The battle of Gettysburg, the crest-wave of the American Civil War

Front matter

THE CREST-WAVE

OF

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR m

Contents

PAGE

A Word to Americans 13

Foreword 17

Foreword

So completely have the statistics of the campaign and battle of Gettysburg been dealt with by numerous able writers and historians — especially by men of marked military attainment and fame, and versed in the art and practice of war — that it would be both hazardous and foolishly presumptuous for me to attempt to improve or add to their voluminous records and discussions. c.The statistical facts and data herein are not meant as a compilation,, so nearly agreed are the most competent authorities who have exhausted vast tomes of official reports and documents. These, however, are supplemented and enlivened by much material gleaned from organization histories and personal reminiscences, detailing the action of corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, companies, batteries, and collective and individual incidents. As Confederate records are lamentably rare and incomplete, the writer who deals with our Civil War, or any phase of it, comprehensively, must bear the odium of apparent favor to the Federal aspect because the data of the Federals comes nearer being complete.

Notwithstanding what may have been written before on this subject, the fact remains that there are as many viewpoints of any subject as there are human beings to consider it. And some of these hold elements of newness, and, perhaps, of information. Especially is this true of so momentous and many phased an event as the sixteenth decisive battle of the world — the Battle of Gettysburg. It is not the purpose here to present Gettysburg as a battle only, or mainly, nor simply as a contest of armed hosts. This is, in i8 FOREWORD

fact, incidental to what may well be considered a large, perhaps deeper, view of the subject ; a view which, in reality, is essential to an occult understanding of the battle itself; for greater forces than armies must have been engaged, acting through our fathers, on that field fateful to mankind!

The two dominant Federal and Confederate armies arrayed against each other at Gettysburg were, in personnel, unlike any other armies which had ever met in battle outside of the United States of America ; for both were composed of citizens of a new nation, unlike any other that had existed; independent, highly intelligent men, mustered from every pursuit of a free and progressive life. The men of which these armies were composed were of warrior races and ancestry, and they had become good citizens. The noble daring and indomitable courage of their sires had found free and constructive scope in the exploiting and development of an imperial domain in the New World, as their more distant progenitors had in the Old. For such superb human material to submit itself to become disciplined into mere fighting mechanisms — automatons, like most armies — was an impossibility. Disciplined, yes ; but not out of individual intelligence and initiative action subordinated to advance a common enterprise or purpose. Rather was the individual intelligence heightened by discipline, that it should work more intelligently and congenially, and act with coordination in close or dispersed mass.

This New Man on earth was regenerate of his regal ancestry in bone, fiber and blood, and also in mind. He was fed of a virgin soil, breathed an untainted atmosphere, and was further vitalized by the presence of imposing and wonderful forests primeval, and vast plains of reverential silence lifted, at spaces, into majestic ranges towering into the infinite blue. What wonder that a new and extraordinary war was inaugurated by such men over a country so formid-

FOREWORD 19

able that it alone would have served to engulf the armies of Napoleon and those that opposed his adept genius? What wonder that the ranks of these American armies were studded brilliant with contented privates who competently judged, and freely voiced their judgment of epauleted generalship, while loyally serving and dying under it often because of lack of it? Is it a matter of surprise that these men represented not only themselves in person, but the spirit of an equally superb American womanhood — mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts — which had bid them go forth to battle ! Is it not a matter to be wondrously spoken cf, — the campaigns and battles of unparalleled duration and fierceness to which these armies rollickingly submitted themselves ?

The facts pertaining to these heroic incidents, though feebly woven, cannot but be of interest as our common heirlooms of glory, if nothing more. But, peradventure, they will help in finally misting away the lingering gauze of bitter memories of those torrential years of our family storm, and in bringing to view a clear sky that will long bless our country and mankind.

