians would you go to your basement or we don't have base but I imagine to these townspeople some of them are going to have windows at street level or sidewalk level what are they seeing as these soldiers are racing by blue pant legs followed by grey pant legs and butternut pant legs chasing them down the street so I can only begin to imagine what it must have been like here in town for everybody yeah Jarrod yeah and I you know I I think that really speaks to what you could call car the numerical shock that these townspeople go through there's 2400 people living here at the time and you late June 1863 you have thousands of Confederates come in a few days later you have 3,000 Union cavalry and come in this is more people than what these towns folk had seen in their entire lives and it was mind-boggling food and there was no other way that they could get over it and as my colleagues alluded to they rode out the storm and their cellars what I want to say is two things Theresa said actually is you know one you know you're almost like punished the longer you hold out the bravest seem to end up at the end of that line and they're gonna be more likely to be captured sort of flying in the face of you know a lot of people to think that the capture don't count for you know casualties or something like that and something else you mentioned about what the townspeople saw you can actually see that if you go to the Gettysburg Heritage Center and go to their John Burns exhibit they have a film of what it would look like looking out one of those cellar door or ground-level windows and it is just what you said it's legs running back and forth and things like that and a lot of those people by the way you know who kept a masterful set of inactivity in their basement during the battle they would be the early battlefield guides and you couldn't tell them otherwise about everything that happened during the battle which is pretty interesting the whole discussion about how newspaper reporters felt about the people of Gettysburg is a fascinating discussion now here Tim is standing near the tracks he hangs out in these places a lot usually near the tracks or something down by the river but we're looking at something in the distance Tim so at the time of the Civil War the railroad did come in to Gettysburg from the east that we're talking about the Gettysburg here over here over Junction a railroaded you know he came off the line that led from a Baltimore to Harrisburg the northern Central Railroad of course Abraham Lincoln used this railroad to get to town on November 19th 1863 four months after the battle down there you might see the train station to specific accounts we wanted to talk about relating to this battle one of them is that the 73rd Pennsylvania the Theresa mentioned part of Casterbridge aid actually stopped here at the railroad and as the rest of the brigade moved on the castor Avenue and thought that delaying action these soldiers is kind of hung out here until the pressure of all the retreating soldiers got too much and they joined in the retreat so they didn't really participate much in the fighting but they actually were sent out here and spent time here at the railroad track for a while the other account that's really interesting is take a look at the official report of the Battle of Gettysburg for the Louisiana Tigers general Harry Hayes and he mentions specifically in this official report that the Louisiana Tigers pushed through the town after they defeated coster's Brigade and captured two of Heckman's guns along the Carlisle Road and they stopped when they got to the railroad and he actually describes Harry Hayes in his account where he refuses the flanked regiments of his Brigade because thousands of northern soldiers who were still out beyond to Gettysburg college campus and he actually retreated by him and he watched them retreat we also know that on the other side of town parens brigade of South Carolinians broke through the seminary anymore straight to the center of the town there's not been a lot written about this but there's a suggestion that Harry Hayes and Perrins Brigade could have moved forward and joined forces in the center of the town and the entire force of retreating northerners would have been cut off but of course it would be like a few hundred guys trying to stop a few thousand guys from running through them at that point and Harry Hayes free admits that he was more than willing to swing open around and let those guys go by and watch him go by of course Harry Hayes after delaying his Brigade here for a few minutes then move forward all the way to the edge of the town and he captured the rear of the can the Union Army's retreat along Baltimore Street and in the alleys that led toward Cemetery Hill ok this is cool so I got hashtag battlefield cellars I got Jared you are loved in Pittsburgh which is both insulting to our cameraman and sound guy one person in the same whose total Pittsburgh as it goes so let it be known that he is loved in Pittsburgh as well and somebody wanted to make sure we called out the cameraman and sound guys for doing a great job today one in the same person but we really appreciate that comment we work really hard on our tech it's really hard to do this outside and go ahead find all those other organizations that are doing going far from connectivity and trying to do battlefield tours out on this particular flat platform oh that's right they're hardly are any this is tough and we appreciate your patience as we struggle with some of the tech even as we get better at it I don't even want to