Opening the Battle of Gettysburg at the Railroad Cut: Gettysburg 158 Live!

hey welcome welcome everybody i can't believe it's finally here gettysburg 158 and we're really happy that you're able to join us here on the gettysburg battlefield we hope you've been watching um our videos leading up our gettysburg campaign videos taking us from fredericksburg to cash town to union mills and the pipe creek plan and all the way up here to gettysburg and now we're on the battlefield we'll be bringing you as much as we can over the next three days and beyond as we follow the armies back toward virginia i'm gary edelman we got chris white behind the camera there there we go we've got other special guests joining us um today but just to summarize here here we are on the first day's battlefield the battle of gettysburg too basic for some of you last three days july 1st 2nd and 3rd 1863. the july 1st sorry to spoil the end is going to be a huge confederate victory and we're going to start to talk about some of that stuff here near the railroad cut here facing west toward the appalachian mountains here with gettysburg about a mile behind the camera and to start this up and get you started let me bring out my longtime friend troy harmon this dude is a star uh when he gives tours here he is a ranger here at the gettysburg national military park he is an author troy thanks for joining us thank you gary uh gary's the star but thank you so much for the introduction it's a honor to be involved with you today quick overview here we're just going to keep it moving you know it's raining today but it's not really out of character with the first day of the battle july 1 1863 it was raining when the first four left just north of emmitsburg they would have gone through patches of rain it would have been very hot humid about 89 degrees heat index would have felt like more low 90s wool uniforms but they kept hoofing it marching north on the emmitsburg road they dismantle fences along the emmitsburg road very close to gettysburg and cross lots over towards the west side of town and uh james wadsworth's division would be deployed uh specifically solomon meredith's troops would go into the woods off to my left herbst woods and lysander cutler's brigade of was worst division would be moved over to this side of the pike that's the chambersburg pike which was a crushed stone road over to your left john reynolds himself was likely involved in placing cutler over on this side of the pike to protect the battery that was advancing up a battery of six artillery pieces this would be james hall's second main battery to relieve caleb's battery that had been supporting buford's defense of mcpherson ridge so all of this was coming together rather quickly the southerners had been coming in from the appalachia or the blue ridge and as they were marching from west to east they begin to appear on the horizon they set up artillery on the opposite ridge hare ridge they begin to lob shells in union artillery began to deploy and fire back and so this thing began to develop very rapidly after 10 a.m on july first 1863 158 years ago now i'm going to introduce you to doug dowds he's going to come in my colleague and he's going to take it from here thanks troy good morning gang well first of all great to be out on the battlefield you got to love that you can't even see her ridge there's so many clouds out there imagine the fog of battle all the unknowns that we don't know so to pick it up from troy imagine now archer's brigade of alabamans and tennesseans will be driving the iron brigade back into the woods off to our south and then what we'd have is brigadier general joseph davis brigade davis davis jefferson davis nephew so nepotism is alive and well in the south now what they're going to do is they're going to be driving union cavalry back when cutler's union troops will come in and they'll be aligned over here in part supporting hall's battery on this side of the railroad cut and then they would be strung out here the 56 uh pennsylvania and the 76 new york and they would be out flanked by a very large regiment of men from north carolina the 55th north carolina in fact we see james wade up there pointing off to his right which would effectively be where those north carolinians come and what they're going to do is out flank this union line and drive them back into that tree line back behind us and so with them driven back now the 147th would have to refuse its flank and at the last minute even as they got orders to pull back the commander will be killed and they'll have to fight a little bit longer until finally they will have to retreat across this railroad cut now the cuts had been made in 1863 the ground had been level but no tracks were there yet as the 147th retreat off there hall's battery is now by itself sensing an opportunity davis brigade will slowly start to wheel with the opportunity to take the iron brigade in the flank and the last reserve in the union line is going to be the sixth wisconsin over by the seminary commanded by rufus daws of the cornfield fame now dawes is going to bring his men over on the run they're going to line up on the south side of the fence they're going to be joined