In this age of commercialism with its intense selfishness, it is well to study the great events in our rearing of a nation. It is good to know that, on occasion, men will rise above self; that hearts will thrill and send the red blood coursing in heroic deeds, leaping into action for a cause believed to be just. A warrior sleeps or stirs in the breasts of most men — and women ; and they love war, not for its carnage and devastation, but because it speaks to the heroic life they feel within themselves; and to read of it lets them out to breathe its robust atmosphere and live in its splendid action. It is good that Americans shall read of and thus feel the vital events of their history in order that the fire of patriotism shall not die in their hearts.

20 FOREWORD

The ceaseless war between Good and Evil, the Spiritual and the Material, Progress and Retrogression, is the universal cause of disturbance and revolution. In this revolution a local insurrection is like a volcanic obstruction heaved up in the boundless ocean of Being. Against such the infinite waves of the Great War dash and hurl until the obstacle is torn and washed below the level and disappears. The American Civil War was an incident or phase of the universal War.

Thus viewed, and in the light of its beneficent results, its regretable phases become ameliorated to fade and mist away.

THE CREST WAVE OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

Chapter I

THUS far in human history true national life has eventuated only after war. War for a principle, sometimes — generally for something less noble and enduring — but war; and then national life has emerged into greater or less permanency of being. So, likewise, on the free soil of the New World. From a war for principle, the great principle of Human Freedom, the unjoined British subject Colonies emerged, an assemblage of States joined in a Confederation bound together by the neutral hostility of self-interest. Finding in this tentative step toward union that these same self-interests were best served, the next advance ensued and was enacted into a Constitution .meant to bind the existing States into one indissoluble Confederation or Union, and also all territorial sections that should thereafter enter the Union and become an integral part of the nation. And in establishing this great principle, the American fathers accomplished far more than was affected in their rearing of a republic.

The Document of the Union of States against tyranny, and the American Revolution resulting therefrom, marked, and, for the first time in human history, established a fact greater by far than the union of States — the fact thai " All men are free and equal, in the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Yet, in this proud Declaration, the fathers immediately stultified themselves before the world, and undermined the structure of freedom which they proceeded to rear thereon, by permitting the greatest of all tyrannies, human slavery, to nest therein. But, withal, they wrought nobly ! For did they not, for the first time in human history, compel tyranny to recognize the great principle of the freedom of man? And so firmly did they establish this principle of life, that when, in 1861, the same contest had grown to the dimensions of war, tyranny assumed the subservient role of rebellion, also for the first time in human history.

Civil wars have, without exception, been class wars — the Commonalty against Sovereigns, or against arrogant overlording by an Aristocracy. The civil wars of the European ancestry of Americans followed this general course, even those numerously incited by the religious class for its own base or questionable ends. But, being near of kin to the English people, Americans are their direct inheritors. Hence, in England's wars between mass and class, the near predecessors of our Civil War are found. English history is so familiar to Americans, however, that it is needless to present the progressive phases of the conquest of the powers of the Crown by the people, until the latter finally gained virtual supremacy over the aristocratic class, as well as over the Sovereign. What concerns Americans most is that, as the result of these wars of England, parts of the persecuted mass, that is of the great common people, and a less number of the aristocratic class — the latter with royal favor or disfavor — migrated and made homes in America; the former settling the northern, the latter the southern Atlantic seaboard.

The dominant settlement of the United States from the past of humanity through its European descendants was effected by the best, the most energetic and fearless representative elements of two distinct classes of humanity, the great common people and the aristocrat. And with them they unconsciously brought their old feud — the feud of humanity — the never-ending contest between freedom and tyranny. They were " Pilgrims " in fact! Bearers of the Ark, and chosen guardians of the Covenant of Human Freedom, primevally made by the Father with His children universal. Bearing this Ark, and blood-pledged for man to this holiest of covenants, the meager remnants of Puritans and Huguenots escaped annihilation at the hands of Aristocracy impelled by the agents of Retrogression, religious persecution and hate. These hardy, self-reliant representatives of the great commonalty of freedom, not seeking nor accepting favors, but simply a place on earth where they might plant and grow Freedom for themselves and their posterity, naturally, if unconsciously, sought the more rugged zone of the New World as being most congenial ground on which to bring to fruition the seed of their desire; clearing way for it through wildernesses, and compelling the penurious soil to give to it sustenance. With equal naturalness the adventurous representatives of Aristocracy — of tyranny — sought and obtained from the home government grants of landed estates in the warmer, more genial zone of physical ease and comfort.