drink sit and say how it's been going today you know and I really appreciate that so here's a monument most people don't see and let's turn it over to Andrew Dalton or Tim for that sure yeah so Doug gave a really great introduction back at Coster Avenue on Amos Humiston he's a sergeant in 154th New York 33 years old and people wonder why is this monument sitting here in the parking lot almost of the Gettysburg fire hall and it's a really interesting story I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with it but we have a couple artifacts associated with the story I wanted to show here today David wills actually wrote a letter about Sargent Humiston as the Union soldiers are retreating back from the Koster Avenue area Humiston is shot and he falls somewhere in the lot of Samuel Russell who was a judge who lived on this corner Humiston he's probably his body's probably laying somewhere along Stratton Street in this general vicinity and then there's some contradictory accounts about who exactly found the body but David wills who is famous for having Lincoln stay at his house in November wrote a letter about Humiston and stated Sargent Humiston s body was found on Stratton Street in Gettysburg along the property of Judge Russell by Peter bite ler who took from his lifeless hand the ambrotype of his three children he was mortally wounded on the retreat of the 11th Corps through our town his body was buried on Judge Russell's lot and I had it interred and buried in the soldiers National Cemetery so Hama stones bodies is taken from it where it's found and the ambrotype in his hand as he's dying is is publicized widely and they're actually able to find his family because it's the only means of identifying this dead soldier and so his family will later move to Gettysburg they're part of the establishment of the soldiers orphans homestead in Gettysburg for the orphaned children of people who were killed in the Civil War but at the Adams County Historical Society we actually have an original photograph and negative of the Humiston children this is the the actual photo and in a second I'll show you the the one-of-a-kind photographic negative that was probably taken by the Tison brothers in Gettysburg in the in about 1865 or 66 and here is the original set this box down so everybody can get a good view of it here's the original glass plate negative of the hummus and children from the late 1860's and obviously we're standing at the site where sergeant Humiston s body was found by a Gettysburg resident and this is the photograph next to it and then Tim is actually holding a copy of the original photo that was found on the soldier's body so this is an early this is one of the photographs is reproduced this one by a Philadelphia firm after the soldiers were the children were identified and they were raising money for the creation of the soldiers national orphanage other people have copies of the ones that were made that were circulated in search of the identity of the soldier and of course the story is just amazing a Sergent in hospitals after gettysburg learned of the story obtained the daguerreotype from Peter Butler I should mention Peter Butler had a stone yard just not too far from here down the railroad tracks we're still there's some factory buildings today and he must have walked from his house to his stone yard after the battle and that's how he found home instance body and then this surgeon had the photograph reproduced and sent to upstate New York newspapers the guy had New York buttons on his jacket said he knew it was a New York soldier so the circulation of this photograph now of course the the conclusion to this is this guy is buried in a known grave in the soldiers National Cemetery instead of one of the many many unknown graves that lot you know dot our cemetery and finding things on fallen soldiers in the town of Gettysburg was something that was fairly common for citizens of the town I'm here I'm holding two original artifacts that were found by John H Culp next to the body of a dead Union soldier in Gettysburg and he was probably killed during the retreat it's a Fife and a popular pocketbook belonging to a fallen Union soldier in the town of Gettysburg so this is these are actually some original effects that were taken from from next to a body and a lot of these things were used to try to identify these people so that like Tim said they could be placed in known graves in the in the National Cemetery here in Gettysburg just while we're going I see people a lot of people are touched by the Amos Humiston story because there's nothing else like it at Gettysburg in terms of this identification in this last tender moment of this father so I see that a lot of you really are and we like the way that the Koster Avenue mural and then this memorial and some of the objects I mean I still don't think and this is why we bring these out for Facebook live if people are willing is that the battlefield with the accounts with the photos with the maps and with the objects the stuff that was actually part of the history is really just you know really sort of the trifecta or superfecta of really understanding history are trying to time travel before we move on I'd be curious if anybody else has anything to add while we're here we do have to keep moving but yes I don't miss you know so what you share with this the idea of you know we talked today about the power of social media think about that idea that he sends that picture around and how it captures the National imagination they find and identify an individual just by a picture and