with a 14th brooklyn and the 95th new york they're going to counter-attack from back by chambersburg pike they're going to lose one man for every yard that they advance seeing them coming these confederates are going to hop in the railroad cut to use it as a trench line ultimately what's going to happen it's too deep it ends up being a bit of a trap and those men from wisconsin and new york will now come over here and they'll go to hand-hand fighting off to the east in fact they're going to capture the second mississippi state battle flag and send those confederates retreating back to hers ridge and that secures the north side of the chambersburg pike and then there's a noonday low gary all right thanks so much doug dowds us army war college licensed battlefield guide and one of my favorite people sorry i didn't say that about anybody else here that's with us today you're with the american battlefield trust we are live for gettysburg 158 and even though it's raining and by the way i said it looks like the worst of the rain will pass by before we go live i think i think that will continue um you know uh we are out here to try to bring you as much as we can and we will go super respectful um sometimes but uh you know especially when we're in certain areas but we are on a battlefield it is a commemoration and we want to talk about those soldiers who fought here we want to show you cool artifacts from um those soldiers especially if the rain is able to stop and we want to talk about some really um key stories by the way make sure that you also uh join us on youtube because at i believe 9 50ish we're gonna go live on our youtube channel subscribe to our youtube channel we need to grow that channel as well help us get close to 150 000 subscribers if you can i also want you to note that there is a lot going on um in the park right now it is the anniversary and they have battle walks they have special experiences they have family hikes go to uh nps.gov get to see the schedule we hope you can engage meaningfully with the battlefield while you're here now i confess i was doing a little preparation did we bring davis in already and everything like that yeah we sure did we brought davis in we had them you have troops get captured here in the railroad cut now they got driven back to drive us to the noonday low all right well let's point northward if you will chris because here we are and this by the way is what a battlefield looks like you know sure they fought in woods and on mountains and near streams sometimes but mostly they fought in open fields like this it's an open fields like this that soldiers fought in a way that you sort of think you're smarter than them because you would have had some better way to fight because you're modern and you understand i'd like to hear what that better way to fight actually is because the civil war failed to really produce that but we're looking across the fields where they fought and among those units in davis brigade was the 55th north carolina and i'm going to bring on our friend ann mitchell from ancestry she's a family historian with ancestry and two of her ancestors and we know that they were here they are going to swing across that field and start to threaten the union line in this direction and what do you see here good morning everybody my name is ann gillespie mitchell i'm here from ancestry fold three find a grave and newspapers.com we're joining our friends here at american battlefield trust so i hope you all are on and watching you need to go check out the civil war records on fold three because what you're going to find is the stories of your ancestors and you will find the stories of your ancestors at gettysburg and i tell you what once you find them you need to be here two of my ancestors well i had 10 who fought in the civil war but two of them were part of davis's brigade they were in the 55th north carolina company d maston turner and david hamrick they started it and they ended it at pickett's charge to be here where they fought and know they were in all of this it gives me chills it's amazing to think that 158 years ago they were participating in gettysburg were they on the side i would have picked no but they were part of it and knowing their story and understanding it and standing on the ground that they were on this hallowed ground it's an amazing thing go to our site click on more stories on fold three all our content on the civil war is free this weekend through july 18th so you can find your stories click on more stories find your regiment and if you go to the gettysburg page you will find maps that will show you the exact places on the battlefield that those regiments fought so you too can come here and find those stories thanks and yeah we have to have you on more often because as soon as anne started talking the rain stopped check this out another thing i noted joe said 55th north carolina that's a big unit see isn't that great there's various people out there who who start to study certain units and whatnot and even the 26 north carolina is on here uh uh that page and they say fold three is awesome um so we're really happy about this partnership when it stops raining maybe you'll get to see