Here, then, at the very outstart of what was to become the United States are found transplanted two of England's long hostile classes, continued under their old conditions of royal favor, or more or less of persecution. And, to give virgin fuel to their ancient flame, African slavery found congenial home with the aristocrats of the South. Here, erected in America, and naturally hostile from old, and specially under their new eonditions, were soulliern barons against northern yeomen. Snrely a less apparent and needy cause than that of slavery would serve to touch the match and blaze this smoldering camp-fire! So England's history of its civil conllict between classes repeated itself in our American Civil War.

Our conflict between freedom and slavery, tyranny, was inevitable; and slavery had to disappear if either the nation or its free representative government were to live. Enlightened Democracy must win over the old proud Aristocracy, risen in rebellion — in tacit inferiority — against the threat at its domineering supremacy. A conflict adequate to the death of slavery was inevitable, but not necessarily a war. And when the good time comes around when the " hidden shall be revealed," the pages of history, then luminous with the truth, will display the fact that our family jar w^as fomented to war by the same lurking power which has been responsible for most armed conflicts of magnitude from the Dark Ages down to the present. Why should we, the flower of human progress, escape this calamity which has beset lesser peoples — many to their destruction as power- factors among the nations? But, as yet, this may be onlv touched upon — due to blind incredulity. The fundamental basis of the American Civil War being thus defined, that contlict may be studied with greater accuracy and a deeper comprehension than is possible with Slavery assumed as having been its root.

To say that war was inevitable to the settlement of the fostered natural conditions of conflagration is not enlarging on the truth. Had not the natural belligerent conditions been fostered, however, but loft to their natural course of settlement, it would not have been true that war was inevitable to their adjustment. Hence, as a matter of truth, we must further touch upon a hidden feature of the

Civil War which has to do with the controlHng under-currents of life, to none of which are our people awake, especially to the phase of this secret power which has ever conspired against our national life and free institutions, as being in their nature hostile to its purposes. Unfortunately we did not sufficiently suffer by our Civil War to awaken us to its secreted cause, and to the ever-increasing jeopardy impending from this Undiscovered. Nor has the time of awakening yet arrived. Nevertheless, if Americans will fully benefit by the lessons of our Civil War its deeper phases and under currents may not be overlooked, and a comprehension of these will save much future trouble. For, while in the newness of our unprecedented experience wc submit ourselves to many ridiculous and tyrannical iniquities, our unalterable purpose of freedom holds us unconquerably hostile to permanent submission, and sure to depose them.

If, in any measure, it has been made to appear that our Civil War was an inheritance from the near or distant past, it is because those who recognize these facts have, in their study of history, penetrated somewhat beneath its mere superficial aspects, or masks of the truth. And it would be strange, indeed, if a mind, once turned in that direction, did not continue its penetration a bit, and there discover that few, if any. great wars have not been incited by a so-called religious force. That such was present in our Civil War is true. For who living doubts the insight, honesty, or knowledge of that event exercised and possessed by President Lincoln? Upon sitch correct data depended his successful prosecution of the war. We find the following among his records made in the early days of his administration :

" A few days ago I saw Mr. Morse, the learned inventor of the electric telegraph ; he told me that, when he was in

