History of Kershaw's Brigade / With Complete Roll of Companies, Biographical Sketches, Incidents, Anecdotes, etc.

by D. A. Dickert

When all was ready the signal gun was fired, and almost simultaneously one hundred and fifty guns belched forth upon the enemy's works, which challenge was readily accepted by Meade's cannoneers, and two hundred shrieking shells made answer to the Confederate's salute. Round after round were fired in rapid succession from both sides, the air above [244] seemed filled with shrieking, screaming, bursting shells. For a time it looked as if the Heavens above had opened her vaults of thunder bolts, and was letting them fall in showers upon the heads of mortals below. Some would burst overhead, while others would go whizzing over us and explode far in the rear. It was the intention of Lee to so silence the enemy's batteries that the assaulting column would be rid of this dangerous annoyance. Longstreet says of the opening of the battle: "The signal guns broke the silence, the blaze of the second gun, mingling in the smoke of the first, and salvos rolled to the left and repeating themselves along the ridges the enemy's fine metal spreading its fire to the converging lines of the Confederates, plowing the trembling ground, plunging through the line of batteries and clouding the heavy air. Two or three hundred guns seemed proud of their undivided honors of organized confusion. The Confederates had the benefit of converging fire into the enemy's massed position, but the superior metal of the enemy neutralized the advantages of position. The brave and steady work progressed."

After almost exhausting his ammunition, General Alexander sent a message to General Pickett, "If you are coming, come at once, or I cannot give you proper support. Ammunition nearly exhausted; eighteen guns yet firing from the cemetery." This speaks volumes for our artillerist, who had silenced over one hundred and fifty guns, only eighteen yet in action, but these eighteen directly in front of Pickett. Under this deadly cannonade, Pickett sprang to the assault. Kemper and Garnett advanced over the crest, closely followed by Armstead. Wilcox, with his Alabamians, took up the step and marched a short distance in rear of the right. The Alabamians, Tennesseeans, North Carolinians, and Virginians under Pettigrew lined up on Pickett's left, followed by Trimble, with his two North Carolina Brigades and the columns were off. The batteries on the ridges in front now turned all their attention to this dreaded column of gray, as soon as they had passed over the crest that up to this time had concealed them. To the enemy even this grand moving body of the best material in the world must have looked imposing as it passed in solid phalanx over this broad expanse without scarcely a bush or tree to screen it. And what must have been the feelings of the troops that [245] were to receive this mighty shock of battle? The men marched with firm step, with banners flying, the thunder of our guns in rear roaring and echoing to cheer them on, while those of the enemy were sweeping wind rows through their ranks. McLaws was moved up nearer the enemy's lines to be ready to reap the benefit of the least signs of success. Brockenborro and Davis were keeping an easy step with Kemper and Garnett, but their ranks were being thinned at every advance. Great gaps were mown out by the bursting of shells while the grape and canister caused the soldiers to drop by ones, twos and sections along the whole line. Men who were spectators of this carnage, held their breath in horror, while others turned away from the sickening scene, in pitying silence. General Trimble was ordered to close up and fill the depleted ranks, which was done in splendid style, and on the assaulting columns sped.

Trimble had fallen, Garnett was killed, with Kemper and Gibbon being borne from the field more dead than alive. At last the expected crash came, when infantry met infantry. Pickett's right strikes Hancock's center, then a dull, sullen roar told too well that Greek had met Greek. Next came Davis, then Brockenborro, followed on the left by Archer's and Pettigrew's Brigade, and soon all was engulfed in the smoke of battle and lost to sight. Such a struggle could not last long for the tension was too great. The Confederates had driven in the first line, but Meade's whole army was near, and fresh battalions were being momentarily ordered to the front. The enemy now moved out against Pickett's right, but Semmes and Wofford of McLaws' Division were there to repulse them.

For some cause, no one could or ever will explain, Pickett's Brigades wavered at a critical moment, halted, hesitated, then the battle was lost. Now began a scene that is as unpleasant to record as it is sickening to contemplate. When Pickett saw his ruin, he ordered a retreat and then for a mile or more these brave men, who had dared to march up to the cannon's mouth with twenty thousand infantry lying alongside, had to race across this long distance with Meade's united artillery playing upon them, while the twenty thousand rifles were firing upon their rear as they ran.

Pettigrew's Division, which was clinging close to the battle, saw the disaster that had befallen the gallant Virginians, then in turn they, too, fled the field and doubling up on Lane and Scales, North [246] Carolinians, made "confusion worse confounded." This flying mass of humanity only added another target for the enemy's guns and an additional number to the death roll.