that end of itself would be awesome but if you think about the idea that after that they take that picture and they sell copies this is how much it resonates across the nation everybody would have known someone who had either lost a father or lost a husband somewhere along length and they buy these photographs that someday it can equate to the homestead orphanage being opened so Frank Freddie and Alice would then go with their mother falinda and live there and so it goes full circle the generosity of the American people as this story touches their their souls even back then the way it touches ours now it shouldn't surprise us at all and Alice his daughter Alice who's in the photograph she actually lived until 1933 and she's buried in LA so if anybody out in California and they could look up her grave and go visit California has come up twice already la by the way in 1863 had about 4,000 people Gettys regret about 2,400 so that's not really a fair comparison things have changed by then but really Gettysburg was an up-and-coming place with what six churches three banks two educational institutes of higher learning the railroad gaslighting all sorts of things like that to him anything to add to that I didn't want to mention right now we're not far from Koster Avenue where the fight occurred out over there of course you really can't see it but today there are buildings and this is the suburbs of Gettysburg but remember we talked about it was in northern edge of town it was open fields and the men who retreated from that battle came across this area the colonel of a hundred and thirty fourth New York Colonel Allen Jackson actually ran into a house with Confederate Jason Louisa herps it was 150 for York Street she sent him up a ladder into an attic and closed it off real quick and he hid in that house during the battle and escaped capture like so many other northern officers said hashtag give those guys an Emmy let's move along as we go because we're still along the route of retreat remember Humiston was just one of the many that had fallen in the act of retreating here I remember when this monument was put up I'm really glad that it was I think it was 1993 if I'm correct when it was put up so I would ask anybody that's with us here to you know step on up and talk more about this retreat or about the town come on we got lots of Minds here who wants to oh here comes Doug down I'll take a shot at this only because while we're here we spend a lot of time talking about senior leadership we talk about the generals of armies and corps commanders and division commanders the idea that we take a moment and talk about a sergeant multiply this across every unit that's here all of that leadership volunteers who had joined a unit who had responsibility to think about it just even our notion of the trusted sergeant the idea that a guy like Sergeant Humiston you go we was brought up pay the guys that are in the back are the guys that are getting captured so we said doing what sergeants have always done in the midst of chaos trying to create order take care of their boys get him out of there and now they're we're treating back through this chaos and we have this notion of the good sergeant here we can almost hear him cheering on the rest of his men come on keep coming as he fires down this road to protect their retreat and then he himself is wounded and of course when he is wounded and and perhaps there was no one else around because he was one of those senior Lee or one those junior leaders who was out there trying to do the right thing and take care of his people and now he gets left multiply that across this entire battlefield of a hundred and sixty-five thousand soldiers and soon you start to realize those 51,000 casualties here at Gettysburg add up pretty quickly yeah that's absolutely right and here we are it's gonna be a busier intersection so we have to be a little louder Chris can you zoom in on this picture is it too shiny because I have a less shiny one looks like it's working okay so what we're looking at is very close to where we're standing right now and that rise in the distance is where the German Reformed Church that you see in the distance of the photo would have appeared at the time again part of the original route of retreat taken just a few years after the Battle of Gettysburg so you're really getting a good look of what's going on here you're watching the American battlefield Trust and this is Gettysburg 155 live we're not covering the whole battlefield today because you don't cover the whole battlefield in 18 videos or 26 videos or 45 videos but we did shoot about 20 last year and we are shooting about 15 or more this year so I hope you vote of last year set just go to the American battlefield trust page and check them out under videos go to civil battlefields org still getting used to that to look for Civil War content and of course share this with your friends we've reached more than 170,000 people with the videos today you know and we've reached already more than 70,000 people have clicked on these videos or at least watched some of them and we're gonna stop and hear about more local stuff from Tim local stuff it's not what I usually call it I'm a little more derogatory usually but man they got some cool stuff here so Tim and Andrew from the Adams County Historical Society what do you got and let's talk extra loud with each other we talked a little bit about the call family now when we talk about a cult family you see people talk about Culp's Hill but there were actually over a hundred different people living in the town