Rome, not long ago, he found out the proof of a most formidable conspiracy against this country and all its institutions. It is evident that it is to the intrigues and emissaries of the Jesuit, that we owe, in great part, the horrible war which is threatening to cover our country with blood and ruin. The tme motive power (behind Secession) is secreted behind the thick walls of the colleges and schools of the Jesuits. Sooner or later this nation will know the real origin of these rivers of blood and tears, which now spread death and desolation everywhere. And, then, those who have caused these desolations and disasters will be called to give an account of them. This war would have never been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits. We owe it to them that we now see our land reddened by the blood of her noblest sons. I do not pretend to be a prophet. But, though not a prophet. I see a very dark cloud over our horizon, and that dark cloud is coming from Rome. It is filled with tears of blood. It will rise and increase, till its flanks will be torn by a flash of lightning followed by a fearful peal of thunder. Then a cyclone such as tlie world has never seen will pass over this country, spreading ruin and desolation from north to south. After it is over, there will be long days of peace and prosperity; for the Jesuit and merciless Inquisition, will have been forever swept away from our country. Neither I nor you, but our children, will see these things."

Lincoln further records that the working tool of this secreted power was Democracy, which, expressed as a political party, was opposed to, and interfered with, the successful prosecution of the Federal war and to that extent acted as the ally of the Confederacy.

Looking back into the conditions preceding the war, it appears evident that true students of that time can honestly igree with Lincoln that " This war would never have been )Ossible without the sinister influence "of some power that vas not then apparent to the general public. Left to its latural conditions, the sectional controversy over slavery :ould have been settled satisfactorily to both sections, had he Union slave States recognized the law suggested by vir. Lincoln and passed by Congress in March, 1862, urging hem to free their slaves by agreeing to pay the owners for hem. Surely, it required some extraordinary and subtle nfluence to carry an entire population into a devastating var to maintain slavery, when two-thirds of that population vas strongly opposed to war for that institution, and the najority of the other one-third would have been glad to )e rid of it in a way that would not subject them to peuniary loss. Under these cultivated conditions of elenents naturally combustible, war was inevitable between he North and South.

Armed conflict having become inevitable, then, a conideration of War itself may be beneficial to those who hiiik of it only as a wholesale slaughter by men become )easts. War, even as a selfish enterprise, sometimes has he appearance of an ultimate saving device employed by he Wisdom that attends to the well being of humanity. \s famine and pestilence often relieve disorders of physical lumanity that the entire body shall not become chronic vith diseases, so does War; and when it is waged for the ight or a principle, it eliminates mental disorders grown nto fever and plague until there remains no other remedy.

Our local insurrection in the ceaseless Revolutionary )rogress of humanity viewed in this light, the belief in its nevitableness is sustained by what it effected of cleansing, lational unity, strength and growth. Nevertheless, had )ur best wisdom met in a patriotic spirit personal and secional ambitions would not have been victorious; and without doubt peaceful methods would have accomplished more than did our Civil War. Only was it inevitable when the people of the United States — the vanguard of humanity — permitted wisdom to yield to the inflammation of selfishness.

Secession failed in its attempt to disrupt the Union, and in this the law was sustained by the bayonets of armed hosts. But the conflict did not fall short of giving to us, as individuals and as a people, a full measure of honest and ennobling examples, rare lessons, and sacred memories, with which to build more grandly and cement more firmly the new national life which it brought to us. We are no longer slaves to slavery, to its tyranny. A thousand free workmen earning prosperous homes in building our South are more cheering, more profitable, than a thousand slaves hopelessly dragging the depleted fields or trying to brighten their dingy quarters with a weird pathos of song. Are we not now masters of self-developed conditions of skill and craft of hand and brain, and not the bound subjects of raw, undeveloped conditions? Is cotton " King," or are we who manufacture it into profitable fabrics for the world and ourselves? Do our rich soils lie fallow of all but cotton and tobacco, or are they teeming with varied products? Is not the earth yielding its billions of mineral w^ealth to our blazing furnaces and gleaming forges? Is our South longer dependent, or independent; debtor or creditor to the world?

