The enemy had placed some batteries on our left and front, and advanced from the woods in our front. Colonel McIntosh's brigade met their attacks, a part of his command being dismounted. His entire force soon became hotly engaged, and also the Fifth and Sixth Michigan regiments. General Gregg stationed himself near his batteries, where he could see the field and direct the battle; one of these was Randol's and the other commanded by A. C. M. Pennington, both famous batteries, Randol's to the right and Pennington's to the left. In this engagement the fire of these batteries, especially Pennington's, was remarkably accurate, compelling the enemy at times to shift their guns, and contributed in no small measure to our success.
After the fighting had been in progress for some little time, Custer took off his cap, placed it in his saddle-pocket and led the Seventh Michigan cavalry in a charge, his yellow hair flying and his uniform making him a conspicuous object. The Seventh was a new regiment and was armed with a Spencer rifle which carried one cartridge in the barrel and seven in the breech; this was the first time I had seen this weapon. This charge was over a very considerable distance, with the result that the lines were somewhat extended so that when they came close to the enemy behind a fence and were met by a fresh body of Confederate cavalry charging them, they were repulsed. Being a new regiment, many of the men rode wildly past McIntosh's command and up to and beyond our guns. I think it was during this affair that General Custer's horse was shot. I heard him remark after the fight that he would have been captured except for the fact that one of his buglers caught a horse for him and held off the man who wanted him to surrender. Meanwhile I had been sent to Colonel McIntosh and was with him when the Seventh Michigan men came back past his dismounted lines. He was making heroic efforts to rally them, fairly frothing at the mouth and yelling, "For God's sake, men, if you are ever going to stand, stand now, for you are on your free soil!"
It was just before this that we discovered Stuart's final advance, by Hampton's and Fitz-Hugh Lee's brigades, which Hampton led past McIntosh's dismounted men, charging right up to within about fifty yards of our guns. Believing that, if the guns were taken, there was nothing to prevent the enemy from getting at the reserve artillery and ammunition trains in our rear, it seemed the crisis for us, as it was also about the time Pickett was advancing against the centre of our army's line of battle. I took a position between two guns, which I think were in charge of Lieutenant Chester, who excited my admiration by his coolness, and there awaited the expected struggle over them. The effect of Pennington's and Randol's firing on Hampton's brigades was soon noticeable, for the momentum of their charge seemed to be checked when they were about one hundred and fifty yards from our guns. Our batteries were then firing canister into them.
Two gallant charges were made into Hampton's columns as they came on. Captain Trichel with about sixteen men of McIntosh's brigade, including Captains Walter Newhall and Rogers, suddenly appeared and charged into them from the right, creating some confusion. Newhall tried to make for a color-bearer, who lowered his staff, striking him in the mouth, knocked him from his horse, and tore his face open. Trichel, his officers, and nearly all of his men were wounded. About the same time Captain Miller of the Third Pennsylvania with his company charged right through the rear part of the column from the left. Hampton had led his men to within about fifty yards of Chester's guns, when suddenly the First Michigan cavalry, a veteran and very fine regiment, led by Colonel Towne, with Custer by his side, appeared. The Colonel, in the last stages of consumption it was said, required assistance to mount his horse. This regiment, which from my position I had not seen, struck the enemy in front and flank, right before our guns, which only then ceased firing. Immediately staff-officers, orderlies, and the men that a moment before had been coming to the rear joined in a hand-to-hand fight in front of the batteries. In a few minutes the enemy broke to the rear and our men, joined by the First New Jersey, Third Pennsylvania, Fifth and Sixth Michigan which had mounted, chased them nearly to the woods from which they had emerged some three quarters of a mile in our front.
This ended General Gregg's cavalry fight at Gettysburg, the fortunate outcome of which undoubtedly contributed greatly to the victory. Immediately word was sent to headquarters of our success and in a short time a brief note was received from, I think, General Butterfield, General Meade's chief of staff, written on a slip of paper about the size of an envelope. The words, as I recall, were: "Congratulations upon your success; attack here repulsed. Longstreet wounded and a prisoner." The reference to Longstreet was a mistake, Armistead was meant. Riding along the lines I called out the contents of this note to our men, who began cheering, for we then knew that the battle of Gettysburg had been won.
CHAPTER X
The following morning our burial parties were at work, when a man from a Michigan regiment came and asked me if I would help him look for some of his comrades in a wheat field; the wheat being about three feet high it was not easy to notice a body in it unless one stumbled right on it. In a few minutes he called out that he had found one and then he said he had another. As the burial party was digging a trench on the ridge just beyond, I suggested that he stay where he was to mark the location and I would ride over and get some of the citizens, whom we noticed plundering the battle-field of horse equipments, to help carry the bodies over so they might be buried. I rode up to two or three men who had harness, saddles, and horse equipments in their possession and told them to drop them and come over to help me carry the bodies that we might bury them, as we had to move on shortly. They were a type of Pennsylvania Dutchmen that lived in that county, who seemed utterly indifferent to the war and anything pertaining to it, beyond securing such spoils as they got on the battle-field. They at once demurred and said they had no time, whereupon I flew into a rage at their heartless conduct, drew my sabre, and threatened to sabre them if they did not come at once. They then sulkily complied. When we got back to where the bodies were I told them to take some fence rails and carry them as though they were a stretcher. We put the bodies across the rails, the men holding the ends of them. When we had two bodies on this improvised stretcher I discovered a Confederate soldier, a sergeant, with a bushy head of red hair and a red beard. A sabre had split open the top of his head so you could put your hand in the gash. I suggested that he be cared for too, and when we attempted to put him on the stretcher they complained that they could not carry the load. Then I rode after some more citizens whom I also compelled to come over and help us. With their assistance we succeeded in getting a number of bodies up to where the burial party was at work. When I told my Michigan comrade of my experience with these men he became so angry that I thought he would shoot them then and there.
The General then moved into the town of Gettysburg, where, in contrast to the heartless conduct of these men, we found patriotic women at work in every house pulling lint and doing what they could to alleviate the suffering that was all around them. One lady, who, I was told, was the wife of a physician killed on the Peninsula, came out on the front porch and asked every soldier she saw to come in and have hot coffee and biscuit. The men gave her coffee, which she made in a wash-boiler, but the biscuits were made from flour she possessed, which by this time was about exhausted. As it was likely to be several days before normal conditions could be restored in the town, I suggested that she had better cease baking biscuits and save the little flour she had for her family, when she replied that she would take the chance, that as long as she had any she was going to give it to the soldiers.
About this time Nick, the General's bugler, came to me and reported that he had found a citizen who had fought with our troops and been wounded, an old man, and Nick wanted a doctor to go and see him as he was in his own house nearby. This citizen proved to be the famous John Burns, an old man of seventy, who fought, I think with a Wisconsin regiment. Whether anybody else had discovered Burns before Nick did I am not sure, but my recollection is that Nick's discovery first called the attention of our people to the fact.