of Gettysburg at the time of the battle and the area around that name called it was a common name and the Culp's had lots of children and their children had children and so we do have at the Adams County Historical Society a collection of stuff that was given to us by one of the cult descendants and includes some really interesting things yeah so this red brick house right here is actually the home of Jeremiah Culp and his family during the battle Jeremiah has ten children and two of which died in infancy and the 11th child is on the way during the Battle of Gettysburg he'll be born on July 4th and as Tim loves to point out named for General George Meade his name is Jeremiah Meade Culp and obviously George Meade's army moves into Gettysburg on the 4th day but they lived in this two-story brick house it was built in the 1850s Jeremiah is the cousin of Wesley Colt the famous Confederate soldier who was from Gettysburg originally moved south and then killed here in the Culp's Hill vicinity and actually when John Reynolds is killed Jeremiah Culp who is a coffin maker and his uncle they have a shop next to the courthouse and Jeremiah Kolb actually is working helps to fit out the box that they've used to transport general Reynolds's body off the field in and we have a couple really cool artifacts this is a photograph of the house taken in the late 1800s you can see the brick house right here and then there was a wood house next to it that's no longer standing and then this is a picture of Jeremiah Culp taken around 1870 an original photograph and then this is an ambrotype from around the time of the Civil War of two of Jeremiah Colts children one of these children is Reuben Colt and Reuben actually wrote accounts later on describing how his father had helped during the battle in making fitting out general Reynolds's it wasn't really a coffin just a box that they used to transport his body and then finally another uncle of Jeremiah is George Coleman who lived out on the Fairfield Road and this is one of our really really excellent pieces here at the Adams V Adams County Historical Society in Gettysburg this is a note left by the 9th Alabama inside the house of George Colt I mean they wrote mr. Colby your house tore up pretty bad but we will do it a good deal more next summer if you do not quit burning our houses and turning out our women children Wow with this you will remember 9th regiment Alabama volunteers so this is a really neat piece it's an original that was left in town by the Confederate Army and we're standing in front of the house of his nephew Jeremiah Colt and there's so many how is it still standing in Gettysburg all of them have really unique stories like this so it's a it's it's important to remember all this the civilians who lived here I think that's just great man did a lot come up over here but let me just say first of all apparently one in 24 people that live in gettysburger named Culp during the Civil War and by the way they're all still here the cults the clap saddles the Hummel vowels the Trostle 's the Y Kurds what am I forgetting the Kaduri Spangler Spangler's in they're all over the place still Joseph why Kurt's and we did mention general Meade but I think we left off something Tim general Meade what do we usually say after his name general Meade is the greatest general in all of American history that's right now as we go here at the American Battlefield trust and I think that this is just really cool that the Adams County Historical Society brings out cool artifacts like this I didn't know anything about them having had that incredible letter left by an Alabamian during the Battle of Gettysburg and the particular relevance to the war at the time and even what some people like to argue about today so that's pretty cool stuff I hope you'll get involved with the Adams Adams County Historical Society what's your website ACHS - PA org all right one of those websites that just rolls off the tongue okay so here we are still retreating through town we actually already saw a picture of what this looked like but we're going exact along that exact route who else something to add at this point oh I'm seeing some blanks Theresa if you looked at that photograph that showed the church up here and you look at the road you look at what the town looked like you know we see it today with these nice paved roads but that's not what it looked like during this battle in 1863 these muddy roads there aren't as many buildings as you see today and so that their path was a little bit different than what we're walking today absolutely I think that's a really good point so I can't stress enough that everybody likes to think well if I was in that retreat I went to gotten captured because I'm special or I'm smarter than Civil War soldiers I highly doubt it if Civil War soldiers couldn't knock down a fence there's probably a reason they couldn't and my guess is that you couldn't do it either if they didn't have some great better way of fighting that you somehow think would work better they probably tried that and found that it didn't work too well I really like to dissuade people of this idea that were somehow smarter than people during the Civil War or that we're different because we didn't have a death wish like they did those crazy people I also like to dissuade the idea that somehow Civil War soldiers are braver than today's of soldiers or something like that people did what they had to do then they did what they do what they have to do now and I don't see a whole lot of difference between us in fact my main lesson about the Civil