Are w^e not imbued with the real spirit, the true pride of life? Free Americans, every one! and proud of that priceless honor, bought and eternally sealed with great treasure and richer blood. Our Civil War was a sacrifice unto salvation ; a throe in the birth of Freedom. From its swirling flames emerged the celestial form and spirit of Liberty, calling her benediction of '' Freedom to all men." Her war-hammered diadem glitters with gleaming suns, the

States ; each in rivalry only to outdo in generating and reflecting light to render more luminous the common Shield. Union at last — in a common cause and glory. This was a result of our Litigation confirmed by the decision of the Judge. These are some of the tangible, visible reasons why our American valor swept the slope of Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg, in July, 1863, like an ocean's tidal wave, to crest, spume red, fret back and level in robust waves of prosperous peace on the great Mother Deep. Because Secession failed, these exist.

Chapter II The Field Of The Civil War

THE conditions were ripe for armed conflict in 1861, when Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States as the representative of the political party which had arrayed itself at the polls in opposition to the extension of slavery into the new territories of the West. Following the election Civil War broke out, the Confederate forces attacking Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

The field of conflict naturally embraced that section of the United States which had undertaken withdrawal from the Union, covered by the eleven States which had decided to erect themselves into an independent nation under the name of the Confederate States of America. The frontier or " border " States developed a difficult problem during the early war, as these, neither slave nor free, but both, essayed a neutrality which they were unable to effect, their position between the contending sections making them the great battlefields of the war.

The nature and conditions of the Confederate war held the South to the defensive while often acting in offensive defense in endeavors to hold its terrain free from the offensive invasion which was forced upon the Federal Government, the North, in contesting to bring the seceded States back into the Union under the plea of holding Federal territory and the Union intact. These facts of hostility, which, in ordinary war, give an advantage of three to one to the de-

THE FIELD OF THE CIVIL WAR 31

fense, in this case were emphasized by the size and character of the territory over which this war operated. With a northern front of nine hundred miles, as the crow flies, six hundred miles on the west, and to the south and east a continuous ocean front of about fifteen hundred miles in a direct line, and some three thousand of irregular coast line, including the Mississippi River, this field of war embraced 800,000 square miles of territory, or an area equal to continental Europe. The surface of this field was so diversified and cut by formidable mountains, rivers, streams, the country interspersed with great forests and meagerly threaded with indifferent roads, as to render it phenomenally defensible. The Federal forces, after forcing the Confederate frontier at any point along its thousands of miles, were instantly involved not only with valiant antagonists, but with the entire country and its population, which at every step of advance multiplied many fold, demanding ever increasing detachments of soldiers to guard flanks, rear, and attenuating lines of communication and supply, while concentration of forces was difficult and often impossible. Of these adverse features of the war the Confederacy was almost wholly exempt while it was benefited by the Federal difficulties. Its extreme western or trans-Mississippi section could only with great difficulty be conquered and this supply source of the Confederacy cut ofif, by holding open the Mississippi River, the great waterway of the Confederates. The Alleghany Mountains, coursing north and south a little east of midw^ay between the Mississippi and the Atlantic ocean, in their initial rise in the Central South offered no obstacle to passage east and west around their southern terminus ; but, rising abruptly northward, they prevented the passage of armies except at the far north, and subordinate ranges curtained and defended the intervening valleys as foremade runways for invasive operations northward, while opening into supply sections to the south.

This central mountain range furnished an impregnable flank protection to the defense, and its several great rivers, with their innumerable tributaries, served as lines of defense from behind wdiich armies were obliged to drive their opponents at every step. The Federal armies w-ere compelled either to reinforce east or west by passing one far northern defile over the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, or to maintain Eastern and Western armies so powerful as to do their separate parts of the common w'ork unaided by one another. They were also forced to operate on a double line in progressing their necessarily invasive war. And their main western line, east of the Mississippi, was supplemented by operations west of that river, but more or less dependent upon that stream as a base. For this reason, and the more important one, of cutting off and isolating the trans-Mississippi supply region of the eastern Confederacy, the Mississippi was opened and held by the Federals as a first necessity to the success of their arms in the West. To insure success to the Federal Government the coastline of the Confederacy was closed to foreign trade by an effective blockade along an irregular shore of some three thousand miles, following bays and navigable inlets such as blockaderunners might harbor in. The order given by Lincoln in April, 1 86 1, to blockade all ports from Virginia to Texas necessitated a great navy of deep-sea warships and a shallow water flotilla, w^hile numerous strong detachments of land forces w-ere required in attempts to penetrate inward against the numerically inferior forces necessary to the defense of the Confederate territory.