anne's awesome shirt that actually has the battle of gettysburg and fold three and ancestry on there pretty cool stuff i also want to say somebody else said to us stay dry thanks ramona that's very helpful um and uh i i i want to invite troy back up here because here we are we've brought the soldiers up the southerners are actually uh you know you know winning here but here comes the six wisconsin they repel the southern attack what's a little bit we don't want to spoil the whole end but what happens next troy yes the six wisconsin under rufus dawes they were back at the cemetery seminary off to your right the lutheran theological seminary and they moved forward uh to connect with the 95th new york and the uh 14th brooklyn or 84th new york this was a major edward pie of the uh that would be with the 95th new york and major edward uh colonel edward fowler of the 14th brooklyn and he was an overall command connected with rufus stahls of the sixth wisconsin they formed along a fence line on the chambersburg pike and if i could pivot around we'll take a look in that direction and along the chambersburg pike we said was a a mixed stone and dirt road there was fence lines there and those three regiments started to fire out in the direction of the cut firing at the 55th north carolina and some mississippi units who doug dallas mentioned earlier had dropped into the cut for cover and then they decided to advance and as they advanced they eventually picked up to a trot overran the position flanked it just off to your left there was a pivot to try to trap the southerners so that they couldn't escape towards the town the cut is deep enough in this area that they couldn't climb out of it so that was that represented the end of the morning's fight just north of the chambersburg pike it was a very decisive moment it was quick thinking on his feet by rupa stars and edward fowler to make this happen so i'm going to pass this back on to gary thanks so much troy somebody i think was christopher said i went on one of troy's hikes once and i was concerned for my life troy is known for going off-road on single track runs with large groups huge groups uh you know i also wanted to mention we got our friends jim voss uh on we've got a bunch of other friends we can't mention y'all thank you so much uh and we have an umbrella over the camera right now they're not not that far there we go um so what we have uh you know here is you know our attempt to cover some of the battle of gettysburg but this right here is the first live video we ever did at gettysburg for gettysburg 154. so you can go check out that video and see how the technology is i hope progressed you can go to last year's video where chris white and dan davis are speaking over at the reynolds monument about this so please don't think that our coverage this year remotely covers the whole battle but get this many of you watching these videos i hope will spend some hours those hours are more than many of the soldiers who were here ever spent at gettysburg so we expect them to remember what happened 5 10 20 50 years later it takes a lot longer to understand what's going on here um than it actually took to fight it so to get into some of this because everybody has a story doug yeah so one of the beauties about this place is think about these soldiers when this war is over gary is talking about this is what a battlefield looks like and today we see this is soy beans but back then it was a wheat field when 147th new york comes out here and they're in this field they don't even see davis brigade in fact the first thing that they realize is the confederate volley and then there's flying pieces of wheat all around them as they go to return their volley the confederate commander will see them level the rifles and tell his men to lay down so that first volley goes over top and this gets to be one of those you know controversies that you know as lincoln would say there was plenty of honor to go around for everyone and yet once this war is over as the decades pass then they start to get slightly petty who fired the first shot well we know it was the ninth illinois out on the first day or was it well and then of course well you know calvary doesn't actually have battles right they're caloriemen so the battle's not actually joined until it's infantry men that fight so then you're going to have you know the 76 near new york and the 56 uh pennsylvania they're going to argue about who gave the first volley and that would be the real start of the civil war or the real start of the battle when we talk about the 55th north carolina and they're charging over here the volley that they do fire in their direction will take out their colonel as the colonel goes down the executive will come over to take his his last direction and his last direction isn't what the regiment should do except for this hey keep up that face don't worry about me don't let us get behind the mississippians this speaks volumes about the competitive nature even between units that fought side by side as they try and advance and bring laurels and glory upon their individual regiments knowing that at that very time as gary brought up they're actually winning this fight