War to me is we are just like people in the Civil War there is no substantial difference between us and them other than the time we happen to live I would also point out that most of these soldiers had occupations you know they could have been all sorts of for professionals or other occupations like that they come into the war they enlist as a private but that doesn't mean that they're an uneducated poor person that simply that they felt their patriotism they wanted to join and support their country and they just happen to start out as a private so let's step it up here a little bit we just got another block and a half to go we've got some more cool stuff to see and if you're a general you'll fan I think you'll like it if you're a fan of some of the scrubber singing and sharp shooting going on around here you'll like it we also have some more photos to show as we walk along here and it's in this dead spot I thought I would just bring up one of everybody's favorite subjects and that is the Gettysburg movie so let's go a little round-robin and all of us come up here and talk either about one line you love from the Gettysburg Turner movie or one line or thing let's not really get into the hate so much but one line you love or hate about the Gettysburg and I'll start with my favorite you couldn't pour pee out of a boot with instructions written on the heel okay who else will step up next I'm gonna next I'd have to say the line I dislike the most is that we should have freed the slaves and then fired on Fort Sumter which completely defies everything at the Articles this is such a hot day Tom Berenger James Longstreet the heat reminds me of Mexico I know the the favorite line of all the guides in the guide room anytime we're sitting around and somebody asks someone else to do something they'll say we haven't just hand for that man okay I like when pedigree was trying to pawn his book off on all the other good good okay and dump downs there's no escape man come on up I think I have to go with the regular fictitious characters referring to Colonel darling I've never seen that any part of military discipline I don't know of any sergeants never talk to Colonels that way and so I find that ridiculous every time he says love when Colonel Chamberlain your brother keeps calling him by his first name he says don't call me that okay how about you Chris white my favorite line is they can tribute eyes the momentous and complicate the obvious all right good so we love the movie we love talking about the movie we love making fun of the movie all at the same time and don't even get me started on the beards let's take a quick stop right here because we actually have an incredible there's actually a little shade here an incredible 1873 picture this isn't a collection of William fresney toe but I'm showing you this out of the book this is this very place right here you can see this little hill in front of us right you scope spraying up for a little bit and then come back see that little rise well you could see there would be no buildings no school in the meantime this is East Cemetery Hill right there there's the mammoth tree right near the Evergreen gatehouse an incredible view and it really shows that even if you're one of Hayes's men here you are advancing down this road here and this is what you see Cemetery Hill is not somewhere else it's right in front of you and you can see it off in the distance here so I think it's a great way to sort of travel through time and see you know what what it actually looked like at the time and Tim this is the German Reformed Church Trinity Lutheran Church and you can see that the modern church has been greatly altered and renovated and this is the way the church appeared at the time of the civil war we have an excellent account by a wounded soldier of the 153rd Pennsylvania watching the battle on East Cemetery Hill in the second day from the cupola of the church and from the he talked to his observations from the top windows of the church as he's looking towards Cemetery Hill obviously this hill you'd have a royal ICU of cemetery here we're gonna talk more about that in a few minutes I think and I think Doug wanted to point out something else with this picture before we do let me just show the cover of fresney toes book he has four Gettysburg books he has two small ones that are really accessible this one gettysburg lenin now he also has a companion to this book and back to that particular photo does so when we talk about the power of standing here on the ground this is a great site because imagine that if you're a Union soldier and you're retreating back towards Cemetery Hill when you clear this Ridgeline you see home home is on that hill and if you can get there there's already Union soldiers there all of a sudden now there's a booster step to help get you there moreover if you're a Confederate and you're looking at the strain as Gary said we clear this hill but now a sudden look there's not a lot of cover and concealment between here and Cemetery Hill when we talk about open fields of you open fields of fire and later on we're gonna have this discussion about hey take that high ground if practicable that's the ground that we're talking about having to cover so our ability to look at these photographs and then evaluate the terrain stand here suspending that we know how it turned out and then judge the merit and folly of the decisions they made why we're here that's one of the joys of being on these battlefields that's right so point from the opposite direction we're doing the retreat but imagine Koster's