Alexander's batteries, both of position, and the line now turned loose with redoubled energy on those of the enemy's to relieve, as far as possible, our defeated, flying, and demoralized troops. For a few moments (which seemed like days to the defeated) it looked as if all nature's power and strength were turned into one mighty upheaval; Vessuvius, Etna, and Popocatepetl were emptying their mighty torrents upon the heads of the unfortunate Confederates. Men fell by the hundreds, officers ceased to rally them until the cover of the ridge was reached. The hills in front were ablaze from the flashes of near two hundred guns, while the smoke from almost as many on our lines slowly lifted from the ridge behind us, showing one continued sheet of flames, the cannoneers working their guns as never before. The earth seemed to vibrate and tremble under the recoil of these hundreds of guns, while the air overhead was filled with flying shells. Not a twinkling of the eye intervened between the passing of shots or shells. The men who were not actively engaged became numbed and a dull heavy sleep overcame them as they lay under this mighty unnatural storm, shells falling short came plowing through the ground, or bursting prematurely overhead, with little or no effect upon the slumberers, only a cry of pain as one and another received a wound or a death shot from the flying fragments. The charge of Pickett is over, the day is lost, and men fall prone upon the earth to catch breath and think of the dreadful ordeal just passed and of the many hundreds lying between them and the enemy's line bleeding, dying without hope or succor.

Farnsworth, of Kilpatrick's Cavalry, had been watching the fray from our extreme right, where Hood had stationed scattered troops to watch his flank, and when the Union General saw through the mountain gorges and passes the destruction of Pickett he thought his time for action had come. The battle-scarred war horses snuffed the blood and smoke of battle from afar, and champed their bits in anxious impatience. The troopers looked down the line and met the stern faces of their comrades adjusting themselves to their saddles and awaiting the signal for the charge. Farnsworth awaits no orders, and when he saw the wave [247] of Pickett's recede he gave the command to "Charge," and his five hundred troopers came thundering down upon our detachments on the extreme right. But Farnsworth had to ride over and between the Fourth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Alabama Regiments, the Eleventh Georgia and the First Texas, and it is needless to add, his ride was a rough and disastrous one. Farnsworth, after repeated summons to surrender, fell, pierced with five wounds, and died in a few moments. His troopers who had escaped death or capture fled to the gorges and passes of the mountains through which they had so recently ridden in high expectation.

The enemy, as well as the Confederates, had lost heavily in general officers. Hancock had fallen from his horse, shot through the side with a minnie ball, disabling him for a long time. General Dan Sickles, afterwards military Governor of South Carolina, lost a leg. General Willard was killed. Generals Newton, Gibbon, Reynolds, Barlow were either killed or wounded, with many other officers of note in the Federal Army.

The soldier is not the cold unfeeling, immovable animal that some people seem to think he is. On the contrary, and paradoxical as it may appear, he is warm-hearted, sympathetic, and generous spirited and his mind often reverts to home, kindred, and friends, when least expected. His love and sympathy for his fellow-soldier is proverbial in the army. In the lull, of battle, or on its eve, men with bold hearts and strong nerves look each other in the face with grim reliance. With set teeth and nerve's strung to extreme tension, the thoughts of the soldier often wander to his distant home. The panorama of his whole life passes before him in vivid colors. His first thoughts are of the great beyond—all soldiers, whatever their beliefs or dogmas, think of this. It is natural, it is right, it is just to himself. He sees in his imagination the aged father or mother or the wife and little ones with outstretched arms awaiting the coming of him who perhaps will never come. These are some of the sensations and feelings of a soldier on the eve of, or in battle, or at its close. It is no use denying it, all soldiers feel as other people do, and when a soldier tells as a fact that he "went into battle without fear," he simply tells "what George Washington never told." It is human, and "self-preservation [248] is the first law of nature." No one wants to die. Of course ambition, love of glory, the plaudits of your comrades and countrymen, will cause many a blade to flash where otherwise it would not. But every soldier who reads this will say that this is honest and the whole truth. I am writing a truthful history of the past and honesty forces me to this confession. "All men are cowards" in the face of death. Pride, ambition, a keen sense of duty, will make differences outwardly, but the heart is a coward still when death stares the possessor in the face. Men throw away their lives for their country's sake, or for honor or duty like a cast off garment and laugh at death, but this is only a sentiment, for all men want to live. I write so much to controvert the rot written in history and fiction of soldiers anxious to rush headlong into eternity on the bayonets of the enemy.

Historians of all time will admit the fact that at Gettysburg was fought a battle, not a skirmish, but it was not what Northern writers like to call it, "Lee's Waterloo." The Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and Petersburg were yet to come.