Multiplying these natural aids to the defense was, the State of Virginia, a huge salient one hundred and fifty by one hundred and fifty miles, exterior measurement, thrust

THE FIELD OF THE CIVIL WAR 33

northward at the northeast angle of the Confederacy; the Federal frontier, the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bayas its north and east wet ditch, with Washington, the Federal capital, on the immediate opposite bank of the Potomac, in easy jeopardy unless strongly fortified. The west wall of this salient was built of the almost impregnable Alleghany Mountains, a subordinate eastward range of which, the Blue Ridge, curtained the fertile Shenandoah Valley for invasive movements of the Confederates across the Federal frontier into the rich Cumberland Valley stretching through Maryland and Pennsylvania to the Susquehanna River. This valley was covered to the southeastward by the South Mountains, the continuation of the Blue Ridge north of the Potomac, the impassable Alleghany Range guarding to the northwestward. This great salient, destined to be the vital battlefield of the war, furnished natural advantages to the defense so numerous and formidable that, in league with an alert and able army, they compelled successful attack to be delivered from its wet ditch, the Chesapeake Bay with its tributary rivers, which numerously cut the defensive terrain of the salient from its eastern coast to its western mountain rampart.

Seldom in the history of war have topographical and strategic advantages so urged to flank and rear operations against an enemy occupying the Virginia salient. For here a spacious inland waterway opened from Washington, the Federal capital, to Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, and to its rear, along the course of the Potomac River, the Chesapeake Bay and up the James River, the Virginia shore frequently indented by bays into which considerable rivers empty. These afforded every advantage for the supply of armies operating from the shore inward, either against the flank of armies operating toward Washington, or for attack on the Confederate capital, itself, always threatening in flank and rear from these water-base positions, and hence holding the Confederates to its protection and away from Washington and invasion, in the presence of a competent antagonist.

From any side available for Federal penetration, except the water-front, this salient of the Confederacy was impregnable ; so proving itself through four years of ceaseless and desperate assault made by an army of mettle and unconquerable valor such as the world has seldom seen save in its equally superb defending opponent; the first steady, stern, patient and invincible; its brother army of defense, fiery, impetuous, with spirit indomitable. These two armies contested four years, converting the center of Virginia into the fiercest vortex of war the world has ever seen in a like area. Within the lines of twelve miles square, having Fredericksburg for its eastern boundary, were fought four great battles and scores of lesser engagements, in which 129,000 men laid down their lives.

SKC. Ol- WAR I.DWIX M. STAN" TON

Chapter III

THE South quickly became a solid unit in support of war; for the North, not content with placing itself as a barrier against the persistent and indefinite expansion of slavery, denied to sovereign States within the Union compact the right to secede and withdraw from that Union, and, with the proceeds of people, territory, and Union property, to set up and erect a new government, a new nation, necessarily hostile, and ever bent on the extension of slavery into the very territory from which it had been excluded by the North. To the South, then, the war necessarily became a war of presumptuous, degrading invasion, a war of tyrannical subjugation with the purpose of establishing negro equality. At the time the Act of Secession was passed by most of the Southern States, about two-thirds of the white population owned no slaves. This great common class of the poor white people was bitterly against slavery because the negro robbed the white man of his legitimate work, such as that of tilling the soil. Having, strong color prejudices, they at the same time opposed the abolishing of slavery, because of their fear that the freedom of the slaves would raise him to their level. For this reason the negro-hater constituted the main portion of the Soldiery in the Southern army.