brigade out here on skirmish duty they're looking that direction where there's not a whole lot of there's a lot of open ground and they're seeing this battle take place in front of them they're seeing the 11th Corps retreat and then they're sent out there to help cover that retreat so we're kind of seeing it from both directions right up here on this hillside really cool and let me just say that I think the best quote for a movie I saw in here was we're gonna need a bigger boat oh wait I'm sorry wrong movie he said I really enjoy that a lot as we go somebody asked what the book was from I already told you Gettysburg vennen now by William frazzle Neto he's the Dean of Civil War photography a lot of people are talking about more let's keep moving to our last spot up here you're watching Gettysburg 155 live you're with the American battlefield truck and we have all sorts of guests here today this is our fourth of at least 15 videos we're gonna do during the battle anniversary and somebody was asking how hot it is the real feel is about 102 right now right now in about the hottest part of the day so here we are but we're going strong we are hydrating and thanks for sticking with us through the wind through any tech issues we have as we go Tim what street are we on now this is a High Street it's called a high street because it's the highest street in town I don't know if anybody's noticed but we're not very imaginative in our names big Round Top Rock Creek Miller's Town Road yeah High Street so um High Street was a collection of public buildings and churches pretty much at the time of the Civil War and we have down the road we had the Trinity Reformed there's a Catholic Church down the street we had a later after the war Episcopal Church but in a Methodist Church but a little further down United Presbyterian Church and here on the corner is a Presbyterian Church at the time of the battle and we had the jail and we have a really nice photograph of the jail we're gonna go visit the jail yard in a moment but here's an 1867 photograph of the Adams County Jail and the sheriff of Adams County would have his office in the jail at the time now after the war the jail was renovated it was actually built in 1850 the original jail was made of wood and it burned down in a fire with a couple prisoners in it in 18-49 I believe and in 1850 they built the new jail and indeed you see there's a an addition a third floor place onto it for many after the jail moved out north of the town in the 1940s I believe this became the Adams County Public Library and it was a public library until it moved into the old post office building where kids would be famously imprisoned in the old jail and forced to read books that's right and now it's the borough office buildings so it's a really nice building it's a they've really maintained it well in recent years you can see that in one story at the top and of course it was here during the battle let me just say that somebody else brought up one of my favorite quotes while they were going on here from the movie they said you must order the death of the thing you love I don't think they did it in that terrible accent but I just tried to do based on other terrible accident as we go every think we're gonna cross the road now we're going to the fire parking lot all right good anybody have anything to add as we're getting ready to tie up so here we are to part of the battle or the Union has already gone by and the Confederates are controlling town they are controlling High Street and this tall Hill I think it's called Baltimore Hill because it's on Baltimore Street so the Confederates not only control this they're controlling further into town so we're getting toward the advance Confederate skirmish line skirmishing with Yankees on Cemetery Hill which we already showed you is not far away from here at all there's a good way to think like as a tour guide we stop here we drive there we talk we drive there and that there's some sort of a separation between these areas no they're all really close together Devil's Den in the wheat field are right next to each other practically if only you'll walk it and see it so now we're walking behind the jail as Tim said into the jail yard and Tim what are we looking at up here if you'll turn around you know this is it for people who like to speculate about what if the Confederate Army would have continued their attacks on the evening of the first day now remember this is the subject of our next it's going to be the subject of our next live so we're not going to get into a too much but I believe I generally like to believe that at some point during the state of the battle probably the morning in a second Richard Yeol passed along the street and undoubtedly came up onto this riser ground next to the wall of the jail which would have been right over there as a matter of fact this alley is called wall alley because it ran along the wall of the jail's courtyard you can look straight over there and of course what do we see the light blue water tower topped Cemetery Hill and of course that landmark has been pointed out by tour guides since it was constructed so originally we put in at the National Tower of course that's got to take it down but then they built a nice larger water tower and that marks the Union position on Cemetery Hill of course you can see Culp's Hill above the Gettysburg area middle school over there and if you look at the crest of the hill maybe you see the top of the observation tower up there so Cemetery Hill and Kolb sale and that's where the northern army are falling back to