yeah that's really cool and i'll bring troy back on in a second here but i'm just reminded how many stories we know about this because you know the first day's fight is the real deal it's probably like 28 000 southerners wrapping around and eventually whipping uh and forcing you to retreat 18 000 union soldiers taken in itself uh the first day of gettysburg probably would have been roughly the 12th largest battle of the entire civil war so don't believe what you see in the movies you know and whatnot in ken burns series where the first day gets a short shrift and it's a skirmish action with the cavalry and everything like that this is the real deal and somewhere uh on july 1st along this area um a you know an orderly or a messenger was galloping out to um a member in command of the 147th pennsylvania and he delivers the order to retreat um but right after he delivers it the major getting it is shot and never gives the order to retreat and 147th is hung out there and to quote tim smith quoting another battlefield guide this is tim smith quoting gary cross if i had a map i couldn't show you all the ways the 140th uh 147th new york retreated here at gettysburg thank you gary i'm going to say something briefly about the terrain and pick up on a point that doug made a few minutes ago that when you're here on the ground you can't see beyond the next ridge and there's an ebb and flow to the ridge lines here think of think of bumpers that you would find in a walmart parking lot and these are rumble strips to slow a car down you might be able to fly 50 miles an hour over those rumble strips but it would destroy the carriage of your car think of the ridge lines from west to east that the southerners were advancing on and that the union was defending from east to west as those speed bumps and a grocery store parking lot so from west east belmont schoolhouse ridge and then closer to us would be hair ridge and then western mcpherson ridge eastern mcpherson ridge oak ridge seminary ridge and cemetery ridge beyond that the union's overall scheme or plan was to protect these ridges and what they would do is set up a defense along the top of the ridge the confederates didn't know what lay beyond the ridge in terms of location morale and strength so they had to proceed carefully with each ridge that they took they had to slow down metaphorically at each of the speed bumps which slowed their advance the overall plan of the union was to buy time and these speed bumps that is ridges helped achieve that one other point about the railroad cut if we could pivot a little bit to your left the railroad cut a boss of mine in the 1980s when i worked at fredericksburg in spotsylvania national military park bob crick many of you know him published author and a giant in our field he he would give speeches and he would say on occasion you can't have a civil war battle without the following a peach orchard a sunken road a stone wall and a sunken railroad kite and um sunken road in a railroad cut and you have the same here and one of the reasons is is that in the 1830s 1840s railroad boom was going on almost like the internet boom in the 1990s people overextended it didn't have enough money was a lot of capital banks were not equipped to give people enough capital to finish what they started so that you would have unfinished railroad cuts and most civil war battlefields had them and this would have been the same uh scenario one other quick point on the railroad cut there are cuts and fills when railroads were put in during the civil war you have when you have an ebb and flow to a ridge you cut you cut the ridges from east to west or west to east and you take the dirt and put it in the the shallow part the flow so you have a level surface steam trains couldn't climb steep inclines so one of the reasons why the southerners were trapped here and the savvy movements of the sixth wisconsin 95th new york 84th new york trapped them here was they were in the cut not the field the cut is through the ridge that's the deepest point and by the uh new yorkers and wisconsin troops circling around they cut off the southern access to the fill that's the lower part so the bank that the cut went through this was the worst possible predicament for the southerners and the union quickly sees that moment of opportunity that's great troy you're with the american battlefield trust we're on the first day's battlefield in and out of intermittent rain the rain that i said would be gone before we started i'm an optimist i'm sorry that's chris white behind the camera we have a gaggle of guests and uh we'll have more uh joining us a little bit later uh make sure you subscribe to our youtube channel because our next live video i think around 9 50. i'm not going to tell you where uh you know we'll probably will be on youtube so subscribe over there in fact we had a guy named mr poulton uh andrew poulton that is actually wondering whether we prefer the uh you know 105 degree real feel weather or pouring rain give me the heat any day over rain man my notes not that i carry any are wet i'm worried for my phone and everything like that uh and we're just so happy to be here with our friends from ancestry fault three