Excluding the ground of the great cavalry fight between Gregg and Stuart on the afternoon of July 3, on the Rommel farm three miles east of Gettysburg, where for hours these skillful generals fought for possession of the field in the immediate rear of the Union army, the area of the battlefield was about twenty square miles.
Lee’s intention had been to have Stuart’s cavalry strike the Union army from the rear the same moment Pickett was carrying the line in the front. The first skirmish in the great battle occurred June 27, when part of Early’s command, on their way to the Susquehanna, drove the Twenty-fifth Pennsylvania Emergency Regiment out of the borough.
On June 30, Buford’s cavalrymen, reconnoitering out on the Cashtown road, one of the seven prominent roads which converge at Gettysburg, ran into some of Pettigrew’s infantry and in the evening of that day, Colonel Gamble stationed his pickets along Marsh Creek.
Early in the following morning, July 1, Pettigrew’s Division advanced toward the town, and at Willoughby Run, with his whole brigade dismounted, Gamble held back the Confederates for two hours. Buford had advised General John F. Reynolds of this expected encounter; he placed the first division of his First Army Corps upon the road, and he then hurried forward the few miles to meet General Buford.
The two rode out the Cashtown Pike, where a conference was held at 9 o’clock. Reynolds then hurried back to his advancing troops to spur them forward and as he was leading the foremost regiment into the woods he was struck in the head and instantly killed. So passed away the greatest soldier in the Army of the Potomac.
An hour later Archer’s Brigade was captured by the Federals near Willoughby Run. Then followed two hours’ lull, during which the Confederates were preparing their lines to sweep the Union troops off Seminary Ridge. General Doubleday skillfully met this attack by throwing his two Pennsylvania brigades (of the Third Division, First Corps) into the front line, Biddle’s on the north of the woods and Stone’s on the south, both in open ground; the Second Division to the woods on the road toward Carlisle.
For three hours these fresh troops received the assaults of the enemy ten times their number, and when night came it was learned that Doubleday’s Corps had been reduced from 9403 officers and men to 2400, the 150th Pennsylvania Volunteers out of 380 men and seventeen officers brought back eighty men and only one officer not wounded. The 121st, 142d, 143d, 149th and 151st Pennsylvania all lost quite as heavily.
While the First Corps was thus engaged, General Howard with the Eleventh Corps came down the Emmetsburg road onto the field. Three divisions were started for Oak Hill, that they might hold it against Ewell’s Corps, coming back from near Harrisburg. Unfortunately the enemy had already seized the hill and Howard was forced into the open, but his two divisions were skillfully placed, and for two hours he sustained an unequal and hopeless fight, being forced back to Cemetery Hill, just as Doubleday had been, and at about the same time.
Among the incidents of the first day’s fight was the appearance on the field of John Burns, citizen, who came out from town dressed in a swallow tail coat with brass buttons on it, wearing a tall hat and his pockets full of powder and balls and a musket which he had used in the Mexican War. He approached the firing line, where Major Thomas Chamberlin, of the 150th Pennsylvania Volunteers was standing, and begged to be allowed to fight with that regiment. While discussing the matter, he was advised to go into the woods and fight from behind a tree, which the old man did, receiving three wounds, for which Pennsylvania has erected to his memory a handsome statue, located on the ground where the 150th fought.
One civilian killed was Jennie Wade, eighteen years old, who was struck by a stray shot as she was baking bread in her home.