Near sundown, June 1st, we got orders to move along a dull road over hills, mountains and valleys. We marched with elastic step, every one feeling the time had come for active work. Early on our march we encountered General J.E. Johnston's brigade of Early's division, that had been left at Chambersburg, together with all of Ewell's wagon trains. This delayed our march until it was thought all were well out of the way. But before midnight it was overtaken again, and then the march became slow and tedious. To walk two or three steps, and then halt for that length of time, was anything but restful and assuring to troops who had marched all night without sleep or rest. About three o'clock at night, when we had reached the summit of an eminence, we saw in the plain before us a great sea of white tents, silent and still, with here and there a groan, or a surgeon passing from one tent to another relieving the pain of some poor mortal who had fallen in battle on the morning of the day before. We had come upon the field hospital of Hill, where he had his wounded of the day before encamped. Here we first heard of the fight in which so many brave men had fallen, without any decided results. As we had friends and relatives in A.P. Hill's corps, all began to make inquiries for Gregg's old brigade. We heard with delight and animation of the grand conduct [232] of the banner brigade of South Carolina, "Gregg's" or McGowan's, and listened with no little pride to the report of their desperate struggle through the streets of Gettysburg, and to learn that the flag in the hands of a member of a Palmetto regiment first waved over the city. I heard here of the desperate wounding of an old friend and school-mate, Lieutenant W.L. Leitsey, and left the ranks long enough to hunt him up in one of the many tents to the left. I found him severely wounded, so much so that I never met him afterwards. While marching along at a "snail's gait" among the wagons and artillery trains, with a long row of tents to the left, tired and worn out and so dark that you could not distinguish objects a few feet distant, a lone man was standing by the road side viewing, as well as he could in the dark, the passing troops. The slowness of our march enabled me to have a few words of conversation with him. At its end, and just as I was passing him, I heard, or thought I heard him say, "I have a drink in here," pointing to a tent, "if you feel like it." Reader, you may have heard of angel's voices in times of great distress, but if ever an angel spoke, it was at that particular moment, and to me. I was so tired, sleepy and worn out I could scarcely stand, and a drink would certainly be invigorating, but for fear I had not heard or understood him clearly I had him to repeat it. In fact, so timely was it that I felt as if I could have listened all night, so much like the voice of a syren was it at that moment. I said "Yes! Yes!!" But just then I thought of my friend and companion, my next Color Captain, John W. Watts, who was just ahead of me and marching under the same difficulties as myself. I told the man I had a friend in front who wanted a drink worse than I did. He answered "there is enough for two," and we went in. It was Egyptian darkness, but we found a jug and tin cup on the table, and helped ourselves. It may have been that in the darkness we helped ourselves too bountifully, for that morning Watts found himself in an ambulance going to the rear. Overcome by weariness and the potion swallowed in the dark perhaps, he lay down by the roadside to snatch a few moments sleep, and was picked up by the driver of the ambulance as one desperately wounded, and the driver was playing the Good Samaritan. Just before we went into action that day, I saw coming through an old field my lost friend, and right royally [233] glad was I to see him, for I was always glad when I had Watts on my right of the colors. Our brigade lay down by the roadside to rest and recuperate for a few hours, near Willoughby's Run, four miles from Gettysburg.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Battle of Gettysburg—July 2d.
When the troops were aroused from their slumbers on that beautiful clear morning of the 2d of July, the sun had long since shot its rays over the quaint old, now historic, town of Gettysburg, sleeping down among the hills and spurs of the Blue Ridge. After an all-night's march, and a hard day's work before them, the troops were allowed all the rest and repose possible. I will here state that Longstreet had with him only two divisions of his corps, with four brigades to a division. Pickett was left near Chambersburg to protect the numerous supply trains. Jenkins' South Carolina brigade of his division had been left in Virginia to guard the mountain passes against a possible cavalry raid, and thus had not the opportunity of sharing with the other South Carolinians in the glories that will forever cluster around Gettysburg. They would, too, had they been present, have enjoyed and deserved the halo that will for all time surround the "charge of Pickett," a charge that will go down in history with Balaclava and Hohenlinden.
A.P. Hill, aided by part of Ewell's corps, had fought a winning fight the day before, and had driven the enemy from the field through the streets of the sleepy old town of Gettysburg to the high ground on the east. But this was only the advance guard of General Meade, thrown forward to gain time in order to bring up his main army. He was now concentrating it with all haste, and forming in rear of the rugged ridge running south of Gettysburg and culminating in the promontories at the Round Top. Behind this ridge was soon to assemble an army, if not the largest, yet the grandest, best disciplined, best equipped of all time, with an incentive to do successful battle as seldom falls to the lot of an army, and on its success or defeat depended the fate of two nations.
There was a kind of intuition, an apparent settled fact, among the soldiers of Longstreet's corps, that after all the other troops had made their long marches, tugged at the flanks of the enemy, threatened his rear, and all the display of strategy and generalship had been exhausted in the dislodgement of the foe, and all these failed, then when the hard, stubborn, decisive blow was to be struck, the troops of the first corps were called upon to strike it. Longstreet had informed Lee at the outset, "My corps is as solid as a rock—a great rock. I will strike the blow, and win, if the other troops gather the fruits of victory." How confident the old "War Horse," as General Lee called him, was in the solidity and courage of his troops. Little did he know when he made the assertion that so soon his seventeen thousand men were to be pitted against the whole army of the Potomac. Still, no battle was ever considered decisive until Longstreet, with his cool, steady head, his heart of steel and troops who acknowledged no superior, or scarcely equal, in ancient or modern times, in endurance and courage, had measured strength with the enemy. This I give, not as a personal view, but as the feelings, the confidence and pardonable pride of the troops of the 1st corps.