and and the gettysburg national military park and some of the others that you'll meet today from the gettysburg foundation and the adams county historical society it's just great and i just have too much to cover so i'm going to maybe try to cover that at the end but here comes doug doubt hey gang i just got done talking about how those competi confederate regiments were competing with one another we shouldn't just think this is something that happens on the confederate side for the six wisconsin the 95th new york and the 14th brooklyn a demi brigade also part of cutler's men that were over by the mcpherson barn when this is all over they will both be claimants to say we started the charge we were the ones who let it now if we read daw's account what he says is we get over there imagine now amendment of the six wisconsin pointing their rifles down the railroad cut and dawes will say surrender or we will open fire and at that point the major now in charge of the second mississippi will offer up his sword and just for a moment you have this awkward case of every other officer hands dawes his sword so he's sitting there with six swords in his hand and now he's got to figure out find some aid to hand those off and of course those men would compete for the laurels of this victory here too the last thing that i would talk about is now steps us all the way forward we talk about what do we find on civil war battlefields today the last remains found on this battlefield would be found in the railroad cut in 1996 by a national park service guide walking down here after a after a strong rain comes across to sign the object now because we know that went to hand-to-hand fighting we don't know whether that soldier whistled disky or sang john brown's body and so what they did in 1997 is they brought the oldest living confederate and union widow here buried in the national cemetery as a united states soldier gary and i think that's great and it's even further confused by i think they found union and confederate items in the grave and they found 90 of the soldier skeletons i remember um a little bit missing um but you know i think the buttons were one side and the belt was another so was it a union soldier with a southern belt or a southerner with a union coat pretty interesting stuff but you know maybe that's the best we can do for that soldier is to learn as much as we can and then you know give him a proper burial um you know a few things to say first of all and i do want to summarize a little bit of this and then we'll be off to our next stop um but you know we are meeting with certain friends here but in jim schmick hopping on here who is just a you know phenom when it comes to all things harrisburg area civil war hello jim you know when it comes to that and there's a great museum up in harrisburg i want to say that they're you know we're talking about gettysburg now but all over the country there are people doing yeoman history work so do check out the national civil war museum um when you're when you're going up in this area go up to harrisburg check out the adams county historical society while you're here with some of the incredible stuff that they have and of course check out the gettysburg national military park and their incredible museum and visitor center run by the gettysburg foundation now if we leave you with anything because not everybody just absorbed that i saw uh facebook trying poorly to caption doug and i i think they captioned uh you know auto caption troy pretty well because he speaks at a reasonable rate um but remember this because you're not gonna remember all of it on the first day the southerners are going to bring superior forces to gettysburg but at first it's not exactly that way it's two brigades against two brigades and then the fight begins to grow the confederates get the upper hand in this field and the union pushes on or pushes back and then they settle into a lull and it's going to pick up a little bit later when 7 000 or more confederates appear on that hill behind me oak hill okay there's going to be a fight for oak hill and oak ridge there's going to be a fight around barlow's knoll along the 11th corps line and of course you'll know there will be a massive series of collapses as the union went back from seminary ridge and barlow's knoll all the way back through town to the famous hills that we'll also cover on videos later so um doug dowds jeremy martin holding an umbrella over chris white behind the camera this whole time thank you so much jeremy troy harmon and mitchell thank you so much for all your help we'll see more from all y'all thank you all for joining us please share this with your friends it's not too late you'll find some history buffs among your acquaintances you didn't even know about and thank you overall for supporting battlefield preservation and education you

Channel: American Battlefield Trust

Views: 35,373

Rating: 4.9519095 out of 5

Keywords: American Battlefield Trust, Civil War Trust, 158th anniversary of gettysburg, day 1 fighting gettysburg, day 1 gettysburg video tour, gettysburg video tour

Id: BOeR93b7KZc

Length: 24min 33sec (1473 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 01 2021