and this is sort of the Confederate high tide of the first day's battle and of course if he asked me for my money this is where general john b gordon rides up to Richard Ewell and of course there's a thud sound and General Gordon looks at ruolan asked him if he's all right and you'll says what's he say Gary according to this graphic novel no no General Gordon I'm not hurt it don't hurt a bit to be shot in a wooden leg look he's smiling and there's the shot coming in right down there and looks like there's Gordon over there coming in as well so I love these graphic novel to help us you know picture things look there's other bullets going by whiz and there's a horse and some other Rebs over there so it looks like they're here there they could be near the town square it's really hard to tell but really neat I love these things let me show the cover of this again because I don't like to show out of books without doing it this is the epic battles of the Civil War vol 4 Gettysburg so I think Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter you know graphic novels whatever floats your boat and can get you more interested in American history in the Civil War you know I think that's just a great thing so here we are at the conclusion of this we're going for the shade up here chris is wanting that because our equipment really heats up and I would ask anybody that wants to come up tie all this up for us what did we just do who did we Teresa you got anything at this point well we're obviously following the retreat of the Union Army this day and it's a helter-skelter retreat now some of these soldiers will say hey it wasn't pandemonium it was a controlled retreat but they're rushin to get to that hill and for the Union soldiers the 11th Corps they've come past this on the way here they know what to look for thinking about those first Corps guys that - haven't been through town yet how difficult it must be for them - to try to find this spot you've got all these foreign speaking soldiers maybe they're having difficulty figuring out where to go but eventually this confused mass of soldiers will reach the the high ground over there and of course for the next two days Confederates are going to try them knock them off of that hill very cool Doug Jared so what I would offer you so we've just followed this route which is gonna be important you know think about it we've been at this for just over an hour imagine how long it took for them to make first contact as we talked about out there on kosterow Avenue we say hey these guys don't fight very long and then they're gonna retreat back here and all that chaos and we didn't tarry too long at any one stop and we've kept on moving and still it took us about an hour to get to this point the idea that we walk on this ground and think about friction on a battlefield is everywhere it's much makes all the very simple things difficult and if we read our von Clausewitz right he says there's only two things that overcome friction one is genius and I'm here to tell you genius is pretty freakin rare and so the other thing that's out there that overcomes friction is iron discipline if you think about those men we're treating from north and west of town and those Confederates who've been fighting all day marching all day and chasing about the amount of iron discipline on this battlefield as both sides trying to overcome friction that they might achieve the objectives from which they are on this campaign for is amazing to go ahead and try and wrap our minds around as we walk on these battlefields in all caps chairs the only one of you who looks cool wearing his shorts and shirt and short sleeves and everything like that and we'd bat hit it I planned accordingly you know to put this a kind of an 1863 geographical context just during the course of our walk here this afternoon we have walked from the north end of town to the south end of town and this here this landscape forests which are completely different in 80 three there's some really dramatic stuff unfolding because for all intents and purposes this is the no-man's land between the two armies by the time we get to the night of July 1st the Confederates hold the south end of town they are occupying a lot of these buildings historic preservation here in Gettysburg has been phenomenal the 2/3 to 3/4 of the buildings that were here during the battle still stand to this very day and you can get a sense of this when you walk down Baltimore Street you can see Civil War Building July 1863 in plaques you know by these homes front doors and it really allows you to see a different perspective of you know what would be that the biggest battle and the history of the Western Hemisphere and to remember that civilians communities that they were highly involved in this I just think is extremely compelling and to put ourselves in their shoes you know they were in the dark literally and figuratively during those 3 days being in their basements all they hear is this intense volume one townsperson said it sounded as if heaven and earth were climbing that's what it sounded like they didn't know who was winning they didn't know who was losing and it was only when the guns went silent did they dare emerge from their cellars to see what this battle foretold you

Channel: American Battlefield Trust

Views: 31,830

Rating: 4.890244 out of 5

Keywords: American Battlefield Trust, Civil War Trust, American Battlefield Trust Live, Civil War Trust Facebook Live, Gettysburg Live

Id: FvGVWJcxS4M

Length: 60min 30sec (3630 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 05 2020